Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (46 page)

In the months after I returned home I was given two awards. Not so much for seamanship, I felt, but more because I'm an amateur who will not take sponsorship. One of these accolades was from
The Oldie
magazine, which gave me the Ancient Mariner Award, presented at a posh lunch at the Savoy Hotel, London. There were about 150 very famous people there. In fact the only one I didn't recognise was me! After being called dead, I thought being called Ancient was a step in the right direction. I was also awarded The Ocean Cruising Club's Award of Merit. I was over the moon with this one, since it was given by people for whom I have great admiration.

In the beginning, all the fuss, all the hugs, handshakes and questions were enjoyable. Then as I started to put on weight, people stopped recognising me in the street and life returned to something approaching normal. After the long days alone at sea it had been marvellous to be shown all that warmth and kindness – something I would remember for all my remaining years but I was pleased it was over.

Soon after I arrived back in England I bought an old 1983 Mini Metro car, which I used to drive around the country giving talks. Driving back to Lymington at 2 o'clock in the morning with maniacs in 30-ton trucks screaming past at 80 miles an hour did nothing to help the old blood pressure. I chickened out of this pastime after several months.

Meanwhile,
Solitaire
was still in the poor condition she was in when we arrived home from New Zealand. It really didn't seem fair. She had done all the work and here I was fully recovered, apart from the ever-present asthma problem. My first job was to replace the wooden toe rail that runs around
Solitaire
's deck.

During the storms in the Southern Ocean, the starboard tang that secures the lower standing rigging to the mast (shrouds) had broken, leaving a 5-inch tear. It was the opening and closing of this gap that was responsible for the cracking sound and not the wooden beam. The masthead navigation light was missing, along with a large part of the forward toe rail. Despite these injuries
Solitaire
had rounded Cape Horn and sailed over 10,000 miles to make her way home. I ordered a new mast with the same specifications as the old, apart from changing to cutter rig with a furling staysail and running backstays.

By 2000,
Solitaire
was spending her second cold English winter out of the water, but at least all the major re-fitting work had been carried out and she was now ready for her fourth circumnavigation.

Having nursed
Solitaire
back to good health, I was able to go into hospital myself for a prostate operation in August. They call it keyhole surgery but at the time it seemed like they used a camera crew and a digger (and afterwards you spend five days passing water – and double-decker buses – through a tube). For me, that was the easy part. The hard part came when it was time to leave hospital and I was told that, because I had to climb a 12ft high
ladder to get aboard the yacht, I wouldn't be able to return to
Solitaire
for six weeks.

Instead, it was arranged for me to go into a memorial hospital and rest home at Barton-on-Sea. The nurses and staff were all angels and couldn't have been kinder, but to watch the elderly patients was like seeing my own future. The dining room was full of old people taking pills. Some just watched daytime TV. Others were desperately lonely and waiting for family to turn up and visit them. To see the expressions on their faces was dreadful. It was far more terrifying than the worst storm at sea.

The biopsy for cancer proved to be negative. However, I still had breathing difficulties with asthma and my lungs needed kick starting from time to time with inhalers. Summers were fine. I could sit in the cockpit with spectacular views overlooking the Solent. The winters were another story –
Solitaire
became an 8ft-squared box without running water or a toilet. There were showers and toilets in the main building but they were a 200-yard dash away.

Over the four years since my non-stop voyage back from New Zealand, I'd been considering what to do when I reached this time of life. At the age of 74, the sensible thing to do would be to leave
Solitaire
, but that was unthinkable.

If I hadn't had difficulties publishing a new edition of my book,
Hands Open
, I would have had funds for a flat ashore in winter. I could even have returned to Cyprus with its warm climate. But then, of course, there's no British National Health Service on the island.

To once more gain the interest of publishers I would need to have fresh up-to-date material. There seemed to be two options. The first was to sail for Boston on the east coast of America, and then follow the route Joshua Slocum took between April 1895 and June 1898, passing through the Straits of Magellan. For this voyage I needed a reliable engine so I had my Saab diesel reconditioned by the agents.

Three times after the start of the new millennium I attempted to leave Lymington to start a new long-distance voyage. The first
time my diesel tank split and by the time I got to the French coast, off Ushant, the carpets were soaked in fuel and with my asthma the fumes made me feel pretty bad. I sailed back to Lymington in southwesterly gales.

It took me a couple of years to sort out
Solitaire
before I was ready to try again. By the time of the second attempt, in 2006, I had bought a new Volvo Penta 18hp engine. I got as far as Old Harry, off Studland Bay, Dorset, when the engine stopped. I was becalmed as there was no wind. Since it was a brand new engine that had been fitted, I contacted Lymington Yacht Haven. They wanted me to call the Coastguard. But I said, ‘No, you've got to fetch me!' So they sent out a towing vessel. It turned out the gearbox was faulty and by the time it had all been fixed under warranty it was too late in the season to cross the Bay of Biscay.

For my third attempt, in order to increase speed under power I changed from a two-bladed propeller to a three. The drag from this mistake only came to light when I tried to sail for Cape Town on October 13th, 2005, hoping to continue to Australia during the Southern Ocean's more kindly months. With my asthma and breathing problems it was really far too late to sail through the Bay of Biscay. The alternative, however, was to spend another cold damp winter in England surviving on steroid tablets and inhalers.

With following winds the trip down the English Channel was easy. It was only when we turned into the Bay for the 380-mile crossing to Cape Finisterre that things became unpleasant. By the third day we were battling into gale force winds from the southwest. On past voyages under these conditions, I would remove all sails, allowing
Solitaire
to fall onto a reach, then unfurl just enough headsail for steerage way. Little progress would be made, but she would be fairly stable and hold her position. Now when I tried, high seas and fast flowing rollers were pushing her sideways at a terrific speed and I ended up using the engine just to break through.

I had never known the boat so wet; charts became soaked and fell apart. With the vibration and shaking it became difficult to boil water for a hot drink. On October 24th it was my 80th
birthday and I managed to celebrate with a cup of tea.

Exhaustion made me decide that, once past Cape Finisterre, I would make for the harbour of Porto, in Portugal, to rest and carry out repairs. When I checked with our GPS position the distance was 20 miles, but when I next looked, the distance had increased to 40 miles.

I'm not sure what happened during that 24 hours. I noticed there was blood on some of the lockers and seats. There was a large lump on the back of my head and more blood. I was very cold and had trouble breathing. After using my inhalers and taking a few steroid pills, I decided to return to Lymington and try again in the spring. Fortunately, the strong southerly winds continued to blow and we surfed back through Biscay on a broad reach with a small amount of headsail.

It was only when we were well clear of the French coast that I had a panic attack and stopped breathing.

The ship's compass showed we were on course to take us up the English Channel to Lymington, but when I checked our position with the GPS it showed we were tracking north towards the Scilly Isles at 2–3 knots. I managed to get my lungs working with kick-start from my inhaler and tried to make contact with the Coastguard. Seawater had put my main VHF radio out, but I still had my hand-held set. When I called on Channel 16 I was answered by an Australian helicopter pilot who said he was in my area and had been asked to confirm my position. Soon afterwards he flew over and called to say I was still 40 miles south of the Scillies. I said I'd been injured and was very tired and would they listen out for me.

Soon after he left, the tide turned and we started to make good progress on course. I tried again to contact my Australian mate, but now my hand-held was not working. We had passed Dartmouth and were outside Lyme Bay with all our lights on when the ship hit us. I was standing in the main hatch and turned to look over the bow, only to find the area filled with a great black mass. There was a tremendous bang and I went flying. By the time I had recovered, the ship had long gone.

Solitaire
's bow was damaged and her pulpit pushed over to the port side. Her engine was still running and we were still on course, but then the engine stopped. When we had our collision, the sheets from the headsails had been thrown over the side. Now they were wrapped around the propeller. We had no engine, no sails and no means of contacting the Coastguard. Dawn was breaking when I saw in the distance a thin white shape, which I took to be the Needles on the Isle of Wight. I cut both the sheets as far down as possible, leaving a few feet still around the prop. When I started the engine we could just about head in the right direction.

When leaving England on October 13th, the last call I had made on my mobile phone had been to Lymington Yacht Haven. Now, when I switched it on, they answered and I told them I could see the Needles, but when I gave them my GPS position they said I was 20 miles away and was looking at the cliffs at Anvil Point. They called the Coastguard, who arrived sometime afterwards and towed
Solitaire
into Poole Marina, where they had an ambulance waiting to rush me into Poole hospital. Tests proved that in addition to cuts on my head, I had suffered a mild concussion.

They allowed me to return to
Solitaire
the following day and, after a diver had removed the sheets from the propeller, we returned to our old berth in the Lymington Yacht Haven.

Since then, I haven't, at the time of writing (2011), done any long passages. I've helped on some deliveries and taken friends out for a sail. One Christmas, Dylan Kalis (the son of Dirk), who took over running Lymington Yacht Haven when his father ‘retired', presented me with a laptop computer. I told them there was no point. I'd never be able to use it. But he sent a technical wizard down to my boat next day to teach me the basics. Having a computer has changed my life. It's better than a mobile phone because you've got time to think and focus.

At 8 o'clock most mornings I fire up the laptop, log on, and check my emails. I can contact friends in Australia, New Zealand and America, as well as the UK and all over Europe, at virtually no cost. When Dylan's father gave me a free marina berth for
life, I was also given free electricity – and then came free wireless internet.

In 2001, following the death of my father's sister Jean, the last of my family, I received a small inheritance. This gave me some extra security so I don't have to rely on charity. I don't drink or smoke and I live frugally. After my convalescence in that old folks' home, I vowed never to let that happen to me. I've had a good run, two good wives and a whole host of adventures.

Who knows what's next? Just recently, a friend, Clive Rockford, helped me get my engine running again. He took the cylinder head off and found water inside as well as corroded valves. He's reconditioned it. It took a lot of persuading to get it started but now I run it every week. I've also got a folding prop. In the summer I painted the decks.