The Lonely Sea and the Sky (50 page)

  Next morning I sighted my first mark – Block Island at the north entrance to Long Island Sound. I embarked on an orgy of cleanliness. Sheila had made a strong statement that it was quite unnecessary for a single-handed sailor to turn up looking like a tramp with a dirty boat, so, after I had washed the cabin floor, the stove and everything washable including my shirts, I set to work on myself and threw in a haircut.

  That night I had a grand sail along the 100-mile coastline of Long Island, averaging 7 knots for nine hours. But I could not relax, and had to keep awake, though at times I had difficulty in keeping my eyelids up.
Gipsy Moth
was close to the shore, and any change of wind could have run her aground. Also, the navigation was difficult at night; there were lights, but not close enough for two to be seen together to give a fix, and as a result I could not tell how far offshore I was in the dark. At 9.30 next morning I logged, 'Twenty-four miles to go. Will that black-bearded Viking be in already?' But an hour later I was becalmed.

  At 1.30 p.m. as I decided to eat lunch, a faint breeze livened up, and I did not get a meal till twelve and a half hours later, two hours after next midnight. As soon as
Gipsy Moth
began sailing, I tried to call up the New York coastguards. Suddenly a clear voice broke in, which sounded elusively familiar, 'This is the
Edith G.
at the Ambrose Light. Your wife is on board and wants to speak to you.' I could hear a word or two from her, but she was pressing the wrong button. Then the clear voice came back, 'What is your course?'

  '270 degrees.'

  'OK two-seven-zero. We will meet you.'

  My lunch was off. I was out of sight of land crossing from Fire Island to the Ambrose Light, and I watched every launch excitedly. I took a set of radio bearings off Ambrose, Barnegat and Fire Island to check my position. At 3.50 p.m. I was met by a fishing-boat. Sheila waved to me, looking very smart in her Mirman hat. Great wavings from friends aboard. I thought to myself, 'This is very fine but what about the race? They know, I don't. How can I find out without appearing too pushing?' I thought of something, 'What news of the others?' I asked. Someone said, 'You are first,' and those words were honey sweet.

  I crossed the finishing line at 5.30 p.m., 40 days 12 hours and 30 minutes after the starting gun, having sailed 4,004½ miles to make good 3,000 miles on the Great Circle Course. I had to sail 16 miles up New York Harbour through the narrows to Staten Island, and no one was allowed aboard until I had been cleared by the health and immigration authorities. My clockwork seemed to have run down, and when I rounded up off Coney Island I lowered and handled my sails like a landlubber, until I seemed to have a tangle of sails, ropes, warps, fenders all over the deck. Every few seconds I had to stop to try to hear, try to answer, some question shouted at me. I was grateful for a tow for the rest of the way when it fell calm, and I was unable to start my motor.

The clear strong voice which had hailed me as I approached New York belonged to Captain Jim Percy, Senior Captain of BOAC, and I had last heard it at a meeting of the Court of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. Jim had been asked by the Grand Master, Prince Philip, and the Master, K. G. Bergin, to welcome me on reaching New York. He donned his full robes of a Warden, together with the broad squashed cap, and we were photographed shaking hands. Someone had presented me with two brandies and sodas, and I thought it was because of them that I hit the doorway a solid thump when I tried to pass through it; actually, I had lost my sense of balance, and I realised then that I had lost it at sea days before, which explained why I had difficulty in doing any job which required two hands while standing up.

  Bubbling with an excitement which could never be recaptured I went off with Sheila to her room in the New York Hotel, where Chris Brasher turned up with a marvellous feast. This was at 2 a.m. and I started to enjoy it, but Sheila and I both fell asleep in the middle, and Chris tiptoed out.

  Hasler came in eight days later, and Lewis was third, seven and a half days after Hasler. Howells, the black-bearded Viking, arrived sixty-three days after the start. His route was nearly a great circle till past the Azores, and from there he sailed to Bermuda, where he put in to have his watch repaired. Jean Lacombe in the small yacht
Cap Horn
started five days after the rest of us, and arrived on 24 August. Sheila and I met him being towed in as we were leaving for Plymouth.

  I lost 10 lbs during the race, because, I think, of the big physical effort. Blondie, who said that he had done no work at all with his big Chinese sail, also lost 10 lbs, Lewis lost 20 lbs and Howells 18 lbs.

  During my race I wrote 50,000 words of log, which were formed into a book entitled,
Alone Across the Atlantic.
Every day I used to look forward to writing in my blue book after breakfast, when I had come through another night and was feeling rather pleased and optimistic, with the next night out of thought. I used to imagine that I was talking to Sheila or a friend, and I think it kept me from being lonely. Chris and I spent ninety minutes on the transatlantic telephone one day, sending through an extract from this log for
The Observer
.

  I stepped straight from forty days alone at sea into a high-powered businessman's life, with hundreds of letters and telegrams to answer, newspaper and radio interviews, and one or two pretty shady television appearances. Sheila brought about a deal with
Sports Illustrated
for me to write them a long story, and I found the staff delightful people to deal with. Percy Knauth lent me one of their offices, where I worked on my story.

  The most interesting thing for me was Sheila's story; how she had set sail in the French liner
Flandres
before she knew if I had passed Land's End, and I do not think there would have been much interest in the race in America if it had not been for Sheila's flair for public relations; and I am sure that no one would have come out to meet me if it had not been for her. We had an invitation from an American cousin to visit her at Cape Cod. We wanted to go, but there seemed an awful lot to do in New York. A week later Cousin Dick or 'Grandick' as her family called her, telephoned, asking us again. We wanted to go, but it seemed a formidable undertaking to get out of all the things we had to do in New York and sail to Cape Cod. Then she telephoned to say, 'My son Felix is flying down in his plane to pick you up, and he will fetch you from the hotel in a car.' This was the start of the most delightful visit imaginable. Cousin Dick, born a Chichester, had married Felix du Pont Senior, and had bought a point of land, Indian Point, where she had her own summer house and several other houses for members of her family. What was so delightful about them was that they never showed what odd fish we must appear to them. Grandick, who was over eighty, wanted to take us out to a party to meet a host of people every day, or else to go to see some famous landmark like the Plymouth Rock, whereas all we wanted was to loll about on the beach, bathing and eating a wonderful beach lunch with lots of clams. Nothing could be more foreign to the American way of thinking than our attitude and desire to do nothing. Felix, Cousin Dick's son, had learned sea­plane flying not long after I had, and as he too now had a yacht, we had much in common to discuss. Cousin Dick was an interesting benevolent autocrat, who enjoyed her swim every morning before lunch.

  The time came when we had to leave this paradise.
Gipsy Moth
was at City Island, undergoing minor repairs. Sheila and I moved aboard to prepare for the return voyage. It was a hot August, and with
Gipsy Moth
tied up alongside the dock in 90 °F., and no fan on board, Sheila found it an ordeal. Felix and his wife, Marka, flew down to help us. They tried to persuade Sheila to give up the sail home and fly back, but Sheila had made up her mind to sail with me, and would not give in. On 24 August we left City Island to sail down the East River through New York City. Rosie (Morris Rosenfeld, the world famous yacht photographer) tagged along in his Foto-launch. I was really rather dreading the prospect of another Atlantic voyage, and although there was only a good breeze I reefed the mainsail, and set a smallish jib for fear of stronger wind giving me trouble among the skyscrapers. This must have been disappointing to Rosie. The weather steadily improved, and we had an interesting cruise through the city. My chief interest was Brooklyn Bridge; I remembered the picture postcard of the old bridge which my father had sent me when he visited New York when I was six. Sheila took fright that the bridge was going to snap off the mast, and I could not convince her that it was far above us.

  After leaving New York, I headed south-east to sail along the 39th parallel to the Azores. Ninety miles from land we passed close to Texas Tower Number 4, a fantastic-looking object in the middle of the sea, with three large white domes like a cluster of spider's eggs on top of a three-legged platform. When we were half way to the Azores this tower was damaged by the hurricane 'Donna', and later it capsized in a storm with the loss of many lives.

  We had lovely weather, though too calm to suit me, and too hot to suit Sheila. It was up to 98 °F. in the cabin. I rigged an old sail in the cockpit, and filled it with Gulf Stream water, and we used to take turns to wallow in this several times a day. I found only two flying fish on deck during this voyage. They were delicious, fried. One knocked some paint off the cabin top when it landed there. Perhaps more interesting were the small squid which flew aboard at night. The
Kon-Tiki
crew were the first to discover that squid flew when one hit a member of the crew in the face at night.

  The weather and seas roughened as we approached the Azores. When we arrived towards the end of the day at the northern end of the channel between Fayal and Pico Islands we were faced with a beat into a head-on gale, under spitfire jib and trysail, in order to reach the port of Horta. There was a strong current against us, and we could not have arrived till the middle of the night. I decided to start the motor, but I could not get a kick out of it. This made me angry. The motor had been temperamental before I left England, and the boatyard at Buckler's Hard had put in a lot of time on it; then it jibbed in New York, and the City Island boatyard had worked on it. This time, I said, I would damn well find out for myself what was the matter with it. It was no picnic, with
Gipsy Moth
bucking about in the short steep sea kicked up by the gale, and presently I was lying at full length under the cockpit to get at the bottom of the petrol tank. Every few minutes I had to pop up and tack the ship. But I found the trouble: the petrol tank was made of iron, and there was ¾-inch of rust sludge at the bottom, which kept on choking the carburettor. After I cleaned the pipes I could get it to run only for a few minutes before the sludge choked it again. Finally I said to Sheila, 'Do you mind if we heave to and wait outside the channel till dawn?' She was relieved. I backed the spitfire jib, and we jibbed about in the lee of Fayal while I fished out a bottle of Californian wine and we had a good dinner. Next morning we beat up the channel against a Force 8 wind, but had a great welcome from the charming Portuguese people at Horta when we finally arrived.

  We stayed there for two weeks while I had a new petrol tank made of copper. We enjoyed a lazy life; our only disappointment was being unable to get a bath. That, and a feast ashore, are the chief things a yachtsman looks forward to after a passage of twenty-six days. All the island's plumbing had been fractured by a big earthquake.

  We left Horta on 3 October. The locals were shaking their heads, and saying that it was too late in the year for a yacht. Sheila was apprehensive, and looked somewhat longingly at an island steamer which called in, but decided to stick to
Gipsy
Moth
and see the voyage through. The Azores were a great disappointment to me; instead of the calm fine weather I had expected in the middle of the Azores high pressure system, it was always squally or bad weather, and there were strong currents, not shown on any of my charts. We left Horta in a dead calm, but within an hour it was blowing a Force 9 gale, with steep seas breaking on the counter. I felt ham-fisted with Miranda after my fortnight ashore, and asked Sheila to take the helm while I went below and cooked some breakfast. I should have liked to heave to, but we had an island in our lee which we had to clear. After breakfast I took over for an hour or two until we had cleared the point, when I gratefully lowered all sails and
Gipsy Moth
jibbed along under bare poles while I went below, had a hot whisky, and a sleep for an hour and three-quarters. Then I set a spitfire jib, and by midnight we were clear of the last island, out in the open ocean and I could relax.

  We were fifteen days on passage from the Azores to Plymouth, and on nine of them we were under storm sails, spitfire jib and trysail. There were impressive seas, magnificent and monumental, but not malicious. It was exhilarating to watch those mountains of water creeping up and passing. I spent hours on deck trying to get a good photograph of a big sea but found it difficult. The whole passage was a grand sail, and much more relaxing for me than the hot calms and light airs after leaving New York, when my temper and fingernails had been worn to the quick by the incessant sail changing and trimming. As soon as it blew up to Force 7, I could set the storm rig and retire below to prepare a good feast with a bottle of excellent American wine. Sheila was now quite happy with big seas in a gale, and I was amused to recall her candid comments on navigation when we left New York if we were bumping somewhat at 6 knots in a fresh breeze.