“This disease, so frequently attending long voyages, and so particularly destructive to us, is surely the most singular and unaccountable of any that affects the human body. Its symptoms are inconstant and innumerable, and its progress and effects extremely irregular; for scarcely any two persons have complaints exactly resembling each other, and where there hath been found some conformity in the symptoms, the order of their appearance has been totally different. However, though it frequently puts on the form of many other diseases, and is therefore not to be described by any exclusive and infallible criterions, yet there are some symptoms which are more general than the rest, and, occurring the oftenest, deserve a more particular enumeration. These common appearances are large discoloured spots dispersed over the whole surface of the body, swelled legs, putrid gums, and, above all, an extraordinary lassitude of the whole body, especially after any exercise, however inconsiderable; and this lassitude at last degenerates into a proneness to swoon, and even die, on the least exertion of strength, or even on the least motion.
“This disease is likewise usually attended with a strange dejection of the spirits, and with shiverings, tremblings, and a disposition to be seized with the most dreadful terrors on the slightest accident. Indeed it was most remarkable, in all our reiterated experience of this malady, that whatever discouraged our people, or at any time damped their hopes, never failed to add new vigour to the distemper; for it usually killed those who were in the last stages of it, and confined those to their hammocks who were before capable of some kind of duty; so that it seemed as if alacrity of mind, and sanguine thoughts, were no contemptible preservatives from its fatal malignity.”
My vegetarian diet, my cress and lemon juice, the knowledge painfully acquired by humanity from the sufferings of those old seamen, would guard me against this scourge. I had much to be thankful for.
Having sailed out of the Tasman Sea north of New Zealand I had to make southing once more towards the Forties. If I had made a mistake in going north-about New Zealand, I had the benefit of some lovely weather now, to set me up for the hard and harsh conditions that I knew I must meet soon.
An hour after midnight on February 13 I thought I saw a fish, but my powerful torch showed it to be a horrible kind of jellyfish like a translucent eel a yard long with a row of brown spots like buttons equally spaced along its back. It was able to move, twisting slowly, away and down. There were myriads of luminous things, visible in depth throughout the sea. They were points of light, which went out when I shone my torch on them.
Next morning I heard a noise like faint rifle fire and found hundreds of small porpoises leaping into the air. The noise was from their hitting the water, the surface of which was nearly calm. At noon I had made good only 180 miles in the past three days. I had been pinched up hard on the wind to light easterlies. I wondered if those light easterlies were due to my being too close off the north-east coast of New Zealand. At noon on the 14th I was only 100 miles from East Cape, New Zealand. According to the forecast the winds were westerly 60 miles to the south of me. This was tantalising and I tried to get south whenever there was an opportunity. On Wednesday, February 15, I had a laundry day, and washed out my shirt and shorts. I tried out a new idea of washing the clothes first in hot sea water, then rinsing them in sea water before giving them a final rinse in fresh water to get out the salt. It saved fresh water, and worked quite well.
As I approached the 180th meridian and the International Dateline I had a marvellous day’s sailing, with a run of 217 miles. That was from noon on Wednesday, February 15, to noon on Thursday, February 16—my first Thursday, for crossing the dateline gave me another day which was also Thursday, February 16. With a fine, beam-on reaching wind, I knew that it was going to be a long run, so I took an extra sight to check things when I made my sun observations. I took four observations, and when the run came up so long, I took yet another sight for a still further check. Running the position lines up and back to noon, three met in a point, which was most satisfying. There may have been some error in my position the day before, but even so it was a wonderful run, and I think by far the longest day’s run ever made by a singlehander. I gave myself a bottle of Veuve Clicquot to celebrate, though as usual champagne brought me no luck, and my second Thursday began with rain and a backing wind. To try to defeat the influence of the champagne I had two glasses of Whitbread’s beer from the keg, which was excellent.
In the middle of the night between my two Thursdays I suddenly felt suspicious about the great 217-mile run of the previous day. Since leaving Australia the run between sun fixes each day had been on the average 12½ per cent greater than the dead reckoning run—i.e. the Harrier had been under-reading by that amount1 But the dead reckoning run the day before the 217-mile burst had actually been greater than the run between sun fixes and it was this which made me suspicious. When I came to rework the sun fix I found that I had made a silly blunder. My 217-mile run should have been only 189 miles while the run the day before should have been more—164 miles instead of 138. I logged: “Never mind, I enjoyed the champagne and I did cover 189 miles that day which is very good going.”
My second Thursday gave me an extra day’s sailing buckshee on the way to the Horn, but I should have to lose ten hours of it through having to put the clock forward an hour every 15° of longitude. Time, except dawn and nightfall, meant nothing to daily life in that immensity of sea, yet I had to take meticulous care to know the time accurately to within a second for navigation. The dateline has given mariners a headache since it was first invented. After crossing the dateline, the only way that I could avoid making mistakes over the time was to head every page of the log with my local date and day of the week, as well as the difference between my local time and Greenwich time. For example, The Times newspaper wanted a dispatch from me on Monday, February 27. I was then about 1,900 miles east of New Zealand. I had found that the best time to transmit was an hour or so after dark. Therefore I had to send my message at 9 p.m. ship’s time on Sunday, February 26, which equalled 7 a. m. on Monday, February 27, Greenwich time.
I was worried by a spot on the chart marked “Breakers Reported, 1960”. Such entries on Admiralty charts come from reports made by merchant ships, and they are marked as a precaution until there has been time to survey the area in detail. A report of “breakers” may mean anything, or nothing. It is easy enough for the sea to trick the eyesight of a man on watch, so that “breakers” are reported in all good faith, when really there is no more than some delusion of eye by waves and sunlight or moonlight on the surface of the sea. But there are still unknown reefs in the Pacific, and no mariner can ignore the possibility that a new reef has been sighted. This particular spot marked “breakers” hadn’t been investigated, so I had to assume that it was dangerous though there was no proven hazard nearer than the Maria Theresa Reef some 500 miles to the north. It seemed to lie almost directly on my course.
That sign “breakers” on the chart gave me a strange feeling. There was no one within 700 miles if the boat should run on a reef. Perhaps I was jittery on Saturday the 18th when I wondered if I was near another reef. A biggish sea began running for a light breeze. It was a tumbly, breaking sea heaping up to points and pyramids. It set me scanning all round to see if there was a reef in sight. I even turned on the echo sounder; it indicated that the depth was more than 50 fathoms, but it would not register a depth within a few feet of a coral reef which has vertical sides.
On Sunday, February 19, the unknown reef—if it was a reef—was some 200 miles ahead of me. I wanted to change course either north-east or south-east to give it a wide clearance, but every time I tried to change course the wind blocked me, and seemed to want to head me back towards the reef. To make things worse, the sky was overcast so I could not get a sight to give me an accurate fix of my position. I dreaded the hazard of this possible reef. It was not a lump of land which one could see—in a low boat like Gipsy Moth you would be lucky to spot a reef awash a mile away; or less
at night. And I could not keep watch all the time. At intervals I switched on my echo sounder to see if there was any indication of the sea’s shallowing, but always it reported “no bottom”—that is, the bed of the ocean was below its reach of 50 fathoms.
I kept my sextant handy in the cockpit all the time to snatch a sight if there was a momentary chance of one, and just before sunset on February 20 I did manage to get a hazy sight. This gave me my longitude and showed that I was 6 miles west of the meridian through the breakers; but I could not tell if I was headed straight for them or to the north of them. My dead reckoning said I was headed 20 miles to the north of them but it was unreliable with no fix for 190 miles. I scanned the horizon with binoculars every fifteen minutes, until it became too dark to see at all. By that time I had sailed another 9 miles and by then must have been east of the reported position of the reef; so I felt reasonably safe. Is there a reef there? I still do not know, but the only safe course is to assume there is.
I was troubled at this time by a return of the cramps I had suffered from on the way to Sydney. Then I got at least temporary relief from drinking a half-glassful of seawater. I had got some salt tablets in Sydney to take instead of seawater, but I tried three times to take one, and every time it made me sick. So I went back to my seawater, and again it seemed to do good.
I was now in the Forties again, and I noticed a creeping lethargy which I think must be connected with air, wind and weather in the Southern Ocean. I noticed it in the Forties when I first entered them in the Atlantic on the way out to Australia. When it was blowing, I felt reluctant to do anything unless I had to, and when it was fine, I just wanted to do nothing. I was even quite glad at having to turn out at night to make a sail change, because I felt that it justified my having a long lie-in in the morning. I suffered from a severe headache at times, which I think must have been a form of migraine, and sometimes I felt quite ill when I had to go on the foredeck. On Wednesday, February 22, I was lucky to escape injury in a nasty fall. I was setting the mainsail, and as I pulled on the halliard a slide stuck in the mainsail track. I pulled harder, to try to free it, and the slide suddenly gave way. The halliard came to me with a run, and I fell flat on my back. It was a bad fall, but I was thankful that I didn’t hit my head on anything as I went down. Usually I have one firm handhold when I am doing anything on deck, but this time, I suppose, one hand must have been fiddling with the slide, and I was so intent on watching it that when it freed suddenly I was caught off balance. The only damage from my fall was to my right elbow, which became very sore. From then on that elbow seemed to get blow after blow.
There were good moments, though, when I would sit in the sun in the cockpit, drinking mugs of Whitbread. It amused me every time I drew off a half-pint from the keg in the bilge, and I would think, “What a place to be sitting drinking beer, in glorious sunshine, with a deep blue sea and light blue sky.” It was never too hot, because of the southerly breeze coming up from the Antarctic. Once when I was sitting in the cockpit like this I tried to calculate whereabouts was the nearest human being to me. There might have been a ship somewhere in the vicinity, but unless there was, which was unlikely, the nearest living person would have been in the Chatham Islands, some 885 miles away. Out of the sun it began to be chilly, so I lit my cabin heater and found it a great comfort. I had one bad shock, which is duly timed and entered in the log, as befits its seriousness.
“Wednesday, February 22. 19.25. I have just realised I have only
four bottles of gin left, enough for four weeks. My favourite hard drink on this voyage. I reckon I have been pretty stupid not to have brought plenty. I’ll just have to ration it, and no hard drinks at lunch. It might be worse—I might have none.”
February 24 was Sheila’s and my thirtieth wedding anniversary. The day began in England at 14.00 my time, and I took a few photographs from the cabin companion when I reckoned that our wedding day really started. It was not exactly a good place for wedding photographs for a gale was getting up, and Gipsy Moth was rolling in a rough sea. I logged:
“I got a brace of shaky sun shots through a gap in the murk overhead but it takes ages to see the sun and then get a horizon among the tumult of waves. Also it is bad for the sextant with spray on the mirrors etc., but it does make the day less dreary to have a position. It was very difficult to stand in the cabin and I was thrown on to the Primus stove at breakfast, not that I minded much but it was bad for the stove, bending the frame. Fortunately I had just moved away the cup of coffee made with boiling water which had been standing on the stove.”
No matter how rough the movement I could always keep a glass or cup full of liquid on top of the Primus stove. This was due to the Primus framework having been made specially with a tray underneath the stove. The whole thing was free to swing and the tray made a good pendulum; it was not only heavily made itself but usually had also a pot of marmalade and a pot of honey standing on it as well as the flat toaster and often a heavy frying pan. Sitting in my swinging chair I could reach all the articles on this tray as well as lift off saucepans or kettles from the top of the stove without moving from my seat. The swinging seat and the swinging table were very well placed; I could also reach the beer tap without moving from the seat, and take books from the shelf to my left hand under the shelf which carried the growing mustard and cress. I also had a bundle of newspapers within reach. Now I come to think of it there were other important things within reach too; a bottle of gin and a bottle of brandy in the cupboard under the Primus; salt, pepper, bitters, methylated spirits and matches were all in a shelf outboard of the swinging stove. As I could sit upright in this chair no matter what the heel of the boat it was one of the most successful pieces of equipment on the boat. It was designed by John Jurd, the foreman joiner of Campers and by myself. At the time I was speaking of when I fell on the stove, the heel inclinometer was recording 55° of roll one way and 30 ° the other way. I wrote in my log:
“I wish I was at home with my darling and feel sad to be away from her, but that is how life goes. I have only just finished breakfast, and will drink her health later. The day in London spread from 2 o’clock p.m. here today until the same time tomorrow. If this gale continues, I may wait until tomorrow for my celebration party.”
I didn’t wait. I decided that there was too much gale to get into my smoking jacket, but I had my wedding day celebration that evening, and wrote:
“I am drinking a toast to Sheila in the delicious Montrachet she brought out from England, and left on board for me. A long life, health and happiness, with grateful thanks for our happy thirty years together. A very remarkable, exceptional woman is Sheila. I did what is supposed to be un-British, shed a tear. Life seems such a slender thread in these circumstances here, and they make one see the true values in life, mostly things (or whatever you may call them) which one disregards, or brushes aside when with people. I must not get too sentimental. I will return to the Montrachet.”
I enjoyed that wine. I can’t say that I enjoyed the gale, but it must be admitted that gales save a lot of effort in a small boat at sea—with a gale of wind established, there is little sail changing until it ends. I ended my wedding day by going on deck to tidy up. I adjusted the leech line of the genoa staysail to stop the leech from flapping like a flag in the wind, and adjusted its sheet lead. I passed a line among the spinnaker poles with their topping lifts, uphauls, downhauls and outhauls to stop their noisy drumming in the wind. I refurled the mainsail, hoisted the trysail a foot or two higher, downhauled its luff, fitted the short boom crutch in the deck and dropped the main boom into it. Then I headed a little more off wind for a bit more speed. I was then at 43½° S, and did not want to go below 45° S before I changed heading for the Horn.
That gale lasted off and on—mostly on—for seven days. It was fast going, but rough. From time to time the speedometer needle stuck at its limit of 10 knots for what seemed like long periods, though it was probably only a few seconds. When a steep swell started un
der-running the ordinary rough sea, Gipsy Moth started surfing. Down below I could often tell when there was a big surfing breaker on the way. First there would be a low, quiet roar, and then the wind would increase suddenly by 10-15 knots. Next, the boat would heel sharply to windward, then whip across to the leeward heel, with white water boiling along the lee deck. There was always a biggish swell. The sea was much the same as when Gipsy Moth broached to south of Australia. The sun was shining brightly then, and in this equally lonely part of the Southern Ocean there was often sunshine too, giving a brilliant sparkle to the white wave crests, and making the rough sea seem almost unreal. But the roar of the wind, the roll and whiplash heel were reality enough. I was puzzled by the violent roll to windward before the boat went over to leeward, and wondered what caused it. I think a wave must push the bottom of the keel before it affects the top, and then, when the surface caught the top, over she would go in the way one would expect.
Gipsy Moth behaved well, and did not broach to. On the way to Australia I used to wait anxiously for her to broach in these conditions, but after the work done on her in Sydney, she seemed much more stable, and to run more truly. I never ceased to be surprised that Warwick Hood’s addition to the keel could make so much difference. All the same, I didn’t want to take risks, and I knew I ought to drop the mainsail when the wind reached over 30 knots. I often tried to get photographs of rough seas from the cockpit, but as soon as I was ready with the camera there would be nothing worth snapping and I hated waiting around. As usual, there would be a succession of impressive seas just after I got below.
It was a worrying business as the wind became marginally stronger to decide whether to drop the mainsail or to leave it up. I wanted speed, but these decisions were hard on the nerves, like waiting and wondering in an ocean race if the spinnaker is going to blow out, or if you dare carry it a little longer. Only here the mainsail was much more serious, with the masts at risk if it should go. When I decided to hand the mainsail and got below after doing so it would feel as if the yacht had stopped, but in fact speed did not drop much, from 7½ to 6 knots, perhaps. And I would be relieved to jog along in comparative peace.
Gipsy Moth Circles the World Page 18
