Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (6 page)

At noon the horizon was even hazier with no chance of a sight. Then a second island appeared which, if we were sailing down the west coast of Martinique, had to be St Lucia. I decided to pass between the two and then head for Barbados. A few hours later I realised that these islands were merging and that we were entering the mouth of a river! At that point I realised I badly needed help for there was nothing in the Caribbean that looked like this.

Solitaire
was sailing in shallow waters where the charts showed 50 fathoms or more. The riverbanks continued to close in on us, now 3–4 miles apart. Small open fishing boats and canoes appeared with the same patched triangular sails I had noted on the earlier vessels. I closed them, pointing downriver, and shouting ‘Harbour', which brought only smiles and shrugs. Then I tried shouting ‘Porto' at which they waved me on.

Moving through the same dirty brown water the echo sounder read 7–8ft. Now and again
Solitaire
would hesitate as we touched soft sand but in no way put out she would shake herself and continue on her way. A Spanish-style village began to appear above a bay to starboard, first a church, then white buildings with red-tiled roofs, and finally a jetty with a flat-bottomed canopied boat tied to it. A walled road ran up a hill, with people lining it. I attempted to anchor but such was the current it would not hold and
Solitaire
was swept towards the shore which made me decide to carry on upriver and find another haven.

Just before dark the river ended in forest. I dropped anchor and was contemplating inflating the dinghy and rowing ashore
when a canoe appeared manned by a man with a dirty cloth at his waist tucked between hairy legs. He passed with thrusting strokes, bulging muscles and furtive looks. A forked spear lay in the bottom of the canoe, most likely for fishing. Holy cow, I thought, I wouldn't like to meet him on a dark night, so decided to stay where I was.

It had been a long day but there was still much to do. For the first time since the knockdown I dried out
Solitaire
, including her bilges. Water had been coming in pretty fast and I had been pumping her every 2 or 3 hours without tracing its point of entry.

By now it was dark and the sky full of stinging insects. Thinking of food I went below into an oven where I managed a cup of tea but spent so much time defending myself with flailing arms that food was not worth the effort. Perhaps those tropical marauders fancied some real English roast beef. I closed the hatch and slept so deeply that dragon bites would not have wakened me. When I came to at dawn, my face was puffed and swollen. Having feasted heartily off me through the night, the dragons had limped off home – gorged. Now all I wanted was to get back to sea. The trip upriver had taken six hours. Two days later, after forcing a way back through thick, brown chocolate, I was to remember those few hours as pleasurable!

At first the return was not too bad. In the cool of early morning I hoisted the sails and started the engine. At the end of each tack I would simply turn the self-steering onto its new course and stand with a genoa sheet in each hand, letting go on one, taking up on the other as we came through the wind. The slow-running engine kept her moving as she came about, easing her through any soft sand. Hard-in sails helped her to heel, which lifted the keel slightly. Every now and again I would pump the bilges but progress was slow.

The mid-day sun reflected off a burning deck. Standing in the cockpit was uncomfortable even in a minimal shirt and shorts as I sought relief from the hot breeze, quite unconscious of the sun's damage to my skin and eyes. The previous night's bites were now sore and itching and when darkness fell we still had not reached the village. I tried to continue sailing but islands of hard-packed
sand constantly delayed
Solitaire
. When we ran hard into one particularly shallow patch, I called it a day, anchored and made tea, for again I could not face food. All I wanted was the night's cool comfort. Bliss... then the dragons arrived for another feast.

I sailed next morning as soon as I could make out the shoreline. The river began to widen and by noon
Solitaire
was a mile or two beyond the village, still running into islands of hard packed sand just below the surface that were impossible to see. Normally they did not cause too much concern: we invariably hit them on their downriver side and the wind soon floated us off again. Then, after running into one soft patch,
Solitaire
's motor stopped. The engine uses seawater as a coolant but the muck we were sailing in did not agree with its digestion, so it overheated and gave up the fight. Lacking its thrust we drifted astern and finished on the wrong side of a hard-packed island. For the first time since leaving England I inflated the dinghy and stepped off
Solitaire
, dropping our anchor with 200ft of rope in deep water.

A few fishing boats closed to see what was going on. One came alongside with a crew of three who I invited aboard
Solitaire
and gave them cigarettes, the first people I had spoken to since the lost souls on the ketch off Falmouth. Not that I could understand these men's language. I felt they had originally come from Spain or Brazil, and spoke Portuguese or heavily-accented Spanish. Peasants in rolled-up trousers, secured by string, they wore tattered shirts and, above all, battered straw hats – which I envied. One or two of the words they used I recognised, ‘please', ‘yes', ‘no', with which I tried to obtain my whereabouts.

One pointed to me and asked, ‘Saint Lucia?'

Getting somewhere at last, I thought. I shook my head and said, ‘Barbados.' Waving in the general direction of the DF signal, I asked ‘Saint Lucia?'

To this they all nodded their heads enthusiastically. I fetched my chart of the Caribbean, and pointed to my position. It was as if it had a curse, they would not even look. I kept pushing it under their noses, pleading, ‘Please, señor.'

Then I noticed
Solitaire
was leaning further over, a foot of sand showing around her. It could not be happening. The Caribbean has no such tide. My guests sat back smoking and smiled confidently, waiting for
Solitaire
to float. I watched the miracle of the waters rising until she pulled on her anchor line and swung into deep chocolate whereupon I farewelled the fishermen, hauled up the sails, and again started reaching for blue waters.

Within an hour it was dark but the river grew wider as we tacked by the stars. I nipped below and made tea, putting marmalade on a cheese biscuit. Next moment I was spread-eagled over the forward bulkhead.
Solitaire
had hit an island and was on her side. Before I had time to panic, a wave had picked her up and gently deposited her in deep water where she continued serenely as though nothing had happened. That would teach me to go below without permission.

As I picked up the lighthouse and made towards it, I started to hear a strange but familiar sound I could not place. Dropping sails, I put down the anchor and, head on tiller, fell asleep having sailed and pumped for nearly 40 fasting hours. Dawn found us close inshore, a shore covered by bushes. Then I remembered and recognised the sound I had heard: crickets! Once clear of the land, I studied my chart, trying to identify the coast with the compass. Nothing made sense. There was no river that size on Martinique, nothing like it in all the Caribbean, the brown water too shallow, the tides quite wrong, the land too flat.

I could not just sit there; we had to sail in some direction. I would sail north, back the way we had come, so I brought
Solitaire
onto that heading. But that could not be right, we must sail south and home in on the RDF to St Lucia. I turned
Solitaire
south. In the end I was changing course every few minutes and circling, circling. I gave up, apologised to
Solitaire
, made tea and ate my marmalade biscuits. Since first hitting the reef three days ago I had accomplished nothing. The trip downriver had ended with me burned by the sun and savagely bitten.

The locals had said St Lucia again and again. My last latitude
had been 14°30´N so, river or no river, I must be on the west coast of Martinique. Nothing else was possible. Finally I headed north. On Sunday, October 19th,
Solitaire
was back on course for Barbados which I believed to be south-east and I followed the coast until clear of land when I found that sailing in clear water had increased the leaks. I was now pumping out
Solitaire
every two hours.

Next morning I hallucinated, believing that my brother Royston was sleeping in my bunk. Should I disturb him and ask him to have a go at pumping? Later I made two cups of tea, and took him one in the cockpit. Just before dark, standing in the hatchway, I felt a chest pain. Looking down I saw I was pushing hard against the hatch cover to make room for family and friends standing behind! Of course I saw no one. There was no fear, nothing worse than having too much to drink and making a fool of myself. Too much worry, too much sun.

Thoughts of sailing direct to Barbados were given up on Tuesday, October 21st. Then one of the twin forestay bottle screws, which allow the standing rigging to be adjusted, broke. Later I learned that it failed because there was no universal coupling at its base. With loose rigging I turned
Solitaire
and ran westwards. My condition was deteriorating, my skin so burned that even a light shirt proved painful, yet I had to spend hours in the cockpit pumping and sailing
Solitaire
, the sun ever blazing, the spray stinging. I could no longer see the horizon. There was no mirror aboard, but I knew my eyes were nearly closed and my head was blistering.

Wednesday, October 22nd
. A week had passed since hitting the reef. Sailing back into the brown shallows, I saw a large bay with the same fishing boats and canoes, the same peasant crews. My spirits rose when I saw a large marker buoy, the type used to mark shipping channels. I circled it, but the echo sounder showed only a few bitterly disappointing feet. Ashore were palm trees and several thatched huts. Motoring down I found flat water with no current, so anchored in 7ft or so, backing away to allow the chain to run out. I went below, glad to be out of the flying spray and
burning sun, and lay on my bunk for the first time in many long days. I moved my eyelids a fraction to close them. Beautiful, deep soothing sleep. Then a bump on
Solitaire
's side.

I staggered on deck to find a dug-out canoe alongside with a man and woman, both with broken teeth and flat faces, and a coloured, handsome man with Spanish features. He made signs indicating the sea would soon leave the lagoon, precisely what I needed to allow me to sleep in safety and, later, inspect
Solitaire
's hull. To please them, I thought I'd move
Solitaire
a few feet. I started her motor, removing its cover to make sure it was not overheating and, stumbling, pushed my leg against the revolving flywheel. A quick burning pain... I watched the blood run without the slightest interest, switched off the motor, gave my visitors cigarettes and pumped the bilges. Finally, lovely sleep.

I awoke spluttering, my face immersed in sea water.
Solitaire
was lying on her side and water had collected – into which I had submerged my face when turning in my sleep. On deck I could see we were about 200 yards up the beach, the sun about to make its appearance. Clambering over
Solitaire
's side, I felt cooling sands on my grilled feet. Ecstasy! A bent old man was examining the beach pools and extracting stranded fish, which he belted over the head before dropping them into his sack. I joined in the game for a while, laughing and dancing like a clown until, tiring of the sport, I went to lay out anchors as close as possible to the sea.

By now
Solitaire
's starboard side was completely exposed and I could examine the wounds she had endured on the reef. A large piece missing from the bottom of the skeg accounted for the jammed rudder. Halfway along her hull on the waterline was one area that had been pushed in the depth of a dinner plate, another (larger) area simply flattened. Other parts were scratched and gouged, although none an inch deep, the thickness of her skin. In the hot sun,
Solitaire
soon dried out. Still searching for the cause of the leak, I saw dampness where the after end of the keel joined the hull which I had reinforced with fibreglass at least an inch-and-a-half thick. When I cleaned it with a file, water trickled out.

Fortunately I carried resin and fibreglass on board in sealed containers; unfortunately I had no brushes or gloves to protect my hands. Despite making a brush from a rope's end, I still managed to cover my hands with resin, which I tried to clean off with rag and seawater. Then I had the brilliant idea of using sand and finished up looking as if I were wearing brown gloves, which at least stopped me scratching my face. It is inadvisable to glass over a damp surface but, by adding extra hardener, I made a half-decent job.

By the time I had finished, a crowd of locals had gathered. The last job was to inspect my stock of 18 bottles of spirits and some 600 English cigarettes which, as I was a non-smoker, were mostly for trade. I came across about 40 sodden yachting magazines and took them on deck, intending to dump them. A girl reached up, so I gave her one. Next minute I was besieged by fighting, screaming women and out of the newspaper business. I decided the men should also have a treat and dished out half a dozen bottles of whisky and gin and, to add to the party spirit, started handing out cigarettes. While this was going on I tried to hold some kind of a conversation without much luck. Suddenly I heard the name ‘Pele'.

‘Football!' I shouted, and pretended to dribble a ball. Pointing to myself I said, ‘Golf.' The best I could get from my fans was ‘Goof'. I still had a set of golf clubs on board so fetched them, made a round hole in the sand, marched back 150 yards, selected my trusty five iron and asked the admiring public to stand back. With my ‘sandpaper' gloves I had a good grip on the club. Making my first back swing as wide and slow as possible, I came down and through what I saw as two blurred balls, holding my stance at the end of the applause. A slight titter. Looking down I could still see two balls.