Nightfall was at 1800 and I shot the first star, Sirius, one minute before, followed by Capella. The sky was clouding up and I could not snap Procyon until seventeen minutes later. When I worked out the sights and plotted the position lines they did not meet in a point. I had a cold feeling; it was fear. Gipsy Moth was racing at over 8 knots towards an unknown, unlit shore in the dark, and I did not know for certain where I was. ‘This,’ I told myself, ‘is where you keep your “cool” or you will have had it.’ I was not going to turn until I was definitely over my finishing line but the prospect of driving on to the beach was a chilling one. I started to re-check my workings. It was no use hurrying. It must be done thoroughly. In the seventh line of the Sirius calculation I found the mistake; this time I had taken the value of the Greenwich Hour Angle of Aries for 4 February instead of the 3rd. This had made an error of 52 miles. After correcting it, the three-star position lines intersected to form a ‘cocked hat’which, though not as small as I would have liked even on a large-scale chart, was small enough to be convincing.
It showed the danger clearly; on her present heading Gipsy Moth was 8.5 miles east of the finishing line, and this in turn was 5.3 miles from the shore at the entrance to the Corn River, where the chart read ‘Breaks across when little swell’. By the time I had finished working out the three sights, finding the error in the Sirius calculation, then plotting the position lines, it was a quarter-to seven and Gipsy Moth, sailing fast, was only 4.5 miles from the finishing line. I had thirty-five minutes before she reached the finishing line and eighty minutes before she hit the beach.
The depth had already shallowed to 18 fathoms. I was up on deck as fast as I could get there. I had to drop the tops’l and big jib to ensure easy control of the yacht and quick manoeuvrability so that I could spin Gipsy Moth round if she was suddenly in danger of grounding. The bottom here was mud and sand and the depth would be always changing with the scouring of the strong currents. I was thankful for the bright pools of light on the deck from the spreader lights above, though they seemed to intensify the thick darkness around. There was nothing visible anywhere, either on the sea, in the direction of the land or even in the sky above, clouded with heavy overcast. There was something ominous and threatening about the night. Was this the forerunner of one of the fierce northerly ‘busters’ which the Admiralty Sailing Directions described as a serious menace at this western end of the Caribbean Sea?
By 1919, one hour and four minutes after the star fix, Gipsy Moth had run 8 miles and I reckoned she was half a mile short of the finishing line.
It was nervy work driving towards the shore in the pitch dark with not a glimmer of light from land or sea, or in the sky. I held to the same course for sis minutes, when I reckoned Gipsy Moth was a quarter mile over the line. I cannot describe the immense surge of relief which I felt when I put Gipsy Moth about on to the port tack, close-hauled and headed SE by E away from that unseen shore.
Twenty-third day’s run from noon fix to 1925 Wednesday
3 February 1971.
Position: 11˚18’ N 83˚47’W (finish).
Distance fix to fix: 59.5 miles.
The course would take Gipsy Moth away from the coast north of San Juan, provided she was far enough north of San Juan to clear a cape east of it. A northerly current could have been carrying her south all this time. It was an uncanny feeling with not a single light along the coast and no sign whatever of the shore. Yet I knew it was there, close at hand, invisible because of its low-lying terrain. Time after time I scanned to the west and the south with the night glasses. The deck was an untidy mess with sails and ropes everywhere, but I dared not take the time from my anxious watch to tidy it up. I wished I could stop work; I had a feeling of helplessness and could have done with a good strong drink, but I would not have anything because I should need to stay awake all night and keep my wits sharp, or at least not to make them duller than they seemed to be already. Gipsy Moth was sailing close-winded to an E by N wind of 17 knots. At 2230 I suddenly noticed that the heading had been pushed round to south in a heavy rain squall. Was Gipsy Moth clear of the point or headed straight for it on this southerly course? The depth was 26 fathoms. I put her about to make sure that she was headed away from the land.
The wind backed steadily and pushed Gipsy Moth’s heading round to the north-west, so that now she was headed in to the shore on the other tack, and half an hour before midnight I found her headed south-west right for the beach, the wind having backed to NW.
For the third time I tacked away from the land. It was not long before I noticed that the heading had swung round from north to north-west and once again Gipsy Moth was headed into the land. I felt as if I were being hunted on to the shore. This time, before putting about again, I took advantage of being on the starboard tack to stow the mizen more snugly on its boom, being able to get at it better while standing on the side of the cockpit on that tack. The new heading was 110˚. It could not have been a safer one for heading away from the land. Twenty minutes later there was a 35-knot rain squall. The log entry reads: ‘Pretty weird goings-on here I call them. Gipsy Moth is plunging madly in a 35-knot squall in a very rough sea indeed.’ However the depth was now 60 fathoms, which was a great relief.
Shortly after midnight another nasty squall came in, a 40-knotter from the NNE, and I turned Gipsy Moth off the wind while I dropped the mizen stays’l; forty minutes later I had to re-hoist it and come up close-hauled to claw off the coast. An hour after midnight: ‘A pretty how-de-do; heavy squalls with winds shifting from SE to N. Each time I have tacked away from the shore the wind has shifted and headed Gipsy Moth into land again. At present she is heading 25˚ E of S but the worry is that the coast for 60 miles from the San Juan Point runs 30˚ E of S. Must risk a sleep; beginning to totter.’ By the echo-sounder the depth was more than 60 fathoms so that it seemed safe enough for a short sleep. The risk was that being fagged to the bone, I might fall into a heavy sleep, and at one place the chart gives a 60-fathom depth only 7 miles offshore. It was a horrible sea and I was feeling seasick, which never made anyone optimistic. But I had to sleep.
At 3 a.m. I woke to find Gipsy Moth becalmed. At last came the dawn to find me bleary-eyed and weary-skinned, having difficulty in concentrating sufficiently to decide the best course of action. I hadn’t a clue as to where I was. There was nothing in sight and the sky was overcast so there was no chance of any star fix. It was not until 0915 that I was lucky enough to get a sun shot and this I combined with a rough DR of the night’s complicated wanderings, which I forced myself to work out from the few entries I had in the log for the night before and my memory of the rest. As soon as I had crossed the finishing line I had found it difficult and irksome to make myself enter up log data. The project was finished and I resented having to do anything more. The DR position put Gipsy Moth 11.5 miles north of the beach at San Juan del Norte at the entrance to the estuary. At 1003 I got another shot of the sun which gave me a fix and put Gipsy Moth 9 miles from the San Juan entrance, NE by E of it. This was 9.3 miles south-east of my position worked out by DR since the star sight. I was well satisfied because this discrepancy was to be expected with a south-east going current as predicted for this part of the coast.
Shortly afterwards a helicopter clattered on to the scene, I guessed with Christopher Doll and Paul Berriff on board. I thought they must be great optimists to have expected to find me, and then to be equally lucky to do so. I was feeling in a ghastly, bleary state after the past thirty hours, but the helicopter succeeded in rousing me to rage by putting Gipsy Moth first aback with its downwash and then into irons. I had to let all the sheets fly and work Gipsy Moth downwind right round the compass so that she could get sailing again. I said some very uncomplimentary things indeed about Christopher’s knowledge of seamanship as the helicopter backed away and headed for the shore.
Presently a large, cumbersome craft showed up. At last I could see the shoreline but it was so low and indistinct that it would have been impos
sible to identify it, I seemed to be full of worry, due I suppose to fatigue. I could not think how to cope with the visiting vessel. The weather was now fine, but there was a considerable swell running from the north-east. If this big, top-heavy craft tried to come alongside Gipsy Moth there would be trouble. I sailed on slowly towards the estuary entrance at San Juan, turning it over in my mind. I dropped the mizen and after down-hauling the main stays’l and mizen stays’l booms to leeward, put Gipsy Moth about so that the sails were aback. She then jogged along with steerage way at about a knot. This enabled the skipper of the Junior to come within hailing distance—and he remained there. He was a good seaman and I need not have worried.
The British Ambassador to Nicaragua and his wife, Ivor and Patricia Vincent, were aboard, as were Christopher Doll and Paul Berriff. The Ambassador gamely started making a speech of welcome. I felt sorry to be the cause of his having to suffer from what must have been a horrible movement aboard the nearly stationary Junior in that swell. He invited me to visit Managua, the capital, but I said there was not sufficient depth over the bar at the estuary for Gipsy Moth to enter, and therefore I was going to leave immediately for Panama. I had had a gruelling night and did not want to repeat it. Christopher Doll knew all this, of course, because I had explained my plans to him at Bissau. However, they pressed me to visit El Bluff, at the entrance to the Bluefields Lagoon, sixty miles to the north. It was an excellent harbour with a safe entrance. Christopher told me that the Nicaraguan Minister of Tourism and other officials at the capital would be unhappy if I did not visit their country after sailing all the way there. I felt pretty desperate about it. Then he added that at El Bluff, Captain Bartlett was operating a shrimp fishing factory with workshops and every facility for making repairs. That gave me food for thought. Gipsy Moth could certainly do with some maintenance and repair, and I had been deeply impressed by Captain Bartlett on the R/ T. So I changed my mind and accepted the invitation to visit El Bluff—and I never regretted it.
It was then 1130. At 1138 I set course for El Bluff. It was sunny, with only a faint breeze, so it would be impossible to reach El Bluff before dark and I arranged to arrive after daylight.
Gipsy Moth ghosted along through the peaceful afternoon in the faintest of breezes. For a while I sat in the cockpit, musing in the sun and thinking over the Transatlantic run. The 4,000 miles had taken 22.3 days instead of 20. This was an average speed of 179.1 miles instead of 200 miles per day, a drop of 20.9 miles per day. Looked at another way Gipsy Moth had been short of the target after 20 days by 417.9, say 418 miles, of which 150 miles had been lost in the first two days. It was a failure, but on the other hand it was 38-6 per cent faster than my previous fastest straight 4,000-mile run in Gipsy Moth IV in September 1966 when sailing round the world. This was from 47˚04½’ N 08˚40’W to 18˚87’S 24˚06’ W. This run averaged 128.78 miles per day and took thirty-one days one and a half hours. As far as I could discover it was the fastest solo run of that length at the time. Then in 1969 Eric Tabarly, the great French yachtsman, made a solo passage from San Francisco to Tokyo covering approximately 5,700 miles in 39.6 days at an average speed of 144 miles per day, though at the time of writing I do not know if this was a point-to-point distance.
But there was one great, glorious consolation. With the five-day speed-burst of 1,017.75 miles in five days, Gipsy Moth had broken through the 200 miles a day solo barrier, exceeding Gipsy Moth IV’s 1967 run by 133 miles or 15 per cent. And with that to give me pleasure, I prepared for the approaching night.
That same stretch of the Thames that I have mentioned, Tower Bridge to Whitstable, has some seventy-six, excluding jetty lights, barge-mooring lights, etc.
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The exasperation was excessive in the circumstances. The Post Office staff was on strike and it was sporting of Portishead to take my call at all.
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4. Nicaragua
I need not have worried about arriving at El Bluff too soon; seven hours after I had set course Gipsy Moth was becalmed only 17½ miles NNE of the old lighthouse at San Juan del Norte, and seven hours after that she had apparently moved on only another 8½ miles. I had noticed that she was moving quietly through the water several times when the log was registering nil. Foolishly I paid no attention; I was in a state of mild euphoria after completing my Transatlantic project. The second half of the day had been lovely, fine weather, and I had got in some good sleep while Gipsy Moth ambled along. In the evening I went to sleep with Gipsy Moth sailing gently along NNE. I woke at 0130 to find her headed due west for the shore at a speed of 4 knots on the log; how far had she sailed on this heading? On that depended how close she was to the beach. I could see nothing, hear nothing. Assuming that she was in the worst possible position based on the depth and the distance logged, it would still be safe to keep going NNE until Paxaro Bovo Island was reached this side of Monkey Point, and that was 17½ miles ahead, so that it would be dawn before Gipsy Moth reached it at 4 knots and I would be better able to fix my position. I set her back on course, reckoning that I could sleep in peace for two hours at least, and probably four, but at 0420 the noise of a boom banging or a sail slatting woke me. The wind had backed 90˚ to NW and Gipsy Moth was once again headed west. What was going on in Providence’s office? Another 3½ miles of sleep and Gipsy Moth would have been on the beach.
I tacked and once again set off on the right course, but presently in the dark I could hear a rustling noise like a wide river running shallow over a stony bed. I listened intently. I could see nothing. It must be a tide race but the chart showed that there could not be anything of that sort there. Suddenly in the lightening darkness before dawn I was aware of an islet abeam. It was Paxaro Bovo and it looked to be only half a mile away. It gave me the cold creeps. According to the log it was not due for another 5 miles. Then I remembered how in the sunshine of the previous afternoon Gipsy Moth had been ghosting along in the zephyr at ½-¾ knot and I had been surprised that the log-impellers had registered nil speed. I found out next day that the log-impeller axles were worn, and the old navigational maxim was once more driven home like a nail hammered into my brain: ‘Never trust yourself to only one method of checking the navigation; get an independent second check.’
Gipsy Moth arrived at El Bluff at the mouth of the estuary on 5 February and had a friendly, warm welcome when she tied up at the side of the Customs Wharf. The Ambassador was there and the Director-General of the Nicaraguan Tourist Board, Dr Ernesto Reyes, who presented me with a Nicaraguan flag to hoist to the starboard crosstree arm: I did not have a ‘courtesy flag’because I had not expected to land in Nicaragua. Dr Reyes was one of the most optimistic ‘pressers-on’I have ever met; he hoped that a result of my passage would be an international yacht race organized along my 4,000 mile course which would bring in its wake an invasion of prosperity-sprinkling tourists. Christopher Doll shepherded and shooed away invading spectators like a hen protecting its chick. Perhaps chick is the wrong word considering that the Nicaraguan press labelled me ‘El Viejo Lobo del Mar’—‘The Old Wolf of the Sea’.
I looked round for my radio contact, Captain Bartlett, but there was no sign of him until the hubbub had died down, when he emerged unobtrusively from the background. ‘Bart’, as everyone calls him, the Captain from Connecticut, has a pointed greying beard and would need no make-up at all to play the part of a pirate captain of two centuries or more ago. In the days of Henry Morgan his tremendous personality alone would surely have made him the most successful—and certainly the most efficient—privateer cruising the Spanish Main. But at Bluff in 1971 he was manager of a shrimp packing factory with eighty-five trawlers fishing shrimp on contract. Gipsy Moth was indeed fortunate to be here because of Bart’s willingness—in fact, determination—to help re-fit her in the factory workshops, which had to be both well-equipped and well-run to keep eighty-five trawlers at sea.
In the end Bart himself did most of the repair work on board Gipsy Moth, often working a
ll day at it. I think that as boss of the works he missed the practical work and the little problems and challenges such as arise on a small craft, like correcting faults of rigging or thinking up and making replacements for broken gear. I never found out how old he was. When I asked him, he dodged the question. I thought he could be anything between fifty and seventy.
Every day we all, including the Ambassadorial party as long as it remained at Bluff, went off to lunch at Bart’s house. Other visitors used to turn up, a steady trickle of men on business, and one day no less than five Ambassadors from neighbouring countries. I do not know why they were there but it was no wonder that their visits coincided with lunchtime because Donata. Bart’s imperturbable Nicaraguan cook-housekeeper, unendingly produced great platters of the most delicious seafood; lobster, crayfish, giant prawns and excellent local fish—all fresh from the sea—with salads and a huge supply of the local favourite—a smallish red bean. I always had to retire after the feast for a ten-minute snooze before starting work again in the afternoon. Bart would join me later as soon as he had dealt with his office business.
Gipsy Moth needed many repairs after being driven so hard. Bart loaded the two broken booms on to his jeep and trundled them down the rough dirt track to his workshops, where the fractures were mended with lengths of irrigation pipe. Fortunately this pipe, which was used for supplying well-water to the houses of the little community, had the same diameter and thickness as the booms, and the aluminium alloy was similar, if not the same.
What could have been impossible to replace without long delay was the big lower insulator at the bottom of the backstay, which also served as the R/T aerial. This insulator had been crushed, but I had not noticed it before because the pieces were still held in place by the wire. I wondered when this had occurred and whether it was responsible for some of the difficulties I had had in making contact. It must have been caused by too heavy a load on the backstay, which not only stayed the mizen mast from the stern, but also the main mast by means of the triatic stay between the two mastheads. The main mast in turn carried the load of the stays from masthead to stem. The load on the backstay would therefore be greater when Big Brother or the running sail was pulling hard in a strong wind.
The Romantic Challenge Page 12
