Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (4 page)

Rome was still insisting I wait another year, while Rex Wardman was threatening to break both my legs if I started on a world cruise so ill-prepared. But despite shortages I wanted off, to have
Solitaire
to myself away from prying eyes and to learn our lessons together in solitude, listening to sounds we had not heard before, riding on waves, skirting their edges, gliding over peaks, surfing down valleys, seeing over horizons, controlling our own destinies.

I had no desire to be one of tomorrow's people: ‘We're off tomorrow when we've bought our new sail', ‘We're off tomorrow when we've painted the topsides', ‘We're off tomorrow when we've bought a bigger boat'. I foresaw the final excuse: ‘We're off in a hearse. We ran out of tomorrows.'

I had wanted to start six years before, not tomorrow but yesterday. Whenever asked about my first port of call, I would say, ‘Barbados'. To avoid technical or navigational questions I would become flippant. ‘I'll potter down the middle of the English Channel and when 300 miles into the Atlantic, I'll turn sharp left and sail between the Azores and Portugal. Then I'll fork right onto Barbados' latitude of 13°20´ and I'll stay on it until the island appears over the horizon.'

At that time I believed celestial navigation to be beyond my limited education, a belief which goes back to the early days of
sailing when captains hugged the secrets of navigation to themselves, fearing that mutinous crews might take over their ships. The fact that the young couple with whom I sailed to Gibraltar took no sights, despite having a first class sextant on board, did nothing to rid me of my apprehension. Rome showed me how to correct for sextant error but then I made the mistake of asking him to explain the formula. There is no need to know this, any more than there is to grasp the working of a car's gearbox: simply accept that it works and try to understand the rules. To learn to use a sextant takes less than an hour, a noon sight for latitude no more than a day. Yet I was foolish enough to sail without this basic background.

I had neither timepiece nor navigation tables, so there was no possibility of my carrying out sights for longitude. I possessed a small portable receiver but this had only long and medium waves with limited range and was unable to pick up BBC overseas broadcasts for time checks. My navigational equipment consisted of charts, compass, Walker trailing log (to register distance covered), Seafarer depth sounder, and a Seafix radio direction finder (one of my main hopes for safe navigation since I remembered my morse code from RAF days). A major mistake was not to carry the
Admiralty Book of Radio Signals
, which gives the stations around the world: instead I had
Reeds Almanac
, which only printed European call signs. However,
Reeds
, with a £10 plastic sextant, would give the information for sights for latitude. With my limited sailing experience it would have been more sensible to have studied two or three English ports, using daylight, tides and weather to coastal hop.

Ken Mudd and his family came down to spend the last week with me. Ken, a born do-it-yourselfer, fitted gas bottles, radar reflector, hatches, battery and goodness knows what else. At the end it seemed only fair to take him and his family for a sail, as in any case I wanted to try out the newly-fitted self-steering gear. However, Ken gave me no chance of doing this, seizing the tiller as soon as we were under way and refusing to give it back, glaring down at me from his 6ft 2in at any intrusion on his new-found
pleasure. He managed to chalk up one first with
Solitaire
when he ran us aground.

We had dropped sail and were motoring back to our berth. ‘Stay just this side of the black markers,' I had instructed. ‘Watch out for the ferry'. I was fiddling with the self-steering gear again, leaning over the stern, when...

‘Les, we seem to have stopped.'

‘You stupid clot, Mudd. You've put us
on
the mud. Where's the marker?'

He pointed to a blackbird sitting on a post. Too late I remembered the day I had first met him. We were standing a few feet from a works clock as big as a barn when he asked me the time. Ah well, no one's perfect. With a bit of jumping about we soon got off. Ken and his family returned to Birmingham that night, not out of embarrassment but simply because it was the end of a holiday. It would be nearly three years before I saw him again.

I was passing the point of no return: my old banger was sold, there were last-minute calls to my parents, to Tony Marshall, Irene and their children, Tracy and Sally, with a few belated words of thanks for all their kindness.

By the night of August 17th,
Solitaire
was just about ready to sail. Covers were off, and the number one genoa and working jib hanked onto the twin forestays, the Avon dinghy half-inflated on deck ready to act as a liferaft. Grace Ryott came down to wish me well with a box of chocolate bars. Anne and her daughter, Susan, invited me aboard their boat for a late supper, as they had done so often before. This time there was too much to do, but I was grateful for their help in turning
Solitaire
so that she was pointing in the right direction (I didn't want her kissing the other yachts goodbye!).

Monday, August 18th, I showered and mailed a dozen postcards. A kiss on the cheek from Anne and Susan, a final wave.
Solitaire
and I were off around the world, unfortunately not to fame and fortune but ultimately to laughter, pointing fingers and cries of ‘You're the one who finished up in a maternity hospital.'

Lymington – Tutóia, Brazil

August – November 1975

As the boat moved slowly downriver that Monday and into the Solent, I hoisted the sails at nine o'clock to start a voyage that would take us 34,000 miles around the world and last more than two-and-a-half years. It was a beautiful morning with south-westerly winds in a blue sky patched with a few scattered clouds. I had some anxious moments when the self-steering failed, until I discovered I had repeated an early mistake and had set a reciprocal course. I streamed the Walker trailing log to start registering
Solitaire
's journey.

Half an hour later we were sweeping past the Needles in company with another boat, both close on the wind, neck and neck, red ensign saluting red ensign. Then I showed off, leaving the cockpit to sit on the pulpit forward as if to say, ‘Look, no hands.'
Solitaire
surged ahead while I yearned to climb the mast to look down on the arrowhead her bow was making, to watch her long white wake, longing to run alongside to see her hull in graceful flight. God, it was marvellous. I turned on the radio full blast and made entries in the log. ‘Yipppeee', I concluded, ‘Yipppeee!'

I decided to come about and follow the coast.
Solitaire
hesitated for a second, wondering why we were separating from her new playmate. Then she saw the distant headland and was off
again, heeling for more speed, like a puppy seeking a new interest. The wind blew free with no bills to pay at the end of the month for that! Oceans lay ahead like orchards of succulent fruit: we could gorge ourselves and feast. All free, free, free.

The rent man called that evening, first with a light tapping on the door, followed by a more insistent banging and whistling. Initially I paid no attention. Then, growing nervous and weary, became too exhausted to care. By six that evening we had problems. The wind was increasing, the sea becoming choppy as I reduced the headsail to working jib. With darkness, the lighthouse on Portland Bill started flashing but
Solitaire
was much too close inshore to clear the headland and its race, so I came about and headed south. France was 60 miles away, with plenty of sea room in that direction. Then a fog descended, thick, grey banks obliterating the lighthouse which prompted me to start the engine in order to maintain a compass course. The outlines of large ships waltzed by, partnering
Solitaire
in a dance of disaster, faint shapes towering above us, their unfamiliar lights confusing me. Sometimes I turned away, sometimes circled back, sails a-flap. Terror!

During one of these panics I managed to tangle the trailing log line around the skeg so that now I would have no idea how far
Solitaire
travelled on her manic course. Tuesday morning saw us still beating into angry seas, completely lost. I tried to keep heading west, confused and legless. My radio direction finder would certainly have supplied the answers had I not managed to leave it switched on with the result that the batteries were now flat.

Turning
Solitaire
off the wind I headed north-west to bring us back to the English coast. Late that night shore lights showed faintly through the murk so I dropped sail and stayed on watch until morning when the fog lifted. Land! We were sitting in the western end of a vast bay, in the far distance, a harbour. From the chart Falmouth was shown to the west of a large bay.

Full of confidence,
Solitaire
motored over to a young lady in a rubber dinghy and, in what I thought to be a swashbuckling manner, I shouted, ‘Ahoy there, missy, could you please tell me
where you anchor in Falmouth Harbour?' A look of horror crossed her face. Ye gods, I thought, my flies are open. The poor creature's legs seemed to give way and she collapsed in the bottom of her craft whence weird sounds emerged, followed by a tear-stained face.

‘Miss, I only want to know where you anchor in Falmouth Harbour.'

‘About 100 miles westwards,' came a shrieked reply.

Brixham is a delightful place. For a while
Solitaire
circled its harbour like a cat looking for a comfortable place to settle, this my first attempt at anchoring. Exhausted, I used my remaining strength to tie a length of rope onto a 25lb CQR anchor and throw it over the side. With that I sat on deck, head in hand, until a man in a dinghy appeared alongside.

‘Are you alright?' he asked. I nodded, whereupon he suggested that it would be advisable to put a length of chain on the anchor before the rope. I fetched up about 20ft and after helping me to re-anchor he invited me to dinner with him and his wife. Next morning they were gone. I forgot their names, even their faces, but I will always remember their kindness.

I stayed only a few days in Brixham, using the yacht club's showers but not daring to enter the bar as I could still hear the girl's laughter ringing in my ears. Perhaps the word had gone around: we have a fool in the harbour.

The sail to Falmouth, starting at dawn one morning, arriving early the next, proved easy. Close on the wind all the way we made a fair course without overmuch tacking, sailing with main and number two genoa in a reasonable Force 3 to 4. I managed to pick up all the headlands by day and identify the lighthouses by night, and having replaced the RDF batteries I could now confirm my position with radio fixes.
Solitaire
and I enjoyed this part of the voyage, arriving fresh and slightly more confident. As Falmouth seemed crowded, we moved to the other side of the river and the picturesque village of St Mawes.
Solitaire
has no fitted tanks, she carries her water in six 5-gallon containers. When these were filled,
I bought a roasted chicken, some vegetables, and prepared for our first long voyage together across the Atlantic.

On August 28th, 1975, I hauled up the anchor at the start of a lovely English summer's day with the dew still wet on
Solitaire
's deck, motored out of the sleeping harbour and raised sail. A faint breeze from the north-west seemed reluctant to speed us from our homeland so
Solitaire
drifted south, her self-steering debating whether to hold her on course or give up and go back to bed. By afternoon we were only 12 miles south of Falmouth. A large ketch headed towards us, passing down our side under full sail. I could hear shouting, see its crew waving their arms as though in distress. Quickly dropping the headsail I started the engine, turned into wind and made after them. It turned out their motor had broken down and they were lost.

‘Which way Falmouth?' they called. ‘And how far?'

That I could give them this information amused me and for the rest of the day I kept chuckling to myself. Had they but known!

Good humour came to an abrupt end that night when I managed to rip the mainsail. Soon after the ketch had left us, the wind started to pick up so I hoisted a smaller genoa, then, just before dark, with heavy clouds forming and the wind increasing, I reduced to working jib. That stormy night, still on a broad reach, I tried to drop the main without turning into the wind but the sail caught on the crosstrees and ripped. When it was finally down and lashed, I was violently sick. I was to be sick at sea only twice, due to my idiocy rather than an upset stomach. On this occasion I was concerned about the sail repair, having previously sewn together nothing more complicated than an old pair of socks. What bothered me most was removing the sail from the mast, as Rome had fitted it for me when I had been elsewhere. Did you take it from the mast first or from the boom? It was only a passing fear. I tied the sailbag onto the mast and fed the sail directly into it – successfully.

When next I went below I had my first experience of the different worlds of sailing. On deck it was cold with a screeching
wind, breaking waves and glowing phosphorus. Below it was peaceful and warm.
Solitaire
broad-reached comfortably, delighted to be off the wind and the pounding sea. The rip proved to be only a few inches long and easily repaired, so
Solitaire
and I learned another lesson. There's an old saying of the sea, ‘When you think of reefing (shortening sail), that's the time to reef.' I have always taken this to extremes.

The number two genoa and working jib were permanently fixed to twin forestays and I invariably changed down to the smaller working jib at the slightest excuse such as increasing wind, heavy swell, unusual clouds... and, after many months at sea, on instinct that all was not right. I liked to clear shipping lanes as soon as possible. Once in open sea, I would switch off lights to preserve the batteries and sleep through the night, relying on intuition to wake me for weather changes, deviation from course or ships in the vicinity. That way of thinking would have been different if there had been other people on board when I would have been responsible to them for keeping a good watch at all times. Besides, there is no way you can develop this intuition when other people are around.