The Lonely Sea and the Sky

by Sir Francis Chichester

  The time came when we had to leave this paradise. Gipsy Moth was at City Island, undergoing minor repairs. Sheila and I moved aboard to prepare for the return voyage. It was a hot August, and with Gipsy Moth tied up alongside the dock in 90 °F., and no fan on board, Sheila found it an ordeal. Felix and his wife, Marka, flew down to help us. They tried to persuade Sheila to give up the sail home and fly back, but Sheila had made up her mind to sail with me, and would not give in. On 24 August we left City Island to sail down the East River through New York City. Rosie (Morris Rosenfeld, the world famous yacht photographer) tagged along in his Foto-launch. I was really rather dreading the prospect of another Atlantic voyage, and although there was only a good breeze I reefed the mainsail, and set a smallish jib for fear of stronger wind giving me trouble among the skyscrapers. This must have been disappointing to Rosie. The weather steadily improved, and we had an interesting cruise through the city. My chief interest was Brooklyn Bridge; I remembered the picture postcard of the old bridge which my father had sent me when he visited New York when I was six. Sheila took fright that the bridge was going to snap off the mast, and I could not convince her that it was far above us.

  After leaving New York, I headed south-east to sail along the 39th parallel to the Azores. Ninety miles from land we passed close to Texas Tower Number 4, a fantastic-looking object in the middle of the sea, with three large white domes like a cluster of spider's eggs on top of a three-legged platform. When we were half way to the Azores this tower was damaged by the hurricane 'Donna', and later it capsized in a storm with the loss of many lives.

  We had lovely weather, though too calm to suit me, and too hot to suit Sheila. It was up to 98 °F. in the cabin. I rigged an old sail in the cockpit, and filled it with Gulf Stream water, and we used to take turns to wallow in this several times a day. I found only two flying fish on deck during this voyage. They were delicious, fried. One knocked some paint off the cabin top when it landed there. Perhaps more interesting were the small squid which flew aboard at night. The Kon-Tiki crew were the first to discover that squid flew when one hit a member of the crew in the face at night.

  The weather and seas roughened as we approached the Azores. When we arrived towards the end of the day at the northern end of the channel between Fayal and Pico Islands we were faced with a beat into a head-on gale, under spitfire jib and trysail, in order to reach the port of Horta. There was a strong current against us, and we could not have arrived till the middle of the night. I decided to start the motor, but I could not get a kick out of it. This made me angry. The motor had been temperamental before I left England, and the boatyard at Buckler's Hard had put in a lot of time on it; then it jibbed in New York, and the City Island boatyard had worked on it. This time, I said, I would damn well find out for myself what was the matter with it. It was no picnic, with Gipsy Moth bucking about in the short steep sea kicked up by the gale, and presently I was lying at full length under the cockpit to get at the bottom of the petrol tank. Every few minutes I had to pop up and tack the ship. But I found the trouble: the petrol tank was made of iron, and there was ¾-inch of rust sludge at the bottom, which kept on choking the carburettor. After I cleaned the pipes I could get it to run only for a few minutes before the sludge choked it again. Finally I said to Sheila, 'Do you mind if we heave to and wait outside the channel till dawn?' She was relieved. I backed the spitfire jib, and we jibbed about in the lee of Fayal while I fished out a bottle of Californian wine and we had a good dinner. Next morning we beat up the channel against a Force 8 wind, but had a great welcome from the charming Portuguese people at Horta when we finally arrived.

  We stayed there for two weeks while I had a new petrol tank made of copper. We enjoyed a lazy life; our only disappointment was being unable to get a bath. That, and a feast ashore, are the chief things a yachtsman looks forward to after a passage of twenty-six days. All the island's plumbing had been fractured by a big earthquake.

  We left Horta on 3 October. The locals were shaking their heads, and saying that it was too late in the year for a yacht. Sheila was apprehensive, and looked somewhat longingly at an island steamer which called in, but decided to stick to Gipsy Moth and see the voyage through. The Azores were a great disappointment to me; instead of the calm fine weather I had expected in the middle of the Azores high pressure system, it was always squally or bad weather, and there were strong currents, not shown on any of my charts. We left Horta in a dead calm, but within an hour it was blowing a Force 9 gale, with steep seas breaking on the counter. I felt ham-fisted with Miranda after my fortnight ashore, and asked Sheila to take the helm while I went below and cooked some breakfast. I should have liked to heave to, but we had an island in our lee which we had to clear. After breakfast I took over for an hour or two until we had cleared the point, when I gratefully lowered all sails and Gipsy Moth jibbed along under bare poles while I went below, had a hot whisky, and a sleep for an hour and three-quarters. Then I set a spitfire jib, and by midnight we were clear of the last island, out in the open ocean and I could relax.

  We were fifteen days on passage from the Azores to Plymouth, and on nine of them we were under storm sails, spitfire jib and trysail. There were impressive seas, magnificent and monumental, but not malicious. It was exhilarating to watch those mountains of water creeping up and passing. I spent hours on deck trying to get a good photograph of a big sea but found it difficult. The whole passage was a grand sail, and much more relaxing for me than the hot calms and light airs after leaving New York, when my temper and fingernails had been worn to the quick by the incessant sail changing and trimming. As soon as it blew up to Force 7, I could set the storm rig and retire below to prepare a good feast with a bottle of excellent American wine. Sheila was now quite happy with big seas in a gale, and I was amused to recall her candid comments on navigation when we left New York if we were bumping somewhat at 6 knots in a fresh breeze.

  I had lost both my log spinners. I rigged up an old-fashioned log, which worked by timing the run-out of a given length of line, but as time went on I found that the log was not really necessary, for I could judge the speed of the yacht to a quarter of a knot with fair accuracy.

  On the way up from Plymouth to Buckler's Hard, on the last day's sailing after a wonderful voyage of 8,000 miles, I was seasick again in some nasty weather off Portland Bill.

  Next spring – the spring of 1961 – I had intended racing Gipsy Moth in the ordinary RORC programme with a conventional full crew. At the start of the season I was alone on the Beaulieu River, checking the compass, when Gipsy Moth drifted aground, and I damaged my back hauling her off. I was flat on my back for ten days, and before I had recovered fully, I had a sharp attack of hepatitis. I had cancelled my own racing programme, but, having agreed to navigate for John Illingworth in Cowes Week and the Fastnet race, I did not like to back out at the last moment; so concealed the hepatitis, and joined John in Stormvogel for the Channel race. Stormvogel is a big 75-foot yacht of very light displacement. Caes Brynzeel (her owner) asked me to stay with him for the Fastnet and I was glad to do so. It was a good experience, sailing with Caes; a tough hard-driving Dutchman with a racing mentality. He had built several revolutionary yachts over the years, and had won the Fastnet Race in 1930. We missed an all-time record for the Fastnet course by only 100 minutes. This was comfortable racing, with seventeen on board, including a cook, but I could not take advantage of the good fare for the last three days – my hepatitis had got the upper hand again, and I navigated on hot water only. All this time I had been pondering my 1960 race across the Atlantic.

  Before the start I had known that the rival yachts would never see each other, and I had set myself a target time to race against, thirty days. This was the time I reckoned that a winning yacht of Gipsy Moth's class should take with a full crew of six, in an RORC race across the Atlantic from east to west. In 1962, for example, there were twelve RORC races in British and French waters. They averaged 250 miles apiece, so that the twelve totalled th
e same distance as the single-handed race, 3,000 miles. Adding the times taken by the winners of these twelve races for the same size class as Gipsy Moth gave an average speed of 107½ miles per day. Allowing for the Gulf Stream's setting her back 9½ miles a day for the first 2,000 miles; I reckoned that 100 miles per day throughout was the equivalent speed, and the best I could hope to do. When I took forty and a half days I was disappointed. I thought Gipsy Moth was too big, and her gear too heavy to handle for one man. By the end of the 8,000-mile voyage, I had thought up a number of different ways to make the gear-handling easier, and the yacht faster. I asked John Illingworth if he would redesign the mast and sail plan to my requirements – he is not only one of the most experienced and successful of ocean racers, but also an engineer who probably knows the stresses involved in tough ocean racing better than anyone: during the winter of 1961 a metal mast was built for Gipsy Moth. It was a little shorter, 53 feet instead of 55 feet. Some of the other changes I planned were: a smaller mainsail, which would balance the headsails better; and be easier to handle.

  The heavy main boom, which had caused me so much trouble, was cut down from 18 feet to 14 feet, and the lethal runners, which had seemed animated by a mad lust to brain me, were eliminated. The headsails were bigger, to compensate for the smaller mainsail, and the sloop rig was changed to cutter rig.

  As soon as all this was under way, I had a strong urge to try out Gipsy Moth in 1962, to see if my ideas were correct. I believe that this is the greatest urge to adventure for a man – to have an idea, an ideal or an ambition, and then to prove, at any cost, that the idea is right, or that the ambition can be fulfilled. At first I thought, 'What about a sail to the Azores and back?' Then I remembered our delightful visit to Indian Point, and thought, 'What fun it would be to nip across the Atlantic to see them again.' From here the next step was easy: 'Why not try for a record crossing? Air pilots and racing motorists are always trying for records; why not a sailing yacht for a change?'

  My enthusiasm was dampened when I came to consider the cost of the double crossing, together with the cost of all the changes and improvements to Gipsy Moth.

  'Why not send the story of my record attempt by radio-telephone every day?' A New Zealand magazine had bought a similar story from me on my 1936 flight.

  I offered my story first to The Observer, because they had been so pleasant to deal with in the 1960 race; but a daily story was not really suitable for a Sunday paper.

  Towards Christmas 1961 John Anderson of The Guardian asked me to present the annual prizes to a sailing association of which he was vice-commodore. I remembered a review he had written of my book, Alone Across the Atlantic, which had fascinated me by the writer's uncanny perception of the true values and spiritual issues involved in solo racing across an ocean. This seemed to me like fate, and at the prize-giving I offered him my story for The Guardian. The Guardian accepted and I declared that I would start at 11 a.m. on 1 June. This was a bold, rash statement; as a pioneer airman I remembered my dislike for stating a definite time of departure, which was thought to invite disaster. There is a similar feeling now about yachts, especially when a race is involved. In the 1960 solo Atlantic race, if one succeeded in crossing the starting line on time it was an act of good luck on the credit side; whereas this time I should have to turn up at the starting line on time, or else it would be a disastrous failure on the debit side.

  The problem was how to transmit a story every day to The Guardian. With the help of friends I got in touch with Marconi, who thought they had a set which might carry my talk half way across the Atlantic. The GPO was very ready to help; the Post Office people were keen to receive Gipsy Moth from farther than any small yacht had ever transmitted. No one, however, dared to hope that I might reach right across the ocean.

  By the end of January, I had finished designing a new Miranda. This was much simpler than Miranda 1, and would have double the power, although the mast would be only 8 feet high instead of 14 feet. Yet there would be so little friction that she should work in the faintest zephyr. I made a full scale model in paper, which I pinned on the wall of my office. The top had to spread over the ceiling because her gaff was 10½ feet long.

  In February I went to Vence for a check up of my lung by Jean Mattei. Every day I timed myself up the Baou Blanc, 2400 feet, as a measure of how fit I was getting. The complete break from office work was invaluable. I did practice transmitting Morse every day, but I had to stop this when I found that my set, which was designed to teach Morse to Boy Scouts, spoilt the hotel television picture downstairs.

  At the beginning of March, work started with a meeting of technicians on Gipsy Moth at Buckler's Hard. The cold wind in the bleak dim boat shed pierced one's spirit, and sent it chilled to one's boots. Place had to be found for four heavy banks of accumulators in acid­proof boxes, with Atlantic proof tops; also for a special charging motor, which might seem light to them, but was heavy to me; and for a radio-telephone of half a man's weight, which had to be high above the water line. All this weight would put the stern down, increase the rolling movement and decrease the sailing power, but the brilliant technical bandits were merciless to Gipsy Moth. My chart table and navigating department had to be partially wrecked to make room for the telephone. There followed trouble with the transmitting aerials, trouble with the receiving aerials, trouble with the earthing arrangements, trouble with electrolytic action, trouble with noxious fumes from the batteries being charged. Fortunately Marconi's were really keen that the R/T should transmit, and the GPO men were determined that it should be received. The boatyard was due to launch Gipsy Moth at the end of March, but she did not get into the water until the end of April, and then there was delay because the mast had to be stepped twice, the first time for measuring the length of the rigging. Unfortunately, there was only enough water beside the crane at certain times of the month. Once again the trials and sail drill which I had promised myself had to be mostly forgone.

  I had only three weeks left before the start of my Atlantic crossing. I did manage to swing my compass, but had no opportunity to calibrate the D/F loop. I used to wonder why ships of the line took months to fit out; I wonder no longer. I believe that my 13-ton Gipsy Moth has just as many items of gear and stores to go aboard for an Atlantic crossing as had the Agamemnon, Nelson's favourite ship of the line, which was built at Buckler's Hard in 1781. The quantities are different, for instance, my armament is one Very signal pistol instead of sixty-four guns, with red and white flare cartridges, instead of ball and grape shot; but I dare say I have more food items. I doubt if the Agamemnon carried tinned cods' roes or chinook salmon. Both ships carried sextants, but I have an echo sounder as well as a leadline, also a radio D/F set, an R/T and two engines to service, which the Agamemnon did not have.

  The Shell Company made me some special cans for my petrol (needed for the charging motor), and for my paraffin, which helped with the stowage, but I should have been hard pressed if Sheila had not taken over the stores again. The stores list was much the same as in 1960, except for the liquids. In 1960 my chief drink had been whisky; I seemed to need it, as if it supplied an essential vitamin (I think that this must have been connected with my illness). Now I no longer needed it, and my favourite drink on board this time was Whitbread's pale ale, of which I carried several cases. (After all, we are always reading how ocean voyagers need to conserve their water supplies!) This time I did not intend to take an oven to bake bread, because on the last race my wholemeal loaves had lasted me until I reached Long Island. I did carry some flour and yeast, however, planning to bake in a saucepan in case of emergency. On 27 May Gipsy Moth sailed for Plymouth.

  CHAPTER 30

  ATLANTIC AGAIN

  1 June, 1962, was a fine day, with the sun shining in a blue sky, a calm sea, a light breeze and it was perfect for the start of a transatlantic race. I say 'race', because I was racing against my deadline of thirty days, just as much as if I had been racing against a crowd of competitors. I boarded Gi
psy Moth at 9 a.m., which I thought was in good time for an 11 o'clock start. I had nothing more to do; even the Customs clearance had been obtained the night before. How mistaken could I be? I was working away, getting my sails up and hanking them on, when a big launch came alongside, which disgorged two Customs men. They said that they had heard that the BBC had lent me a tape recorder, and they wanted to inspect it. They even cut open the battery box, and turned out all the batteries, looking at them one at a time. It appeared to me as a deliberate piece of obstructionism on somebody's part; they were so slow about every slightest movement they made. Unfortunately I could not find my clearance slip, but I do not believe it would have made any difference if I had. I was hopping mad at the thought of all the people down at the starting line waiting for me to appear at 11 o'clock. When I did finally get away, Sheila took the helm, while I worked like a beaver. Sid Mashford, the boat builder, was also on board to give me a hand. When we reached the starting line with Sheila and Sid still on board, I shouted to someone in a near-by yacht, 'Has the first gun been fired?' 'Yes,' he shouted back, as I frantically hoisted my mainsail and started sailing, while Sheila and Sid scrambled into the launch alongside and shoved off: in the end, I managed to cross the line only a few moments after the starting gun had fired. What could be more thrilling than a 3,000-mile race across the Atlantic? It is true that the romance of doing something for the first time can never be equalled, but now I had not only the fascination of a 3,000-mile voyage, and the romance of heading into the adventures I could be sure of meeting, but also the thrill of sailing a yacht in first-class racing trim. My first day was almost too fine. I seemed to be trimming or changing sails all day, and moving slowly. At one time, the wind swung from south-west to north-west within a minute. By the end of the day I was still not in a single-handed frame of mind; I could not stay below for more than a few minutes without popping up to see if there were any ships or land near. I knew that later I should be content to stay below, because I should hear or feel the slightest change of conditions around the yacht.