The Romantic Challenge

by Francis Chichester

  I did not think it would be possible to replace the insulator in Nicaragua, but Bart disappeared one day on a mission and in a direction which he declined to discuss, and next morning calmly turned up with exactly the right insulator for the job in his pocket. To fit it, all the rigging had first to be slacked off—topmast stays, forestays, and twelve main and mizen shrouds. Afterwards, all these had to be set up again. Bart carried out the whole job, and in the end I was satisfied that the rigging could not have been better tuned, with all the stays and shrouds set up to just the right tension—which goes to show that neither Bart nor I were adept at the rigger’s art, because when I got back to the high seas all went slack and I had to set up afresh every stay and shroud.

  Besides the boom and insulator, there was a long list of repairs, small jobs and large, such as the broken jumper stay bottlescrew, the boom rest, the big runner clew thimble, the main stays’l boom fitting, the inspection lamp, the leaking galley water pump, the damage to the cine-camera housing, and even the cabin vacuum cleaner, all of which needed repair, new parts, or overhaul. The self-steering skeg and oar had to be dismantled, cleaned of barnacles and weed, and repainted with anti-fouling paint. Bart also had a wooden toolbox made for me and some lead weights for the collision mat to make it sink under the hull in the event of a leak there. Cords at the corners of the mat then drew it against the hull. There were stores to be rounded up, such as fruit, water, paraffin and fuel, and the other food stocks had to be replenished.

  I wanted to keep at the job until Gipsy Moth was ready to sail again, so reluctantly I had to refuse all invitations by the friendly Nicaraguans to visit Managua, their capital. Then one day I was told that the President, General Debayle, wished to present me with a gold medal. This put me on an awkward spot because it would be too churlish not to visit the capital to receive it. So an aircraft flew us off from the short airstrip on the rise behind Bart’s house. For the first hundred miles the country was rough and wooded, very green and scarcely inhabited. It looked like the rough back country of New Zealand fifty years ago. The river which emptied into the lagoon inland of El Bluff twisted its way below, with an occasional steamer leaving a wake on the smooth water. For the second hundred miles there were roads, of which one looked like a new motorway and had a few cars on it.

  At Managua I stayed with, the Vincents in their bungalow. Ivor gave a big cocktail party to which many Ambassadors, Government Ministers and officials came. I had never before seen so many Ambassadors together. It was a geography lesson in how many States and Republics there are in Central and South America.

  General Debayle was most amiable when I was taken to meet him in his Palace. I had wondered what suitable present I could give him from Gipsy Moth, and plumped for the burgee of the Royal Cork Yacht Club. This Club, founded 250 years ago, is the oldest in the world, and as Gipsy Moth was built four hundred yards from the Clubhouse, and I have the honour to be a life Member, I thought it would be a suitable present. The burgee is an attractive dark blue with a golden harp. The general seemed delighted with this and said he would hang it on the wall of his bedroom. After this formal presentation we passed through a number of impressive staterooms and settled on the huge patiobalcony where we sipped Flor de Cana, the local rum, while talking. In the distance through the darkness we could see the giant pall of dust from the active volcano, Cerro Negro, which spread for 50 miles in every direction above the land, threatening to obliterate everything living under it. When the audience ended, we left after shaking hands all round, and I flew back to El Bluff. I never did get my gold medal.

  On my return Bart and I set to work in earnest on Gipsy Moth. After nightfall he used to come back and have supper with me on board. We would settle down to yarning, but towards the end of a bottle of brandy or gin, the talking would give way to Bart’s stentorian sea songs. When he was in full song he made the welkin ring and it felt as if Gipsy Moth’s hull were quivering, the warehouses along the wharf shaking as if in an earthquake.

  5. Escape from the Caribbean Sea

  During the twelve days Gipsy Moth spent at El Bluff, I was planning the next move, pondering over charts, sailing directions, and hydrographic-meteorological charts. Gipsy Moth had achieved my principal ambition, to break through the 200 miles per day solo barrier, so there was no longer that excuse for a dart down to the Equator and back. But I wanted more adventure, and above all I wanted to be free, as free as a wild sea bird like the stormy petrel, to sail where I liked as long as I liked on the great ocean. This longing was strengthened by my feeling of being trapped in the Caribbean. I was enclosed by land, shut in with islands, cays, reefs and shoals—on a sea 1,550 miles from east to west and 700 miles from north to south. I had already made up my mind to sail down to the Equator before returning to England, but to give substance to my plan I thought that with the experience I now had of sailing for speed, I could coax Gipsy Moth to put up a much faster five-day run. I would try for one on the way down to the Equator and again on the way north from it.

  I sailed out of Bluff on 17 February. I felt queasy and clumsy, truly ‘at sea’, and I don’t suppose that having only three and a half hours sleep after my last party with Bart and his friends improved either my resistance to seasickness or my efficiency. My guests were invited aboard for a drink at six o’clock and I assumed that the party would end at seven because I could not speak any Spanish. At least I hoped so because I had so much still to do on board. However, at eleven I was still following the example of the Colonel in drinking Flor de Cana with lemon juice and ice. The Major was drinking whisky, Bart brandy, and Bart’s boss, who was there too, gin. I fear they did not get a very sympathetic reception when they came aboard in the morning. After being tied up to the coastguard cutter for nearly a fortnight there was quite a lot to do to cast off in the strong tide pressing abeam on Gipsy Moth and I did not want to be distracted by anything. I wanted to be able to concentrate on working my passage alone out of Bluff without ramming anything, going aground or what not, as well as waving goodbye to all my friends.

  My agony could not have been as prolonged as it seemed because, although I did not leave the jetty until nine o’clock and then had to motor down the channel out of the harbour before hoisting sail, my log records that five sails were set by 0930. At 1030 my very good friend Bart shouted and waved goodbye and the landing craft in which he had been seeing me off returned to El Bluff. I was in 13.5 fathoms and felt seasick due to the strong head-on swell running on to the coast from the east. The movement was horrible. ‘This boat’, I logged miserably, ‘is hellish on the wind.’

  All the afternoon I dozed or slept or read Simenon’s Maigret et les Vieillards, lying on my bunk and thanking God that I could do so because I wasn’t racing and there were no hazards about. The sea was empty and there was plenty of sea-space ahead. What a relief to be able to do nothing when feeling seasick!

  I felt depressed and lonely, however. I missed Bart’s company and my beloveds in England seemed a long, long way away in time and distance. But it was no good giving in to this sentiment so I pushed myself into preparing and taking a star fix. It was useful in getting me a good fix, but perhaps its chief value was in the satisfaction of doing a job well, and I began to feel better.

  I was rather bitten by this star fix business. I used to scorn it because only a little cloud is needed to prevent one from finding a star during the short period of a few minutes at twilight when both it and the horizon can be seen, whereas the sun can usually be glimpsed through light clouds or, if not, is likely to show through almost any cloud after a few minutes or at worst a few hours. This means that the sun can still be valuable when the weather is foul, stars are useless, and a sight is badly needed. On the other hand, two big advantages of a four-star fix are that a double check is obtained and the whole operation is completed in a comparatively short time; with the sun it is necessary to make at least two separate observations with an hour or more interval between them in order to get a fix, and wa
it another similar interval for the third observation, if a check of the first two is needed.

  I had always expected a trouncing when it came to escaping from the Caribbean. There are only three outlets from the western half, the Yucatán Channel between Cuba and Mexico, the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, and the Mona Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The eastern half of the Caribbean is ringed by a string of smaller islands curving round from Puerto Rico eastwards and then south to Trinidad and mainland Venezuela. Passages can be made between most of these islands, but it would be sheer folly to beat 1,350 miles into a 20-30 knot wind against an Equatorial Current of up to a knot making its way to the north-west end of the Caribbean to pass round the west end of Cuba and become the Gulf Stream between Cuba and Florida. Escaping at the west end was formidable enough. The Mona Passage lay ENE a thousand miles from Bluff and the Windward Passage NE, 750 miles. Both were a beat to windward. In that fine Admiralty volume, Ocean Passages of the World, sailing-ships, squareriggers and clippers of a hundred years ago which had business on the Spanish Main were advised to wait if possible until the summer months, when the wind was likely to be south of east, in order to sail out of the Caribbean by way of the Windward or Mona Passages.

  The easy way out would have been to take the same route as the current, but at that time of year it would entail running the gauntlet of the formidable northerly busters. I considered this too risky for a single-hander sailing through comparatively close waters for 750 miles, first of all among the unlighted cays and sandbanks at the north-west end of the Caribbean, then through the Yucatán Channel between Mexico and Cuba, followed by the Straits of Florida with the Bahamas crowding the water to the east of Florida. As I was not going to wait for the summer, my best tactics were to follow the coast south-east from Nicaragua, past Costa Rica, and along the coast of Panama to Colombia, until I reached Cartagena when I would beat across the Caribbean northeast to the Mona Passage, 650 miles, and from there into the open Atlantic. At first Gipsy Moth ought to keep in a favourable current eddy by hugging the coast some fifty or a hundred miles off for 570 miles in the Mosquito Gulf, along the Isthmus of Panama, and in the Gulf of Darien. At least there ought not to be a contrary current there, according to the Admiralty Routeing Chart for February. The trouble was that near the coast the wind was likely to be patchy, with calms interspersing squalls.

  Before Gipsy Moth was a day out of Bluff, I was beginning to have trouble with the rigging. In the morning I found the main topmast stay slack and hardened it up; in the afternoon the mizen stays’l stay was slopping about and I had to harden that up; the same thing happened with the main stays’l stay; then I noted that the top of the main mast was curving forward above the cross-trees although the backstay was taut, so taut that I felt it would be unwise to harden it up any more to straighten the main mast. I would try slacking off the main lower after shrouds and taking up the forward ones to straighten the curve, and this was partly successful. I decided that Bart and I would never become tycoons in the yacht rigging business.

  Nothing is more exasperating for a singlehander than calms alternating with squalls. At midnight, with the spreader lights shining down in the darkness the water looked like oil and at first I thought it was coated with oil. It had that dead slap on the hull and bubbles in the bow wavelets which happen with an oil-covered surface.

  How I dislike the slatting of sails, the banging of sheets, and clinking of booms that go with near-calms. It is hard on the gear, but that was not the reason why I should soon be sewing for hours to repair a row of seams at the foot of the No. 1 jib. There was no chafe on that sail along the foot. These seams had opened up simply through bad sewing where the stitches were not in any way anchored at the end of the seams.

  On the afternoon of the 19th I thought Gipsy Moth was in the Trade Wind at last and set the No. 2 jib in place of the 600. I expected the wind to freshen and Gipsy Moth would sail closer and more comfortably to the wind with the flatter, smaller jib. I did not relish a week’s solid hard pounding into the Trade Wind, its seas and swell. I wanted to make life as painless as possible, compatible with efficiency. But at 0725 the next morning I logged: ‘This is a very weary man writing. The going is so rough that it is difficult to stand without being thrown, difficult to focus on small things like the latitude scale at the chart margin, difficult to rest. On top of that I am dopey with lack of sleep.’ Gipsy Moth was plugging close-hauled into a north-east wind of up to 30 knots. She had sailed through the steamer lanes converging on Panama from the north-east but I had seen only three steamers.

  It was not always rough going. On 21 February I woke at 0300 to calm, peaceful sailing at 6 knots hard on the wind; an extraordinary change from the rough riding which seemed interminable when sailing against the wind in the Caribbean. At noon I was able to write: ‘It’s good to feel fit again and I certainly am grateful for a quieter sea. I shall be on the wind continuously for another 770 miles before I get out of the Caribbean—120 more in the Gulf of Darien and then 650 to the Mona Passage. Although it is comparatively quiet today, Gipsy Moth has jumped twice off wave crests this morning; the tin of butter was jumped off the saloon table and other mop-ups were required.’ The noon fix had shown that Gipsy Moth had been in a strong current which had set her 21 miles southwards into the Gulf of Darien in eighteen hours.

  In the evening: ‘It has been quite a livestock day. First, that tarantula has turned up again. He scuttled out a couple of inches from under the tier of drawers below the liquor locker in the main cabin. When he saw me he stood defiantly with his two claws held in the air before him like a scorpion’s, then bolted up the face of the bottom drawer and hid behind the bow-shaped drawer handle. He thought himself safely hidden but I could see his back and the two claws raised above his head. A nice thing if I had gripped the handle to open the drawer! I darted for my death-ray gun and aimed the deadly beam at him. He turned and ran for it, scuttling back under the framework. He did not seem worried or affected. He seemed to be a survivor and I began to admire him for it. If he survived this he was a member of the crew.

  ‘Then a horrible new creature turned up. At first I thought it was a giant flying ant. There was a touch of the praying mantis, which eats the fore-half of her mate while he is making love to her, about its looks. I thought of the invasion of the earth by the Triffids and again rushed for my death-ray of insecticide. This time I aimed the death-dealing jet with positive success for later I found the creature on its back with its knees all drawn up. I felt sorry for it then but there just is not room for a horrible-looking creature like that on a singlehanded yacht.

  ‘Later, when I was sewing the seams of the No. 1 jib on deck, a moth appeared, a handsome, beautifully mannered creature sitting on the sail where I would need to be sewing later. I did not want to frighten or disturb him—no, I am sure now that it was “her”—so I worked on as quietly as possible so that she could fly away if she wished. But where could the poor creature go, thirty odd miles from land? So when the time came to work at the seam near her pitch, I fetched an empty honey jar and induced her to enter this where, after a short flutter, she settled down as if she was enjoying the honey. (Tasmanian honey with an aroma almost as if scented.) After I had finished sewing I took her into the cabin and removed the lid so that she could please herself. At present she is perched on the beam above my berth and looking very contented. I do hope she will survive but boat life is full of hazards for fluttering creatures. They will hide in out-of-the-way spots like a furled sail or coil of rope, which sooner or later will be brought into violent or sudden action.’

  At 2040 on Monday 22 February Gipsy Moth was 40 miles WNW of Cartagena. The sails had been banging and slatting incessantly all day. Now a faint breeze put them to sleep. The currents in that area are tricky and treacherous and of course near the coast must be more or less unpredictable. According to the current and wind chart for February, Gipsy Moth should have been in a favourable ½-knot ENE cu
rrent in this area, instead of which she had been set in the opposite direction by what appeared to be 3 knots for the past seven hours. I wondered if that was partly due to a tidal current. It is a worry for a solo sailor near land needing to sleep six or seven hours a day.

  What I wanted was a good breeze to get clear of the Spanish Main, and in the end a freshet of wind had me out of my berth at 2200. The wind steadily veered until Gipsy Moth was headed E by S. With the likelihood of more calms to follow I did not at all like heading in to the coast at night in case the very strong onshore current was still at work, so I decided to abandon my coast crawl with its calms and squalls and strike out across the sea where I hoped to find a steadier wind. So I tacked to the north. All night Gipsy Moth was plugging into a strong wind and a bouncing sea. There is nearly always a big swell running in the Caribbean Sea; with the night glasses I watched a long steamer pitching to the swell and periodically disappearing completely from view behind it. Gipsy Moth behaves excellently in this sort of rough, hard going, provided she is precisely set up for it. A degree or two more off the wind and she pounds and bashes, due mostly to the extra speed. A few degrees closer to the wind she slows right up and nearly stops. The amount of sail set is critical. She must have no more than the right amount or she makes life a hell below. In this case she was sailing between 27.5˚ and 35˚ off the relative wind of 25-32 knots. I dropped sail after sail until only the mizen stays’l and the main stays’l were set. In eleven hours throughout the night Gipsy Moth sailed 53 miles at an average of 4.8 knots.