The Lonely Sea and the Sky (47 page)

  The starting gun was fired. We were off! What a race! Instructions read, 'Leave the Melampus Buoy to starboard and thence by any route to the Ambrose Light Vessel, New York.' The others got away ahead of me, but I began to catch them up as soon as I had set my big genoa. Then I slowed down as I pinched into the wind, to squeeze past the breakwater without tacking. As I drew away from the land the wind freshened and the seas got rougher, and I was soon wet through with sea water and sweat reefing the mainsail. The difficulty was to get the sail to roll easily on the boom without someone at the aft end to haul out the creases and folds. The last I saw of David Lewis, he had tacked inshore after the breakwater. He was well to windward of me, and not far behind. That must have been just before his mast broke in two; he rigged a jury sail and sailed back to Plymouth, where the Mashford brothers repaired his mast for him and got him away to sea, again three days later. He is the only man I have heard of who has finished third in a race after breaking his mast at the start.

  For the first three days, the weather was rough with gales. Heavy seas burst on the deck, and I reckoned that it took thirty seconds after a sea had broken on deck before the water finished running out of the lee scuppers. I had considered
Gipsy
Moth
a dry boat apart from one or two minor leaks, and I had pumped no water out of her during the three months she had been afloat. After the first three days, however, all the cabin walls were streaked as if they had been in a slanting shower of rain, and everything was damp or wet: I can only imagine that the tremendous weight of seas bursting on deck opened the planking or seams for an instant to shoot spray through. The terrific crash of a sea several times started me out of my berth, thinking that the yacht had been struck by a steamer, or that the mast had snapped. While I was asleep one sea shot me into the air off the heavy wooden settee I was sleeping on and jumped it out of its fitting. The clothes I got wet stayed wet, and I did not get a chance to dry them out until thirty-seven days later. At the end of the first three days I had had nothing to eat except a few biscuits; I had been feeling seasick or queasy all the time. Reading through my log gives me an impatient longing to sail the race again. I see the mistakes I could have avoided, and how I could have made a faster pace. This is nonsense really, for the mistakes and errors are the price for the great romance of doing something for the first time. Miranda's antics cost me a lot of time. The lever which locked the wind vane to the tiller was periodically knocked free by the backstay, and I would be rousted out of my bunk to find the yacht headed the wrong way. I had a nightmare fear of the yacht's jibbing herself to bring the wind vane against the backstay and snap its spars. Immediately I sensed the yacht's going off course – I soon became sensitive to the least change in sailing conditions – I rushed out to the stern, whatever I was doing, or however undressed.

  Reefing the mainsail, lowering it, and hoisting the trysail in its place, with the frequent changing and handling of heavy Terylene foresails, exhausted me, and I was not sailing the yacht as she should be sailed. I envied my rivals the comparative ease with which they would be able to change the smaller sails of their boats, although I reckoned that their boats were too small, just as mine was too big; the best size for this race would be, I thought, a nine-tonner. In rough water my bigger boat should be better off, but I was losing too much valuable time over my sail changing. It took me up to one and a half hours to hoist the mainsail and to reef it in rough water. I know it sounds inefficient, but my 18-foot main boom was a brute to handle when reefing. I had to balance on the counter and slacken off the main sheet to the boom with one hand, while I hauled on the topping lift with the other hand to raise the boom. Meanwhile, it would be swinging to and fro, and I had to avoid being knocked out by it.

  While hoisting the mainsail, I could not head into wind for fear of the yacht's tacking herself, and causing further chaos. As a result, the slides would jam in the track, the sail would foul the lee runner, and the battens would hook up behind the shroud as I tried to hoist the sail. All this time the boat would be rolling to drive one mad, and bucking. With heavy rain falling, and wave crests sluicing me, I would feel desperate until I got into the right mood, and told myself, 'Don't hurry! Take your time! You are bound to get it done in the end.' Once, after all this, I had just got the mainsail to the top of the mast when the flogging of the leech started one of the battens out of its pocket. So I had hurriedly to lower the sail and, after saving the batten, go through the whole procedure again.

  At the end of this unpleasant three days I was only 186 miles south-west of Plymouth. My chest was hurting me on one side where I had been thrown across the yacht when a door burst open forward; on the other side it had been stabbed by a sharp corner when the cabin hatch, which I was leaning against, suddenly slipped forward a foot; a patch of my skin over my ribs had been caught in a doorway when the door slammed on it, and I had cut my scalp on the roof of the cabin. Then my seasickness ended, and it was not long before I was recording that I would not change places with anybody in the world. I got steadily more skilful in handling the yacht. One night
Gipsy Moth
really began to show her paces. I was called on deck by the hull slamming, the sails banging and snapping. I had too much sail set for the rising wind, I thought, so I slacked off the genoa before lowering it, and the result was extraordinary.
Gipsy Moth
went quiet, and shot off in the dark and fog at speed. I imagined that she had smiled to herself and said, 'This is what I've been waiting for.' There was no fuss, no disturbed wake and almost no noise. It was awe-inspiring on deck, with a black Hades rushing past the bright light shining from the stern. There was a slight, snaffly, clinky jingle from the end of the main boom which, from the cabin, sounded like the bit in a horse's mouth.
Gipsy Moth
was going so fast that it was hard to stand up. She was like a horse flying over fallen logs on rough ground, haunches thrusting up with a wobbly movement, as if shaking her powerful stern in the air. The strange thing was that Miranda quietened too; she had a gentle weaving movement, instead of jigging and flapping and snapping as she had been doing before.
Gipsy Moth
cut out 8½ knots for the next two hours. It was not comfortable, though; while getting dinner I was pitched into the galley stove, and knocked it clean off its frame.

  Next morning I was woken up at 8 o'clock by the yacht's tacking herself. I felt her go upright and heel the other way. I was about to spring up and rush to the tiller, when I looked at the pendulum which measures the heel of the yacht and was astonished to see that we were still heeled over 25 degrees to starboard. She had simply eased up suddenly from a heel of 45 degrees, which had fooled my drowsy senses. During that night
Gipsy Moth
had sailed 86 miles in 12½ hours, 7 knots on the wind – wonderful sailing. That was what I had come for! By next night the going was beginning to get rougher.
Gipsy Moth
rushed at the waves and ski-jumped off' the crests to land with a terrific splash. The noise below was appalling, and I marvelled at the strength of the boat to stand the bashing. It was hard to sleep for more than ten minutes at a time, and I woke feeling that the gear, mast and sails could not stand the strain, and that I must change down the headsail. Sheila had warned me that carrying too much sail would be my biggest risk, but I hated to slow down the yacht. Then, an hour after midnight, an extra heavy sea came on board and I decided that the time had come. I rigged myself out in my full kit: oilskin trousers, long boots, long oilskin coat, cotton towel scarf, storm cap, knife, spanner and torch round my neck, with safety-belt over all to hook to the lifelines. But when I came on deck I found that
Gipsy Moth
was sailing as well as she possibly could. We must have sailed through a rough patch. It was thick fog on a black night, visibility 50 to 75 yards with plenty of wind and a rough sea. A steamer passed me, sounding her deep foghorn, and I answered with the right toots from my little mouth horn to show I was under sail on the port tack, though whether she could possibly hear anything I don't know. She seemed a big boat and fast, because I was doing 7 knots and she just swept by. I went back to my bunk and slept soundly for four hours, when I was woken by a calm.
Gipsy Moth
had had a sail which I felt that it would be hard for me to beat single-handed – 220 miles on the wind in 33 hours, an average of 6 knots.

  Every day I tried to call up a ship or an aircraft on the radio-telephone. Each of us in the race had been lent one, and we had had elaborate instructions on how to contact aircraft flying over, but the telephones were ship-to-shore sets for use only in coastal waters; also they had not been fitted until the afternoon before the start of the race. I spent hour after hour trying to raise a ship or an aircraft. Once I heard a Pan-American Clipper calling the yachts in the race, but it did not hear my reply. On I7 June I got a sun fix with the sextant, taking advantage of the fog's lifting enough to show a horizon and the sun visible through the mist. I was pleased to find that my dead reckoning was only fifteen miles out after six days. One could expect this if racing with a crew of good helmsmen. I always worked up the dead reckoning carefully, but I could only guess what course Miranda had been steering while I was asleep.

  During the next week the main theme of my log was fatigue. I kept on complaining about the heavy gear and endless sail changing; the wind changed force and direction like an angry rattlesnake. Sometimes it swung right through to the opposite direction within a few hours. In spite of.my troubles, I averaged 135½ miles a daÿ for five consecutive days – distance sailed, that is, not distance made good in a straight line. On 25 June, after two weeks, I had made good a distance of 1,264. miles in a straight line from Plymouth. I knew nothing then about my rivals, but in those fourteen days Blondie had made good 1,038 miles. I had not feared Blondie as a rival, although I knew his Folkboat hull was fast and seaworthy, but I thought that his junk rig would not take him to windward well. The Amateur Yacht Research Society, however, considers that a junk sail, slightly modified, is the most efficient rig there is.

  The rival I dreaded was Val Howells in a Folkboat with a boosted up sail area. She had looked a fast boat, driven by a formidable sailor. And this was a race of man and boat; both equally important. Val had served his time in the Merchant Navy, was extremely powerful, and had told us he did not know what fatigue was. Looking at him with his huge black beard I believed him. He had had much sailing experience with a voyage to Spain alone before the race. Also, he had on board a keg of his magic brew, raw eggs mixed with rum, which sounded a formidable weapon in his hands. Lastly he was a Welshman with a wonderful voice, so that whenever in trouble or unhappy he could practise for the next eisteddfod. If I tried to sing, the fishes would groan. Val, after the fourteenth day, was 900 miles from Plymouth. Lewis was 500 miles behind me; he had been delayed three days by his mast breaking, but had avoided that period of dirty head-on weather. This was the state of the race when I ran into big trouble on 25 June.

I had turned in the night before with all sails set in light airs, ambling towards New York at 3 knots. I had a fine sleep from midnight to 5 o'clock local time, when I woke to find the yacht headed due south; the wind had backed steadily during the night, and was now east-south-east. I retrimmed the sails and Miranda before starting to prepare the twin headsails for running. It took me two and a quarter hours to get the twins rigged, and drawing on the right heading. I thought this was good going, because it was only the second time I had run with twins since the yacht was built, and there was a lot to do. On every trip from cockpit to foredeck I had to transfer the snaphook of my lifeline four times. I had to unlash the two spinnaker booms from the deck. Then each of them, 14 feet long and 18 inches in girth, had to be hooked to the gooseneck 7 feet up the mast at one end, and to a strop at the clew of the sail at the other end; then hoisted up by a topping lift, while two guys from the middle of the pole down to the deck kept it from swinging fore or aft. The tiller had to be freshly adjusted after each sail was hoisted, because the sailing balance was then changed. When both headsails were drawing, it took me a quarter of an hour for the final adjustment to the self-steering gear, and then
Gipsy Moth
sailed downwind at a quiet, silky 6 knots.

  The bow waves rumbled with a hint of distant thunder, and in the cabin I could hear them breaking and rushing along the hull. It was a delightful change after days of plugging into wind.

  My next entry in my notebook was twenty-two hours later, and in between so much happened, and I had had such strong sensations, that I could not recall them all.