by Stuart Woods
I drove up to Galway for the boat show, which was bigger and better than ever, and for a last goodbye to the people who had given me my first opportunity to sail, both in dinghies and cruising boats. At the dinner, I was allowed to say a few words, and I presented a cup to the club to be given each year for the best cruise by a member. I was very sad to think that I might not see Galway or any of my friends there for a very long time.
Some time in April I read that there was a second Irish entry in the OSTAR, Patrick O’Donovan, and that he had just sailed into Kinsale at the completion of his qualifying cruise in a thirty-one-foot trimaran. The next day I was invited to dinner at the O’Donovans’ Cork home, where Patrick and I got acquainted and compared notes on our preparations. He mentioned a new marine radar detector which would sound an alarm in the presence of radar signals from another ship, and this sounded a good idea, since the OSTAR rules prohibited radar on the yachts participating. I ordered one immediately.
Patrick had had his problems with getting a boat ready and would have more. He had planned to sail Lillian, a fifty-five-foot proa, in the race, and had actually qualified in her, but on a return trip from Ireland to England with Lillian’s owner, the proa had capsized in a Force ten and Patrick and the owner had spent eighteen hours in the life raft, tied between the proa’s floats, until they were picked up by a fishing vessel. When they returned to look for Lillian she could not be found, and they learned subsequently that she had been taken as salvage by a Russian ship, sawn into manageable pieces, and left on a quayside in Cairo, of all places. All Patrick had got back was his passport, forwarded by the British consulate there. Now he had bought my friend David Walsh’s trimaran, Silmaril, and qualified her. The following morning he stopped by Drake’s Pool for a look at Harp and more conversation. Patrick, who was only twenty-three, would be one of the youngest competitors in the race. Born in Cork, he was now living in England and was preparing his boat there.
Ron and Laurel Holland moved into their new home, Strand Farmhouse, in Currabinny, across the river from Crosshaven, and for the first time Ron had a proper design office. From his drawing board he had a view of the Royal Cork and the members’ yachts moored in the river; he could see all who came and went. Shortly before I left for Plymouth, he and Laurel cruised down to Kinsale with me, the first time they had sailed together in two years, kept apart on the water by Ron’s increasingly busy schedule and Laurel’s pregnancy. Kelly, the Holland daughter, was a big tot by now, and Laurel was pregnant again.
Now I applied to the Irish Yachting Association to be examined for the Yachtmaster’s Certificate, the culmination of a program I had been working on for more than a year. To my astonishment and consternation, I was told that I did not have enough experience to sit for the examination. The Yachtmaster’s program called for forty-eight hours of classroom instruction (I had had sixty-four); six days of practical instruction (I had had ten); and five hundred miles of offshore cruising (I had submitted a logbook documenting more than four thousand miles offshore, thirteen hundred of it single-handed). I was incensed to be told that I did not have enough experience even to take the examination. If I took it and failed, fine, but I did not feel I should be denied the examination after so much work. Apparently, the difficulty had stemmed from a report about my training cruise aboard Creidne, when Captain Eric Healy, the skipper, had suggested I needed more experience of handling the boat under power, and that I had been impatient with the crew when skippering. I agreed that these had been justifiable, constructive criticisms at the time, but since then I had sailed more than three thousand miles and amassed a great deal more experience, and I did not feel that comments made a year before still were applicable. At the suggestion of a friend, I wrote to the president of the IYA, explaining my position and requesting an examination before I left for Plymouth. I waited nervously for a reply.
My back problem had begun to abate now, after more than three months of pain whenever I stood up or walked for more than two or three minutes at a time. The lower back pain had extended to the sciatic nerve, which runs from the hip down to the foot, then given way to severe muscle cramps which continued for some weeks. I had been to two more back specialists; one had given me muscle relaxant injections which helped somewhat; the other had told me just to wait and it would go away, and he prescribed a very embarrassing, steel-braced corset to be taken on the transatlantic crossing in case the fractured disc slipped out of place again. Having always been extremely healthy and unaccustomed to severe pain, I lived in terror of the thing recurring in mid-Atlantic. My last treatment came from a quack, an Irish farmer who seemed to be able to “divine” and treat the source of pain, much in the way that some people are able to divine water. His treatment had the most immediate and dramatic effect of all, although it did not cure the problem entirely, and I was unable to see him again, as he lived some distance from Cork. So I tucked my corset into a locker on the boat and hoped for the best. I was also very careful about lifting things and favored the injury whenever I could.
At the Easter bank holiday weekend I planned a return to the Scillies with some friends, having been very impressed with the islands when we stopped there during the Irish Mist delivery trip the spring before. We spent a delightful, sunny weekend, listening to the local male choir in the pub and seeing Harold Wilson, recently retired as prime minister, strolling on the beach with the giant Labrador which had once nearly drowned him when the dog had capsized the dinghy from which Mr. Wilson was fishing.
Our passage back was pleasant and fast, taking only twenty-seven hours in a good breeze. We had been supremely comfortable on the boat, what with the central heating and the stereo, and after much work the bugs were finally being ironed out. Harp was beginning to be something like ready for the transatlantic. No serious water was coming into the boat, although there were one or two minor leaks I hadn’t yet located; the new Dynafurl supplied by Tim Stearn was working well in its newly engineered form; and with the addition of the new storm jib, which could also be used as a reaching staysail, the sail plan now seemed ideal.
Back in Cork my sextant, which had been left with Henry Browne & Son for reconditioning and correction, arrived, not having withstood very well the tender mercies of the British and Irish postal systems, and I packed it back to London with Harold Cudmore, who was setting off for America and Spain on the international yacht racing circuit.
Word came that I would be examined for the Yachtmaster’s Certificate after all, and a Mr. O’Gallagher met me at a Cork hotel, examined me closely for more than an hour, and pronounced me passed, to my intense relief. I believe I was the first person to be certified under the program.
I made a final dash to London, where I conferred with my publishers and took care of last-minute details. Ann and I continued our restaurant research, and I had another lunch with Angela Green of The Observer, when I learned that Chay Blyth, who had damaged his huge trimaran, Great Britain III, in a collision with a ship, would not be participating in the race. All doubts about the entry of Alain Colas had been resolved, though, and he would be sailing his 236-foot Club Méditerranée. Colas had nearly severed his right foot when it was caught in an anchor chain the year before, but he had made a remarkable recovery and, wearing a special boot, had made his qualifying cruise in the Mediterranean with a crew of forty. He would do another 1,500-mile single-handed qualifying cruise prior to the race.
Henry Browne & Son, when they saw the state of my old sextant, promptly gave me a new one without charge. That is the sort of customer relations that maintains an outstanding reputation, as was also my experience with the Omega Watch Company. I had purchased an expensive Omega wristwatch which had performed erratically; when I got no satisfaction by reporting this to the American importers, I wrote directly to the company in Switzerland, and within a very short time, the Irish distributors had replaced the old watch with a brand-new Omega Seamaster electric wrist chronometer, which performed beautifully. In general, I found that most of
the suppliers I dealt with took great pride in their products and were always ready to make adjustments when warranted. Only two or three times in the eighteen months that I dealt with manufacturers was I disappointed by a supplier’s attitude. During the whole of the project I was badly let down by only one equipment manufacturer.
My final task in London was to buy provisions for the race, and for this I went to Harrods, that superb department store in Knightsbridge. On the Azores trip I had become bored very quickly with my diet, and I was determined to take more time and plan my menus more carefully for the much longer transatlantic passage. I chose Harrods because their magnificent food halls are stocked with a huge variety of main courses in tins. Any supermarket has a lot of canned food, but the choice of main dishes is poor. Harrods has everything, from the simple to the exotic, and I filled four or five large shopping carts with stews, chicken, sauces, cheese, meats, and, best of all, American snack foods I had grown up with, packed in tins to preserve their freshness. It was expensive, but I would eat very well indeed.
Back in Cork I had less than a week to dismantle my life in Ireland and prepare for a new one at sea. Those last days were wildly busy, every moment taken up with packing, paying bills, making arrangements to have mail forwarded and goods shipped to the States. I was very sad at the thought of leaving Drake’s Pool Cottage, and even sadder to leave Fred, but he had, fortunately, practically adopted the McCarthy family, who lived near the main gate of Coolmore, staying there whenever I left Cork for a few days. They loved him and he loved them. It is not every dog who has the opportunity to choose his own family.
Harry was arriving on Friday and we were sailing for Plymouth on Saturday. On Thursday night Ron and Laurel Holland arranged a farewell dinner at their new home in Currabinny; John and Diana McWilliam were there; Nick, Theo, and Heather came; so did Derek and Carol Holland and O.H. Rogers—all of whom had done so much work on the boat that I could never thank them sufficiently. Friends Donna O’Sullivan and Carey O’Mahoney came, too, and we had a good dinner and a fine evening, even if it was tinged with sadness for me.
On Friday the removals people came and took away the personal belongings I would be sending to the States, and in the afternoon Harry McMahon arrived. We worked the rest of the day getting gear sorted, had a farewell drink at the Royal Cork Yacht Club and a steak at the Overdraft, and got a good night’s sleep. Next morning I took Fred’s bed, bowl, and rubber mouse to the McCarthys’ and made my farewells there.
We loaded all the gear onto the boat and began stowing everything, tied up next to Nick’s boat in Drake’s Pool. Fred had been behaving oddly for the last twenty-four hours; I think he knew something unusual was up. The day before he had turned up in Carrigaline, apparently looking for me, something he would not ordinarily do. Now, after my choked-up goodbye, he sat on the stone slip in Drake’s Pool and solemnly watched us working on the boat. I had explained to him long before that he would never be allowed on Harp until he had learned to use a marine toilet, and after a few instances when he swam in circles around the boat, demanding loudly to be hauled aboard, he had given up, and whenever I rowed out to the boat he habitually departed in a huff for the McCarthys’. He sat there the whole morning, watching. Finally, we had the last bit of gear stowed, we had made our last goodbyes to Nick, and we were ready to leave Drake’s Pool for the last time.
We started the engine, cast off Nick’s lines, and, as we motored around the first bend and out of Drake’s Pool, the last thing I saw was Fred, sitting in front of the cottage, watching.
Twenty-two
Cork to Plymouth
An hour later we were in a full gale. The southwesterly six-to-seven wind that had been forecast had become southerly and Force eight. Harry, who does not have the world’s best sea legs the first day of a cruise, was very ill, and in his bunk. I reefed us down to storm canvas, set Fred (the Hasler Windvane Steering), and relaxed as best I could in the seas. The gale continued all that day and all night, and morning brought little relief and bad visibility. Our first intended stop had been the Scilly Isles, but I had borne away onto a close reach to ease our motion and keep up our speed, and we made our landfall at Land’s End early the following evening. Faced with a hard slog to the Scillies, I decided to turn left and reach to St. Ives, on the north coast of Cornwall, instead. It turned out to be a delightful alternative.
Not having a large-scale chart of that part of the coast, I telephoned the St. Ives harbormaster on the VHF and got excellent approach instructions, and we were anchored in the lovely bay by midnight, ready for a much-needed night’s rest. There was no customs officer in St. Ives, but we went ashore anyway the next day, saw the town, had dinner, and returned to the quay to find two police detectives waiting for us at the dinghy. Our identification and explanations were accepted, but it was clear that, the political situation being what it was, the constabulary was taking a close interest in any visiting yacht flying an Irish ensign.
After another night in St. Ives, we beat our way around Land’s End in a Force seven wind, Harry now fully recovered, and made our way in moderating weather to St. Mawes, my favorite Cornish village, just across from Falmouth. I had radioed ahead to arrange for the customs launch to meet us there, and on arriving we did a little square dance with them in St. Mawes Harbor as they came alongside us, bending a stanchion or two and the top shaft of the self-steering, but finally we were safely moored.
Two days later we sailed to the entrance of the Helford River, and as we started to motor up that beautiful Cornish estuary, the engine, though it continued to run smoothly, ceased to drive the boat and we had to be towed to a mooring.
The following morning Harry went over the side in a wet suit to see if the propeller turned when I put the engine in gear. It did not, but we didn’t know if the propeller was freewheeling on the shaft, or if the hydraulic drive wasn’t turning the shaft. The best solution, after several calls to Hydromarine in Galway, seemed to be to continue to Plymouth without the engine and there look for repairs, so we slipped our mooring and sailed to Fowey, enjoying a light-weather spinnaker run along the way. We were able to sail up the river into Fowey and anchor without incident, had dinner ashore and a drink at the Royal Fowey Yacht Club and another on a Royal Navy training yacht anchored alongside us, then sailed for Plymouth the next morning.
It was a beat in fresh winds all the way, but finally we were sailing past Plymouth Breakwater, past the Royal Western, around Drake’s Island and up to the Mayflower Marina, where we were towed to a berth. After a year and a half of preparation and dreaming, Golden Harp and I were finally in Plymouth together. I could hardly believe it.
It was now Monday, May 24, and there were only twelve working days left before the start on Saturday, June 5. I had carefully planned to be in Plymouth that far ahead to have time to handle any unexpected problems, and a good thing it was, too. My biggest problem was the engine. Actually, the engine in its broken state performed the only function it had to for the race, charging the batteries, but I did not like the idea of having a major piece of equipment not in working order, even if it had to be sealed during the race so that it could not be used as a propellant. Besides, it was still on warranty, and that would have elapsed by the time I arrived in Newport. The plan was for O.H. Rogers, who was driving my car to Plymouth, to bring with him a new tank, which comprised the major part of the hydraulic drive unit. I had described all the symptoms to the Hydromarine people in Galway, and they were sure that it was either the propeller or the tank. I had performed all the tests instructed by both Hydromarine and their agents in Southampton, and they felt it could only be one of the two problems. O.H. should have arrived on the Tuesday, and I had the engineer coming from Southampton on that day, but then O.H. phoned from somewhere in Somerset to say that my car had blown a cylinder head gasket and he would be delayed a day, so the whole operation was put back.
Finally, O.H. arrived with the new tank and the spare propeller pins, and all was ready. The
engineer arrived from Southampton, walked under the boat, which we had dried out on the scrubbing pad at the marina, turned the propeller first one way and then the other, and said, “It’s not the tank and it’s not the propeller; it’s the driven pump, which sits behind the tank, and I don’t have one with me. Didn’t anybody tell you to try turning the propeller both ways? It should only turn one way.” Nobody had mentioned this simple test. The engineer promised to see that the proper parts were sent and instructed a local mechanic on how to perform the relatively simple installation.
O.H. and I pressed on with small jobs, assisted by Peter Adams, a local friend of a friend who was very helpful in getting me around the strange city of Plymouth, and in transporting my Harrods stores and Averys wine from the Royal Western office in Millbay Docks to the marina for stowage aboard Harp. The arrival of these stores had caused much amusement at the Royal Western. Harrods had packed everything so carefully that the apparent volume of my food was twice its real volume. There were two huge crates and three cases of wine from Averys. Nobody could believe the shipment was for thirty-foot Golden Harp and not for 236-foot Club Méditerranée.
The slaving aboard the boat was relieved by an increasingly active social life as more and more competitors arrived. The bar at the Royal Western was getting more crowded by the day, and nobody talked about anything except the race—especially what equipment different boats were carrying and, most of all, the riddle of which route to take.
There are two main routes taken by most competitors and several variations. The most-sailed route, and the one which had always been sailed by the winning yacht, is the great circle route. Its principal attraction is that it is the shortest, about two thousand eight hundred miles. But it has great disadvantages, too: the weather can be very rough at times, there is the likelihood of icebergs and fog along the way, and, worst of all, a skipper taking this route must expect headwinds nearly all the way, and he must tack back and forth in order to get west, since a sailboat cannot sail straight into the wind. This circumstance can add several hundred miles to the distance actually sailed.
