Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (13 page)

Fatu Hiva – Lymington

May 1976 – April 1978

In a way Jeff's delayed return turned
Solitaire
into a harvester of yachts. At sunset I would spend my time looking out to sea on the off chance that Jeff's transmitter had broken down. If I saw navigation lights I would switch on
Solitaire
's powerful 24 watt light at the top of the mast, a beacon in an otherwise dark bay. I caught two beauties this way, one a lovely 48ft Swan with two married couples aboard from the south coast of England, one husband a furniture restorer.

The owner of my second catch was also a furniture manufacturer – from France – and was accompanied by his wife and two paid crew. In the dark they anchored near
Solitaire
and later started swinging into us. Although the bay was still crowded, there was no real reason why I should not shift my berth so I explained my intentions and, despite their protests, moved away. The following morning they came over to thank me and invite me back for a drink, another couple I grew to like. During the war the owner had been a submarine commander in the Free French Navy, an occupation that could be seen in the design of his boat. Virtually you could close yourself below and sail it.

He made quite an occasion of introducing his wife. ‘Leslie, I have the pleasure of introducing my charming wife to you...'

I warmed to this old world courtesy, which showed the affection he held for his wife and made me feel important to meet her. They owned a private island and I was invited to call there but alas never did. Instead I decided to sail to Papeete in Tahiti and made plans to lift anchor on June 10th, 1976. Tahiti lay 750 miles to the south-west and again there would be no navigation problems. In fact the island at 7,339ft was twice as high as anything I had seen up to then and also possessed a powerful RDF station and full navigational aids. I expected the winds to be kindly at Force 3 to 4, mostly from the east to south-east.

The quick and the brave sailed a direct course calling at the Tuamotu Islands, which are well worth a visit as the locals are friendly, laying on feasts and dancing. However, the low-lying Tuamotus are surrounded by strong currents and at times a palm tree can be the tallest thing around. I have never taken star sights but, if I did, this would be the locality where I would use them constantly as it is vital to know your position to a tenth of a mile. Over the years their reefs have claimed many fine boats. Climbing high in the rigging is advantageous when passing through these reefs but as a single-hander I could not do that and steer
Solitaire
at the same time. I decided to take no risks and, in golfing terms, made a dog's leg of it, sailing above the islands on a course more like WSW. That way, one arrived with a yacht and not on foot.

After leaving the Tuamotus
Solitaire
made 375 miles in the first three days then the winds fell light with the odd shower. There is a low-lying island 20 miles north of Tahiti called Teriaroa, owned then by the film star Marlon Brando. Although I kept a good look out all day, we must have passed it as I saw nothing and
Solitaire
arrived off Tahiti at nightfall. There is a reef to go through to enter Papeete Harbour, well marked and used by cruise liners, but as I was thinking of navigating it, the last of the sun's rays fell into the sea and went out like a candle. Suddenly Tahiti was a blaze of lights, making jokes of channel markers.
Solitaire
groaned, ‘Please, please not again!'

So we turned away and I distinctly heard her give a sigh of
relief. We entered harbour at dawn on June 19th, our log showing 755 miles. As Bastille Day was not far off, the harbour was packed with some 90 boats waiting for the festivities to start. The Bastille was a French prison demolished in the times of the Revolution but, so far as I am aware, the British were never blamed for this.

Solitaire
circled the harbour a couple of times, nodding to many of the craft she had met before, the boats anchored stern to shore. I saw a space next to a bright yellow Ericson 36 with an American in his early thirties sitting on the foredeck.

‘Is there room for one more?' I asked.

‘Are you single-handed?' he replied and, on my reply, waved me in.

In fact I had told a lie because at that stage I was anything but single-handed. We had about six dinghies tied to us. How and where
Solitaire
berthed had been taken out of my hands. I heard the anchor go down, two lines were taken to the shore and she was slowly eased back to lie 20ft off. Remembering our arrival in Fatu Hiva, I could almost hear her saying ‘Now, this is more like a welcome.'

Many of our visitors I had met in Panama and they had been concerned by my slow passage to Hiva Oa. After any voyage I enjoyed making physical contact with friends, shaking hands with both of mine, and hugging the ladies. You can say a great deal with the strength of a hand or hug.

As this was a Saturday morning Customs would not re-open until Monday.
Solitaire
spent the rest of the day receiving visitors, which kept me busy making endless cups of tea for her guests. That evening I managed to sneak away to a party on another yacht, after which I found Dontcho and Juli's lifeboat and left a message on its closed hatch.

The following morning my American neighbour came over and introduced himself as Webb Chiles. I have never met a more determined person. Twice he left his home port of San Diego for a single-handed voyage around the world via Cape Horn. On the first attempt he had been forced to turn back before reaching
the Cape, leaking badly and with broken rigging. He called in at Tahiti, made repairs and tried again, only to be turned back once more to San Diego. Finally he made the voyage on what was virtually a sinking yacht. He had visited New Zealand and had recently arrived in Papeete where, at the time of our meeting, he was writing his book,
Storm Passage
.

I learned much from Webb, the first true single-hander I had ever met and remember talking to him on the sidewalk when a woman reporter asked if she could visit our boats and interview us. She wondered if we had a death wish, a daft question, particularly when put to someone who had just sailed around Cape Horn fighting for his life. I would have advised anyone with such an outlook not to step into a dinghy, let alone a seagoing yacht, and Webb said much the same thing only more trenchantly.

Although not yet halfway round on my first voyage, I had already committed myself to a second and these chats with Webb dictated the route for my next attempt – around Cape Horn. Always ready to joke about my early navigational mistakes and the Brazilian hospital, I was finding it increasingly difficult to live with my errors. My confidante would forget about it the next day; I would carry it in my mind for the rest of my life and wanted to square the account which made me believe a second voyage around Cape Horn might help.

Later the woman reporter visited
Solitaire
, by which time Webb had sailed for home – just as well, I thought, after reading the story she wrote. Under the headline ‘Yachtsman Lucky Les earns his nickname' (I've never been called Lucky Les in my life), it started: ‘Les, while sailing here from England, was lost at sea, shipwrecked, hospitalised and suffered from hunger.' As I said at the time, ‘I hope my luck never runs out or I'll be in real trouble.' In fact, the story helped in two ways. The paper was given away to all the boats in the harbour, and as a result I was invited aboard many of them. If I was not asked to any I thought looked interesting I would contemplate chipping a golf ball onto their decks to wake 'em up!

Through the same article I met Tim Beckett, fresh from England and who, for some reason, I always thought of as a college student with a delightfully dry sense of humour. With him was the co-owner of
Huzar
and they were waiting for Tim's father to join them before continuing to New Zealand. When visiting him, he would send his ropey rubber inflatable across on a pulley arrangement. Once you were aboard, it would wrap itself around you like a starving octopus. If you survived you were greeted with a chamber-pot of tea. Tim later lost
Huzar
on Lady Elliot Island, 60 miles off the coast of Australia, saving only the engine and his address book.

The morning after my arrival in Tahiti, Dontcho and Juli made their appearance and I spent a week visiting places of interest and working on their boat, always with the movie camera churning away. Then they had to leave for Fiji because of the schedule laid down by their country. I made arrangements to sail for Australia the following day, a schedule dictated not by HM Government but by my pocket; I had less than $30 left. It seemed an age since I had established two rules to govern my life at sea: the first that I would always sail alone, the second that I would never accept payment for working on a friend's boat.

Next to Dontcho's lifeboat was a 45ft steel boat belonging to a French aircraft pilot, Peter, who had a beautiful wife and two lovely blonde children. On the day Juli and Dontcho left, Peter and his wife invited me to a local restaurant and asked if I would stay on for a few weeks to fit out his boat. Since he was working and making good money, he could well afford to pay me. After a long talk I agreed somewhat reluctantly to bend my second rule and accept owners in employment. In Peter's case the pay would be low, the local Tahitian rate for unskilled workers being $4 an hour and, since I had to get used to my new rule, I would take no more than a dollar an hour. During the next few weeks I worked a 60-hour week and, by saving two-thirds of my earnings, pushed my $30 up to nearly $200. Then Peter told me Kodak Laboratories wanted some fibreglassing done and would pay $4 an hour, the
outcome of which was that I started on one of the worst and most dangerous jobs in my life.

The Kodak building itself was a modern, single-storey factory with a slightly sloping roof of corrugated aluminium. The maximum space between the roof and the ceiling was 8ft, diminishing to a few inches. To prevent the heat discomforting their employees, rolls of fibreglass had been laid in the loft. Particles of this were now falling through cracks in the ceiling onto the film processing machines so they wanted the fibreglass rolled up and replaced on sheets of plastic. Entering the loft was like stepping into a cauldron and it was impossible to wear a mask to prevent glassfibre being sucked into the lungs. Joists, 4ft apart, were all I had to stand on up there. I would take a gallon of water with me and work through an 8-hour shift. Now and again they would call me down for a break, but I would explain that if I ever left their hellhole during the day I would never go back. Each night they promised me a local worker whom they reckoned would be more accustomed to the heat. Now and then a face would pop through the trap door, the whites of the eyes would start to look like two fried eggs and the face would drop out of sight. Why I carried on with the job, apart from wanting to finish something I had started, I shall never know. The only good thing to say about it was that it was great when you stopped.

The laboratory had some splendidly hot showers, the first I had used since leaving Panama. I would stand under them for ages to open up the pores and rid myself of the itchy dust and glass, and then return to
Solitaire
, knowing that I had more money to spend on her. For three weeks I worked a 45-hour week. Then they asked me to knock two rooms into one. After that, would I build some storage racks? When they suggested building some car ports, I decided I was getting too civilised and left to prepare
Solitaire
for our trip to Australia.

Just before leaving Tahiti a young French couple, who planned to start teaching on one of the nearby islands, came to see me. They had bought a 35ft wooden yacht to use as a home, which
they considered a good buy until they discovered Toredo worm in the stern-hung rudder and then could find no one to build them a replacement, so I stayed on two more weeks to do the job. My one regret about sailing was that I had not started when I was a young man, fitter, stronger and able to give
Solitaire
more care. Tahiti strengthened my regrets. I wished I could have seen these islands and met the Polynesian people before ‘civilisation' had spoiled them.

Only in smoke-filled night clubs could you watch their beautiful native dancing. If you saw a Polynesian thrusting his canoe through the water with muscle power it simply meant that his outboard had broken down and he was on his way back to the garage to get it fixed. Large white cruise liners would dock and release a flood of even whiter chattering mice, all wearing the same brightly-coloured shirts, hats, sunglasses and cameras. False teeth flashing even falser smiles, they would stream past the dancing girls swaying to Hawaiian guitars. The tide would flood the shops to devour everything in sight, prevented only by pavement vendors holding out armfuls of shell necklaces and beautiful woven straw hats. Cameras would click, click, then their Pied Piper would toot toot on the ship's siren and the tide would reverse. The heavily-laden mice would be sucked back into a hole in the ship's side. A puff of smoke on the horizon, and they were gone. The locals would count their profits and a street cleaner remove the last traces of their presence. Weeks later postcards would arrive in New York, Tokyo and Scunthorpe, ‘Having a wonderful time in Tahiti, wish you were here.'