The Lonely Sea and the Sky (56 page)

  Later in the morning I was proceeding up East River under motor with Sheila and Laurie's skipper on board, when the exhaust pipe finally blew my repairs into asbestos smoke. The cabin was smothered in it, as if from a volcanic eruption. The Statue of Liberty was abeam, and at that critical moment the Queen Elizabeth passed close on her way out of New York Harbour. She saluted
Gipsy Moth
with three blasts, and that was one of the great moments of a lifetime.

  Although I had failed to beat my 30 day target by 3 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes, at least I had knocked nearly a week off my 1960 time – 6 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes, to be exact. (And if I had succeeded in making a thirty-day crossing, as I had hoped, I should have been deprived of the immense sport, anticipation, hope and excitement of trying again!)

  After getting the motor repaired by our old friends at Minneford's Boatyard, City Island, Sheila and I had a happy cruise down Long Island Sound to Cape Cod. Abreast of Fishers Island a small yacht came near as we were sailing, and the man at the helm said, 'Welcome. I am the temporary pastor at Fishers Island, and I am delighted to meet
Gipsy Moth
, because I used Miranda and her guidance as the text for my sermon last Sunday.'

  Early one morning we left Stonington in a fresh breeze which steadily increased. There was a yacht on our starboard bow, and we kept together for hour after hour. As we approached Point Judith, and the area where the 12-metre races for the America's Cup are held, Sheila said, 'Do shorten sail. We are not racing, and it's getting much too bumpy.' I went on deck and reefed the mainsail. The yacht ahead reefed at the same time and, as we overtook her, I was surprised to see her name,
Carina
. Dick Nye's
Carina
had won two Fastnet Races, in which I had been taking part. When we reached Indian Point we tied up to the dock at the end of Cousin Dick's garden, and next morning she said, 'Come for a ride in the automobile; I want to visit a very old friend of mine at Wood's Hole.' His name was Alan Clark, and when Cousin Dick introduced me he said, '
Gipsy Moth
! Why, I was coming down from Long Island Sound on Saturday in my son's yacht
Carina
and had just said to him I must have someone relieve me at the helm, I can't take it any longer, when I'm damned if your
Gipsy Moth
didn't sail by with no one at the helm at all!' This had been Dick Nye's previous yacht.

  We had a great welcome from Cousin Dick and her family, and stayed with them for three weeks. Giles flew out to join us as soon as his term ended at Westminster School. He arrived a few days after his sixteenth birthday, and we waited to let him have a week at Indian Point. My impression was that he filled every available minute of it. At one dance he was putting everything he knew into the twist. Cousin Dick was, or pretended to be, shocked. 'Well, to think that I should live to see that,' she said, 'and from an Englishman too.' I think Giles was laying it on. Afterwards I noticed Cousin Dick dancing with him, though not the twist.

  What wonderful sailing water the Americans have! From our bedroom, where I could hear
Gipsy Moth's
halyards rapping the metal mast where she lay at the end of Cousin Dick's jetty, I could also hear the sailing instructor coaching the boys and girls of the Wiano Yacht Club as they tacked and manoeuvred near the house.

  Our American friends wanted us to leave from Plymouth, Massachusetts, for Plymouth, England, but we wriggled out of it, wishing for a quiet start from Indian Point. We left on 13 August.

  As we cleared Pollock's Rip at the entrance to the North Channel through the Nantucket Shoals, it fell dead calm, dense fog rolled up, night fell and the tide turned, setting on the shoals south of the channel. We were not racing now, and I needed only to start the motor. But when I tried to, the exhaust pipe blew out clouds of asbestos, and the motor stopped dead. Nothing would induce it to go. I spent the night at the helm, coaxing
Gipsy Moth
to ghost eastward with any breath of wind I could detect. I did not like it, but managed to keep clear of the shoals until the tide turned at 3.25 in the morning, and I handed over the tiller to Sheila after twenty hours on the job.

Although we had some great sailing on this passage home, I was not happy. I did not like sailing with Sheila aboard without keeping a watch. When alone, I had only myself to consider. Now Sheila was not fit enough to take a watch, and in any case did not want to, and would not agree to Giles keeping watch on his own. For a lot of the time I was seriously worried. Sheila had sailed tired out from the efforts she had made with the map publishing business in my absence, and helping to organise my departure from England, as well as our arrangements in America. After flying out to America she had led a strenuous life in New York before sailing down to Cape Cod. Soon after we sailed she began getting severe headaches, and felt sick. We ran into rough seas and strong winds, and I think she was worrying about Giles, who was also in his berth with headaches, and felt sick for day after day. The voyage was a formidable enterprise for a boy of sixteen. The heat did not help. I had aimed for the centre of the Gulf Stream, and often the water was hotter than the air. On August 15, 16, 17, and 18 it was 80 °F. I used to sluice myself down with buckets of Gulf Stream in the cockpit, but Sheila was not well enough to do this. Day after day I logged winds of Force 6, with sometimes Force 8 or 9. We made good 750 miles in five days through rough seas. Even with the help of the Gulf Stream this was a good pace. Sheila could not rest because of the rough going, and after a fortnight I was getting seriously worried about her. On 20 August she had some brandy, and wrote in her diary that she felt well, but had no appetite. I could see no improvement. Giles continued to feel ill, and I suspected that his eyes were causing headache due to the strong light reflected from the sea. I feared that ocean sailing was not for him. Then, at the end of the third week, he made a big effort, came on deck, and began helping me with the sail changing. Every day after that he got stronger, and before the end of the voyage he was changing headsails by himself, working the foredeck alone. Before the end of the voyage he was a first-class foredeck hand.

  For Sheila, I did not know whether it was better to sail on regardless of the rough going and reach England as soon as I could, or to halve the speed for easier going, and take much longer over the voyage. In the end I compromised, sailing fairly fast, but not at racing speed.

  Had it not been for these worries it would have been an interesting voyage. I found it fascinating to plot the temperature of the Gulf Stream day by day, and also to compare my dead-reckoning position with my sextant fix, to get a rough idea of the meanderings of the Gulf Stream or Gulf River as it might well be called. The lanes of dark yellow sargasso seaweed, considered with the wind direction at the time, seemed related to the direction of the Stream, which sometimes flowed north or south, sometimes looped westwards, before continuing its easterly passage. This sargasso weed frequently stopped the log spinner several times a day. I used my long boathook to catch clumps of it as we sailed past, and when I examined them in a bucket they were full of tiny crabs and shrimps.

  Several stormy petrels, Mother Carey's chickens, came on board. It is easy to understand how these birds have intrigued sailors through the ages. I used to watch them, fascinated, as they crossed and recrossed the logline with their fluttery, irregular wing beats, occasionally pecking at the line as it twisted after the yacht like a thin snake. Sailors have dreaded them as forerunners of storm, and when we saw so many on this voyage we certainly had rough weather, though no storm. The one that came aboard on 24 August I found later in the evening in one of the lockers under the cockpit seat, with its wings outstretched. It was a small bird, and fitted neatly in my hand, cool to the touch. It had long black legs had three long toes, webbed with a membrane like a bat's wings. Its curved beak was like a tiny parrot's. I held it pointing into the wind in my hand, and it took off into the night. Then, when I was on the counter looking at Miranda, it flew back towards me, and came quite close, fluttering feebly as if wanting to alight again. When I went on deck two hours after midnight I nearly trod on it. We were having a rough ride on a starry night. At 3.20 a.m. when I next went on deck, the petrel was still there; and it took off from my hand like a black moth.

  August 27 dawned with rain squalls in all quarters under dirty, stormy-looking skies, and I donned an oilskin coat for the first time with regret. Until then I had been doing foredeck work in bathing shorts only.

  Throughout the voyage Miranda gave trouble nearly every day and Sheila worried about it. On 3 September Miranda lost her grip after
Gipsy Moth's
stern had been slewed round by a big wave, and while Giles and I were trying to fix it up again, we were both well sluiced by a wave which pooped
Gipsy Moth
, and filled the cockpit. The two chief causes of Miranda's slipping were some self-tapping screws which kept on working loose and freeing the collar they were supposed to hold; secondly, a stainless steel band, doubled over to hold a bolt, was slowly being drawn open.

  My anxiety about Sheila was at its height, and I was feeling sad and unhappy about her, when we sailed over the slope of the Continental Shelf into soundings. This was 150 miles south-west of Land's End, and here it was like sailing over a 7,000-foot cliff into the comparatively shallow water of 400 feet depth. This change in the ocean floor has always been important to sailors: west of it the oceanographers have recorded waves 70 feet high in the Atlantic, whereas on the Cornwall shores waves rarely exceed 20 feet.

  As we sailed over the shelf a magical change took place in Sheila. She recovered so quickly that I could see a change every time I looked. The fact that it happened as we sailed out of deep water was no doubt only a coincidence, but it was odd that her ailing at the beginning of the voyage should have coincided with our sailing off the American Continental Shelf when the depth suddenly increased from 300 feet to 12,000 feet. I felt an immense surge of relief.

  By my reckoning we were 48 miles from the Lizard when I had a blinding row with Sheila, though why I cannot remember. I turned in and slept without moving for twelve hours. Giles and Sheila kept watch, and Giles logged the Lizard light abeam at 3.10 in the morning. When I surfaced at 8 a.m. they said that they had had an exciting fast ride into Plymouth Bay.

  As we sailed into Plymouth Sound on a fine sunny day with an ideal sailing breeze, I photographed Sheila sitting on the cabin top with her back against the mast, and Giles lolling with his hands on the spinnaker pole, and thought that I had never seen a happier, healthier-looking pair. Giles had started the voyage as a boy, but finished it a self-reliant man. As we crossed the line of Plymouth breakwater it was five seconds past noon GMT and we had made the passage from Pollock's Rip in 26 days, 12 hours 14 minutes. Even from west to east it was a fast passage short-handed.

  During the winter of 1962–3 I planned a number of changes to rig, gear and methods, which I hope will speed up
Gipsy
Moth
next year. Now I am impatient to return to the Beaulieu River and start my sailing trials. All my new ideas must be proved right or wrong before the spring of 1964. The single-handed race across the Atlantic starts on 23 May, and I believe that there will be a formidable entry for it. It seems to have fired the imagination of many yachtsmen, and so it should, if it is the greatest of all yacht races. I feel sure that my rivals will all be out after my title. However, I believe that with luck
Gipsy
Moth
can go a good deal faster yet, and I look forward to a thrilling, fascinating race. What is more, I shall take my green velvet smoking jacket again, hoping that my new handling methods will be efficient enough for me to dine in style one night while keeping
Gipsy Moth
racing at her full speed.

SOLO ATLANTIC RACE 1960

SAIL CHANGES