I never seemed to have good luck with this voyage, which probably means that I did not plan and carry it out skilfully. For example, my chief object was to try out Gipsy Moth when running before the wind, not just for a few hours but during several days. What happened? On the way home with Giles, when we could confidently expect the prevailing south-westerlies, we were continually on the wind for 1,600 miles. One might go round the world several times without being close-hauled for such a stretch. Every time we turned a corner of Spain or Portugal expecting the headwind to become favourable, the wind changed direction at the same time and continued to head us. Gipsy Moth sailed well into wind, but this was not the object of the voyage and it was certainly not what I wanted on any speed run. In the end I never did have a sustained run to try out her speed and handling qualities in Trade Wind conditions. Once when sailing down-Channel with Christopher the wind freshened up to gale squalls and for a minute or two Gipsy Moth was touching 17 knots as she surfed on a wave crest with the wind from the starboard quarter. This stuffed me with optimism and I felt convinced, because I wanted to be convinced, that she could keep it up given the right conditions; that she was an exceptionally fast yacht, a veritable Arkle outstanding among all other racehorses. It was unfortunate that she had this burst of speed for a few seconds or minutes and pushed my aspirations into the clouds instead of keeping them down to earth.
It was not until 22 October that Giles and I sailed back into the Beaulieu River, and as I wanted to be in position for my speed, run to the Equator by the beginning of January, I had to bustle round to get everything done in time. Sheila had her stores list for the voyage well in hand, but I had a list of 97 modifications and things to be done to Gipsy Moth, of which the most troublesome were still the propeller, propeller shaft, stern tube, and the engine controls.
With only six weeks to go before I should start for the Equator, the time had come to disclose my project. One of the first people I told was my friend George Greenfield, who looks after my literary business and is a connoisseur of ‘strives’and adventures. When I told landsman George of what I had in mind he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be much more interesting if you made your speed run between two definite fixed points instead of along a 1,000 mile line across an ocean?’ I said that this was quite impossible; as it stood now my project was much too difficult not to look for the most favourable conditions and site anywhere in any ocean in the world, without being tied down to going from one fixed point to another. ‘For example,’ I said, ‘consider the Singlehanded Transatlantic Races from Plymouth to New York and Newport.’ More than fifty yachts had taken part in the three races. The straight line distance from Plymouth to Newport via Cape Race was 2,840 miles. My fastest time in Gipsy Moth III in 1964 had been 94.6 miles per day, and the fastest passage in all three races had been that of Geoffrey Williams in Sir Thomas Lipton in 1968 when he crossed in 25 days 20 hours and 33 minutes, at an average speed of 109.8 miles per day. A large share of the sailing in this race was windward work because of the depressions whistling through from west to east in the North Atlantic. Two hundred miles a day was a vastly increased speed and it would be almost impossible for a singlehander to achieve it on that fixed northern route. It showed clearly why I must seek the best conditions I could find. George’s comment boiled down to ‘H’m’.
George’s words niggled at me. Of course the whole idea was ridiculous, as any yachtsman could see at once. And yet.…A definite course between two points. A definite starting line and a definite time at which to cross it, after which you were committed to win or lose. It was a greater challenge, and a tougher one. I began to sit up late at night studying charts, reading Admiralty Sailing Directions and calculating distances to see if I could find some run between two fixed points which would fill the bill.
The traditional cross-Atlantic route for yachts is from the Canary Islands (29˚N 13½˚–17½˚W) to Barbados (13˚N 59½˚W) in the Windward Islands of the Caribbean Sea. Hundreds of yachts have sailed over this route. I stepped off the distance on a chart and found it roughly 2,640 miles from Palma in the Canaries to Barbados. It was an intriguing possibility, a good sporting sail; but it was an old and well-worn route. Could I find something more exciting? Why not go straight through the Windward Islands and catty on into the Caribbean?
My route needed to be a straight line, that is to say a Great Circle, on the earth’s surface1 I spotted a place called Chichi on the coast of Venezuela, Central America. This name sounded an auspicious tie up with mine. Supposing I started from a point near the coast between Dakar and Bathurst in West Africa, and shot through the Windward Islands, south of Grenada, to Chichi. I calculated the distance and found that it was 3,00.75 miles. Three thousand miles was certainly much more romantic than 2,640. But why stop at 3,000? I plotted route after route, getting more excited and keen to extend the distance. Could I run straight through the Caribbean, past Venezuela and the Isthmus of Panama, to Nicaragua, at the western end of it? Nicaragua seemed to have a horrid coast, strewn with cays, reefs, and islands. On top of that it had a wide belt of shallow water, which could make life very uncomfortable. On top of that again it would be a lee shore with a strong ENE wind driving right on to it; and lastly, it would also have a west-going current, trying to carry a yacht on to the beach. However, there was one place, San Juan del Norte (sometimes called Greytown), which could be approached without risk of hitting a cay. Just to the north of it the coast was indented somewhat to the west, with Com River in the middle of this indentation. The nearest hazard north of Corn River was a rock or islet called Paxaro Bovo, fifteen miles to the north, and then there was a bunch of cays off Monkey Point, five miles farther on. Farther north was impossible. The shallow waters were sprinkled with cays and reefs and islets. There was not a single light on the coast from San Juan del Norte to El Bluff, sixty miles to the north. None of the cays or islets was lighted. Approaching Corn River from the east, it was so shallow that there were only 30 fathoms of water twenty miles offshore. San Juan was a nightmare landfall too; there was not enough depth on the bar of the estuary for Gipsy Moth to enter and there was a cape sticking out four and a half miles to the east of it. Approaching this coast on a dirty night with a fresh onshore breeze was enough to give a singlehanded yachtsman nightmares for the rest of his life. But, and it was a most important but, this San Juan indentation provided the longest straight stretch of water between West Africa and the west end of the Caribbean Sea. I calculated the distance from Bathurst to San Juan; it was 3,900.2 miles.
This threw me into a feverish chart hunt. I could not bear to be so close to 4,000 miles without being able to stretch the distance that far. I simply had to find another hundred miles of distance. On the African coast to the south of Bathurst, the capital of Gambia, the next state was Portuguese Guinea, and then the coast bore away to the south-east so that the farther south the starting point, the longer the distance would be. At Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea, I should easily have the extra hundred miles of distance and more, but in January it would be in the Doldrums with no wind or fluky light airs for up to 500 miles to the west of it. That put it completely out. The only possibility was Portuguese Guinea. Here the hydrographic charts showed mostly faint airs up to 250 miles offshore, though there was a percentage of Force 3 and Force 4 breezes coming in from the north and NNE. I computed the distance from Caio at the mouth of the Canal (estuary) do Geba in Portuguese Guinea to San Juan del Norte. It was 3,956 miles. Forty-four to go. By now I was enchanted with the romantic appeal of the round figure of 4,000 miles and, carried away by it. I decided to start 47½ miles up the Geba estuary at the capital, Bissau. From there, at a point in the middle of the estuary five miles offshore from Bissau, and if I moved the ‘finishing post’ somewhat north of the township of San Juan del Norte to postion 11˚17’N 83˚47’ W, about five miles off the Corn River entrance, I could get my straight line distance of just over 4,000 nautical miles.
It lay roughly along the parallel of 10
˚N, which put me, usefully, in the west-going North Equatorial Current. The hydrographic pilot and routeing charts showed me that January should give the strongest winds in this southern part of the North Atlantic, with a good percentage of them at Force 5 and above and comparatively few calms. The winds on the whole should be easterly, in the main between 40˚ and 50˚ abaft the beam, which would put Gipsy Moth on to a broad reach, a yacht’s fastest point of sailing; only a small percentage was shown from astern or abeam.
This was it. What a wonderful racetrack. On the face of it, it did not look as if there was a hope of getting anything like the length anywhere else in the Atlantic, and bursting with excitement I committed myself to attempting 4,000 miles in 20 days along this track. And although I did not know it at the time, in my enthusiasm for those extra miles I had found, I had also made my first major error.
At that time, I reckoned that the whole voyage would take four months, with 9,500 miles of sailing. But after I had penetrated the Caribbean Sea I had a feeling of claustrophobia, of being encompassed and even oppressed by the land and islands surrounding it, although it is 1,650 miles from end to end. I felt ‘au large’ as the French put it so well, when I emerged through Crooked Island Passage into the broad Atlantic, and a primeval urge set me to sail on down to the Equator and back before being enclosed again by land on my return to the English Channel. My excuse was that I wanted to try to improve upon my five-day speed record. I did try, damned hard, but I never really believed the excuse. In the end I was to be away for five months and Gipsy Moth was to sail 18,581 miles.
And when in my planning I listed the difficulties and hazards of approaching the Nicaraguan shore, of beating out against strong winds and currents to escape from the Caribbean through the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, and thence through the passages among the cays of the Bahamas, somehow I was not touched by the practical reality of it all. When I came to it, it turned out to be as interesting and exciting an adventure as I could wish for. Nor, while I was planning, had I any premonition of the amazing, the Providential good luck which I feel I did not deserve and which saved me and Gipsy Moth from disaster near the end of the voyage.
Meridians are typical Great Circles and parallels of latitude, except for the Equator, are small circles. A simple way of seeing what a Great Circle route looks like is to stretch a piece of string from one point to another on a globe. If plots are taken along the line of the string and transferred to an ordinary atlas of Mercator’s projection, the results can be very instructive.
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2. Down to the Starting Line
On 12 December 1970, Giles and his friend David Pierce helped me to sail Gipsy Moth from the Beaulieu River down to Plymouth. It could well have been Gipsy Moth’s last passage. She had such a near escape from being smashed by a steamer that my blood still runs cold when I think of it.
On a fine sunny morning in perfect visibility Gipsy Moth was on passage westwards from Portland Bill. Start Point was in full view ahead and bearing south-west. Abeam, three or four miles to starboard, was a steamer approaching from the N or NNE, probably out of Exmouth. Gipsy Moth, under sail, had right of way. I made a mental note of our closing angle, checked our course, was satisfied that all was well, and went below to cook some breakfast for the crew. It seemed only minutes later that suddenly looking up, I saw through the window on the starboard side of the doghouse the green-painted, rust-speckled iron side of a steamer a few feet away. I don’t think I will ever again reach the cockpit as quickly as I did then. Gipsy Moth’s bows were just about to hit the broad side of the big steamer. I grabbed the helm, overriding the self-steering gear by force, and turned on to a heading parallel with the ship. The great iron mass was now eighteen inches or so from the side of Gipsy Moth amidships. I could not head directly away from the steamer because the stern would have swung over to starboard and been caught by the ugly steel plates and rivets sliding past. I had to keep Gipsy Moth sailing almost parallel to the side of the ship and between one and two feet off it. I feared that any slight roll would swing the crosstrees into the side of the steamer to knock her off course and bring the hull in contact. Giles was lying in his berth hard against the starboard side of Gipsy Moth amidships, and I dreaded the side being tom away by the rough iron with Giles trapped in his bunk. Yet as the steamer drew ahead I had to edge Gipsy Moth away, increasing the gap inches at a time, else we could have been dragged into the propellers.
One of the crew of the steamer looked down over the side at Gipsy Moth and I told him what I thought of Crystal Kobus, registered in Panama. I had reasoned that no ship would turn the Point with its busy two-way traffic without being able to cope with any problem a yacht might present. It is true that Gipsy Moth, like every vessel, should keep a lookout even while having right of way, but before the near miss I had checked the closing angle and decided that if ever there was a case where it was unnecessary for Gipsy Moth to keep watch on an approaching steamer, this was it. Gipsy Moth had not altered course nor, in the conditions, could there have been any appreciable increase or decrease in speed.
Steamers should of course be given right-of-way over smaller and normally handier yachts and sailing dinghies in land-locked waters, estuaries, or narrow sea-passages where some of the big steamers can put themselves into danger by giving way to a bull-minded racing yachtsman intent on his ‘rights’. But offshore I think steamers should stick to the rules of the road when they meet sail, and should remember that a radar set is an aid to the lookout and does not replace him.
At Plymouth there was little to do. All the stores were aboard, organized by Sheila at Beaulieu; arrangements for my radio schedules and my rendezvous with Christopher Doll at Bissau were already settled. The really important item was to ask Sid Mashford, whom I regard as the most knowing judge of a yacht’s likely weaknesses in storm, to look over Gipsy Moth. As a result of this he strengthened the stem pulpit and its fastenings; how right he was to prove to be! He also rigged a permanent radar reflector under the starboard cross-tree. While Gipsy Moth was at Sid’s yard, BBC technicians fitted a cassette cine-camera at the forward end of the cabin top, in a gimballed container designed to stand up to rough weather. Privately I wondered how it would last, but it was certainly worth giving it a try. The camera itself had a romantic past, being ex-RAF and first used in a fighter to record air-to-air combats in the Battle of Britain.
Gipsy Moth left Plymouth on 18 December. It was a foul day with drizzle and mist, followed by heavy rain, with a nasty sea outside the breakwater. I felt gauche with the gear and in no wise like a seaman. My heart was depressed to my boots and I could not imagine anything more unpleasant than starting on a big project in the dead of winter in such weather. To make things worse Stanley Rosenfeld, one of the finest yachting photographers in the world, had been commissioned by True magazine in New York to take pictures during the days leading up to the start. As I left the east end of the familiar breakwater that runs across Plymouth Sound, Rosie’s launch crossed my bows as I tacked and I would have rammed him had I not immediately tacked back again. I cursed him from Plymouth to hell, but he seemed quite unmoved and clicked away with his camera. I wondered if he had done it on purpose to catch me in an awkward situation.
Visibility was very bad outside the breakwater and the movement was horrible. As soon as I had got rid of Rosie I had two strong Courvoisier brandies with honey, lemon, and hot water. Gipsy Moth was pinched up hard on the wind, driving into a rough sea and a wind of up to 27 knots. It was dark at 1630 and the skies did not lighten again until 0845 next morning, giving sixteen hours of night sailing. In spite of a feeling that I was about to be sick—I wasn’t—and all the banging, which sounded like a gale blowing up, I had a good sleep. At dawn a half moon was showing among some clear sky patches among gloomy, stormy-looking black clouds: I logged that it was thrilling to be on my way at last.
I had looked forward to using this passage from Plymouth to Bissau for trying out Gipsy Moth’s pa
ces. I wanted to experiment with different sail trimmings and sail settings, and to see what speeds Gipsy Moth could achieve at different headings relative to the wind. Most important of all, I wanted to get my sail drill slick and fast. For three days I was chafing with impatience; there was no weather worth a damn to me and over one period of 121⁄3; hours up till the early hours of the 20th Gipsy Moth averaged only 1.1 knots. Then on the morning of the 21st the wind swung round to the NE and freshened. At last I had just what I wanted. Half an hour before noon I rigged up the 25ft spinnaker pole to port and boomed out the 300sq.ft jib which I had bought back at a sale of Gipsy Moth IV’s sails. It took me 2¼ hours to set up the pole and boom out the sail; I had to find all the different items, the guys, outhauls, sheets, the pole rest to fit on the stem pulpit, and so on, and then to remember how to handle the complicated layout, for I had not been able to use it seriously on Gipsy Moth V before. All the time I had to go carefully so as not to make a mistake in a breeze now blowing at 30 knots. But the thin winter sun was shining, dolphins were surfacing within six feet of me while I worked the stemhead, and it was exciting because this rig had to succeed if Gipsy Moth was going to clock anywhere near the 200 miles per day target. One immediate benefit of poling out was that the changed airflow put the No. 1 jib to sleep; it had been banging horribly during the night and had kept waking me from a restless nightmare in which someone was aboard Gipsy Moth with a whistle; but I think this noise was due to one of the stanchions, which sighed and whistled mournfully as the wind found a hole or gap in it. Two hours after noon Gipsy Moth was clocking 9.2 knots on the speedometer; this was a rate of 220 miles per day and I felt optimistic and excited.
The Romantic Challenge Page 3
