Gipsy Moth Circles the World Read online

  I set a course which would take me clear of the main steamer lanes. At nightfall I hauled down the White Ensign, and also the little pennant which the Cutty Sark had presented to me, and which I was flying in the starboard rigging. I lit my “Not Under Control” lights—two red lights, one several feet above the other on a staff, which fitted into a socket in the stem. This would warn any other vessel which might expect me to give way to it when I was asleep that Gipsy Moth could not change course, or slow down. I was feeling queasy and off my feed: I was not sure if this was due to seasickness, or to a hangover from the excellent party we had the night before. Perhaps it was both.

  At midnight I flashed my torch and hooted four times at a small steamer, which kept on a collision course. She finally altered course to pass astern. I got an hour’s sleep at 01.30, but was woken at 03.00 by pain in my leg. A deck leak was dripping into my bunk near the foot, and I rigged a plastic bag, with string at the four corners, to make a sort of tent over the place. At 05.00 a gale squall had me out, to furl the mainsail and drop the staysail genoa, thus reducing the sail area from 940 feet to 440 feet. I got pretty wet in spite of a one-piece deck suit, and it was quite hard to get a foot-hold on the heeled deck. At 07.00 there was a rough sea with a 24- to 32-knot wind, and I still had only the mizzen and a jib set. I had no appetite, but had been actually sick only once. By noon I had made good 190 miles in the first 25 hours of the voyage. I got a sextant fix from the sun, and finished hoisting the mainsail and the staysail genoa by 13.30. I found that the windward filler line from the self-steering gear had stranded. This was the start of almost endless trouble with making the boat self-steer, though mercifully I did not then know it. These troubles were not the fault of the self-steering gear; the load on the rudder was so great that a tremendous strain was imposed on the tiller lines connecting the self-steering gear to the tiller.

  I was still too near the tribulations of the land for the peace of the sea to find me, and I was still feeling feeble and unbalanced on my feet. The cabin, I am ashamed to say, was still a muddled dump. By evening Gipsy Moth was slowed right down, slamming badly, and scooping up the foredeck full of sea. It was very uncomfortable and sickening, and my head was aching. One big slam set Gipsy Moth aback. I thought the self-steering gear must be broken but it was all right. I dropped the jib and decided to jill along until conditions improved.

  I had no feeling of romance about the voyage yet but, of course, seasickness is very anti-romantic. I was ready for a good sleep that second night, but ran into an extended fishing fleet on the edge of the Continental Shelf. And just at that time there was a heavy squall, so I had to keep a lookout as well as I could, in pelting rain and a strong wind. I must say I cursed those fishermen. I think they were tunny fishermen, although in the dark I could see nothing but their lights. I did see a single tunnyman next day, with his brown sails and the long poles for his fishing lines.

  I could still eat nothing, but at noon on August 29 I managed to get down a little food—my first meal since leaving Plymouth two days before. It had been a bad morning. I was having great difficulty in handling the self-steering gear, and the boat. A 35-knot squall from the north-west had set Gipsy Moth griping up to windward, overpowering the self-steering gear. I dropped the 300-foot jib and, after a rest, hoisted the 200-foot working jib. I had not fastened its tack to the deck, and it flew up the stay to the masthead. However, on slacking the sheet right off, it came down again. I left it on deck, I am sorry to say, and although I knew well enough that what should be set were the working jib, storm staysail and trysail, I decided to wait a while and try instead to get some food inside me, for I feared that lack of food was making me short of strength. I could not manage much, but I think that the effort to eat did me good.

  It was rough going, but my third night brought bright moonlight from a full moon (or nearly so), in a clear sky, with a few fair-weather clouds. But there was still 30 knots of wind. At 06.00 in the morning I turned out for a 40-knot squall from the west, and dropped the mizzen, which at once gave the self-steering more control. My one-piece deck suit took several douches well. That afternoon I rigged and hoisted the trysail, finding it a tough job, with my bad balance, and feeling weak and lethargic. It was difficult to stand firm in the wind, which was still blowing at 30 knots, and plenty of sea was coming over the boat. After that the tiller line which I had rigged for the self-steering gear parted again. I rove a 1½-inch plaited nylon line to replace it. This line had been Gipsy Moth III’s jib sheet, and I hoped that it would stand the great strain. It was so hot working that I had to take off my shirt under the deck suit.

  My leg continued to hurt and I could not sleep in the quarter berth because of the pain in my leg when I lay down. I tried the cabin bunk but had no luck there either, and finally slept a little sitting up on the settee.

  Next day I got down to some housekeeping, and wrote in my log:

  “12.50. I managed a wash up at last, chiefly of glasses used when drinking with John and Helen Anderson on Friday evening last. I would like a shave, but can’t do everything at once. I am going to switch all clocks over to GMT for convenience.”

  I had sailed 556 miles in the first 4 days, and a spell of bright

  sunshine made me feel better. I went on with my housekeeping, hanging out clothes to dry, and tackled various deck-jobs, working in shorts only, which was very pleasant. I sent the kedge anchor down, and secured it in the forecabin. This made the foredeck much clearer for working. I had had a big nylon net specially made which I had fitted on the deck amidships for stowing bagged-up sails, and now I rigged an extra line over the top of this net for security in bad weather. I spent some time scrubbing several ropes—the main sheet, jib sheets and pole guys—using detergent to get off the oil or tar which had fouled them in Plymouth. They were brand-new sheets which I wanted to keep clean. I felt ready for tea, and ate some of Moggie Sinclair’s excellent cake.

  It was still rough going. I reflected that the Cutty Sark would have loved this weather, which meant such heavy going for me, but then her hull was 5 inches thick, compared with my 7/8 inch. Everything in every cupboard rattled and banged, and I noticed with dismay that the bulkhead forward of the heads was cracked, with a jagged line showing where the plywood had parted under stress. This must have happened in one of the big slams that the yacht had undergone. I hoped it had not weakened the structure of the boat, because John Illingworth had specially stressed to me the importance of these bulkheads for strength.

  Soon after this I made another worrying discovery—I found that I had left behind my tables for reducing sun sights between 40 ° N and 40° S by means of the modern short method. This meant that I should have to use the long, old-fashioned method with logarithms through 80° of latitude. I realised suddenly how much a project like my voyage depended on a host of details being satisfactorily attended to before the start. I had another scare—I have written various manuals on astro-navigation, but just couldn’t remember any of the formulae. I thought I had not brought with me any navigation manual which would give me the mathematics for solving the spherical triangle using the old log method. I imagined myself stuck from 40° N to 40 ° S without the means of working out a sun sight for longitude! Fortunately, I found that I had put on board the textbook on Navigation by Wing Commander E. W. Anderson, Ex-President of the Institute of Navigation, and that, of course, would give me the method. And I always carry with me Norie’s Tables of Trig Logs. All the same working out sights by the old logarithm method was going to be a chore.

  By the night of August 31, I was clear of the main steamer lanes, which was a relief, though I was still near the route marked from the Channel to Recife, in Brazil. I reckoned that this was not an overcrowded route. I was past the latitude of Cape Finisterre in north-west Spain, and hoped for a northerly airstream.

  At 11.30 on September 1, I logged, “Having all meals in the cockpit: that’s something that never occurred in the Transatlantic solo races. Enjoyed my first
shave for five days, and an all-over wash.” Soon after this cheerful entry, however, tragedy struck—I got up a nice thirst, and I couldn’t draw any beer from my keg! I wondered if I had left the pressure on, and the beer had escaped in rough seas. The koala bear given to me by Sheila Scott, who had just become the first British woman pilot to fly singlehanded round the world, fell flat on its face when I discovered the tragedy of the beer. It was not, in fact, as bad as it might have been. I think I must have made a mistake with the gas cylinder valve, for I found later that I could get beer again.

  I crossed the parallel of 40 ° N and on September 3 I had to use the long Haversine formula for reducing my sun sights for the first time on the voyage. The result was obviously all wrong. I double-checked all my working of the formula, and could find no mistake. Finally I took another sun shot and worked that out afresh. As soon as I started working on it I found that I had used the Greenwich hour angle and the declination of the sun for September 4 instead of September 3. What a blunder! A mistake of this sort shows why one becomes apprehensive after navigating for two or three months by the sun without any sight of land for a position check.

  Next day—Sunday, September 4—1 had the first good sleep of the voyage, the first good sleep, it seemed, for months. I slept well for four hours without my leg’s waking me up. Of course this four hours’sleep was not the only sleep I got; I would drop off for a few minutes from time to time, and sometimes for an hour or so, usually just about dawn. But four hours at a stretch was a wonderful relief. At noon that Sunday I reckoned that Madeira was 210 miles distant, and I gave myself a sluice down of Madeira sea water—a lovely pale indigo—from a bucket on the after-deck. I had a salad lunch with bread and cheese and beer. It was a halcyon day. In the afternoon I read some passages of Conor O’Brien’s story and Ann Davison’s in my book, Along the Clipper Way, and much enjoyed them.

  After viewing the chart I reckoned that I should gybe 90 miles after my noon position. I continued to have trouble setting the self-steering gear, and I tried hanging two anchor cable swivel links as weights on the windward tiller line. These swivels weighed 1¾ pounds, and I reckoned that they would give a constant pull on the windward tiller line of about that amount. The only bother was that when the tiller was brought up to windward by the self-steering gear, these swivels sagged down and began banging on the cockpit seat. I wondered if I should ever get the self-steering gear to work troublefree. However, it was wonderful sailing, and lovely weather, with a warm breeze on my bare skin—sheer delight.

  I picked up the aero beacon at Funchal, Madeira, and got a bearing of it, which agreed with the plotted position. At 01.40 on September 5 I was 77 miles from Porto Santo. It was a lovely moonlit night. The swell had eased, and the dark surface of the sea was sprinkled with gleaming white horses. In the morning, when I was breakfasting in the cockpit, I saw my first flying fish.

  At 11.00 that morning I could see Porto Santo dead ahead, faint but unmistakable. I prepared a hoist of my number, GAKK, allotted to me as the nearest thing possible to the registration letters of my Gipsy Moth plane in 1929, GAAKK. By lunchtime the island of Porto Santo was abeam. Gipsy Moth was galloping downwind in bright sunlight and a brisk breeze, sailing at 7-8 knots. She was only making good 6.7 knots, however, so must have had the tide against her. I feared that I had boobed in sailing through the group of islands, and that I might lose the Trade Wind in the shadow of the islands. The clippers must have had reason for passing to the westward and windward of the Madeiras. I had hoped to make for Point Barlavento, the easternmost extremity of Madeira, but the wind backed and I could not make it on that gybe, so headed for the little semi-desert island of Deserta Grande, a long island 1,446 feet high, with its greatest width less than a mile. I planned to gybe when I got near it. There were one or two ominous cracks and I wondered if the pole carrying the big genoa was feeling the strain. I eased the outhaul to reduce the compression load. The truth was I was carrying too much sail for that wind.

  I saw two boats with huge, high, pointed prows. One appeared from round the south end of Porto Santo. It had its mast laid horizontal fore and aft, and was plugging dead into the wind, using its motor. It was full of crew, and I inferred that it was a whaler. Then I came across a crabber half way between Porto Santo and Madeira. It had only one man on board, and it, too, was plugging into wind. Though they took no notice of me, they gave me a feeling of being crowded here, of being in an enclosed space between these three islands. Yet it was more than 15 miles between Porto Santo and Madeira.

  When I was below there was a loud crack which I couldn’t account for, and when I went on deck to investigate I found that the spinnaker pole had bent in the middle. This was a bad business, because it looked as if very little more would be needed to break the pole in half, and I could not use the starboard side pole on the port side. I dropped the poled-out sail and got the pole inboard with some difficulty because of the heel jamming in the track. I started straight away trying to devise some way of straightening the pole again but I could not see how it could be done.

  By evening I was past the eastern end of Madeira, and was sailing some miles south of Funchal. But by 21.00 that night I was in trouble. I was in the lee of the island, and although it was about 8 miles away, I was being struck by minor squalls from wind eddies whirling down from the 6,000 foot peaks. I had my first experience of Gipsy Moth’s being out of control, and I didn’t like it. I had a desperate feeling when I couldn’t move the tiller; the sails were pressed right down, and the boat was tearing through the water out of control. Gradually I got the mainsail down, followed by the mizzen. Then she was under control again, but almost immediately the wind died away to a complete calm. These whirling gusts were repeated time after time. I longed to escape from the wind shadow of the island. “No wonder,” I logged, “the clippers kept outside Madeira. What a fool I have been! And I am worked out.” During the intervals of being becalmed, the self-steering wind vane, released, rotated, swinging through whole circles. A clipper under these conditions would be in pretty serious trouble. With each burst of wind I gained a few miles to the south-west, and finally got clear of the island, determined if possible to keep well to windward of any other groups of islands on the voyage.

  After losing 4 hours in calms, I got a true wind again, and for the first 2½ hours after midnight averaged 7 knots. My leg kept me from sleeping in a bunk for the first part of the night. Heavy deckwork seemed to inflame it.

  With morning the wind became a light north-easter and I rigged out a spinnaker pole to port with a big genoa outhauled to it. On the other side I had a jib and a staysail.

  Before I left Plymouth, someone, anonymously, had sent me some orchids, with the hope that they would last all the way to Australia. I logged at the time that I did not think they would last beyond Madeira, and they didn’t, giving up the ghost as I sailed past the island. I was sorry to see them go, but had expected it. The loaves I brought from England all went mouldy. I cut off the mould and mildewy outsides, and started to rebake them in the oven. Unfortunately, I left them there for 54 minutes while I set the mainsail, and they were spoilt by burning. Even more bothersome (for I could bake more bread), I found that my garlic was attacked by mildew, too. I saved as much as I could of the garlic by putting the bulbs in the cockpit in the air and sunlight for I attach enormous importance to garlic, and usually ate a clove a day. I had been advised to do this for the good of my lung. One does not often get a chance to eat as much garlic as one wants without bowling over anyone who comes near!

  The boat rolled madly with a following wind, and the din of banging blocks, or bottles, tins and crockery crashing from side to side was terrific. I had a lot of chores waiting to be done, but I also needed a rest. It was at this point that I began to suspect that some tablets of a glucose preparation that I took to give me extra energy might be impairing my appetite, for I seldom felt like food, except at breakfast time, and had rather to force myself to eat. I shall be referring
to these tablets again.

  Though it was hot on deck, I could not resist the pleasure of sunbathing. I sloshed on plenty of Nivea cream for my shoulders and knees, but in the end had to wear a cotton coat because of sunburn—perhaps I ought to have covered them up more. An hour before midnight I started to gybe, and it took me until an hour and a half after midnight to complete the job. I had to drop the pole to starboard and the big genny outhauled to it, also the pole to port and then rehoist sails on that side for a wind now coming in from abeam to starboard. I was tottering with fatigue when I finished, but was up again at 04.35 to retrim. Then, at 07.00, I was woken again to find the ship headed north back to England, sails all aback, pressing against the mast or rigging.

  At noon that day (September 7) the temperature in the cabin was 81° Fahrenheit, where it felt quite cool! The heat on deck was grilling. A sudden shift of wind sent Gipsy Moth heading towards Newfoundland. The yacht had at this time four stays, going from the stem to the masthead. I had wanted only two stays there, but the architect had talked me into having four. When, after trials, I said that I should like to remove two, he asked me not to. Later, I understood why. Meanwhile I cursed having the four, because I had to drop the big genny which was set on the foremost of these stays, and rehoist it on another one. I spent an hour or two tinkering with the self-steering gear, but it was really too hot to work in the sun.

  Every day was getting hotter. On September 8 I logged: “I have to be careful to cover up before going out under the high sun; I take everything off as soon as I am below.” The day’s run was only 96 miles and of that 17½ miles was due to the Canary Current, which is an extension of the Gulf Stream, branching off round the Azores, and flowing south-south-westwards past the Canary Isles.