Gipsy Moth Circles the World

by Francis Chichester

  An albatross flying overhead dropped a personal bomb, which hit the mizzen sail fair and square, decorating it with a string of red blobs. Lucky shot! I rove a new tiller line to the steering sail and took the strain on it so that I could adjust the present one, then I did the same with the leeward line. The lengths of the steering lines, and the amount of play or movement of parts of this steering system were most critical, and fine adjustment made all the difference to its effectiveness.

  Next day the wind returned to roaring in the rigging, and I dropped all sail except the storm jib and steering sail, content to jog along on course at 4 knots only. Some Mother Carey’s Chickens were only 6 feet away from me when I was working at the stem; I had never seen them so close before. I watched them bouncing off the wave surfaces with their chests, and sometimes hitting the water lightly with first one wing tip and then the other as if they were flicking bits of fluff off a hot plate with their wings.

  On November 29 I had sailed for 14 days since the self-steering bust, and had made good 1,808 miles, an average of 120 miles per day. This was good going because, quite apart from my self-steering difficulties, I was missing one of my best driving-sails. Alas, it was not good enough to reach Sydney in the 100 days. I still had 1,057 miles to go and only 6 days of the 100 left. I was depressed because I had had a bad night, unable to sleep through being thoroughly rattled by the radio telephone, and the pressure being exerted on me through it for news, etc. After three months of solitude I felt that it was all too much; that I could not stand it, and could easily go mad with it. All this is weak nonsense, I know, but that is how I felt when I was twisting about in my bunk trying to clear my brain of all the thoughts and images attacking it. I told myself that I must try to be tolerant with the demands being made for air photography, telephone talks, etc, etc.

  An hour after midnight on November 30 I was forced out of my bunk by a bad cramp. I always got cramp if I stretched my legs on waking, but I couldn’t stop myself from doing it when still half-asleep. Fortunately, standing upright freed the bound muscles, which were as hard as wood, and very painful. I was always frightened that a muscle would break under the strain. A small drink of sea water usually prevented another attack—maybe I needed salt after losing so much during hard deck work.

  That afternoon I sewed up the seam of the mizzen staysail which had given way. It was a delightful sunny day for a change, and warm enough for me to sew in the cockpit. When I set the sail, the steering sail could not control the boat with it up, so I had to haul it down again. Then I set the big 600-foot genoa instead of the 300-foot jib. Gipsy Moth was doing 9 knots easily at times, but when the wind piped up the steering sail could not control the boat with that sail set either, and reluctantly I had to drop it again. What was so frustrating was that the wind dropped to near-calm almost to the second as I dropped the sail, and I could have carried it thereafter! If the wind had acted purely out of spite it could not have been more successful. I think there might have been a chance of controlling the boat if the trysail had been dropped, but it was getting dark, and I had a damned radio telephone appointment coming up. So I left the big sail down and rehoisted the 300-footer.

  When on the foredeck in the dusk, after I had bagged the big sail, I was startled by what seemed a human scream close to the boat. I swung round to see whatever it could be. It came from an albatross! There were two of them, sitting on the water about 10 feet from the boat. They were courting, I think, facing each other, and one had its wings raised in a V with curved sides. It was too poor a light to see more1

  At 6.40 in the morning of December 1, the wind backed to the south-east and Gipsy Moth came hard on the wind for the first time for about a month. “I expect,” I logged, “that it is going to give me a headache before I reach Sydney.” How right I was!

  Rex Clements in his book A Gypsy of the Horn relates an oddly similar

  occurrence.

  “One dark, moonless night just before we got clear of the ‘forties’, there

  occurred a most uncanny experience.

  “It was about four bells in the middle watch, the ‘churchyard’watch, as the

  four hours after midnight is called, that it happened. Suddenly, apparently close

  aboard on the port hand, there came howling out of the darkness a most frightful,

  wailing cry, ghastly in its agony and intensity. Not of overpowering volume—a

  score of men shouting together could have raised as loud a hail—it was the

  indescribable calibre and agony of the shriek that almost froze the blood in our

  veins.

  “We rushed to the rail, the mate and the men too, and stared searchingly into

  the blackness to wind’ard. The starbowlines, who a moment before had been

  sleeping the sleep of tired men in their bunks below, rushed out on deck. Shipwreck

  would hardly bring foremast Jack out before he was called, but that cry roused

  him like the last summons. If ever men were ‘horror-struck’we were.

  “Even the old man was awakened by it and came up on deck. Everyone was

  listening intensely, straining their eyes into the blackness that enveloped us.

  “A moment or two passed and then as we listened, wondering and silent,

  again that appalling scream rang out, rising to the point of almost unbearable

  torture and dying crazily away in broken whimperings.

  “No one did anything, or even spoke.

  “Nobody slept much more that night and thankful we were when the grey

  dawn broke over the tumbling untenanted sea.

  “This was all. In bare words it doesn’t sound very dreadful, but it made that

  night a night of terror. For long enough afterwards the echoes of that awful

  scream would ring in my ears, and even now it sends a shiver through me to

  think of it.

  “Who and what it was that caused it we never learnt.”

  I wonder if this might also have been an albatross?

  Back to Text

  8. Bass Strait

  The noon position on December 1 showed that the current, probably following the wind, had set me 36 miles north of the dead reckoning position. The day’s run was 140 miles, the last good run I was to have for many days. Now began a tough phase of the passage.

  The heading I was on would run Gipsy Moth into the coast between Cape Otway and Cape Nelson 100 miles to the west of it, and this would be a lee shore. So I dropped the 300-foot jib and hoisted the working jib instead to harden up to the wind. Gipsy Moth at once started slamming, but I felt that I must endure it. By 20.00 that night the pounding became terrible. I felt that it could drive one mad, the tension waiting for the next crash. In the Forties I had usually been able to ease the heading until I was broadside to the wind or even downwind. Here I felt it would be a mistake running down on a lee shore. Actually it was still 90 miles away, but it seemed very close after the big stretches of ocean that I had grown used to. I dropped the working jib and set the storm jib in its place, and also reefed the mizzen. This cut the speed from 5½ to 3½ knots with the same heading, but it made existence tolerable by cutting down the pounding.

  At midnight the sea got up, and was really socking the boat. I have the storm jib to windward, dropped the trysail and lashed the helm right down to leeward, jogging along at 2 knots hard on the wind. At 06.00 in the morning of the 2nd I resheeted the storm jib and hoisted the mizzen sail.

  At noon I had had a day’s run of only 68 miles. I had had a single sun shot at 10.24, which confirmed the dead reckoning position, that I was some 35 miles from Cape Nelson at noon, and was heading into a bay of a lee coast. I had poor visibility, and a gale, increasing, with the possibility of a really bad blow, the way the barometer was moving. I had a low coast which would be difficult to pick out lying ahead of me. I wore the ship round on to the other tack and headed SSE. I expected to have to stay on this heading until the wind veere
d enough to let me into Bass Strait. Gipsy Moth was making only 3 knots owing to the steering sail being aback, but at least the pounding was cut down and I felt I could relax. It was fairly rough; I had to clean my sextant twice to get the one shot at 10.24, then I had to give it a freshwater bath because a big wave crest drenched it.

  I had got stuck with what I had always hoped to avoid, having to enter Bass Strait in a gale with bad visibility and no position check for 12,000 miles. I was on edge about this, for sextant observations of the sun, moon or stars will give an accurate fix only if there is no blunder in working out the sights. I reckon to make some blunders in, I should guess, about one observation in ten or twenty, usually something quite silly, like using the wrong date in the almanac, or copying down the wrong figure from a 6-figure logarithm. Fortunately I nearly always realise when a mistake has been made somewhere; I seem to develop an uncanny instinct for smelling out an error. But, aware of having made these blunders, I could not help feeling nervy when approaching land and relying on astro-navigation for not hitting rocks or an island in the dark when the last positive position check was 12,000 miles back. Suppose there had been some consistent error running through all the astronomical observations, an undetected error in the sextant, or in the time, stop watch, the tables, the almanac … I had expected to get a check from the radio beacons in Bass Strait; but when I tuned in to the frequencies listed in the latest Admiralty Signals Manual I could not pick up any of them—I did not know then that all the Australian frequencies had been changed. I searched the whole range of frequencies on my D/F radio set and picked up Mount Gambier airfield beacon on a frequency totally different from the one in the manual. I then began searching the frequency band for the Cape Otway and Cape Wickham beacons. The trouble was that these came on only at intervals of 30 minutes.

  To make matters worse it was a head-on gale so that I was having to beat slowly to windward. At 5.30 p.m. I tacked again, and once more was headed for the coast, later in darkness and still a gale with bad visibility. The plunging and pounding of the boat could drive a man crazy and when I called up on the R/ T that night I felt it was like trying to use a telephone when standing on a dodgem at a fair.

  At 09.40 next morning (December 3) my dead reckoning position should have been within soundings for my little echo sounder, which had a range of 50 fathoms. But the echo sounder recorded no signals, so I assumed I was a couple of miles to the west where the chart showed a depth of over 50 fathoms. If that were right, I was still 19 miles off the lee coast.

  Besides not being able to get a sun sight my navigation was complicated by not being able to pick up any of the radio beacons listed in the latest Admiralty manual. At last, by searching the frequency band, I located Cape Otway on 314 kcs instead of the 289 given in the manual—the latest available when I left. I also managed to find Cape Wickham’s frequency, and I got a rough fix from the two. My run to noon of December 3 was only 53 miles.

  The fix from the Cape Otway and Cape Wickham bearings put me 12 miles from land, 23 miles west of Cape Otway, but 5 miles north of it. This was at 12.30, and I kept on popping out to see if I could see land ahead. I didn’t want to tack until I had seen it, and also I was hoping that the wind would veer and let me weather Cape Otway without a tack. I kept on taking bearings of Otway and Wickham, but they were not good because the compass was so cranky in the southern hemisphere. Two hours and twenty minutes later I sighted a long cliffy stretch of coast dead ahead. The farthest I could see was a point away to the east, which I thought was Moonlight Head. I thought Gipsy Moth was headed for Oliver Hill, 3 or 4 miles west of Moonlight Head which was where I expected to be, but I could not identify the coast positively. If it was Oliver Hill, then I was only 16 miles from the Schomburg Reef, where the famous (or notorious) skipper, Bully Hayes, lost his clipper. Land was about 3 miles off when I tacked1

  I reckoned to stay for four or five hours on the port tack, to get clear of the shipping lane. At 17.00 there was a standard “Southerly Buster” cloud formation along the coast astern, a long, low roll of cloud, purplish blue. I wondered if it was as vicious as it looked, and whether it would come upwind and attack me. I wanted to set more sail, but that roll of cloud scared me off it. According to radio bearings at 22.00 I was still 31 miles from Cape Otway and in a steamer lane, for I had just seen three steamers one behind the other. Those steamers would have been a good help to my navigation if I could have been sure what steamer lane they were on; unfortunately—this was one of those little slip-ups which bedevil a long passage—I had left behind my copy of the Admiralty’s Ocean Passages of the World and therefore I could not tell what route the steamers would be on if they were making for Fremantle.

  I had to get further south to be well clear of the shipping lanes when I tacked. At midnight I logged that the steamer lane was nearly as crowded as the English Channel; three more steamers were passing then, and I had had to turn downwind to avoid colliding with one. It was about a mile away when I went up to tack, and I thought it was far enough off to give me plenty of time. That was the first steamer I had been close to since the South Atlantic; this is the only excuse I can offer for mistiming my tack. As I came round I realised that I was on a collision course with the steamer, and I began bearing away to pass astern of it. The steamer must have been wondering what the devil I was doing, and, having a conscientious and good navigator on board, slowed to a stop. I wish all steamers would be equally chivalrous towards small boats. I bore away under its stern, feeling a proper Charley. I suppose it had taken me longer to tack than I had expected, and also the steamer had been going fast.

  Now I could see the loom of the Cape Otway light. I got a bearing from it, but I could not tell how far away it was. I put it at 20 miles. I decided that the coast I had seen could not have been Moonlight Head. Altogether I was fussed up in a hard way till midnight, what with steamers, uncertainty of position, dirty weather and wind still occasionally up to gale force. I could not turn in for a sleep when headed for the land when I did not know how far off it was. So I laid down on my chart the limits of error in my position, and from this deduced that no matter where I might be within these limits, I could safely sail for a certain number of hours on the port tack before I risked running into King Island. In working this out I made due allowance for the treacherous currents round King Island which the Admiralty Sailing Directions warned about.

  December 4 was a green-grey day, with rain, bad visibility, and wind still heading me from the south-east. I was going very slowly because of the terrific pounding. In spite of all this sailing and navigation, I still had not got into Bass Strait! The day’s run was again miserable at 52 miles. Gipsy Moth would get up speed to 5½ knots, then slam on three or four waves in succession, and end up stopped. They did not need to be big slams, only just enough to start her hobbyhorsing, which would stop her dead. I had had no sun fix for three days. According to an afternoon radio fix, which I could not rely on, I had been set 10 miles south in four and a half hours since noon.

  At 16.30 I reckoned that I was 8 miles north of Cape Wickham, at the north end of King Island. I thought this was close enough, and tacked on to an ENE heading. It was reported to me afterwards that the Cape Wickham lighthouse keeper said he sighted Gipsy Moth. This surprised me, because I should think that I would have seen the lighthouse before he could sight me. However, he may have picked me up on a radar screen.

  This would explain what happened an hour and a half later, when an aeroplane found me, and made a number of passes over Gipsy Moth. I thought it was smart work on his part in the murk with cloud down to 200 feet. Each time he turned to make another pass he disappeared in the murk. The joke was that he must have known my position exactly whereas I still did not know it.

  An hour before midnight I logged, “The wind and the sea have eased, thank Heaven. I just cannot understand how a boat holds together under such battering.” I spent a lot of time that night trying to get radio beacon bearings. The clearest signal was f
rom an air beacon on King Island. I had difficulty in getting good bearings because the compass needle swung about so wildly. This showed up another little slip I had made before starting the passage. I ought to have remembered to get a compass with the needle counterpoised for the Southern Hemisphere’s magnetic dip. Also I discovered that the fluorescent lights in the cabin upset the radio bearings, and this was a nuisance, because it meant that I had to turn out all the lights in order to get readings of any value at all.

  With daybreak of the 5th the wind fell light and also backed, thereby heading me worse than ever. On that day my hundredth day ran out. I reported:

  “In the last four days I have made good only 279 miles, plugging into a head-on easterly, mostly of gale force. It was equivalent to beating up the English Channel for four days against a gale for a third of the time, and a Force 4 wind for the rest. Twice I had to heave to when the boat was being pounded too hard by the seas. It was thick dirty weather, and I did not get a positive position check until I reached Cape Liptrap at noon today.”

  I felt that it was time to make port, for I had finished my last onion. At 10.38 next morning I sighted land ahead. By noon, the day had begun turning into a hot summer’s day. The day’s run was 106 miles. I tacked when 3 miles off shore. I was in Venus Bay when I tacked away from the land, and from Venus Bay I had to beat to windward to pass Cape Liptrap, and make for Wilson Promontory. There were islands all round the promontory—the Glennie Group, the Anser Group and the Rodondo Group. Fortunately the weather stayed clear and there were two lighthouses, but even so it was tricky work for a singlehander getting through the islands in the dark. I had to check every mile of every tack, and the only sleep I got during the night was one catnap of less than two hours. However, I consoled myself with the promise that the head-on wind would be favourable for me as soon as I got round the promontory and headed ENE for Gabo Island.