Gipsy Moth Circles the World

by Francis Chichester

  It was not comfortable sailing in the strong winds. Big “slams” would slow the boat right down, and then she would pinch up to windward as if the self-steering had been “forced”. I thought, indeed, that this was what was happening, and I would go and give the self-steering a downwind twitch. I felt that I needed both a monkey and an elephant for supplementary crew—the monkey to tackle things when Gipsy Moth was heeled to 35 ° or more, and the elephant to take the helm when it got out of control in a squall.

  On Monday night (September 26) I had just settled nicely in my berth, absorbed by Maigret and La Grande Perche, when there was a big bang astern. A big sail flap followed, and I thought that something in the self-steering gear had burst. I got on deck as fast as I could, but it was no weather to be there without a safety belt. I was relieved to find that it was only a tiller line which had broken. I robbed one of the spinnaker pole guys, and rigged that hoping that the old rope had just perished and that the new rope would hold. It was quite a long job, in a strong wind and rough sea, but I got it done and got back to my berth feeling so sleepy that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was not allowed to sleep for long—Gipsy Moth was getting such a bashing that I could not stand it. I went on deck again and dropped the mainsail, and then I did manage to get a bit of rest.

  I got up after a couple of hours, intending to go on deck and get the mainsail up again, but I decided to have a cup of hot chocolate first. The wind increased to 25 knots while I sipped my chocolate, so I hoisted the small staysail, and left the main down. That morning might have seen the end of the voyage as far as I was concerned, for I had a narrow escape in a nasty, though rather absurd, accident. The weather continued dirty, and Gipsy Moth was much thrown about. I went to the heads (lavatory) and the door was twice thrown open, and I pushed it shut. Without warning the door burst open again, smashed back downhill from behind me, and the handle struck me a crack on the forehead, sending my spectacles flying. The blow cut my head about two inches above my eye, and left me feeling nearly stunned. Amazingly, the spectacles were not damaged, and some dabbing with disinfectant seemed all that the cut needed. But my escape seemed a miracle—supposing that handle had caught me on the eye, after smashing through my glasses!

  My big event next day was a shave. I could not use the mirror in the heads, because there was no means of keeping myself in position for shaving when Gipsy Moth was heeled over. So I used a bucket sitting in the lounge with a hand mirror. I mention this because some think that it is only a matter of picking up a razor to shave when sailing, and wonder why yachting men are so slovenly!

  The heavy duty bearings in the self-steering gear seemed to be clanking a lot, and I worried a good deal about the gear. There was so much of it to go wrong.

  In spite of the efforts I had made to sort out my eggs, all was not well in the egg box. I couldn’t stand the smell in the saloon, so I humped the box to the cockpit, and found a niche for them in the after hatch. Fourteen dozen eggs, apart from whether they are bad, make quite a lumpy package to handle gingerly in roughish going. I believe that this big package (too big) was dropped en route to the boat or before sailing, and that the smell came mostly if not wholly from cracked eggs. Those eggs survived only a few days longer. The smell grew worse and worse, and finally I dumped the lot in the ocean, and watched the box dwindle to a speck as we sailed on. It isn’t often one has to throw away the best part of fourteen dozen eggs. They were a loss.

  Winding up the story of my eggs, I have got a little ahead of events. An odd thing happened in the afternoon after my shave. I decided to pump the bilge to check that the pump was working. I didn’t expect to pump more than a few strokes, for I glance at the bilges regularly, and there was hardly any water there when I looked that morning. I began pumping more or less automatically and went on in a sort of daydream, until suddenly I became aware that I had been pumping for a long time. I thought that maybe one of the pump valves was not working properly and that I was just pumping the same water to and fro, so I went forward to hunt for a stick to poke the end of the pipe. I found water running out of the heads! I must have left the inlet seacock turned on when I gave up trying to shave there, and transferred myself, razor and shaving things to the cabin. The open seacock had been quietly filling up the boat ever since.

  On my 32nd day out (September 28) I was 1,940 miles from where I should cross the Greenwich meridian at 40° S. Cutty Sark, on her 32nd day, was 1,900 miles from where she crossed the meridian. So I figured that the Cutty Sark was only some 40 miles ahead of me after 32 days. The weather grew much colder, and I began wearing woollen shirt and trousers below deck. I felt that the Antarctic was creeping up!

  After my encouraging calculation about the Cutty Sark on September 28, the 29th began badly, with the discovery that the port aft settee locker was well flooded. I decided that this was due to the main boom flogging during a sail change which had caused the boom downhaul to draw an eyebolt partly from the deck. The mishap was a pity, because the locker was full of books, and they were all messed up. I took the precaution of pumping the bilge again, and found it took 35 strokes to clear it. I hoped that it was water from the heads which had not found its way aft when I had pumped out the day before.

  After this work with the pump I noticed that I kept having to hitch up my pants. I measured my waist, and found that it was down to 30 3/8 inches—pretty ladylike, I thought. I had certainly lost weight, which didn’t surprise me, but I wished that I could find more appetite for food. I enjoyed some of my meals, but there were many days when I had more or less to force myself to eat. I stood myself a gin, which was a mistake, for I found that gin usually seemed to bring a squall and hard work on deck.

  This gin ran true to form, bringing a gale from 160 °, roughly SSE, and a horrible sea. The gale came at me from where I wanted to go, so there was not much that I could do about it for a while. I tried to stay in my bunk, but was forced out by cramp in my right leg. Wary of the troubles that seem to be in store when I drink gin (or champagne) on board, I gave myself a brandy, hot, “with” for a change. I can’t remember what Jorrocks meant by “with”, but I think it was sugar and lemon. Anyway, mine was a very good drink to hearten a fellow. The gale moderated a bit, but there was still a rough sea, and we jogged along under reefed mizzen and spitfire jib. The brandy stimulated me to do some deckwork, and I greased and oiled two winches which had refused to work during the night. I also fixed another cord to the self-steering gear. This was most necessary work, for the winches and the self-steering gear had given me hell in a shemozzle during the night. What happened was that I did not think it would pay to tack, so turned in, to be awakened by the flap when the boat tacked herself. In the darkness the rattle and flap was enough to panic an elephant. I whipped on a lifeline harness round my waist, but had no time to dress, and arrived on deck barefooted in pyjamas. As the headsails were aback, I decided to accept the situation and leave the yacht on the port tack. Neither winch would work. Then the self-steering gear jibbed. The steering oar lay hard over to one side, and my most herculean hauling couldn’t centre it. I had to fiddle with tiller lines to get the boat sailing again while I dealt with the self-steering. This was difficult, because while the self-steering was connected to the tiller, the load on the tiller was very great, and it was hard to cope by using tiller lines. And all the time I was struggling with torches, my powerful one to try to see what was wrong with the self-steering, and an ordinary one for the usual deckwork. At some time during all this, an empty bottle, left on the cockpit seat to dry for paraffin storage, was knocked off on to my toe (it gave me a black toe). This last incident did me good, for it emphasised the absurdity of taking it all too seriously. But I could scarcely be surprised at losing weight.

  5. Whistling for Wind and Rain

  On October 1, five weeks out, I began to feel hungry again, and had a wonderful breakfast. I had slept well, and woke feeling properly rested. I went on deck and changed up the storm jib to the working jib. This gave
me an appetite, and I found a flying fish on deck, provided for my breakfast. I cleaned and cooked the fish, and that breakfast stays in my memory. The menu was:

  1 grapefruit (about one-quarter thrown away because of going

  bad)

  2 potatoes fried up with the flying fish

  2 slices of wholemeal toast with butter and marmalade

  1½ mugs of coffee

  When I had “rested” that lot, I went up and set some more sail.

  Between the 32nd and the 35th day out I had lost my good position relative to the Cutty Sark. She had terrific runs on her 33rd, 34th, and 35th days out compared with me, and from being only 40 miles behind her on the 33rd day I was 352 miles behind on the 35th. This was dispiriting, and sometimes I would feel really black despair for a while, when the whole boat seemed hopelessly too big to handle in troublous conditions. Being turned out of my bunk from sleep to cope with a crisis involving a lot of dirty hard work on deck made things seem at their worst. I used to think how different it would be if one were on watch in a crewed-up boat, waiting and ready to deal with any fresh conditions, however tough. These moods passed, and I always felt better when I managed to get a few hours of sound sleep. That would transform me, and I would cheerfully tackle any jobs that needed doing. I would water my garden, and sow seed in any vacant patch where I had cut the cress. There was music, too—how wonderful life can seem with the right circumstances and the right music! I would get Giles’s tape-recorded concert going, and feel that I had been taking life too seriously, and worrying about things that didn’t really matter.

  The South-East Trade Wind held beyond its normal limit, giving me headwinds when, according to the averages, I should have had at least three days of north-easterlies, which, of course, would have enabled me to romp ahead instead of having a gale in my teeth.

  In the evening of October 1 I was still in the South-East Trade Wind belt and I complained in my log that “it seems as if I am doomed to travel south for ever.” It was a black night, and when I first went on deck the sky was as black as the sea, but my eyes gradually detected a difference. “Those deckhands on the clippers,” I wrote, “had to know the ropes; no lights aloft for them. If one is on watch, it is amazing how much one can see in the black after a while, but those clipper crews had to turn out of their bunks in a hurry at times, just as I have to do; all hands on deck.” But four hours later I sailed out of the Trade Wind. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read east of south on the compass. For the first time since crossing the Equator I could head for the Greenwich Meridian at 40 ° S. I was then 300 miles south-east of Ilha da Trinidade.

  The wind piped up to 24 knots and I thought that we were in for a blow from the north-east, so I eased all sheets and took two rolls out of the main. But I was wrong, because the wind dropped back to 18 knots. But Gipsy Moth was going nicely, and it was so wonderful to be laying the required course that I just stopped worrying. A bad mishap this day was that I lost my biggest and most important screwdriver overboard, trying to make some more jammed Lewmar gear work, this time the stop for the mainsheet slide.

  On the night of October 2 I saw the Southern Cross for the first time since 1938, when I was coming home with Sheila from New Zealand. That was a thrill, though in the meantime one of the four stars of the Cross had become faint, which marred the handsome constellation.

  I was now in a lonely part of the ocean which few ships use. I saw a large bird about 75 yards off—I think it was an albatross, but it might have been a mollyhawk. I hung up in the cabin Sheila’s lovely silk scarf, with pictures of horse carriages on it. It looked gay and brightened the whole cabin.

  On Monday, October 3, I sounded the fresh water tank and found that I had only 21 gallons left, plus half a jerrycan (about 2½ gallons) which Giles, my son, had made me take as a reserve. To be on the safe side and have a little in hand, I ignored this in my calculations. My diminishing water supply was worrying, but not critical. When I started I knew that I had not enough water on board to see me through the passage to Sydney; I had allowed myself enough for all reasonable needs for six weeks, relying on getting enough rain to fill my tanks before there could be any real chance of running short. But I underestimated my use of water, particularly for the twice-daily watering of my cress-garden. And so many things needed water—baking required it, and all dried vegetables, egg and milk powder wanted it. I could cook potatoes in seawater but not rice. With my underestimation of consumption, I seemed, too, to have overestimated the chances of rain, or at least my ability to catch it. Rain had come with the squalls from time to time, but not in catchable quantity, apparently. I realised, too, that I had made a mistake in my plans—the sort of mistake that can completely upset a long passage in a small boat, though it wouldn’t matter at all for a passage of only a week or two. My water-collecting system relied on collecting rain from the mainsail by means of the hollow boom, from which I could pipe it into the tank. What I failed to take into account was that rain usually comes with a strong wind, when the mainsail is not set: or, if it is set, then salt spray is probably flying as well as the rain, thus ruining the water for drinking purposes. I ought to have made arrangements to pipe the water off the mizzen sail instead of the mainsail, because the mizzen is carried in rough conditions long after the mainsail has been dropped.

  It is normally reckoned that a man can live well enough on half a gallon (four pints) of water a day; that is, of course, for drinking and preparing food—it allows nothing for washing oneself or one’s clothes. Half a gallon a day was the old sailing ship allowance. At this ration my 21 gallons would last me 42 days it seemed almost inconceivable that there would not be rain to help me out within that time. But I couldn’t be certain of rain, and I was shaken to find that I had already been so long at sea without catchable rain. How long would my 21 gallons have to last? There was no knowing; suppose for some reason rain just didn’t come, or I couldn’t manage to catch rain? I hoped to be in Sydney in 100 days, which meant at least another 65 days at sea, but I might take 120 days, or 140. Or I might be dismasted, my radio put out of action, and drift for months in these unfrequented seas. Perhaps this was unlikely, but it could happen. I decided to make do on less than half a gallon a day, and to record every pint of water I used. If I could manage on a quart a day, I should have enough for 80 days.

  As if to comfort me, there was a sharp rainsquall during the night, and at breakfast next morning I found enough rain in a jug I had left in the cockpit to mix an egg-powder omelette. Later that morning rain came again, and I hurried on deck to rig my plastic rain-collecting pipe from the boom. At once the rain stopped. Noon brought another sharp squall, again I rigged my rain pipe and collected about one pint of brackish water. I studied every drop as it flowed from the sail to the boom and into the collecting pipe, and I soon saw that the method of collection needed modifying. Rain ran off the mainsail into a trough by the mainsail slide track, but there were rivet holes in the track, and a lot of rain was being wasted by running through these holes. Between squalls I worked out a method of correcting this, and when the next squall came I managed to collect a bucketful (about 1½ gallons). Again it was brackish, but this seemed unavoidable, because of salt in the spray that came with the squall, and of salt from earlier spray on the sail. However, the water was drinkable if I did not drink too much at one time, and it could be used for cooking. I felt sure that about two hours of good, steady rain would clear the salt, and fill my tanks with fresh water.

  But two hours of good steady rain did not come. There was some rain, but either it came in squalls with too much spray to make it worth collecting, or it came with high winds that forced me to take in the mainsail, so that there was no means of collecting it. By October 14 I was down to 16 gallons (plus the half-jerrycan of Giles’s reserve). Considering that I had “won” 1½ gallons in the squall on October 4, that meant that I was still using rather more water than I reckoned. I rationed myself more strictly.

  Though concern
ed for water, I was not worried about food, for my food was lasting well. True, I was using up some of the things that I liked best. I finished my last grapefruit, and my last orange. As I enjoyed that last orange I reflected that it had come from South Africa, and so had had nearly a round trip. On October 14 I ate the last of my potatoes, and much regretted that I had not brought more, for they are one of my favourite foods, and had kept well. The loss of my fourteen dozen eggs was a sad bereavement, but I had powdered eggs. I had powdered potato, too, but both egg powder and potato powder needed water before I could use them, so that I was rationed in their use. Looking back, I am sure that the real trouble about my feeding at this stage of the passage was that I was being starved of protein, had I known it.

  Those rainless days had compensations, for they were mostly pleasant weather, with clear skies and calm seas. I was frustrated at not being able to sail faster, but I could be philosophical and enjoy the weather. I saw lots of birds, and always enjoyed watching them. I appointed myself a judge at a birds’sports day, and awarded first prize for graceful flight to the Cape Pigeons. I saw several albatrosses, but in that part of the ocean they were small birds, none bigger than about 4 feet across. They must be beginners, I thought, with the big birds all away, nesting. There were a number of chocolate-brown birds that followed the yacht. I think they were a kind of petrel that clipper sailors called “Cape Hen”. Sometimes they would settle on the water together, and chitter-chatter away, looking very much like hens. But they were not as domestic as they looked, and I saw one of them attack a Mother Carey’s Chicken.