Blue Water, Green Skipper: A Memoir of Sailing Alone Across the Atlantic

by Stuart Woods

  We had the mast, we had a foresail, and we were out of the Gulf Stream. Newport lay ahead. We were finally in the home stretch.

  A ship’s horn at this range is a sure-fire alarm clock.

  Gazing into my last sunset at sea. The mustache, so carefully cultivated, went soon after my arrival in Newport. It made me look less like Clark Gable than I had planned.

  Twenty-seven

  The Final Dash

  Sunday morning, the eighteenth, I picked up a Newport commercial radio station. I could not have been more excited if I had been contacted by a flying saucer. I could hear people talking, and they were in Newport, Rhode Island. What’s more, they were reporting race news. Five or six boats had finished during the last twenty-four hours, including Ziggy Puchalski and Richard Konklowski; another twenty-five boats still had not finished, so at least I wouldn’t be last.

  I had a good lunch and stretched out on a settee berth for a nap. A few minutes later, as I was sleeping soundly, I was lifted right off the berth by the sound of a ship’s foghorn at what seemed a distance of about eighteen inches. I landed in the cockpit, ready to dive overboard and swim for it. There, about fifty yards off the port quarter, was a large merchant ship, Alchemist. I jumped below to get the loud-hailer, not wanting to use the tiny radio batteries unless absolutely necessary. I started to shout that I wanted to send a telegram, but she was already overtaking us. Someone on the bridge made a hand signal to indicate that they would circle. I tried to wave them off, remembering my close call with Olwen some weeks before, but they circled and came up again. I shouted out a telegram to Angela in Newport, giving an ETA of Tuesday, and asked for a position. But we were being overtaken again, and the big ship circled a second time. This time, the radio operator was standing on the foredeck, and as I shouted out my message, he sprinted toward the stern of his ship, writing furiously. Someone on the bridge had an old-fashioned hand megaphone and shouted a position to me. It struck me as funny that I, on my tiny boat, should have an excellent loud-hailer, while they, on their huge ship, should have a megaphone.

  They sailed on, promising to dispatch my telegram immediately. My spirits soared now. My position had been reported, my navigation had proved to be perfect, and in two days I would be in Newport. I anticipated arriving between noon and three with the light winds we were experiencing. Then, only a few minutes after the disappearance of Alchemist, I looked off the port quarter and saw a yacht, the first I had seen since the English Channel. She was in the far distance, and even with the binoculars I could not recognize her, but I felt sure she was a competitor. She was there for the rest of the day, slowly overtaking us, and during the night she disappeared.

  While I was watching her I saw something else in the water, a float of some kind, with a pole and a radar reflector. Then another, and another. This meant I would have to keep a lookout for fishing boats that night and the next, but also that they were using radar to find their floats, so would be likely to spot me, even though my reflector had slipped down to about six feet above the deck.

  Darkness fell and I kept a close watch, sometimes lying down for ten minutes at a time to rest but not falling asleep. About two-thirty in the morning, as I was resting, I was suddenly overcome by a violent chill. Shaking uncontrollably, I got up to light the cabin heater but thought I would first have a look around. I stuck my head up through the hatch to find a large fishing boat two hundred yards dead ahead, bearing down on us at about ten knots. I grabbed a torch and signaled him, and he changed course to pass about twenty-five yards on our starboard side. The chill vanished. Had I developed another level of perception, like Bill King? Maybe.

  Monday, July 19, our last day out. The wind backed and freshened, and we were tearing along at six knots under our reefing genoa and double-reefed main. My ETA began to change, and, for once, to earlier. We saw no shipping of any sort that day until sunset, when the first fishing boat appeared. At midnight, a huge, brightly lit ship, looking like an aircraft carrier, appeared on the horizon and tore across our wake several miles astern at very high speed.

  We had now picked up Gay Head Light on Martha’s Vineyard to starboard, and Buzzard’s Bay Light was ahead, off the starboard bow. I kept a running check on our position with bearings from the two lights, combined with a check of our depth. At midnight I estimated we were fifteen miles from Brenton Reef Light and the finishing line, but I would not yet see it, even though it should have been visible at that distance. I hoped that one of the infamous local fogs was not enshrouding Newport—that was all I needed. I was taking great care to see that nothing went wrong this close to the finish. I kept thinking about Bill Howell in the last race, about to finish in fifth place, then colliding with a fishing boat. I didn’t want that sort of problem now. My ETA was now three a.m. I had not wanted to arrive at night in a strange port and I hoped I would be met at the finishing line, as had been mentioned at the pre-race briefing.

  At twenty minutes past midnight I saw Brenton Reef Light flashing in the distance. I abandoned my compass course and began steering for the light, the first time in forty-five days I had had a mark to steer for. It was very satisfying. At 01.45, Judith Point Light appeared, and from bearings on the two lights I estimated my distance at seven miles. An hour later, I was almost on top of Brenton Reef Light and looking hard for the flashing red light on the buoy that marked the other end of the finishing line. I could see the lights of Newport arrayed behind the light.

  I brought some flares, the signaling torch, and the loud-hailer into the cockpit. I didn’t want to waste a minute being found when I was across. The red buoy appeared where it was supposed to be.

  On July 20, 1976, at 03.15 local time, 07.15 GMT, Golden Harp crossed the finishing line. The second we cleared the line I stood up on the afterdeck and struck a white flare. The yacht lit up as if a dozen klieg lights had been thrown on it. I had never seen such an intense, white light. The flare burned for about a minute, then sputtered out, leaving me with no night vision whatsoever. Gradually, my eyes became accustomed to the darkness again, and there was no boat of any kind to be seen. The wind was dropping very quickly, and Harp was slowing, now running dead before it at about two knots. I waited a few minutes and struck another flare. Again, the intense light, followed by equally intense darkness. Still no other boat.

  Following the chart as best I could, we started up the narrow entrance to Naragansett Bay toward Newport. The lights of the town and of the large suspension bridge farther up the river made it very difficult to pick out buoys and lights ashore. The wind continued to drop and soon we were barely stemming the tide. We drew abeam of where Castle Hill Coast Guard station was marked on the chart. I could see a large building on a hill, with several exterior lights. I signaled the station, but there seemed to be no one on watch. (The building was a hotel. The Coast Guard station was behind the hill.) I tried the VHF but got no reply either from the Coast Guard or from Goat Island Marina, where a twenty-four-hour watch was being kept at a reception center being run by American Tobacco. Nothing. Maybe the small batteries were enough for receiving but not for transmitting. I struck another flare abeam of the Coast Guard station. Still no notice was taken of me.

  I sat in the river for the rest of the night, fuming at being ignored. Forty-five days at sea and no bands, no fireworks, no dancing girls, not even a rowboat. The river was absolutely devoid of traffic of any kind.

  These people did not seem to understand my heroic achievement. Did they think I did this every day? Shit.

  Dawn came as slowly as possible. I made a cup of coffee and tried to stay awake until somebody else was up. I wondered what time the local water-skiers got started; there didn’t seem to be anybody else stirring. There was still not enough wind to make any headway against the tide.

  At six o’clock I heard an engine. Reception committee? Fishing boat. He was on his way out for his day’s work, passing a hundred yards to starboard. I hailed him and asked if he would call Goat Island Marina on his radio and
ask them to come and get me. He said he would, and I settled down with my coffee again. A couple of minutes later, he had turned and was coming alongside.

  “Nobody’s up,” he said. “Throw me a line, I’ll take you in.” The only other person aboard his boat was a girl.

  “I envy you your crew,” I said. “I haven’t seen one of those for six weeks.” She laughed and made my line fast.

  As we moved up the river a huge, red sun rose behind the spires of Newport. I stood on the deck and looked at the houses and green shore. It seemed unreal, a New England Disneyland, constructed of papier-mâché. We approached the marina’s fuel dock. A lone figure stood on the pier, holding a towel. I shouted at him to take a line. He did. He was waiting for someone to come and unlock the showers. I called the reception center. No answer; it had closed the day before. Customs wasn’t up yet. No need to wake Angela at this hour. I lurched back to the yacht on my new land legs and pottered around the decks, sorting ropes, then went below for another cup of coffee. I was too excited to sleep. A voice from above. I stuck my head up. A smiling face greeted me.

  “I’m Pete Dunning; I run the marina; I think you’re the sixty-third boat in. Congratulations.”

  “Where’s Mike McMullen?”

  “He hasn’t been reported since the start of the race.”

  I knew it. I think I had known it all along.

  Epilogue

  I had my first hot shower in six weeks, and Angela turned up soon afterward, having been rung by Pete Dunning. I got all the news: 125 boats had started the race; I had finished sixty-third; thirty-six had retired in various stages of damage; five had sunk, but their skippers were rescued; Mike Flanagan was lost and Mike McMullen was missing. Several other boats had not been reported but were eventually accounted for.

  There was much discussion about what had happened to Mike McMullen. It was the consensus among those who knew him that he would not have taken his own life, even after having lost Lizzie. He seemed too good a yachtsman and too familiar with his boat and her limitations to have lost her in heavy weather. No collision had been reported. It is my own view that he went in some simple, everyday way, probably falling overboard like Mike Flanagan and like Brian Cooke the year before. That can happen to anybody, no matter how good he is. It is unlikely that anyone will ever know for sure, of course. The only possible consolation for any of his friends is that, depending on the way things really are, he might be with Lizzie. Anyone who knew them will spend the rest of his life missing them.

  At last, a tow into Newport.

  I pottered around Newport for a couple of weeks, getting small repairs done to Harp. My mother had been in Newport when I arrived and said she was getting tired of the family business. I had decided to sell the yacht and spend some time reorganizing things and getting her retired. I had a novel to finish, too, and the day after I arrived in Newport I talked with Ron Holland about a new boat for the next race, a bigger and faster boat. It was a very satisfying experience to finish the race, but I wanted to do it again, and faster.

  Newport is a pleasant and hospitable place. Angela and I saw a lot of Peter Crowther of Galway Blazer and his girl, Pauline, and David Cowper of Airedale and his wife, Caroline. Jerry Cartwright and his wife, Kay, had a lot of the competitors over for dinner, and other dinner parties took place on the various yachts and at the Black Pearl on Bowen’s Wharf.

  There was much warm camaraderie among the finishers, and each time another yacht finished, there was much shaking of hands and swapping of stories. Most of the early finishers had gone by the time I reached Newport, but many competitors were still there. A lot of them left the day after my arrival to return via a race to Horta, then France. Tom Grossman of Cap 33, who had finished fifth, came down on a visit from Boston. The people of Newport invited us to beach parties and made us feel welcome. They had had an active summer, what with the Tall Ships, then us.

  Angela came back to Georgia with us for a few days before returning to London and her job on The Observer.

  The race rules are being rewritten, probably to exclude giant yachts, and that may be for the best. There has been the usual chorus from some of the yachting press that the race be abolished or made into a two-man event. No matter what is said, it seems impossible to make them understand what this race means to the people who compete in it. Many human beings need adventure, real adventure, personal adventure, and, sometimes, as in our case, solitary adventure. Some men and women have always needed that, finding their own physical limits without the aid of bearers and Sherpa guides, searching out their own emotional and spiritual boundaries in places where there is no one to answer to but God. As our society grows and our environment shrinks, there will be more and more little men who will wish to deny us that. Many of them have public or editorial platforms and they will use them to attack this event. They must be ignored.

  (left) Tabarly, now a French national hero.

  (right) Clare Francis celebrates her July 4th arrival in Newport.

  It is interesting to note that at the start of the race, where chaos had been predicted, not one untoward incident occurred which could be attributed to the size of the race, its organization, or the single-handedness of its entries. During the remainder of the race only two collisions with ships occurred, one of them not serious, one resulting in the sinking of the yacht and the subsequent rescue of her skipper. Another competitor, Nigel Lang in Galadriel, had the truly incredible experience of colliding with another single-handed yacht, not a competitor, hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. Neither was seriously damaged.

  Two lives were lost, the first ever in this event. It was inevitable that it would happen in one of these races, and now it has. Both men knew that it might, though neither probably expected it would happen to him. Both, in a sense, died defending the right of men to risk dying in adventurous living.

  No one has proposed, with any effect, that motor racing be prohibited or that men stop trying to climb Everest. It is simply accepted that those who participate in these enterprises do so at their own risk, and good luck to them. Those of us who race single-handed ask no more than that. Leave us alone; ignore us, if you like, but let us get on with it.

  Let us, as Jack Oddling-Smee, commodore of the Royal Western Yacht Club, has said, “enjoy and profit by what must surely be one of the last great freedoms granted to us in this ever contracting world.”

  • • •

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  www.penguin.com/woodschecklist

  Afterword to the 2012 Edition

  I was thirty-five when this adventure began and thirty-eight when it was over. Reading it for the first time since it was originally published, in 1977, I think it’s still the best job I could have done, although I was surprised at how many things occurred that I left out.

  The book is exactly as it was when first published, except that I have restored half a dozen pages that were excised by the British publisher for fear of running afoul of the U.K. libel laws. The pages concerned my disagreements with the boatyard, and I don’t think they are libelous.

  *

  Finishing the OSTAR didn’t end my sailing career, although I did sell Golden Harp. I sailed in the infamous Fastnet Race of 1979, in which fifteen competitors and four observers were lost (see Fastnet, Force 10, by John Rousmaniere for the definitive account), aboard Toscana, a Swan 47 owned by my editor and publisher, Eric Swenson. That autumn, I skippered the yacht back across the Atlantic, starting at Falmouth, in Cornwall, and stopping at Horta, Madeira, and Las Palmas and Puerto Rico, in the Canary Islands, finishing at Antigua. Since then I’ve sailed on other people’s boats, and I’m now a partner in a 1935 motor yacht, Enticer, and I spend a couple of weeks a year aboard her. When I owned Golden Harp I looked upon motor yachts as boats that spilled my drink when they chugged past, making a wake; now I take a more benevolent view, and I enjoy sitting on the afterdeck, a gimlet frozen to my fist, spilling other peoples’ dr
inks. I also operate my own Hinckley 38, Indian Summer, in Maine and Key West.

  Some footnotes, gained with the passage of time: Parts of Mike McMullen’s yacht, Three Cheers, were found a couple of years later, encased in the frozen shores of Iceland, identified by the serial numbers on some of the electronic instruments. My opinion of how Mike died has not changed.

  The last known sighting of Three Cheers was made by my friend George Kennefick, at that time the commodore of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, who was approaching Cork Harbor, under power, in nearly calm conditions when he came across the trimaran, sailing slowly westward. He motored alongside her for a few minutes, chatting with Mike, who, he said, seemed in good spirits, except for the lack of wind. Then the wind came up, and Mike sailed away, obviously headed for the northern route. No one ever saw him again.

  Some of the people mentioned have, inevitably, died since the book was finished. Andrew “Spud” Spedding died a few years later of natural causes; Worth and Pasha Newenham are gone, as is Harry McMahon, who died in his fifties of a coronary.

  *

  Bill King, however, has passed his one hundredth birthday and is still sailing. Ron Holland and John McWilliam remain friends, although I don’t see them often. Ron is now designing some of the largest, most luxurious sailing yachts afloat. I see Harold Cudmore rather more often; he lives next door to the Royal Yacht Squadron, in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, where I summered from 1983 to 1993.

  Ann Greville-Bell married an Australian architect and lived there for many years, but now they are back in England. I exchange an occasional e-mail with Ann and with Angela Green, who still lives in London.