Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat

by Peter Nichols

  Birthday over, I keep turning pages, held by the fascination of seeing another view of scenes I remember, and remembering again what I’ve forgotten.

  Our naive honeymoon plan of turning up in the south of France with my parents’ boat and spending the summer raking in charter fees was quickly dashed. We were too late. We presented ourselves to the local charter agents everywhere along the coast between Monaco and Cannes, and were told that most bookings were made well before the season, usually six to twelve months in advance. There was little last-minute business. There were many beautiful yachts. But the agents, most of them, looked at us and found compassion enough to say nice things about our brochure for Viva III, which we’d had printed in London, and promised us they would keep us in mind.

  We soon ran completely out of money. We’d been given a little by our families at our wedding, but after a month and a half of supporting the boat, buying paint, varnish, fuel, and paying the steep dock fees in lovely St Jean Cap Ferrat, it was all gone. We’d watched it going with little concern, until the very end, believing that the boat was so beautiful, someone would come down the dock and want to spend a few glorious days aboard it. Also, the boat was seriously for sale, listed at all the yacht agencies on the coast, and people were coming to look at it; it was possible someone would buy it at any moment. But no one chartered, the boat remained unsold, and finally we had to leave the port. We had to find the cheapest place to keep a boat on that stretch of Riviera. That turned out to be the middle of the harbour in Monaco. You could drop your anchor there, tie a stern line to one of the harbour’s mooring buoys, for 40 francs a week.

  We still had my car, an old Morris Traveller, the wood rotting along its sides and growing mushrooms. As we drove up and down the coast visiting charter agents, we tried to fend off desperation by picnicking in the Provençal hills, but even that palled as we fretted over every centime.

  Oliver Reed finally rescued us from penury on the Riviera. He had bought a sixty-foot Chinese junk, which lay in Beaulieu, next to St Jean Cap Ferrat. An Englishman named Tony, a very smooth fellow whom we’d met in every bar in St Jean, managed to get himself appointed captain of ‘Ollie’s’ junk, and he hired J. and me to scrape and revarnish its entire teak hull.

  Flush with francs, we dined out after our first day’s work, on coquille de fruits de mer, salades, tarte aux framboises, vin de maison (on almost every day, J. has recorded what we ate). And from Tony we bought two tickets for Nice’s forthcoming jazz festival, a leaflet for which is pressed between July 7 and 8.

  And our fighting – recorded as faithfully as our diet – continued despite good food and music.

  I flick pages, passing through weeks. Work, money, wonderful food, fights and J.’s record of the minutiae of our daily life: a broken public phone in Beaulieu from which we could make free calls, my haircut from an old-fashioned gents’ barber in Monaco, and rainy days that interrupted our work on Ollie’s Ding Hao, when we would pack a picnic (wine, paté, Camembert, baguette) and drive off into the hills.

  We finished our work on the Ding Hao and began to get a few charters, hand-me-downs from other boaters. A newly married middle-aged French couple for a day. Four tiny Irish jockeys and their strapping wives and girlfriends (who all had the long legs of thoroughbreds) for four days.

  Then a friend from St Jean with engine trouble gave us his week with an English family, and we were thrilled. This meant real money. But after a day of Derek, Mavis, and their heavy-footed children thumping all over Viva, J. found she couldn’t bear them, couldn’t mask the sense of violation she felt having them shouting and crashing around in her home, and she begged out. I replaced her with my brother David who was on holiday in the Provençal hill town of Bargemon with his girlfriend. J. went to Bargemon and David and I sailed Derek, Mavis and brood to Corsica. They were fine, in fact, loud and rough, perhaps, the boys needing vigilance with the boat’s gear, but they also had an endearing capacity to enjoy themselves without a hint of English restraint, and they always respectfully asked me to tell them the best way to do anything. Halfway to Corsica, Derek turned to me and said, ‘Peter, I’m going to vomit in a minute. Which side of the boat would be best?’ Mavis did all the cooking, blackening Viva’s pots and pans without fail. ‘Caught’ was the family’s word for burned, and the cry at mealtimes was always an exasperated, ‘It’s caught again, Mummy!’ I remember them now fondly. And David and I were the best of shipmates together.

  Friday, August 13, my birthday. I see I got a Tintin book, Le Trésor de Rackham Le Rouge, and a pair of docksiders. In the evening we set off to a restaurant in Menton to meet our friends Peter and Jennie, and David and his girlfriend. Halfway there J. remembered she’d left the address behind on the boat. We drove back, rushed aboard and – surprise! They were all there, with food.

  One day’s page has only the words ‘Douanes boat’ written on it, but I remember it in vivid detail. One evening late in the summer we were lying alongside the dock in Beaulieu, J. reading (or maybe writing in the diary I’m reading) in the cockpit, while I was below. I heard voices in the cockpit, J. talking with someone. I didn’t pay attention for a few minutes, until I detected a tone of discomfort in her voice. I came up and found a young, swart Mediterranean thug, bare-chested, wearing jeans, leaning into Viva’s cockpit, leering at J. I asked him what he wanted. He asked me if I was the boat’s owner. Yes, I said, and asked him again what he wanted. I was affronted by him and his loutish unsubtle machismo and I’m sure this showed. He bristled and told me to prepare for an official customs inspection. He walked away, short, muscular, thick-legged, to a large, high-powered Douanes launch that had come in earlier. In five minutes he was back, wearing a uniform hat and shirt over his jeans, accompanied by his middle-aged commandant and three other members of the launch’s crew.

  They boarded Viva and searched it from top to bottom. I asked them what they were looking for and the commandant replied that this was a routine inspection. They found nothing; but the boat’s green card – passeport du navire étranger – the permit for a foreign vessel in French waters, had expired. Ordinarily this was a simple matter of getting it stamped again with a new date. But the commandant now told us we had incurred a fine of 200 francs, payable immediately in cash. I told them we didn’t have that much cash on us (true), that I could either give them traveller’s cheques now, or cash in the morning. Impossible, they were leaving early in the morning, they needed the money now. I offered to pay the fine at the Douanes office in Nice tomorrow. ‘Non!’ both the commandant and his macho lieutenant said. We had to pay in cash now, tonight, or the fine would be double. They had become astonishingly angry. They said we must know someone from whom we could get the money.

  We were tied at the shadowy end of a long dock, away from most of the boats in the port. We were alone with this crew of douaniers, and the menace we felt from them was unmistakable, particularly so from the young lieutenant. He was undoubtedly Corsican, almost Arab in appearance, a type seen everywhere along the southern French coast, and he had a hot, mad look in his face that made reason – the plausible appeal that they simply couldn’t expect us to produce such a sum of money now, at night, at a moment’s notice – useless. As well as wanting money, their eyes were crawling over J. We were afraid.

  Okay, I said. We knew where we could get the money. We had friends in St Jean. We’d go get the money and come right back. This seemed to placate them momentarily. I picked up our keys – for the car and the boat – locked the boat up, and J. and I stepped ashore. I said again that we would go get the money and come right back. We turned, and the lieutenant grabbed J.’s arm. ‘She stays here,’ he said.

  I exploded, insane with male rage. I yelled in his face, something about how I didn’t like being taken for a cretin, that I wasn’t leaving my wife with anyone. I grabbed her and we turned and marched away. For a few long seconds they did nothing; I think they were a little amazed at my outburst, which, being in French, they might have been sti
ll trying to decipher. But when they saw us abruptly get into the English car sprouting champignons along its wooden sides, they started to run. It was a movie getaway: backing out I almost hit them, making them jump back, then, crunching gears, we took off at a sedate pace while they ran after us. It was touch and go with the Morris’s acceleration, but we finally pulled ahead and left them behind, still running after us down the dock.

  We were stunned. Thrilled by our getaway, but still frightened, and now worried for the boat, thinking the thwarted douaniers would board it and trash it. We didn’t know what to do. We drove into St Jean and found Sven Bergstrom aboard Vagabond. We told him our story. He was sympathetic but not very surprised. He told us how corrupt everything was along the côte, from the notorious racketeer mayor of Nice, Jacques Mèdecin, down to thugs like our douaniers who were a law unto themselves. We decided the best plan was to stay away from the boat tonight, go to the Douanes office in Nice in the morning and report the incident to them. Meanwhile, Sven too was worried about Viva. He put on his Swedish naval hat (whether his own or simply a nautical artefact, I don’t know; it was heavy with gold braid and looked about right for an admiral), extending his height from six-foot-three to six-six, and with his large, naturally protuberant eyes and close-cropped beard, he made an imposing sight, a figure of undoubted, if unspecific authority. He said he’d drive around to Beaulieu on the pretext of visiting us. When he came back half an hour later, he reported that the douaniers had approached him as he had called aboard for us. They told him we had gone off somewhere on an errand. They were very respectful to him. He thanked them and left. He said they did not appear to have gone aboard the boat. We were all pleased that at least they wouldn’t have their hoped-for night out on us. At least not that night.

  J. and I drove into Nice, had dinner in a small restaurant in the old port and spent the night in a hotel, clinging to each other for sanctuary. In the morning, we told our story to officials at the Douanes office. They seemed bewildered. They left us in a room for almost an hour, and when they returned our douaniers, in full uniform, were with them. The Corsican screamed at us, accusing us of running from justice. We asked to see the American consul. The local officials seemed embarrassed. When the shouting subsided, we paid the officials 200 francs, our boat’s green card was stamped, and we left.

  Later that day, back in Beaulieu, in daylight, we watched the Douanes launch depart. As it crossed Viva’s bow, the Corsican raised his hand and pointed his finger at me, staring, an unmistakable murderous threat should we ever meet again.

  We left Beaulieu a little later, bound up the coast to Monaco. Offshore I looked around nervously, half expecting the Douanes launch to be lying in wait for us or to appear suddenly from behind a headland and zoom towards us. There was no sign of it. Perhaps its crew were on to richer game, of which there was plenty about. But for the rest of the summer, in port and offshore, I looked around and watched my back for that Douanes launch and its crew and wondered what would happen if I saw them.

  This pulled us close together. Us against the world we were fine. It was from the inside that trouble came. I’ve forgotten how frequently and easily J. would slip into depression. And back then I could only conclude that if she was unhappy it must be my fault. And maybe it was. I’m no day at the beach. But my memories triggered by her impressions are poor witnesses to any truth. What single truth is there between two people?

  Enough. J.’s birthday draws to an end. I set the alarm and go to sleep.

  June 24

  01.30: Got up for lookout, then feeling awake turned on radio and heard ‘Alfie’ done as radio play by the BBC short-wave World Service. Really good.

  My radio, a large black Panasonic short- and longwave receiver, is on more than it is off. Out at sea, beyond the range of shore stations, I keep it tuned mostly to the BBC World Service frequencies, or to the Voice of America. The music, news and eclectic chit-chat about every imaginable subject that pours forth effectively produces another presence aboard the boat, like some old auntie tucked away in a corner always just beyond my peripheral vision; someone who has an incredible range of general knowledge, but at the same time is a bit of an old bore, who prattles inanely on and on, whom I can tune in to or ignore as I like, or even turn off at the flick of a switch. But she’s always available. I don’t know what I’d do without her, except realize how utterly alone I am. She holds that at bay.

  04.00: Been tearing along broad-reaching all night, great speed. Just picked up US Coast Guard, Portsmouth, VA, doing their Offshore forecast. Must listen at 05.30 for their High Seas forecast.

  05.35: Heard it. Nothing much – low at 42° N, 51° W – far away.

  07.30: Cloudy, totally overcast. Might be a rainy day. Porridge for breakfast. Good day to tackle Gibbon.

  13.55: Listened to Shuttle touchdown in California on Voice of America.

  17.30: Just sailed out from under all that cloud into clear blue skies. Beautiful.

  23.30: Beautiful moonlit night. Dolphins playing around. Jibed.

  June 25

  02.30: Just passed a sailboat, quite close. I was in the middle of jibing and had to stop and put on my lights. Afterwards came below and found a BASEBALL GAME on VOA! Can’t make out who’s playing yet.

  03.15: White Sox and someone.

  10.40: Another sailboat to the SE, tacking NE against my fair wind, poor bugger. Second sailboat in 8 hours. It’s too early in the summer to be seeing transatlantic boats this far east. These boats must be on the return leg of the AZAB [Azores And Back Race] out of England, which started from Falmouth a couple of weeks before I left. Haven’t expected to see many of them on the direct rhumb-line that I’m following. I would think they’d head farther north where they might hope to find westerly winds around the top of this seemingly stationary high.

  13.45: Noon pos: 41°30' N, 25°47' W; 87 miles noon to noon. About 225 miles to Horta – hopefully in 2 days, on the 27th. We’re 180 miles from Graciosa, which I want to glimpse, or see its light if we pass it at night.

  I’m growing excited as we near the Azores, and filled with memories. Two years ago, on our way across the Atlantic, eastbound from Florida to the Mediterranean, J. and I spent the whole month of August anchored in the harbour off Horta, Fayal’s main town. It was unenterprising of us not to have cruised around the other islands, but we were having too good a time exploring Fayal and talking and eating and partying with other yachties from the United States, England, Brittany and Scandinavia. We saw again people and boats we’d met in the Caribbean and on the US East Coast, and from them heard news of many others.

  A thousand miles west of its owner, Portugal, easily sailed to from all directions, out of the way of most bad weather, Fayal has long been an important crossroads in the Atlantic, a vital link between the New World and the Old. It was a port of call for Yankee whaling ships that could offload barrels of oil and cargoes of baleen for shipment on to New England, and find new hands for their crews. Native Azoreans, good boat handlers and whalers from small boats ashore, were prized additions to any whaling ship. So many embarked here, cruised off to whaling grounds around the world and were later paid off and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that an area in that town in the nineteenth century was known as Fayal.

  At ‘Fredonia’, the house of the American consul in Horta, where shipmasters, merchants, diplomats and ocean-crossing VIPs dined and talked, the latest news of global affairs was heard first, in the age before sub-ocean telegraph cables, and discussed over local and Madeira wines before being passed on to those waiting for it on the distant continents. Fayal later became a coal-bunkering depot for steamships, an outpost for cable stations, a refuelling stop for transoceanic aircraft. But after World War II, when technology outgrew most needs for a mid-ocean stopover, Fayal lapsed into a sleepy state and turned in on itself. Its people farmed, fished and still went whaling in small oar-powered boats, throwing hand-held harpoons. It was little visited except by the infrequent yacht and
its bold crew.

  When Eric and Susan Hiscock stopped in Horta in 1968, there were three yachts in the harbour. When J. and I first passed through, there were perhaps fifty yachts in port. Now more than seven hundred call each year, and Horta does much for the visiting yachtsman. Making a profound first impression on the overripe, water-rationed sailor is the barrack-sized bathhouse right on the quay, kept clean and swabbed, with ancient, grandly scaled porcelain tubs and brass fixtures and oceans of hot water. Women of deeply indeterminate middle age, reeking of Old World domestic skills, meet the sailor as he staggers ashore on rocky legs and relieve him of his embarrassing laundry and return it so clean and sweet-smelling he doesn’t recognize it.

  The local tourist board hosts races for cruising boats, with prizes and parties for all competitors, and dinner at the Estalgem Santa Cruz, an old fort and now swank hotel on the harbour, for the winners and their crews. (We were told the Santa Cruz was owned by the actor Raymond Burr, who supposedly wandered around the lobby in spectacular kaftans when in residence. Unfortunately, I never saw this.) When we were there, J. raced Toad with an all-female crew, and I joined a single-hander named Jeffrey, whom we’d met in Bermuda a few weeks earlier. J. and her crew did Toad proud, passing a number of newer, sleeker boats by superior sail handling. Jeffrey’s boat was small and light and in the near-calm conditions on race day we managed to pass most of the fleet of larger boats, placing fifth overall, but first on handicap for our size. We got the big dinner and cases of local wine, but Jeffrey turned out to be a bum and sailed off while we weren’t looking with my half of our grand prize: a load of provisions from local stores. J. and I were as chronically broke as ever and for a while I hoped Jeffrey would dine on botulism.

  The Fayalese treated people off visiting boats in a way I had only read about in the older Hiscock books, when Eric and Susan had circumnavigated in the fifties and cruising sailors were a rarity in the world: they were adopted, taken in by locals, treated like movie stars. As J. and I walked and hitch-hiked around Fayal, locals would pick us up and not let us go. They took us home and fed us, gave us picnics and took us anywhere we wanted to go. They seemed terribly flattered that we had sailed all the way from America – at great peril, they were convinced – to visit their island. They went out of their way for us. Some of them even appeared to be cruising the roads looking for yachties to entertain.