Gipsy Moth Circles the World

by Francis Chichester

  After this I made another tour of inspection, surveying the damage. Some extraordinary things had happened. The long mahogany boathook which had been lashed down at the side of the deck was jammed between the shrouds about 6 feet up in the air. By a great stroke of luck the locker under one of the cockpit seats, which had a flap lid with no fastening at all, was still full of gear, including the reefing handles for the main boom and the mizzen boom. I suppose the jumble of ropes and stuff which filled this locker (so that it was practically impossible to find anything in it) had jammed so tightly when upside down that nothing had spilled out. On the other hand, sundry winch handles, which had been in open-topped boxes specially made for them in the cockpit, had all disappeared.

  Down below some queer things had happened. To start with, there was that foul smell. I sniffed the bilges, but it did not come from there. I tried the batteries, but they fortunately had been clamped down securely in the bilge and were perfectly all right. At last I tracked it down to the vitamin pills, pink vitamin C. The bottle had shot across the boat from the cupboard above the galley sink, and had smashed to pieces on the doghouse above my head. The pills had spread all over the windows in the doghouse, where they partly dissolved in sea water. I tried to mop them up but the melting vitamin mixture smeared into the joint between the Perspex and wood of the windows and into every possible crack and cranny. For the time being I had to put up with the stink. The irony of it was that I never used a vitamin pill on the whole passage!

  I worked at the pump intermittently, stopping for a rest after every 200 strokes (the water had to be “lifted” 10-11 feet) and doing some other job as a change from pumping. When at last I got to the bottom of the bilge I found an assortment of plates and crockery, and also I found plates beside the motor, and one right aft of the motor. I was much puzzled at the time to know how these plates had got into such extraordinary positions, but realised later what had happened. The motor had a wooden casing covering it in at its forward end in the cabin, and the top of this is a step which hinges upwards. This lid had flown open, so that the plates had shot through the gap and when the boat righted herself, the lid had closed down again. One of the strangest things happened at the forward end of the cabin, where I kept on finding minute particles of razor-sharp, coloured glass. It was a long time before I tracked down the origin of this, but one day I came across a cork stuck into about an inch of the neck of a bottle. This was a long time later, but I mention it here because it provided some valuable evidence. It was the cork and neck of a bottle of Irish whiskey, which Jack Tyrrell of Arklow, who built Gipsy Moth III, had sent me as a present at the start of this voyage. I knew exactly where this bottle had been standing, in a hole cut in a sheet of plywood to take the bottle in the wine locker on the starboard side of the cabin. This locker had a flap-down lid. So I knew exactly where the bottle had come from. I also knew exactly where it had gone to; it had hit a deck beam in the ceiling of the cabin, making a bruise a quarter of an inch deep in the wood. Here it had shattered into a thousand fragments, and it was not till even later in the voyage that I found out where most of these were. At the foot of Sheila’s bunk on the port side of the cabin there was a shelf, of which half was boxed in with a flap-down lid. In this case also the lid had flown open when the boat went over, the pieces of glass had shot in, and the lid had closed down again. As I write this, the glass is still there. The last fragment of glass I found was one that had dropped onto the cabin floor from somewhere and lodged in the sole of my foot when I was going barefoot. The point about this glass is that it enabled me to measure the exact path of the bottle, which showed that the boat had turned through 131° when the bottle flew out of its niche; in other words, the mast would have then been 41 ° below the horizontal. I wondered if the shock of a wave hitting the boat had shot the bottle out of its locker, but there was other evidence which convinced me that this was not the case. On the roof of the doghouse the paintwork was spattered all over with particles of dirt up to a line just like a highwater mark on a beach. This dirt must have come from the floor of the cabin when the hatches above the bilge flew off. The particles were so small they would not have any momentum if a wave had hit the boat with a shock; they would have got on to the roof only by dropping there through gravity. What I have described and other little bits of evidence which I came across during the succeeding months convince me that the yacht rolled over until the mast was between 45 and 60° below the horizontal, and I don’t believe it would have made much difference if she had come up the other side after completely rolling over.

  But this detective work came later. I must return to the state of things at the time. There was butter everywhere and over everything, for 2 lb of butter had landed at the foot of my bunk, and splashed and spread. Coat hangers in the hanging locker were broken, and the basin was full of my clothes. Also in the basin was a Tupperware box containing my first aid equipment. Both cabin bunks had collapsed, spilling the contents of Tupperware containers on top of the contents of the drop lockers. Tins of food, fruit and milk were jumbled up on the cabin floor with shackles, sextants, biscuits and cushions. All the floor boards had taken to the air when Gipsy Moth went over, so everything that could find its way to the bilges had duly got there. My camera stand had broken in two, but the loose half was still lying on deck, up to windward. The main halliard was tangled with the burgee halliard.

  Gipsy Moth capsized on the night of Monday, January 30. My log notes briefly: “About 22.30. Capsize.” Heavy weather continued throughout Tuesday, January 31, and I spent the day lying ahull, doing what I could to clear up. The electric bilge pump would not work, so I had to pump by hand, trying to repair the electric pump in the intervals of hand pumping. After I had cleaned the impeller the electric pump worked for a few minutes, but then sucked at an air lock. The bilge was still half-full, but gradually I got the water down. I streamed my remaining green warp in the hope that it would keep the yacht headed downwind, but without any sails up the warp seemed to have no effect. So I hauled it back inboard and coiled it. The socket for the vane shaft of the self-steering gear was nearly off, so that had to be repaired, a dirty job which put me under water now and again. Thank God the water was warm! As I dealt with these various jobs one after another, my spirits began to pick up. I had been unbelievably lucky. The masts and rigging were all intact, which I attributed largely to Warwick’s rigging. I felt a sense of loss that one of the big genoas had gone overboard, but I could get on without it. I was upset at losing one of my drogues and the 700 feet of drogue warp that went with it, for I had intended to stream a drogue at the end of a long warp to slow down Gipsy Moth and to keep her stern to the seas in Cape Horner storms. Later, after I had pondered the details of my capsize for many hours, I completely discarded the warp and drogue idea. So the loss of those items was not as serious as I thought at the time.

  As the day wore on I began to feel a little hungry, and I lunched on three slices of bread and butter and marmalade. The bread was pretty mouldy, but it was solid food, and went down well. My log for that day notes cheerfully: “18.20. Called Sydney Radio. Told Sheila the tale.”

  That radio talk with Sheila meant much to me. She was as calm and confident as always, and never for a moment questioned my decision to carry on. I said again that I did not want any help. She was distressed as I was about the mess in our beautifully tidy boat. I could tell her about everything, because she knew exactly where everything was. I remember telling hereabout the horrible smell like stale, spilled beer, from wet vitamin tablets sticking to the cabin roof. I told her that I had spares on board for most things, and that in time I should be able to tidy up. I drew strength from her.

  I had had reefing points fitted to this sail in Sydney.

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  11. “I Have Been Damned Lucky”

  The Admiralty sailing instructions for square-rigged ships stated emphatically that ships leaving Sydney for the homeward voyage round Cape Horn should proceed south-east to
pass south of New Zealand, no matter what the wind was after leaving Sydney. That was the Clipper Way, and the maps in my book Along the Clipper Way show the route passing south of New Zealand or, at the most northerly, going through Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. For me, in the situation in which I found myself after the capsize, other considerations were compelling. To have gone south would have meant thrashing into a head wind, and with the appalling mess on board still to be cleared up I did not want to do it. The cabin was still a chaos of tins and stores, and to clear a passage through it the yacht had to be kept upright. I had to head north-east to keep her sufficiently upright to make a start on clearing up, and then I kept going on the same heading while I did more clearing up. Finally, I decided to carry on and sail north-about round New Zealand, instead of south-about; the going, I reckoned, should be easier, and the weather milder and warmer. As well as all the clearing, sorting, repacking and relisting of stores for six months that had to be done below, I needed as smooth sailing as I could get to enable me to repair the damage to the cockpit, where the water was pouring off the deck into my berth. I was at a low ebb physically, partly from having eaten next to nothing since leaving Sydney, partly from having felt ill or queasy so much of the time. But I was getting better, and the sheer weight of work to be done, although depressing in some ways, helped me to recover my spirits.

  The weather continued rough, but by Wednesday morning, February 1, I had the yacht sailing again, under a trysail and working jib. I refastened the foredeck net, rescued the broken pole-stand for my camera, and recovered the boathook from the rigging. There was still a full gale blowing, but the sun was out, and life began to seem more cheerful. But I worked slowly, and was often thrown off balance. I put this down to being weak from lack of food.

  Towards noon I knocked off for breakfast, and had a splendid meal of coffee and toast and marmalade. I was also careless, and scalded myself rather badly by tipping a mug of newly-made coffee over my arm and leg. It was my own fault for trying to cut toast on a swinging table with a mug of coffee standing there. I applied bicarbonate of soda at once and congratulated myself that things might have been much worse. After breakfast I had a snooze.

  I awoke about 13.30 from a heavy sleep and a vivid dream that I was in Baghdad opening a shop. It was a most realistic dream, and for a few moments after waking up I thought that I was in Baghdad. But I soon came back to Gipsy Moth, got up, and got to work again. I treated four small cuts on my right hand and my scalded right arm, wondering while I did so why only my right hand and arm had suffered, and there was nothing on my left. I felt better for my sleep, and set to work on what I reckoned to be the worst of the many jobs in front of me, fixing the propeller shaft-brake, which had come adrift again, and the engine’s exhaust cut-off, which had been jammed open. I reckoned that if water entered the engine through this open exhaust valve it could mean the end of battery-charging.

  I disliked both jobs extremely. Dealing with the exhaust valve meant lying on my belly, with my arms stretched above my face. The shaft-brake meant similar contortions, head down, with my feet up beside the engine. The shaft was spinning fast while we were sailing. I had been warned before leaving England to prevent this spinning, and had thought much about the best way of tackling it. At first I had a go from the side of the engine beside my bunk, and managed to stop the shaft temporarily. But I needed to reach across to the other side of the engine and was afraid of stretching my body over the top of the shaft for fear of its spinning again and catching my clothes so that I would be held down there, unable to move. Finally, I crawled through to the starboard side of the motor from the after-hatch, and got the job done. Both the exhaust job and work on the shaft brake were made easier for me by a 13-inch spanner and a universal grip tool that had been given to me in Sydney, but I was “down under” on the job for an hour and forty minutes.

  The wind seemed to be dropping a little, though still blowing around 30–40 knots. I considered setting a bit more sail, but decided against it, and went on with clearing up. I should have been glad of a rest, but I felt that I must try to get things more shipshape in case the weather worsened again. It was hard to know where to begin. Bottles, tins and bags of fruit had shot out of their lockers to where the cabin bunk had been before it collapsed. Seven large airtight containers, all full of food, had been stacked on top of the other bunk, and most of these had ended up on top of the port-side mess. They had burst open, and their contents had spilled around them. On the port side there had been sixteen loaded containers, and these, too, had burst open and crashed down on the vegetables and fruit below. I made a start to starboard, and worked for two and a half hours at tidying up and restowing things in the bunk, three drop lockers and three settee lockers. I came across half a dozen bad apples and lemons, which I was glad to find, to get them over the side before they contaminated anything else. All the bread was going mouldy, and I decided that it would have to be rebaked. But that was enough for one day, and I turned in.

  A depressing sun sight next morning (February 2) put me only 124 miles from Sydney, which I felt must be a record for slow going. The weather forecast offered a promise of slowly moderating sea and south-east winds, which were at least better than winds dead on the nose. There was nothing for it but to get on with the job of clearing up. I tackled the mess on the port side of the cabin, which was harder than working to starboard, because the yacht was heeled to port at an angle of some 35°, and this made it difficult to lift or move things there. I had to move everything away first to get standing room before starting to stow. Some of the containers were pretty heavy—one had 15 lb of wholemeal flour in it. Working in that mess of food and stores was like engaging in a lucky dip, and the interest of finding things helped to keep me going. I came across my eggs, packed in plastic foam containers, and I was astonished to discover that only two were broken. The mess that those two eggs made was enough—I dreaded to think what it would have been if all the eggs had broken. Apart from the satisfactory reduction of mess, I was relieved to find my eggs intact, for eggs are among my most valuable sources of food, and I suffered much from the loss of my eggs on the way to Australia.

  Twenty pumps cleared the bilge, which was a relief, but there was water in the forepeak; I had to siphon that out with a long pipe. The water there must have come from a deck leak.

  I was delighted to find the bilge keeping so dry, because a full bilge would have been a serious menace to the radio. Odd things kept turning up—and not turning up. One strange disappearance was a vacuum flask, which must have been on board somewhere, but which had vanished. The plates and crockery in the bilge set a problem in recovery, for they were inaccessible except to the end of a 6-foot pole. I left them for the moment, deciding that I would have to think about this.

  Next came the cockpit. This was an urgent job, for water poured into my bunk through the damaged cockpit when a sea came on board, but I needed better conditions on deck for working at repairs. My sleeping bag and blankets were soaked through. In the immediate excitement after my capsize I had scarcely noticed how wet they were, but I didn’t fancy going on sleeping in wet things. So I managed a temporary repair to the cockpit with sealing compound and a plastic covering, and hoped that this might serve until I could think of something better.

  As night fell this day I reckoned up my profit and loss account so far since leaving Sydney. The loss was severe. The boat was still in a dreadful mess, and I had sailed only 185 miles since starting. For four days I had been bumped about and thrown, twisted, accelerated and jerked as if in a tiny toy boat in a wild mountain stream, and I was sick of it all. But everything that mattered on Gipsy Moth was intact; she had capsized and righted herself. She had been through an experience which few yachts have survived intact and she could still sail. It continued rough, but at last the wind had eased, and even if it was only a lull, it was a relief to be free for a while of that tiring, menacing roar and the whining in the rigging. The Tasm
an Sea was now much as it was when I had flown it in 1931, on the first solo flight from New Zealand to Australia. There were the same blue-black clouds, and, before darkness came, the same occasional shafts of sunlight slanting from cloud base to the sea.

  The fact was, I had been damned lucky. “Yet,” I logged, “I could not be more depressed. Everything seems wrong about this voyage. I hate it and am frightened. Now I am going north-about New Zealand, whereas the Admiralty sailing directions say one should always go south-about no matter what the wind. That is a worry.” In four days I seemed to have got nowhere. But if I had gone south, and attempted to plug into that wind, I should equally have got nowhere. At least I had cleared up nearly half the boat, and made some things work again. I cut the mould off four loaves of bread, and rebaked them for 30 minutes. Then I turned in, hoping that my bedding would keep dry now.

  I slept for ten hours, and when I awoke the sun was shining. I had breakfast, and went to sleep again, waking to feel a great deal better. The sea was moderating, and there was work to do on deck. I re-sheeted the genoa staysail, and unreefed the mizzen. The next job was to unravel the main halliard from its tangle with the burgee halliard—there is always trouble with burgee halliards.