Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (17 page)

I dropped all sails – a mistake. I could have continued to run with them but perhaps my judgement was impaired by finding myself with no secure lifelines to starboard. Later, when the winds increased to match the seas, I hauled up the working jib and sailed comfortably. I made an entry in the ship's log next morning and spotted the date, Friday, January 13th. ‘No wonder!' I wrote.

On Monday, January 30th, the entry in the log read: ‘0300 GMT, St Helena sighted'. It always warms me to see land loom out of the dark, particularly when, as with St Helena, there is no lighthouse! I waited until morning before entering harbour, after logging 1,607 miles, which meant we must have had a strong helping current.

St Helena was where Napoleon found himself interred in 1815 after his defeat at Waterloo by the British, since when the island has changed little. Many of the battlements built to prevent any attempted rescue can be seen from the harbour. There is little industry for the 5,000 inhabitants, so many of the young men emigrate to find employment elsewhere, leaving a surplus of attractive ladies with time on their hands. As there is no airfield, the only outsiders who call regularly are yachtsmen.

When the Customs boat came over, I asked them what the main entertainment was or, at least, what the second was. I was told there was a cinema show three times a week. What they neglected to say was that they were the same three films, one of which just consisted of coming attractions that never came.

As soon as practical I rowed ashore, walked through the old town gates and up a sloping cobbled street where the islanders, a friendly lot, crossed the street to greet you. At the local tavern I
asked the innkeeper to bring me a tankard of his finest ale and, as I got stuck into this, became aware of a toothless woman weighing close to 18 stone who was sizing me up. She told me that the town was holding a beach barbecue that night, for which I thanked her kindly and promised to attend but, tired from the voyage, I slept and failed to make it. Next day I was talking to some of the local girls and expressed sorrow at missing the big event, whereupon they started to laugh. It seems the only people on the beach that night would have been me and Toothless. She already had 12 children and was trying for a record 13. After that, my stay on St Helena was like having both my mother-in-laws with me. She would swim around
Solitaire
, a cross between a shark and a whale, and I had to keep explaining she could not come aboard because we would sink.

Local dances started at 7.30 but I was warned to stay away because of the danger of being attacked by man-hungry ladies. At seven o'clock I would be at the door trying to start a queue, only to find, once inside, the blight of my life. The night would be spent with her not so much sitting on my lap as flowing over it, every now and then uttering a war cry reminiscent of a Gordon Highlander. On one occasion, when I saw a crowd of yachties and girls leaving early, I asked the reason. They explained that although the beach was of pebble, there were cardboard boxes to lie on and did I want to reserve one? Not bloody likely!

Many of the South African boats came into St Helena while I was there, including Eilco Kasimier on
Bylgya
, later to continue to Holland for a hero's welcome, and Glen and Norma Harvey on
Chummy
, which was to hit a wreck off Brazil and sink. Fortunately all aboard were saved although I'm not sure what happened to the cats. Six boats were lost at sea between leaving Tahiti and reaching England but luckily all my friends survived.

Another boat from South Africa,
Sundance Kid
, came in just before dark one night when I was able to help, an attention they repaid later in spades. Aboard were Doug and Mary Solomon, with two teenage boys and a crew member, John. They had run
out of diesel and were coming in under sail. Although Doug was a first class seaman, the light was poor and as St Helena sometimes has a 30ft swell at that time of year, anchoring alone is not particularly healthy. It is far safer to have at least one rope onto a mooring buoy so I rowed out with a torch and directed them to lie alongside
Solitaire
.

Life on this island must be a paradise for any able-bodied seaman but after 10 days I felt as pure and as disappointed as a snowflake falling in summer. Next stop was Ascension Island, 700 miles away. We set sail on Saturday, February 11th, 1978, in company with
Sundance Kid
, only to watch them pull away under poled-out headsails.

The conditions were much the same as before, with following winds from the south-east. The trip passed without incident, apart from the sextant falling to bits, which I soon cured with a few elastic bands. After logging 671 miles we arrived on Saturday, February 18th, quite blasé about our navigation, despite a sick sextant. The island, emerging from the ocean like a dirty grey volcano, I spotted 30 miles away. I was thrown a curving ball in that the powerful RDF transmitter was off air. One would think that when you approach an island that is packed with satellite-tracking equipment, a BBC relaying station and a modern airfield, not to mention their own Russian spy ship, there would be little problem in keeping a simple transmitter serviceable. One would think. I had the confidence not to worry, although I did pray for the sun to come up every morning so that I could take sights. My prayers increased in tempo when I looked into the anchorage.

It is always difficult to judge a breaking wave from the back. Even taking a picture of a really terrifying one from this angle will show only a comparatively flat sea. I could see things were quite interesting by the bashing the sea wall was taking and the puzzling way everything kept disappearing – now you see it, now you don't. One minute there would be landing barges and yachts, the next the anchorage would be empty. Obviously a monster swell was responsible for this illusion so I considered giving it a miss and
pushing on to the Azores but, as there were two yachts at anchor and I wanted to post some letters, I decided to take a closer look.

In England I used to watch an American TV show called
Hawaii Five-O
, which always started with some nut on a surfboard inside a wave. During the next few minutes I was to become that nut. I began to enter the harbour under power with sails stowed and conditions looking not too bad. Then, as everything went dark, I looked up, expecting to see a black cloud across the sun: instead I saw water reaching for the top of the mast. We were inside a breaking wave, with no way out. If I tried to turn we would broach, capsize and finish as a wreck on the rock-strewn beach. To do nothing meant surfing in at Lord knows what speed to smash into the harbour wall.

The wave took the decision out of my hands. It fell on us.

Even as the cockpit started to empty I was turning
Solitaire
, bringing her around to face the threatening seas, clawing back out to sea. I could now see where the breakers started and finished so I made for a marker buoy and rounded it to make another attempt but, as we closed, the other craft still kept vanishing, clinging to their mooring buoys. The wind was offshore so that whenever the swell came in, the boats would rear mightily, surge forward, and then be driven back by the wind as the wave passed through. There were no free buoys but I would be unable to leave the tiller long enough to secure a line anyway. The nearest yacht was
Sundance Kid
. I decided my only chance was to get a line onto one of the landing barges and hang off its stern. I went round the nearest a few times but there was no one to take a rope.

I closed Doug's boat intending to shout goodbye before continuing on to the Azores when John, the crew member, dived over the side and started swimming towards me, risking his life. I just could not see how anyone could survive in that sea. Had Lana Turner been alone on the other craft, begging me to step off
Solitaire
, I would not have gone, even after my disappointment in St Helena. In that situation I think I would have gone below and quietly cut my throat. No way would I have left
Solitaire
.

After getting a line to John, he managed to clamber on board. When we had chewed a piece out of the bow and twisted a pulpit, he succeeded in getting a line onto a bollard on the stern of a barge, whereupon I played out as much rope as I could without endangering the craft astern of us. Each time the swell bore in, the rear barge would lift like a bird of prey, come screeching down for the kill and then stop a few yards short of
Solitaire
. Next moment we would be shooting up in the lift, looking down on the craft ahead, before plunging for its decks. My stomach muscles relaxed when I became confident that this vessel would move forward before we struck. It is terrifying to realise you have so little control over the life of your craft and, for that matter, your own.

John told me
Sundance Kid
had arrived the day before. The people on the adjoining boat had gone ashore with Doug's wife and the boys, whereafter the swell had started. Those ashore had been forced to spend the night there with no chance of returning until things eased. In fact it was 48 hours before we could land and the island newspaper reported it was the worst swell, rollers and resultant undertow for years. Concern was felt for the Giant Turtle eggs that were destroyed, Ascension Island being one of their few breeding places.
Sundance Kid
had been watching when I made my first approach and, as the first wave hit
Solitaire
, it seemed she had gone down like a stone. Later some of the Americans and British, who had been standing on the surrounding hills keeping an eye on us, confirmed that even the mast vanished. Having decided that we were lost and that they should start looking for survivors on the beach,
Solitaire
's bow shot back from her grave to live again. Tongue in cheek they offered to take a collection for a repeat performance!

I told them bluntly what to do with their cameras.

Ascension, in many ways, is the opposite of St Helena, which is green and reasonably fertile with a surplus of girls and little to do, a tired island living in the past and totally isolated from the modern world. Landing on Ascension, in comparison, is like landing on the moon. Barren of greenery, the island is grey and
dusty, growing only tracking and transmitting aerials charged with static electricity, a man's island with few spare ladies. Although it is under British control, Ascension depends on the gigantic American airbase for its lifeblood. I have played golf in some unlikely places, in the deserts of South Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and on a beach in Brazil, but Ascension has a golf course which its members describe as the worst this side of hell and, after playing on it, I was forced to agree. It is more like playing on a pinball machine. Having hit your ball you can relax awhile, watching it leap from rock to rock. When it settles, the game turns into hide-and-seek. At this stage you realise that this is also a very expensive course to play since every time you hit a ball you are virtually kissing it goodbye.

Everything possible is done for the servicemen and contracted civilians working there. If you weary of the black and grey landscape or looking out to sea, there are always the latest films to be seen nightly at a variety of clubs. The Air Force base has a fine restaurant that looks as if it has been freshly shipped from Hollywood, the meals cheap, the food fresh. Spending most of my time in the clubs talking to BBC and service personnel, I never did get to see a film.

I cast off from the stern of the landing barge on Friday, February 24th, with England 5,000 miles away and Cape Horn a further 20,000. We left in a mood of uncertainty. If I sailed direct to England, spring would hardly have sprung. Should the weather prove too cold as we pushed north, it might be advisable to stop off in the Azores and wait for a warmer welcome home. There was enough food and water on board for a non-stop voyage. I would play it by ear.
Solitaire
had now sailed close to 30,000 miles since we took our first stumbling steps with Rome in the Solent. Considering the punishment and adventures we had shared, she was still in good health, although her motor gave concern. On top of that, the working jib that had seen us round the world was on its last legs, broken stanchions needed welding, and the sextant was held together by faith and elastic bands. The self-steering needed new nylon bushes but at least it still worked well.

On Tuesday, March 21st,
Solitaire
crossed her outward-bound track, tying the knot and completing her first voyage around the world. In the past I had run the motor every week or two, now I was exercising it every few days, but each time it became more difficult to start. I ran it for long periods to circulate the oil and charge the battery but every mile north the problem increased. As the Atlantic grew colder the seas sucked through the engine froze and thickened the oil, adding more problems to those with which we left Cape Town.

Wednesday, April 5th, found us close to Horta in the Azores after logging 3,330 miles from Ascension. Land's End, England, was approximately only 1,200 miles away. I had heard many heart-warming incidents about the Azores and its people so the temptation to call in was great but, above all, now I wanted to see my family so we sailed on. The waves that broke over
Solitaire
's decks were touched with ice and her cabin grew cold, damp and dreary. Slowly I increased my clothing, first long trousers and sweater, then heavy socks and sea boots, which I left on for longer periods until finally I slept in them.

The motor grew even harder to start and 900 miles from England it groaned for a few minutes, slowed down and coughed as though it had consumption, exhaled its last breath and died. I performed every operation I could think of to bring it back to life, bleeding its system, stripping it down, taking off its head. Its dismembered body was strewn over a heaving cabin floor and I did everything possible bar give it the kiss of life. I accepted the fact that we would have to sail up the English Channel without its backing, conserving the battery for navigation lights.