Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (23 page)

‘Why did you give up sailing round the world, Les?'

‘Well, I cut my thing off!'

Perhaps one should not curse the Japanese, even if they are slaughtering your friends.

We had now reached the stage in the voyage when life began to speed up. I'm often asked how it is possible to spend week after week living in boredom. Most people on holiday find that, although the first week goes fairly slowly, the longer they are away the faster the time flies, particularly if they are enjoying themselves. It's the same with sailing. You wake and perhaps bake bread, take the morning sight, have a coffee, read a book. After noon sights, the main meal. More reading in the afternoon followed maybe by a bit of a snooze. Watch the dolphins play with a last coffee. Another day has passed. Work and storms interfere with this fast-moving clock. In moments of danger it stops to freeze you in a lifetime's terror.

Wednesday, August 6th
.
The start of our fifth week at sea, our latitude 12° north of the Equator and longitude 27°W. Another 720 miles to Rome's first parcel for crossing the line. We start edging to the east to sail down the middle of the South Atlantic, reducing the longitude to around 20°W. No point in heading for the Cape of Good Hope because a large, high-pressure area lies
off the coast of South Africa. Better to stay clear of its calms, not that there would be much chance of a direct passage anyway. Since leaving England the winds had started from the west and slowly veered, moving clockwise to north then north-east, giving lazy days of sailing with stern winds. Now they were blowing from the east. The doldrums would bring confusion to the winds. It would be possible to have days, even weeks, of calms to be broken by squalls, short sharp gales from every point of the compass. Flat seas, angry seas. You paid your money and took your chances. Once through the doldrums the wind should settle, blowing constantly from the south-east, and the Cape of Good Hope, our next turning point.

Whenever I think or write about the weather my thoughts seem always to affect it. After writing in the log that we would soon be in the doldrums we lay in a sea of grey steel. Every now and then someone would shake its corner, making it swell and ripple. We spent the night with just the reefed mainsail up. Even so there was much slamming and banging, and for all the noise we covered only 4 miles, and lost two of our three buckets. How I could be so stupid as to lose two buckets one after another I have little idea. The handle came off one as I was trying to bring seawater on deck and fell like a leaf through the transparent blue water. Without more ado I tied a second bucket to a rope and dropped it over the side with the same effect. Neptune must have thought it was raining buckets but at least he had a matching pair. The last bucket now took on a new importance. Although I had a flush toilet on board, once in the Southern Ocean, with its high seas, it would be more sensible to close it down at its seacocks and use a bucket. Fortunately the remaining bucket was stronger than its companions so I thought it should render valiant service.

Thursday night brought a vicious electrical storm with black, racing clouds, breaking waves, skin-smarting driven rain... and our first visitor, an unwelcome one: a butterfly, in the middle of an ocean, bringing only sadness with it for its certain death. As with land birds they last only a day or two as you try to feed them, but
they always die. Sometimes you wake in the morning and they are lying stiff on the cabin floor. At other times they disappear and you feel thankful. Days later you move a book or a chart and you find their lonely grave. It's difficult for people living ashore to understand the effect of such a loss. Unlike the human race a single small bird becomes your responsibility; you share in its suffering, it's the only living thing with you.

We had been in the storm for some time. Angry seas tore furiously towards us, breaking over
Solitaire
's bow and flooding her decks. The night sky, lit by a full moon and hundreds of bright stars, was brilliant. It is only when you watch awhile and notice how quickly moon and stars are being switched on and off by racing clouds, fronts rushing through like stampeding herds, that you understand. I reduced to two reefs in the main with working jib and decided that before enjoying a hot drink below I would first clear up the tangled mess of halyards and sheets in the cockpit.

I bent to pick up the ropes and came up with a screaming monster in my hands. Jesus Christ! I flung it as hard as I could. Only when it hit the boom and its wings splayed out did I realise it had been a storm petrel. I watched it fall into the sea with horror. I had committed murder and the loss of this bird was to stay with me for the rest of the voyage. I would be reminded of it every time I saw other birds gliding past
Solitaire
's white hull or landing in her sheltered wake.

Saturday, August 9th
.
One calendar month out of Lymington. Still making progress in squalls and confused sea with runs of 60 to 100 miles a day. Hard on the wind most of the time with plenty of tacking back and forth.

One night when we were hard-pressed I heard two loud bangs like a gun going off. I dashed on deck thinking the rigging had parted. By the time I had reached the cockpit, the thing I used for a brain had already accepted the fact and was calculating how to reach Ascension Island under jury-rig. The rigging still stood and I could find no reason for the double bangs. I had heard aircraft flying through the sound barrier and this had sounded much like
that – a cannon exploding followed by its echo. Possibly it was a high-flying jet or even a satellite passing overhead at 100 miles a minute, making unflattering comments as we crawled across the planet trying to make the same distance in a full day.

At this point in my log I made a remark about Francis Chichester. To be honest I've never been a lover of your conventional hero. My type is like Rome's sister, Terry, who had a cancerous breast removed just before I sailed. That did not stop her walking down to
Solitaire
or laughing at the party. During the Second World War I wanted to be a pilot and envied those I saw walking the streets, wings on their breasts, popsies on their arms – the Few who saved the country. But the real heroes for me were the poor devils who spent year after year in mud, covered in lice, until one day some idiot told them to stick their heads up and get them blown off. They received no medals, were never called ‘heroes' but only because they were not of the few, but the many. Bloody millions of them.

Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnston, Alex Rose were people I admired for living full lives. Apart from Slocum I had read only one of their books but because I found Chichester's
Gypsy Moth Circles The World
among my paperbacks, I read it to check my positions and times for different stages of the voyage against his. In the ship's log that day I noted that it had taken Chichester only 22 days to reach my position against
Solitaire
's 32. No way could
Solitaire
equal
Gypsy Moth
's times. We would set no records; our satisfaction would come from finishing something we had started.

Solitaire
continued south through confused seas and grey, overcast skies, tacking back and forth, dropping off the top of waves, decks awash. Concerned half the time because we carried so little sail, worried the next because of sea falling from under us, an anxious eye on the weakened, straining rigging.

For a few days the sun sulked behind heavy layers of mist and clouds, the odd smile it managed so fleeting that it could have been imagined. Dead reckoning put us 300 miles above the equator. Since leaving England I had used one chart only to cover the 3,500 miles we had logged, one of the luxuries I had indulged in! It would
have been safer to have had charts of the islands we passed, but a chart of even a harbour will cost as much as one covering several thousand miles. Chart two would have brought looks of disbelief from any self-respecting yachtsman. While in Darwin, Australia, I had photocopied one of Terrell's charts covering the Atlantic from 10°N to 37°S, say 2,820 miles. It was in two pieces as it was too large for the machine in one go and made of thin, coffee-stained, pencil-marked paper. Alas, it did not even cover the 200 miles below the Cape of Good Hope, which I needed to help avoid the fast-flowing Agulhas Current that sweeps from east to west under South Africa. The lack of food, equipment, sails and charts I had accepted before starting out. My log complained constantly about this, but it was only my way of letting off steam.

In the heavy seas,
Solitaire
had started taking on water from the forward compartment and I needed to pump out her bilges twice a day. Once through the doldrums, with their squalls and confused seas, things would improve, but I felt useless as I watched the boat try so hard for so little progress, one working her heart out while the other sat around long-faced and complaining. That apart, my health was good. I still worried about small things like appendicitis, breaking a leg or simply needing a heart transplant. That's another thing I find amusing, being asked if it would not be safer to have two aboard for such emergencies. In fact all you do is double the chances of trouble.

The end of our fifth week found us 296 miles above the Equator, 18°24´W. We had just finished one long tack to the east. Our next would take us back to around 20°W. That week we logged 632 miles which sounds pretty fair until you look at the chart and find that all you have made good in the last 24 hours is 90 miles due east when you want to be sailing south! After 35 days we had travelled 3,615 miles, still holding onto our 100 miles a day, but only just.

In week six more living things, sea birds, started to join us, this time brown in colour. They needed constant winds for survival; perhaps, soon, we would be out of the doldrums, I thought. I
was fitter than I had been for two years and my spare tyre had been worn away by
Solitaire
's constant movement. My skin had toughened so that I no longer worried about sunburn, and I had settled to my planned diet, baking bread every third day to accompany the eggs and onions. I was conscientiously leaving the food that would last until the end of the voyage.

The biggest lift to my spirits was that soon we would cross the Equator and have Ascension Island within easy reach, and Rome and Annegret's first parcel to open. I started to look forward to that day with an enthusiasm I had not experienced since I was a small boy. My log became full of the event. On Monday, August 18th, our noon sight showed us to be just 24 miles north of the Equator. I could have cheated and opened my present then, arguing that with luck we would cross over the line before midnight. However, I had promised myself that no present would be opened until the specified time. Nevertheless it slept with me at the bottom of my bunk. We crossed the line at 10pm GMT. Inside the parcel was a lovely tin of ham, enough for two meals, a tin of fruit, another of coleslaw, a can of beer, chocolates, sweets and a letter from Annegret. My log read:

Just opened my parcel. Over the moon with contents. I've been cutting down on eating my tinned food but tonight a special treat of cooked ham and coleslaw. I'll be drinking to Rome's and Annegret's health with the beer they supplied. Makes me remember the many times they've had me round to dinner. God bless them! Have taken pictures of parcel with Rome's camera.

Rome had lent me his, together with three rolls of 35mm film. Then Peter Tolputt had turned up with another easy-to-use camera and more film. It was one of the things I just had not even considered because of the cost. Later I was to be pleased that my friends had.

At the end of our sixth week we were 4,155 miles out from Lymington (the direct route by chart was more like 3,800). That week we had logged 540 miles, but by direct line, Wednesday to Wednesday, noon to noon, only 440 miles. Despite the lost 100 miles there was much to be grateful for: the winds had settled from
the south-east and were allowing
Solitaire
to sail close to them on a southerly heading. During the day I saw my first whales of the voyage, brown monsters that broke the surface half-a-mile away, blowing water vapour, disappearing, reappearing, bothering no one. That day's log finished on a cheerful note, ‘Now for fresh bread, the last of yesterday's ham, fresh onion and soup. Blue sky, scattered white clouds, winds south-east. A good book. It can't be bad.'

August 22nd
. For the first time in nine days we covered 100 miles in the right direction. Looking at the chart and reading the daily logged distance you would have thought the rest of the seventh week was sailed in the same blissful conditions: our pencilled course flew arrow-straight for 602 miles, never wavering from our intended longitude of 22°W. The noon positions were equally spaced, 86 miles, 81, 87, 87, 85, 77 miles. Only on reading the log do you realise how bad the conditions were.
Solitaire
has sailed in far worse seas – in fact the winds barely blew over Force 8 (39mph). Maybe it was just worry over the gear and the distance still to go, but I have never known my nerves so raw. For the first time I began to wonder what the devil I was doing out here.

It started that Thursday night with the entry, ‘Could be past Ascension Island in a few days if sails, gear and guardian angel don't let us down. Winds gusting,
Solitaire
dropping off the odd wave.'

Friday
.
Changed down to working jib during the night, winds gusting Force 6. Lots of square waves give impression of climbing upstairs. Can't increase sail area because of slamming. All to be expected in this area with its high swells. Still managing to head south (slowly), blue sky, scattered clouds, 86 miles in 24 hours.

Saturday
.
No sights possible, very rough sea. 81 miles in 24 hours. Still working jib and one reef in mainsail. Charts show Force 4 winds from south-east. Holding approximate course south, but sea throwing
Solitaire
all over the ocean. One minute becalmed, next screaming winds. Bilges constantly filling. Very little sleep with all the bouncing. Nerves get on edge when
Solitaire
is knocked about. Nothing I can do: if I reduce sail further we won't make any headway.