Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (39 page)

The only family I had now were my father's sister Jean, as well as Irene and Tony. There was no longer a reason to remain in England. I started to think about getting
Solitaire
back in the water and making ready for another voyage.

I finally got
Solitaire
back in her berth but it had been a long slow battle. My breathing had become a major problem. The routine in the beginning had been to stay awake all during the day and late into the night. Before going to sleep I would take two or three puffs from my inhaler. This would carry me through
until halfway into the night when I'd wake again short of breath. After using the inhaler again I could normally sleep until dawn. Now all this had changed. When I woke now it was to find that I had completely stopped breathing and was in the middle of a nightmare: looking down at my brother's poor body, or terrified to find myself in the water with Rome and watching our boat sail away without us. Having stopped breathing, it would take five or ten minutes to get any benefit from the inhaler. For the rest of the night I would sit upright to get air into my lungs, too frightened even to think about sleep. The doctor gave me tablets to help me relax. But I still had the nightmares.

I wasn't the only one with problems.
Solitaire
was having her own troubles. When she had been taken out of the water, I should have removed her old engine oil and topped up her diesel tank. I'd forgotten to do this. Worse still, the motor was run without changing them and became clogged. Day after day parts were stripped off and cleaned. Other jobs were started and left. The main cabin became a complete shambles. Friends were constantly calling to ask how I was getting on. Tired and covered in dirty oil, I became bad tempered and snappy.

When I finally got the engine to run, I decided to set sail the following day. I paid all my debts. That night I was trying to get our navigation lights to work when my old mate Dennis Skillicorn and his wife Marie turned up. Dennis wanted to do a final tape recording for the BBC. I said it was my intention to sail down to Gibraltar and from there follow Joshua Slocum's route around the world, sailing west about and through the Straits of Magellan. After Dennis and Marie had left, I was too tired to do any more work and spent the rest of the night trying to get through another asthma attack.

The following morning I was standing on the pontoon trying to work out my next move. I wasn't keen on sailing down the English Channel without any navigation lights, but to work on them would mean another day's delay. Brian, another mate of mine, turned up on his way to work to enquire how I was getting
on. I can remember snapping back, ‘If you bloody people would stop pestering me, I might make some progress.' Without a word, Brian turned and walked away. It seemed at that moment that following Rome's death, I'd been walking down a very long road and it turned into a blind end. I didn't know whether to run after Brian to apologise or to work on
Solitaire
.

There were a couple on a nearby yacht. The day before, the lady had volunteered to give me a pre-sailing haircut. They came over to ask if there was anything they could do. ‘Yes, you can let go my lines!' As I started to leave the marina, I saw that they were following me. They passed me in the Solent and started waving, heading towards an anchorage behind Hurst Castle. There they circled and started pointing down, trying to get me to stop as they'd seen I was in no fit state to start the voyage yet. I dropped
Solitaire
's anchor and, satisfied, they headed back to their berth.

I spent three days there. The first 24 hours were mostly spent sleeping. I finished wiring the electrics and tidied up the main cabin. Feeling much better, I thought about returning to Lymington to say goodbye properly, but in the end decided on running down to Dartmouth where I could write letters and make phone calls. I found that at sea my nose still remained a useless piece of equipment that could neither sniff, smell or blow. However, my breathing improved and with so many things to worry about, the nightmares became less frequent.
Solitaire
spent a week in Dartmouth. Then, with all the wiring sorted out, we set sail for Gibraltar on June 7th, 1988.

Soon all the old sounds returned, the freedom of once more being in the open sea. The trip was to take 13 days. It could have been much quicker if it hadn't been for an unwanted visitor. We were well out to sea and clear of all the shipping lanes when a pigeon came on board. Despite all the pointing he wouldn't leave until we had gone off course and back in sight of land.

Gibraltar was the same dusty, dirty place I had remembered from my previous two visits. When my brother had taken his own life, he left me the money he had inherited from our father. Not
a great sum, but enough that, providing that I spent a reasonable time at sea and anchor, I would have an income that would pay for food and cheap marina berths when required. It had been my intention to stay in Gibraltar only long enough to carry out a few repairs and put on stores before setting off to cross the Atlantic. This plan was changed when I received a letter from Tony and Irene, saying the family had booked a holiday on the island of Ibiza in the Balearics for September.

The island was only 400 miles away and I decided to join them. With time to spare, cheap marina fees, and a first class chandlery within walking distance, I decided to fit out
Solitaire
's forward cabin, and give the main cabin a new headlining. Knowing I could expect fickle winds in the Med and that I would be doing a great deal of motoring, I bought an autopilot to back up the wind vane steering. I spent six weeks in Gibraltar before setting out to cruise along the southern Spanish coast. It was time to leave. When I had first arrived after weeks of fresh sea air, my lungs were much better. The narrow smoky streets and a marina berth next to the airport's main runway were starting to show effects.

The final few days were spent with terrible coughing and sleepless nights. As Gibraltar slipped behind us, I was reminded of the American singer Tony Bennett who had a theme song called
I Left My Heart in San Francisco
. Mine for the future would be, ‘I left my lung in Gibraltar.'

After all her long-distance voyages,
Solitaire
set a new record with four stops in the first 50 miles, but we did manage to sail the last part of the trip to San Antonio harbour in Ibiza non-stop. I think I will always remember the voyage for the many contrasts. There was the so-called marina that was a part of a filthy harbour with few berths and one foul-smelling toilet, and the posh place filled with Gin Palaces. When you arrived, they didn't ask the size of your craft, just how many helicopters the deck holds. Then there would be the dozen discos and the howling frustrated Spanish singer, always just out of a stone-throwing distance. But at night I woke to find myself surrounded by magic. There was a
piano playing all the old romantic songs:
Stardust, Love Letters, Yesterday
. Then a woman started to sing, switching from English to French, to Italian. I sat in the cockpit until dawn, hardly daring to breathe – MAGIC!

There was the contrast too of a lovely lady's voice in the distance with a naked female only inches away from the end of my nose. Over the years I had got used to the lengths ladies would go to remain cool. In Tahiti during the summer of 1976, going topless had become the fashion. By 1983 in the Caribbean, it had become the norm and men stopped looking. Well, old men anyway. After a sleepless night of being roasted by the heat and deafened by the discos, I staggered into the cockpit to pass another milestone in my life. During the night a German yacht had tied up alongside and a very attractive lady was attempting to stay cool by taking a shower.

Having no hat to raise, I spilt a boiling cup of coffee in my lap. ‘Guten Morgen, Fraulein,' I said, which was about all the German I knew. She smiled and I tried to keep the conversation going. At the time she was having trouble with a fly she was trying to swot. I remembered that the German word ‘Fledermaus' had something to do with a fly, so said this to her. The smile became a laugh and she disappeared down her own hatchway.

Later, when changing my shorts, I remembered where I'd heard the word. It was from the German opera by Johann Strauss
Die Fledermaus
– The Bat. Telling some naked female that a bat was trying to land on her boobs was not the best chat-up line I've used. But at least it was different, and another contrast.

The holiday with Tony and Irene went as planned. Irene's mom and dad had come along and we enjoyed good sailing weather. I watched two 70-year-olds become teenagers. By the time they left, the first days of October had arrived and it now seemed
Solitaire
would be spending her first winter in the Mediterranean. Irene had always said that one of her dreams was to sail around Greek islands in a yacht. I decided to head in that direction, perhaps spend Christmas in Malta. As we made our way through the
Balearic Islands, the days grew shorter, the nights colder. Yachts started to disappear like flies. The charter boats were the first to go with their darling crews. ‘Let the anchor go, darling'; ‘Right ho, darling'; ‘Has the anchor gone, darling?'; ‘Yes, darling, did you want chain on it?'

It was while we were anchored in one of these harbours that I met up with Bob, his wife Liz and his seventeen-year-old son Karl. The family were from Liverpool. Bob was 44 and had spent his working life as an electrician on merchant ships. It had taken seven years to build his steel yacht
Lisarne
. He used the same plans as
Solitaire
's, but adding two more feet to the length. Liz, a very attractive lady, looked like the American singer Doris Day. She had the same bubbly personality. She would be leaving the following day to be with their second younger son and take up her job in a bank. Bob and Karl on the other hand intended taking
Lisarne
into the port of Mahon in Menorca, leaving her there while they returned home for Christmas. Since we were heading in the same direction, we decided to keep one another company.

We arrived in Mahon on November 17th, 1988. Bob found it difficult to get cheap flights from this island and after a few days returned to the main island of Mallorca. I was having problems of my own. The fuel lift pump went U/S due to faulty valves. I tried to find replacements but without any luck. When I left England I had been given the names of Keith and Liz Trafford, along with their children Hannah and Bradley, as a contact. They had left England seven years before to cruise around the world. Mahon was as far as they got. Starting with only the money from the sale of their boat, they now owned land and villas, which they rented out to holidaymakers. Their own house was in a choice position, built into a cliff overlooking the harbour. They made me feel like one of the family and since they would be returning to England for a Christmas break, they suggested I wait for their return with a complete new pump. Mahon lies at the end of a 3-mile-long fjord. Its beautiful natural harbour is one of the best in the Med. It hasn't changed much since the days Nelson was there with the British fleet.

Keith was partner in a small racing craft with a guy called Fred. The yacht was about half the size of
Solitaire
, but for all that it carried a crew of five, mostly I think to be used as ballast. Whichever tack it was on, the crew would have to sit on that side to prevent the boat rolling over. I still hated racing, but from time to time I would just go along to make up the numbers.

On the day that Fred was skipper we had two new crew members and Fred kept saying that we should go through the man overboard procedure before the race. This normally consists of throwing a fender over the side and turning the boat round to retrieve it. As it happened, there was no time and the next thing I knew, we were tearing down the harbour in the middle of a load of clowns, all under full sail. Just when I thought the boat was about to cartwheel, Fred decided there was something wrong at the top of the mast, put on a harness and got hauled up. At that moment, the yacht did start to roll over. Fred made a majestic descent, still tied to the top of the mast. There was one heck of a splash and all I could see was bubbles.

The two new lads had been hurled over the side and were now standing on the main sail as though they were waiting for a bus. This kept the mast underwater and bubbles continued to break surface. Keith was still in the cockpit but up to his neck in water. As soon as the roll started, I began running in the opposite direction. Perfectly dry, I was now standing on the side of the boat screaming for the lads to get off the sail. There were more bubbles and Fred appeared to join in with me, before once again making more bubbles. Finally Keith managed to release the halyard and our skipper popped up on the stern.

Later, when we were safely back in our berth, Fred asked me how I'd enjoyed the sail. ‘Not bad,' I said. ‘But I thought your man overboard drill was a bit over the top.' Fortunately, Keith, Liz and the children left soon after that and I spent a quiet Christmas alone on
Solitaire
.

When they arrived back in the middle of January 1989, it was with the news that they had been unable to find the model of
pump we required. Without the lift pump it would be possible to run the engine by gravity feed. This meant strapping a container of diesel on the cockpit seat, well above the height of the motor. The process took some time to set up and could only be used for entering or leaving harbour – never in a rough sea. The voyage took seven days, covered 620 miles and we arrived in Malta on January 23rd, 1989. On arrival, I tried to buy a new pump, but the best I could do was to service the old one from a kit.

Food and mooring were reasonably priced, along with a local cinema. It was a popular stopover for the cruising boats. Many of them were trying to book into Larnaca Marina in Cyprus for the following winter. There was a year's waiting list for a berth, but since it would tie up with my holiday in the Greek islands with Tony and Irene, I sent an application form with a cheque.