Atlantic Adventure

by Francis Chichester

  We did not get away from the mooring until two o’clock in the afternoon, after church, and a visit to Gipsy Moth by Tubby Clayton with one of his disciples (or ADCS?). Now as to our trials. First, concerning Miranda II, the Mark II version of my self-steering vane. The sail was cut two inches too long in the leech instead of dead flat. As a result it flapped badly in anything of a wind. A bottle-screw on one of the wire stays to the end of the boom quickly shook itself free and disappeared into the Solent. That I soon replaced by a lanyard. Maybe this floppy sail was a good thing: it showed up weaknesses bound to give trouble in a storm. I decided to add two long battens and two rows of reefing eyes, as well as getting the sail flat. It was also clear that Miranda’s mast would have to be strengthened greatly. The flapping sail made the mast whip and shake below the sleeve. I decided to get Ian Proctor’s advice about it.

  We ran down the Solent dead before the wind under Miranda’s control, which never could be done before because of the backstay’s interference with the vane. That old backstay has been changed to twin backstays farther forward, allowing Miranda to swing right round. The new Miranda is more powerful too. Also partly due to Miranda, Gipsy Moth did well on a broad reach, only hunting through an arc of 30 degrees instead of through 90 degrees as before. But this was partly due to the new rig by John Illingworth, as a result of which Gipsy Moth is well balanced and easier to control.

  Unfortunately, the old mainsail, recut to the new look, had come out wrong. It was too baggy. This was something that had to be cured: it could not be endured.

  While all this work of adjustment and making new fittings went on, I had some more sailing. I remember particularly one day when I finished lunch at eleven p.m., and dropped into my berth at midnight. It was only a voyage to Cowes and back, about eight miles each way. I had wanted to take my Miranda sail there for more alterations, because it still would not fit. I had meant to leave my mooring in the Beaulieu River at eight, but I didn’t get away until eleven a.m. It always amazes me the number of jobs to be done on a 13-ton boat before one can sail, and as I had to moor up on the trots at Cowes single-handed, I had to prepare four fenders and two warps. I got three sails bent and cast off the mooring. It was one of those lovely spring mornings with an occasional cuckoo and a romantic freshness of tone, a few gulls mewing, and later thousands of them squalling in their nests along the spit. The sun shone hot, but it was cold out of it with an ENE. breeze. I trimmed up the new No. 2 jib (which I was trying out for the first time) with a staysail and the main until the boat sailed itself for a while.

  But when I had crossed the Solent hard on the wind, I lost a lot of ground to the westward with the strong 2½-3 knot tide stream against me, the wind against me, and only a light breeze at that, so I had to spoil the lovely scene by starting the motor. I switched off and sailed when the breeze freshened a little. Off the Squadron Castle at Cowes the time came for me to lower the sails. All went well with the headsails, but the reel winch on which the mainsail wire halliard was wound, like thread on a reel, jammed and refused to budge. The reel was partly off its spindle. I tried to free it, banged it with a wooden mallet, but it would not budge. There was a nice fix, with the main jammed up and no bosun’s chair rig with which I could haul myself up to the top of the 50-foot mast. In the end I found I could work the wire off the reel a turn at a time between the reel and the guard designed to prevent the wire from doing just that thing.

  I bustled off with Miranda’s sail and her 11-foot spar, and Sherlaws were soon putting it right. This took time, and it was six p.m. when I emerged from the Medina River. The tide stream now turned and was really strong against me again, but I thought it would be all right with a nice easterly breeze astern to waft me home. No such luck; the breeze had gone round to west. With a 3½-knot stream off Cowes I should be carried halfway to Portsmouth if I tried to cross there.

  Either I must wait until the tide turned favourable in the Solent at nine-thirty (when, however, it would be against me all the 4 miles up the Beaulieu River) or else put the motor on and creep round the point at Cowes with sails flapping. Purist yachting men, forgive me; I motored and flapped. The motor was making a horrible row, and I was forced to realize that the exhaust pipe was leaking. When I had crept far enough up the coast of the island, I tacked and headed for the mainland, sailing. I switched off and tried to repair the exhaust pipe (which I feared would set the boat on fire) by strapping it with a Whitbread Pale Ale can (after I had suitably emptied it).

  As soon as I got into the river the breeze began to die on me, and I switched on the motor again. After a while the cylinder belching into that exhaust pipe stopped firing. I held on for a while, busy with navigating in the narrow channel, hoping it would pick up firing again. When I looked into the cabin it was invisible for sooty black smoke. I switched off, threw out a charred piece of wood, and hurriedly loosened the kedge anchor and dropped it just before Gipsy Moth charged her favourite mudbank. Balked of her evil desire, she strained against the kedge, still pointing at the bank. The kedge warp rubbed off green anti-fouling paint under the bottom. I hoisted the mainsail, and finally coaxed Gipsy Moth into a heading so that I could free and haul aboard the anchor and get back to the tiller before the yacht charged the bank. I began tacking to and fro across the channel in a zephyr, but the tide was making slowly up river—in my favour for the first time that day. The zephyr became imperceptible, but still Gipsy Moth ghosted on over the reflection of the western sky where the huge red sun was dropping behind the trees. The water was glassy. In the end the yacht swung across the river in a dead calm, then a faint puff took her aback and she headed for the bank. Our wills tangled. I did not want her to hit the mud and lie on her side all night. I dropped into the dinghy astern like a rabbit out of a hat, after running along the deck with a warp from the stem. I rowed hard and tugged at the reluctant stem standing black in the still water. Slowly she came round and headed upstream. The dinghy jerked to a halt; the warp flicked taut; the yacht moved slowly. After half a mile a man coming along in a dinghy with a motor offered me a pluck, and I accepted with a little regret; it appealed to me then, the prospect of towing Gipsy Moth through Buckler’s Hard to her mooring with an 8-foot dinghy.

  Another mile would have done it. One man, a stranger, called out to me: ‘You can’t imagine how lovely her reflection looks, black in the water.’ That was how I came to have lunch at eleven p.m. on the first day of May.

  I used to think it extraordinary to read of ships of the line taking months to fit out for a voyage; I no longer do. Even in this 13-tonner there always seem to be a thousand things to service, to make ready, or to make work. And I have no seventy-four guns to attend to, only one modest Very pistol which merely has to be cleaned and oiled, and its cartridges checked, so many red and white flares. I suppose that the rockets I carry and the red and white flares are nearly in the gunpowder class. Slowly I got through the items on my agenda, making it seem possible that I could be ready for the deep sea one day soon. Yet the list seemed endless. There was the compass to be adjusted, with sundry moorings and anchorings down river. This turned out well, with no disturbance in north and south headings, which is nice, only in east and west. I like a good compass position with little deviation to correct.

  Then there were the anchors to be bedded down in the starboard berth in the forecabin. I first chose the sites carefully where they would take up least room, and then I drilled for twenty screws to secure the ten metal chocks to keep them in place in heavy weather. Then I rigged tackles into the staysail sheets, which I thought would be an improvement on winches for single-handed work. Next I rigged a curtain over the entrance to the cabin; the three washboards which drop into slots to close the entrance and stand up to a big sea are excellent, but they are an obstruction to quick exits and entrances. And there was the engine, which had given trouble and reduced me to despair by black exhaust carbon from leaking exhaust pipes. I suppose I really resent motors in a sailing vessel. Why have them, you sa
y? Well, without the auxiliary I should have to wait for a favourable tide to get back to my mooring in the Beaulieu River. You can’t tack a 40-foot boat against the wind in a narrow channel single-handed, for long. A mainsail alone won’t drive her fast enough and tacking a big head sail every minute or so will soon exhaust a single-hander. And the channel at low water is not much wider than the yacht length in places where piles have been driven into the river for mooring. Martin fixed my motor. He runs a garage, and used to look after Lord Montagu’s museum of old cars. His fixing of my motor, and of the charging engine, made a big difference. Still, all the time I felt how happy I should be when the boat actually became a sailing vessel again.

  The start on June 1st did not go according to plan—I was nearly late across the line. Gipsy Moth was at Mashford’s Yard, because we had saved up a lot of repairs for them to do. One reason we were there is that Sid Mashford has a wonderful eye for a yacht and any detail on it. No transatlantic yachtsman should leave without letting him have a look at his boat. For example, he found that the pulpit wasn’t properly fastened. He also pointed out that a lot of the anti-fouling on the hull was missing, although it was only put on two months before. Another thing he did for me was to show how the lifelines could be better placed, and altogether I felt really confident when I left. At nine a.m. I had gone on board and was preparing to sail. I was just getting things in order when a big launch came alongside and two Customs men stepped aboard. They had just heard that I had a tape-recorder, so they looked all over it, cut open the battery-box and looked at all the batteries, cut open the tape-box and looked at all the tapes. I don’t know what they expected to find. I was stamping about on deck, and as a result of the delay we nearly missed the start. While Sid Mashford stowed gear below, my wife took the helm and we rushed down to the line, where my passengers transferred to the harbourmaster’s launch. Instead of being calm, and resolute, and all set to do some lovely manoeuvres before the start, there I was in a hurry. I had been told that the forecast promised a north-east wind up to Force 6. Very cautious, as usual, I set the number two jib, but hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when I found that we had not got enough canvas. So I set my biggest jib, but there still wasn’t enough, and I added the staysail.

  As I got clear of the breakwater the wind came in from astern and I thought I was in for this north-easter. So I boomed out the genoa. But this was no sooner done than the wind veered and I had to get the 21-foot pole in again. The wind veered once more and the boat was hard on the wind. At Polperro I tacked for the first time. For the rest of that first day I seemed to be re-setting sails all day. The wind was all over the place, but never from the northeast, never.

  At six p.m., when I made my first telephone call to the Guardian, Gipsy Moth was still 15 miles from the Lizard, and we were making only 5 knots. But still—that’s yachting.

  I found that I hadn’t yet got the single-handed attitude of mind: I kept popping up into the cockpit to see what was happening, whereas I should have been content to stay below. But I knew that

  I would soon tune in to the ocean and its atmosphere, and be

  happy to listen, and feel for any change in conditions.

  2. A Pigeon Joins the Ship

  I spent the rest of that first evening stowing clothes and gear below, and around nine-thirty I met a fishing boat. The tide turned in my favour at the Lizard about then, and I set a course clear of the Runnelstone, which is a buoy just south of Land’s End. I was nearly becalmed in the lee of the Lizard, and the coastguard there flashed me a signal asking me what ship I was. I was nearly becalmed in the lee of Land’s End as well. I had no sleep up to then, because I couldn’t sleep so close to land, with so many ships about, and also the wind was too variable: if I left the self-steering gear in charge and went to sleep near the land, a slight change of wind direction might have put me ashore. But I couldn’t complain: it was a lovely scene, a sort of yachtsman’s dream, with clusters of fishing boats, quite brightly lit. I had the red sector of the Wolf Rock to guide me, and I was soon rounding the Runnelstone. Then I got into the red sector of the Longships light off Land’s End. This made me think of Ann Davison in her story Last Voyage, and I became convinced that this was the ‘baleful red light’that she could not identify. After I left Land’s End you might think that I was clear, but I still had the Seven Stones to avoid, a cluster of rocks north-west of Land’s End, with a lightship there.

  I was getting very sleepy indeed, so I decided to have a sleep, and I set an alarm clock for an hour and a half later, which I reckoned would give me a safety margin of time in case the wind changed and was bearing me down on the rocks. But a nice breeze got up, and Gipsy Moth was heeled over twenty-five degrees and I got my decks well washed. It was rather thrilling to be at sea again, and to hear the water gurgling and swishing outside the hull, alongside my ear while I lay in my bunk. We were being bumped about a bit, but all the same a red carnation, placed in a glass on my swinging table by my cousin Myra before I left, stayed in the glass. When I woke up I found that the wind had held, and we were well north of the Seven Stones. Then I turned in properly, and had a fairly good sleep from three a.m. until about nine o’clock. To show what a good breeze we had, we did forty-four miles in seven and a half hours, an average of nearly six knots. But I was woken at 9 o’clock by the sails flapping in a calm, and I began working hard to try to get more speed out of the yacht. I boomed out my No. 2 jib, so that I had 1,090 square feet of sail set. In spite of that I managed to get only seven and a half miles in three hours. Then we were nearly becalmed again, and Gipsy went round twice in a slow circle. There was some awful rolling, but it was lovely sunny weather, with the sun hot and only fair weather clouds in the sky.

  After I had my morning Mackeson I had a delicious salad lunch, made from some salad given me by Mrs Odling-Smee, wife of the former Rear-Commodore of the Royal Western Yacht Club. I felt absolutely on top of the world, and I was almost tempted to jump overboard to have a swim; but I did some work on board instead, trimming sails, and trying to charge the batteries. I ran the generator for three and three-quarter hours, but the batteries were still not fully charged. I also contrived to lose the funnel for filling the generator in the bilge.

  Miranda, my self-steering vane, controlled the yacht even when I could not tell where the faint air was coming from, helping her to ghost along quietly, too slowly for the log to register. This was a wonderful success for the new model Miranda, and couldn’t have been achieved with the old one. But calm is no fun at all for a sailor: the boom sways to and fro and the whole yacht shakes when it comes up against the sheets; blocks creak and sails flap. In one period of ten hours I did only ten miles. Finally, I took down the mainsail to spare it the hard time it was having as it slatted about, and then of course there was nothing to prevent the yacht from rolling, which she did in no uncertain terms. But I still did not feel like complaining. I never had a day’s weather like this in the whole of the 1960 race. The sun shone out of a cloudless sky, and there was a lovely dark blue sea, and it gave me a chance to catch up on stowage and getting jobs done. Another great compensation was that I got a wonderful sleep, pyjamas, nylon sheets, and all.

  The great event of my second day at sea was the arrival of Pidgy, a handsome homing pigeon, which I found underneath a sail on the foredeck. It is a great event for a single-handed sailor when a bird comes on board. Pidgy was very diffident, and I could not catch him, but he was intensely curious and seemed to want to know exactly what I was doing. He kept perching on the companionway to see what I was doing in the cabin. As I was tuning up my radio to talk to the Guardian, Billy Cotton suddenly came through with that show of his. Pidgy perched on the chart table to listen to it. Soon after I first found Pidgy, I gave him some muesli and water, which he seemed to enjoy, but afterwards I had great difficulty in persuading him to eat. I tried him with all sorts of food, salad oatmeal, and everything I could think of, but he didn’t seem very keen on any of it. I think h
e was seasick: he looked terrible, all fluffed up, bleary-eyed, and with his head tucked under his wing. I wondered whether he would last the night, but in the morning he seemed to revive.

  He still wouldn’t eat, but he kept on following me about. He looked very sick to me. He was certainly not house-trained, but I didn’t grudge it him. But he did make a frightful mess. When I was sunbathing on deck he jumped into the cabin, and when I discovered him he had already made a frightful mess on the cabin sole. Thank heaven it was not on the carpet. I had to follow him round the boat with a bucket. He did eat some food at last, and I made a box for him in the cockpit, giving him a mallet and a piece of rope to stand on. I thought that I could probably sell the guano rights on that mallet for a large sum when I got to America! But Pidgy must be about the most stupid pigeon ever. He kept on pecking like mad at a saucer he finished long ago, but wouldn’t look at the new supply I put in his box and showed to him several times.

  Note: The pigeon which took refuge on Gipsy Moth was identified by the National Homing Union from the letters and figures on his ring, which Francis Chichester gave to the Guardian by radio-telephone. He was a cock, belonging to Mr Arthur Banks, a nurseryman, of Marsh Lane, Longton, near Preston, bred from a distinguished pair of racing parents in what Mr Banks described as ‘a long-distance French family’. In 1961 he finished fifth in a race from Guernsey to Longton—the Longton Two Bird Open. He was released in the Channel Islands to take part in the race this year on the day after Chichester left Plymouth, and was apparently blown off his course, to land exhausted on Gipsy’s foredeck. Francis was much concerned about the pigeon’s exhausted state, and very much bothered when he could not persuade it to eat. He asked us on the Guardian whether we could get him some expert advice about pigeons, and we sought advice from the Curator of Birds at the London Zoo, the RSPCA, and the Severn Wildfowl Trust. All responded readily, and suggested much the kind of food that he was already giving it—nuts, oatmeal, and broken biscuit. They also advised fresh greenstuff, and Francis gave the pigeon what he had, but fresh greenstuff on a small sailing boat well out to sea is not easy to come by.—J.R.L. A.