Gipsy Moth Circles the World Page 11
“Life is going to be pretty good hell I imagine for the next fortnight or so. I have been out to the tiller several times in the past two hours, once to prevent a gybe when the wind dropped, another time because the wind had increased, making the boat gripe up to windward. Tomorrow I must try to lead tiller lines into the cabin so that I can steer from there. Otherwise I shall go barmy if I have to dress up each time I have to adjust the tiller. At the moment the wind direction is the best possible, because beam to wind is the boat’s natural lie. What I shall do to make her go downwind I can’t think at present. I am going to turn in for a sleep while I can.”
It was a stinking night, and I was called out several times to find the boat headed west instead of east, with all the sails aback. On one of these occasions I lay drowsy in my berth reluctant to get up again, and I noticed that although the sails were aback, the boat was forging ahead slowly and a most important fact—she kept a much steadier course than when she was sailing in the right direction with the sails all drawing. At the time I took these facts in without really being aware of them. They imprinted themselves; as it were, on my subconscious self.
At 6 a.m. I started the job of trying to make the boat sail itself in some way or other, so that I should be able to eat and sleep without having her stop dead. It looked desperate by breakfast time, when I had been trying for an hour to balance the sail pressure, etc, against the pull on the tiller. However, I had a good breakfast, even though I absent-mindedly dipped into the coffee jar instead of the marmalade pot. Some time during breakfast I recalled that Gipsy Moth had held a steady heading when she had been turned round facing west with the sails aback. This was a strange fact; surely I might be able to make use of it? During breakfast, when I was trying hard to squeeze something out of my brain, I had an idea. I devised something and by 10.20 I had the boat sailing herself, on course, and downwind. She was not going very fast, but by then there was only an 8-knot wind (thank Heaven). An albatross gravely insulted my efforts by swimming or paddling along a few yards astern, to keep up with Gipsy Moth.
All that day I was experimenting. I unshackled both the storm sails and changed them over, so that the smaller sail was on the staysail stay, then I hove the clew of this small storm staysail to windward, so that the sail was as she would be if the ship had turned right round and the sail was aback; then I linked the clew of this sail to the tiller by means of blocks on each side. After a lot of trial and error, the result was as follows:
When the yacht was on course, the sail was aback, and wind pressing on it pulled the tiller sufficiently to windward to counteract the tendency of the boat to turn up into wind.
If the boat did begin turning off course into wind, the pressure on the sail increased, with the result that the pull on the tiller increased, making the boat turn off the wind again.
If, on the other hand, the boat started turning downwind, this steering sail would presently gybe, as it were, and the wind would press on it from the other side, thereby exerting a pull on the tiller in the other direction to leeward, with the result that the boat turned towards the wind again.
Luckily the wind had fallen light that morning, and all day I was working in a gentle breeze of between 7½ and 10 knots. By noon I had sailed 91 miles on course for Fremantle since the self-steering gear broke. At 17.30 I logged: “Nearly becalmed. At least Gipsy Moth has steered herself all day which I regard as an achievement starting from scratch, even if it isn’t right for other conditions.”
My chief anxiety now was not to embarrass Sheila. Her ship was due in at Fremantle next day, and I had to get a message to her before then, so that she would not continue on to Sydney while I put into Fremantle. That evening I had a bad contact with Oriana. Her operator seemed to hear me better than I could hear him. I kept on repeating: “I am on my way to Fremantle, I am putting into Fremantle.” The contact was too bad to explain why. I logged: “Poor Sheila, she will wonder what is happening.”
That night was dark and it was raining. I saw a strange thing, bright blobs of phosphorescence up in the air passing the boat. As my eyes got used to the dark I realised that these bright patches were actually in the water, and the high waves had made them appear to be up in the air!
By noon of the 17th I was another 81 miles on the way to Fremantle. But I was getting increasing fits of depression and sense of failure; I had set out to sail non-stop to Sydney. The prospect of putting in at Fremantle stuck in my gullet, and finally I decided that I could not stomach it. At 3.45 that afternoon I altered course back for Sydney.
All day I worked on my self-steering system, watching the effect on my steering arrangement and the tiller of any change in the heading, or in the wind strength, or direction. By the end of the day the heading required was dead downwind to a 33-knot wind, but my system was coping with it, though with a loud clatter of ropes and sails flapping.
I was now anxious to get another message through to Sheila, so that she would not get off at Fremantle while I sailed on to Sydney. I tried calling up Oriana again that night, but had a rotten contact. Altogether I tried five times on the 16th and 17th to contact Oriana. I thought they were hearing me, even if I could not hear them, and I repeatedly said that I was headed for Sydney again, and was not going to Fremantle. I asked for Sheila to speak to me on Perth Radio when she landed there.
My system took a minor squall pretty well, and I was pleased with it. The day’s run to the 18th was up to 111 miles. I felt happier than I had been at any time previously during the voyage. I had been waiting for the self-steering gear to fail, and apprehensive all the time that I should be helplessly stuck with a badly-balanced boat. That I had been able to rig up gear to make her sail herself was deeply satisfying. I hate turning back; I hate giving up; and I hate being diverted from my course; it was a seaman’s job to get over difficulties. I think this compensated for my chagrin at failure of the 100-day project, which did seem impossible now for two reasons—firstly, because the steering sail was depriving me of one of my best driving sails when on the wind, and secondly, because part of the steering sail was actually acting against the forward movement of the boat, pulling against the other sails. I knew I had set a very high target with 100 days, but I believed that I stood a fair chance of achieving it if the self-steering gear had not bust. At the time that happened I had 2,758 miles to go and 20 days left of the 100. In the previous 20 days I had sailed 2,920 miles.
On the night of the 18th I had a long radio session with Perth, and explained the whole situation during 80 minutes. Just before midnight I was called out by a minor shemozzle, to find all the sails aback, including the mizzen staysail. “And that,” I logged, “is something to have aback.” I had set too high a standard for my steering system, asking it to control the boat with the mizzen staysail set in a light wind which was something the self-steering gear itself had often failed to accomplish.
The fourth day’s run with my system produced 138 miles and I began to warm up my hopes: could I possibly do it in 100 days after all? Of course there were a lot of miles lost in the first three days which I should have to make up, and that would be a big handicap. Again I kept at it all day, fiddling with the system and ironing out minor troubles.
The petrels and one or two albatrosses stayed with me, and they would come from quite far when I banged my scrap tin before emptying it—to call them to dinner. Then they kept on flying round close, for more scraps. I loved watching them. To make things better still, that evening I made contact on the radio with Oriana, and had a long talk with Sheila. It was a joy to hear her, and to be able to talk directly to her. This cheered me up immensely, and I wrote in the log:
“I have been leaning over the garden gate, in this case the washboards of the companionway, looking out at the hazy moon and the water sliding by; I am more at peace than at any time before on this passage. I think that the damned self-steering gear was a constant worry to me, waiting for it to bust. Now we seem to be really sailing and I feel happy.”
Next day I could only jog along in a 40-knot gale. There had been a quiet roar in the rigging all day and I had trouble getting the steering sail to control the boat when there was only one sail drawing. I logged: “My experience of these gales is that you can’t set sail again seriously until the noise in the rigging, a mild roar, one might call it, eases.” I was feeling very feeble physically again; it seemed as if the gale had taken the stuffing out of me. I meditated why, wondering whether my feebleness was due to the incessant effort of holding on and straining to keep a position without being thrown, or to damp, not enough food, or the nervous strain tensing up for the next time the hull was hit, thrown down or over. The day‘s run dropped to 82 miles.
I could not hoist the trysail right the way up, because the loose end of the broken burgee halliard was twisted round the trysail halliard and everything else aloft. I was afraid to use the winch, and there was too much wind to wiggle things free. I do not get on well with burgee halliards, and logged: “It could easily happen that that burgee halliard stops everything from moving up there! Curse it, this has always happened on every ocean crossing I have done. I should get rid of the damned thing before I start.”
My great interest every day of the voyage was to get an accurate sun fix, so that I could know what the ship had sailed during the past day, and ponder on my tactics for the coming days. On November 22 I recorded:
“I got four shots at the sun with some difficulty, and then a surfing wave took charge of the boat. The crest coamed into the cockpit giving the sextant a real sea bath. However, I rinsed it in warm fresh water with some detergent in it. Just after I finished, a 45-knot squall hit the boat. I was sheltered in the cabin helping out the tiller in overpowering gusts. The hatch was only open an inch to allow passage of the cords to the tiller, but the rain was so heavy that it was driving 7 feet into the cabin through that small crack. I put on a raincoat and a hat standing in the cabin.”
That afternoon I dropped the jib, and stopped the ship. All the battens had been torn out of the working jib, and the sails were taking a beating. It was hard to stand on the deck. Waves were coming into the cockpit, and hail sounded like rifle fire. It was also very cold, and my hands were half numb. The seas, squirting through the closed hatch, had swollen the woodwork in the galley so that I could not open two of the drawers there. That was irritating, because there were several things I wanted in those drawers.
In the evening I got Gipsy Moth sailing again, but I had to come to the rescue of the steering system several times next day, both to prevent a turn downwind from becoming a gybe, and a turn up into the wind from stopping the boat. Undoubtedly the system had its disadvantages. I could not use the mainsail, because the boom would have fouled the steering lines from the sail to the tiller. And the cockpit was so full of lines that it was dangerous to set the mizzen staysail. The boat was like a birdcage. It was difficult to make way along the deck, and when I came out of the cabin it was easier to crawl under the tiller than to move over it.
But I was improving all the time, and on November 24 I logged:
“Still driving hard through grey-green seas, and grey sky of low overcast. The rig seems to be spoiling me, keeping course at 7 to 7½ knots all through the night, except for periodic roarings in the rigging and bashings of waves over the deck when a wave throws the boat’s head off to the north-east or even further to the north; but each time so far, after rough going for a few minutes, the steering sail has brought her back on course. It is 9½ hours since I touched tiller or rope. Long may it continue; it smacks of the marvellous to me!”
I got quite a thrill when I found suddenly that I was well past the western end of Australia, which I might not have noticed if I had not run off the end of the chart of the Indian Ocean. Perhaps I should add that I was then 500 miles south of the land, so that there was no likelihood of charging into it because of not noticing that I was passing it. It was exciting to dig out the chart of Australia. I was now only about 1,200 miles from Bass Strait which was a daunting (if exhilarating) prospect after no sight of land since Madeira.
I still had no log or speedometer, but I found my dead reckoning much better than expected. One gets used to judging speed. For instance, the previous day’s run was 158 miles by sun fixes, and my dead reckoning run, based on judging the speed at intervals, was only 3½ miles short of this.
An extraordinary thing happened after I had finished my radio telephone dispatch on November 25. As the light over my chart table had failed temporarily, I connected an inspection lamp at the end of a lead to give me light to work the telephone. I hung this lamp on the wire lead to the speedometer. Suddenly the speedometer began to work again. I found that the wire leading to the speedometer had snapped (probably it had been damaged when the radio telephone was being fitted), and the weight of the inspection lamp somehow managed to connect the two ends again inside the insulating cover! I had tried that particular connection between the wire and the speedometer about eight times, but never thought of the wire itself being snapped. Now I had a speedometer again (though I didn’t actually repair the lead until next day). I was glad to have it, for I should need it among the islands of Bass Strait, but I reflected ruefully that my peace of mind would probably be less.
I fitted up a tackle with two blocks from the tiller to the windward side of the cockpit, and the running part of this tackle led into the cabin. On the lee side of the tiller I had at first a plain line leading from the tiller to the side of the cockpit, and from there into the cabin, but later I found that this was insufficient, and rigged a second tackle with two blocks on that side too. These two tackles were invaluable; they enabled me to control the tiller and help out the steering sail from the cabin, without having to dress up in deck clothes and go on deck. For example, on November 25 two smashing waves broke right on to the boat, picked it up and swung it round through a change of heading of no less than 140°. The steering sail might have brought the heading back again in time, but not without a lot of sail flogging. (It’s a wonder any sail can survive flogging in a 45-knot gale!) By hauling on the weather tackle, I brought the heading back on course quickly without going up into the cockpit.
That evening a big swell began running in suddenly from the west; big, I would say 50 feet. There were a number of Mother Carey’s Chickens about, which nearly always forecasts a storm, whatever meteorologists may say to the contrary. I could see them picking things out of the water while on the wing, but not what the things were. An hour before midnight a wave gybed Gipsy Moth, and put her aback, headed south. The steering sail could not move the tiller with the sails aback; nor could I with the tackle and the tiller line into the cabin. So I had to dress up in hard weather rig, and still I could not move the tiller by hand. I had to sit down on the lee side of the cockpit and, with my back to the side of the cockpit, and both feet on the tiller, I was able to move the rudder slowly and turn Gipsy Moth downwind, and gybe back on to course. It was really rather a splendid night. There was a bright moon, with some silvery clouds, and there were white manes to the waves. Gipsy Moth tore through the water at a good 7½ knots. Shortly after midnight I was woken up again with the ship aback, in a very unpleasant squall. I had to stick this one out in the cockpit, nursing the tiller to keep Gipsy Moth near downwind until the squall blew out. It was wild rocketing downwind, and I was very cold with only pyjamas under a quilted coat and trousers. As soon as I got a chance I put on a sweater and safety harness, and dropped the working jib. I hated losing the good speed, but a ship out of control is hell. At 5.30 in the morning I was woken again by the ship aback. I logged: “My steering sail, let’s face it, will not control the boat in winds of Force 8 (35 knots) or more. It has not the power to work the tiller to bring the heading off the wind after a wave slew. That helm needs the stren
gth of an elephant, anyway.”
That was not my lucky day. Besides being turned out so often to rescue the helm, my drawer full of electrical spares, fuses, valves, etc, shot out, and on to the cabin floor. Next, all my rolls of chart fell from their nest close under the cabin ceiling on to the cabin floor; then I delved in the clothes locker under my cabin bunk, and found everything there running water, except what I had put in plastic bags. At noon I was in the middle of some sun shots when a big breaking sea surfed Gipsy Moth along with it until Gipsy Moth broached to on the starboard gybe, sails aback again. I felt that I needed a tent pitched in the cabin to keep things dry.
Two and a half hours later I logged: “Well! That was a near go.” I was standing facing the companionway, and looking at the speedometer repeater dial above my quarter berth, to see if it was working properly. Suddenly the needle shot up hard against the stop at the limit, 10 knots, and stayed there. For a second or two I thought that the speedometer had bust again. Then the boat went overen to its side and, looking out, I saw that Gipsy Moth was on the crest of a big breaking wave. This breaker slewed the boat round broadside to it, knocking her down forwards, so that the masts were horizontal, pointing in the direction in which the wave was going. From where I stood on the side of the bunk I could see the mizzen mast lying flat along the surface of the boiling, seething surf. I would say that the boat was travelling sideways at a speed of 30 knots. There was nothing I could do. I was not frightened; I watched interested. Would the masts dip in? If they dipped a few more degrees below the horizontal they must dive into the water, and inevitably the boat must then roll over. They didn’t; the surf passed leaving Gipsy Moth broached to. She righted herself, and presently the steering sail brought her back through 90° on to her previous heading.
On November 27 I was 710 miles from Cape Otway, and I decided that I must adjust the lead of the steering sail lines so that I could hoist the mainsail again. I had to have it, because I could not now pole out either of the big running sails. I had robbed the main boom of its topping lift tackle for one of my tiller lines, and had to rig up another. There was a pale greeny blue sky like I have known before a terrific wind in Europe. There were also some strongly developed mares’ tails in a straggly line across the sky. But these indications misled me, for the big wind did not arrive.