The Romantic Challenge

by Francis Chichester

  Finally I slid him back into the ocean where he flipped off gaily, as if he regularly made year-long voyages across the Atlantic imprisoned in a net. I wondered what the cumulative odds must have been against his being released. First of all there were the odds against his being caught in the net, then the longer odds against the net breaking away, further odds against being swept out to sea, further odds against entering the Guinea current to be carried into the Atlantic, incredibly long odds against the net being caught in the keel of a yacht 2,300 miles out in the Atlantic, almost as long odds against the net being hauled on board—and finally I would think it was a pretty lone chance that the skipper of the yacht should be vegetarian by preference.

  I suddenly remembered my date with the R/T. I felt bustled; already I was late, the sails were mostly down and the deck seemed to be littered with untidy heaps of gear. Immediately I had finished talking, I set to work once again with urgency. First I re-hoisted the tops’l and the mizen stays’l, sheeted the mizen and the main stays’l properly, and hoisted the 600 runner to starboard as a genoa. By 5 p.m. I was ready for the tough job of moving the repaired boom across the deck. First it had to be worked aft along the deck until it would pass between the main mast and the main stays’l; then forward again to the stem pulpit. Although only 22ft long, its weight was now that of a boom 33ft long, plus the boathook, plastic piping and the long row of lashings. Besides that, the jagged edges of the two broken ends had to be treated with great respect. They seemed to catch up in every item of deck gear as I worked the boom across. I got the outboard end on to the pulpit pole rest, but the boom was now so heavy and clumsy to handle that I had to use a topping-lift to raise the gooseneck end off the deck to the lug on the mast. Then the belly of the joint wanted to hang downwards, twisting the boom round so that it was difficult to connect the gooseneck snaphook at the heel of the boom to the lug. Everything seemed to get fouled up, the boom lift was twisted round itself and had to be re-rigged, the aft guy had passed under the top life-line instead of over it and needed re-reeving, and then I found that one of the jumper stays had parted halfway up the mast and was fouled by the tops’l halyard. So down that halyard had to come. Next I had to drop the big genoa because its halyard was fouled. The whole enterprise seemed desperately hopeless, with no speed, and darkness and a rain squall about to catch me. However, I kept at it and in the end the tops’l was up, the genoa was up, the pole was up and the No. 1 jib was boomed out. The jib set perfectly and turned out to be much better for booming out than the 600 runner. It is true that it was 90sq. ft smaller but I think that was outweighed by the efficient lead-in of the wind to the genoa on the other side. At last all the sails were set and drawing to my satisfaction, and I returned to a brandy I had poured out at the time of the R/T session some three hours earlier. ‘I certainly have enjoyed that brandy now,’ I logged, ‘and it is only a snifter compared with what I plan to have follow it.’

  Fourteenth day’s run to noon fix Tuesday 26 January 1971.

  Position: 15˚55’N 57˚11½’W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 157-5 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 1,574 miles.

  Days remaining: 6.

  The bust sail, my bloodied pate, the turtle and his net, had between them wrecked the day’s run. Distance was lost by sailing off course when the turtle net was hooked up on the keel, because at 173-5 the distance sailed was considerably more than the fix-to-fix line. The day before the speed had dropped 0.6 knot from 7.8 knots to 7.2 knots—8.4 per cent—when the big runner was put out of action at 0724. There was no boomed out sail for just over twelve hours and I think that 8 miles were lost to the run because of that, while a further 10 miles were lost by the disorganization of the sails and sailing while I was playing with the turtle. Altogether I would put the total loss at 24 miles or I knot over the day, and that is a conservative estimated rate.

  With only six days of the twenty left, the remaining 1,574 miles would demand a daily run of 262.3 miles per day to reach my target, which was quite impossible. However, I thought I had the consolation of having achieved my original aim of 200 miles per day for a 1,000-mile run point-to-point. Gipsy Moth had totalled 1,006.5 miles, the total of the five days’fix-to-fix runs of 180, 207, 207, 219 and 193.5 miles between the noon fixes of 16 and 21 January. But when I calculated the five-day run, point to point, it was 995.5 miles. I had failed to reach the 1,000-mile mark in five days by a miserable 4.5 miles.

  An hour after noon I climbed the mast to seek out the cause of the broken jumper stay. One of the screws of the bottlescrew, about halfway up the mast, had snapped. I could not find another of that size on board, so I secured the end as well as I could with cordage. The actual wind was now E by S. Gipsy Moth was headed for the Martinique Passage, 240 miles ahead, between Dominica and Martinique. I should probably need a star fix at dusk the next night if approaching the islands in the dark afterwards.

  At nine o’clock the next morning, the 27th, I payed off both the mizen and the mizen stays’l as a speed experiment. The sailing speed during the hour before checking the sheets was 7.1-7.2 knots. During two hours with the sails payed off, the speeds were 7-9-8 knots. Then I hardened them in again and in the next hour the speed dropped again to 7.25. The relative wind was coming in on the port quarter.

  At intervals during the night it had kept coming back to my mind: the original target I had set my heart on was a point-to-point run of 1,000 miles in five days, and a log entry later that morning reads: ‘Thanks be to God for the world’s most enjoyed breakfast, during which I worked out the route (which I like very much) for two five-day-1,000-mile speed attempts on the way home.’ It would not be such a favourable time of year for them as I originally planned, but I would at least have the sport of making them.

  Fifteenth day’s run to noon fix Wednesday 27 January 1971.

  Position: 14˚33½’N 59˚58’ W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 181 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 1,405.75 miles.

  Days remaining: 5.

  The passage between Martinique and Dominica, was now 77 miles WNW, and the St Lucia Channel between Martinique and St Luck Islands lay ahead, WSW 55 miles off. The St Lucia Passage looked the more desirable if Gipsy Moth could make it, but it might be too much of a squeeze on, that gybe. I thought I must try to make it, however.

  By six that evening I was getting restless at not having sighted Martinique. Always after a long ocean passage without a position check I am apprehensive of some awful blunder in the navigation. Then suddenly, a few minutes afterwards, I could see land with a high peak, a cone bearing 300˚. ‘I think this peak is Vauclin Mountain,’ I logged. ‘I got quite excited at first, thinking it might be Mont Pelée, the most romantic mountain in the world for me as a boy because of a story in the Boys’Own Paper about the great eruption of 1902 and the strong portraits of the characters in the story, particularly of the old crone, the Sibyl, who foretold the coming eruption.’ On that terrible day the whole city of St Pierre, with its 30,000 inhabitants, was wiped out within a few minutes. In the harbour the ships burst into flame and sank in the boiling sea. Then I noted that Pelée would be 22 miles behind Mt Vauclin as seen from Gipsy Moth’s position, so I feared my romantic surge had been groundless. Later I decided it was Pelée after all because it had the right bearing and the chart gave its height as 4,400ft. When it comes to seeing a peak that high from seaward, what is 40 miles of distance?

  Night fell as I was approaching the St Lucia Channel between Martinique and St Lucia, with the swell livening up and rolling in from the east. The log records a long series of bearings of the Pointe d’Enfer light. It was a tricky passage because at first Gipsy Moth would not point north of the middle of St Lucia. I was very reluctant to gybe, however, both because of the hours of hard work involved and because I suspected that the wind was being temporarily deflected by the islands and would improve in direction. Meanwhile the heavy rain showers blotted out all the lights on the land, and
this I did not like. I knew there were strong currents between the islands. The list of observed bearings lengthened, but presently, at 2120, Gipsy Moth was far enough into the channel for the Pointe Castries light at the north-western end of St Lucia to open up from behind the land.

  2021½

  Castries 200˚

  d’Enfer 020˚

  2135

  d’Enfer 035˚

  2144½

  Castries 200˚

  d’Enfer 045˚

  At ten o’clock I reckoned that Gipsy Moth was past the middle

  of the channel and into the Caribbean Sea. I celebrated with a glass of delicious Courvoisier and sank the empty bottle carefully and respectfully to the bottom of the channel which, I reflected, was appropriately French.

  Before daybreak the calm, lake-like gliding through the water was quite different from what I had expected from the Caribbean. It intensified the feeling growing on me that I was being shut in. Although the Caribbean stretched 1,350 miles ahead of me, to leave the broad Atlantic gave me a feeling of claustrophobia, of being encompassed by menacing land.

  The feeling of sailing in inland waters was soon shattered by a fierce, short rain and wind squall which came literally ‘out of the blue’with the sun shining during it. Gipsy Moth got out of control broadside to the wind, even though I had the tiller tackle rigged; I think the rudder was too much out of the water or too near the horizontal to bite or be effective. At one moment I thought she would not come upright again without some more drastic action, such as letting all the sheets fly. It seemed very cold in the driving rain. I had had no time to put anything on as I rushed into the cockpit, but I grabbed a moonweave blanket which wanted a wash anyway and put that round me like a shawl. It was very effective besides being the quickest way of getting some covering. Maybe one needs some form of cloak in such emergencies.

  ‘I have thought about this squall as there are others about. I must have a drill ready and I shall try having both the mizen and the mizen stays’l at the ready for dropping as far as topping-lifts, vangs and halyards are concerned. I could let them fly at the first sign of trouble and let them lie, to re-hoist easily afterwards. With the remaining sail area forward I should then have much more control. I would prefer to get rid of the tops’l but that has to be eased down its track and the halyard needs careful watching. What about some breakfast; it is 9.30?’

  Sixteenth day’s run to noon fix Thursday 28 January 1971.

  Position: 13˚45’N 62˚36’W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 161 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 1,249 miles.

  Days remaining: 4.

  The fix-to-fix was as much as I had expected through the St Lucia Channel.

  At midnight ‘I hoisted that damn tops’l again, this time sheeting it to the end of the mizen boom. I must say the boat seems more lively since but it does make much woe when a squall strikes. The set-up is so involved and the tops’l always causes trouble because it is set so high and therefore has a big heeling moment.’ But it was a successful move and in the freshening wind Gipsy Moth was going well.

  Seventeenth day’s run to noon fix Friday 29 January 1971.

  Position: 12˚18½’N 65˚28’W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 190 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 1,077.25 miles.

  Days remaining: 3.

  In the afternoon I finished making up a makeshift clew for Big Brother. I pierced the strengthened corner of the sail behind the broken clew ring in three places with 1½-in intervals between the holes, drove a shackle-pin through each hole to fasten a shackle there, then gathered these together by passing a fourth through them, to which I attached the bowline of the sheet. It turned out a strong makeshift repair which did not fail me. Immediately afterwards I had to gybe because I was headed for a group of islands, Islas Los Roques, belonging to Venezuela. Nine minutes later Isla La Orchila was abeam 10 miles to port. These islands caught me unprepared. I hurriedly studied them on the chart and referred to the Admiralty Sailing Directions, but I was definitely caught out and in a bustle. Then halfway through the gybe the time came for me to call the BBC. I asked them to defer my call, which they did.

  I still had a lot to do and the islands kept cropping up and going by at what seemed a terrific pace for a yacht, which made me think there must be the father of all currents there. I had approached the islands to take advantage of the Equatorial Current on its way to the Gulf of Mexico to become the Gulf Stream. However, Gipsy Moth was sailing faster than the speedometer showed; I was to discover later that the axles of the tiny propellers which measure the sailing speed of the yacht had worn out during the voyage and I had not realized it. As a result the log was not registering at all at low speeds and under-registering by about ½ knot at high speeds. I had thought that the distance made good was more than the distance sailed because of a strong current, whereas the difference was mostly due to the log failure. I was due again at the infernal wireless and felt jumpy at having to leave off keeping watch with so many islets close on hand.

  At midnight I raised myself from my drowsy sleep to go and rig the pole for Big Brother, but when I got on deck I voted against it. The breeze had freshened up considerably—I saw the wind speed indicator at 24 knots—and Gipsy Moth could well do without the running sail at present. Perhaps my real reason was that with the end of the race in sight I was nursing the pole. I wanted in any case to put one more lashing at each end of the join before I used it again. It is very difficult with two large diameter poles lashed together to prevent the butt of one from slueing sideways in the join and it was already a few degrees awry: and as soon as they are not exactly parallel the compression load must set up a tremendous strain. So I secured the pole on deck again and dumped the big runner back in the forepeak.

  ‘I am suffering from a complaint quite new to me tonight. My bottom is sore with sunburn. I was working for an hour or two on the clew of the big runner and I must have got burnt then. But I am not moaning about it because it is such a wonderful thing for a Briton to be able to get a burnt bottom in January. I dabbed calamine lotion on. I had a long talk on the R/T with Frank Page of the Observer. He seemed sympathetic and I am only too willing to be drawn out. He asked if I had done 1,000 miles in five days during this passage as, he said, I had told Captain Newman of the Cutty Sark I hoped to do. I said “No”.… I feel there is a current fairly whisking Gipsy Moth along here and the run might be up to 200 miles tomorrow. The disadvantage is that I have had to come close to the string of islands along the coast to get full advantage of the current, and I could soon be in trouble if the wind backed when I was asleep. The heading is O.K. up to now, one hour after midnight.’

  At 0400: ‘It always tweeks a romantic chord to see the Southern Cross again. Brilliant stars in a darkish sky; one or two tiny black clouds. Sea surprisingly pobbly.’ At daybreak I suddenly thought I must try a star fix because I would almost certainly be needing one when running down on to the lee shore of Nicaragua. It was a dismal failure; by the time I had found the star volume and worked out the value of Aries, it was too light in the sky and I could not pick up in the sextant any of the three stars I wanted. It was a good lesson; I had not needed a star fix for a long time and I determined to smarten up the drill.

  ‘The boom mend seen as it lies on deck has a bend in it and I must doctor it up before hoisting. It is now needed. The speedometer is recording only 7 knots though the wind is 17 knots. I suppose the speedometer is O. K?’

  By eleven that morning—’At long last!’—the boom mend had been strengthened, the shackle clew for. Big Brother strengthened, and he himself was boomed out to starboard. It was a long and at times tricky operation to shift the heavy, murderously jagged pole from one side of the deck to the other before even the hoisting could start, and I noticed that the mast was bending where the heel of the pole pressed against it, and that a whip had developed at the top of the mast. I hoped that the remaining jumper stay was strong enough. I h
ate jumper struts; I think them old-fashioned for offshore work and more likely to cause a mast-break than to prevent it.