Once Is Enough

by Miles Smeeton

  Next day we had a wind from the north-east and we made sail after breakfast, under full sail and the Genoa. The sea was calm and there was the same long swell. Tzu Hang sailed along unattended all day. I did ‘laze around all day’, but Beryl and John must always be at something. John had persuaded Beryl to knit him a Fair Isle jersey, and they were now busy trying to work out the pattern.

  Pwe was full of activity also. She kept dancing up to us sideways, her ears back and her body arched, daring us to do something. It was about this time that she invented her main game. Siamese cats are not very original in their ideas about games, and this was inevitably a mouse game. She would fly up into my berth, a canvas bunk on two poles, and then stare over the pole at her victim. If he did not respond she would complain vocally, but none of us could resist her. The game consisted of running a finger along under the canvas, while she pounced on it. There were two variations; one was to run a finger along the side of the pole, while she hid inside and tried to grab it by putting her arm over the pole, and the other was for her to sit at the end of the berth and await for a finger to appear from under the canvas. This was extremely tense work and as the finger approached the end of the berth, excitement grew to fever pitch with both participants. She never let it get the better of her, and although she always caught it, she only dabbed the finger with a paddy paw. After she had caught it, she would swagger away, like a boxer who has floored his opponent.

  In the afternoon we heard a soft sigh come faintly through the hatch, and then another, and another, and knew that we had a school of porpoises with us. We went on deck and John filmed them, crisscrossing in front of the bow and breaking water together in threes and fours. Sometimes they would haul off to one side or the other, and one of them came leaping along almost continuously out of the water, and falling over on to his side at each jump. They stayed with us for some time, but eventually tired of the play, and dropped astern, lazily rolling a dorsal fin out of the water, before they went off on some other business. Pwe stood with her forefeet on the cockpit coaming to watch them, with her ears pricked and in a rather alarmed and elongated attitude. They are horrible animals, she thinks, and will never venture further on deck if they are about. We always love their visits, they are such merry creatures, and feel strangely gratified by their attentions, and sorry when they leave.

  The blue whale also seems to be a friendly animal, and is the only whale that likes to accompany us. We have seen quite a lot of them, sometimes longer than Tzu Hang, and they have often steamed alongside, to the delirious excitement of Clio’s small brown dog.

  We were now 200 miles south of the south-east corner of New Zealand, in longitude 170° east and latitude 50° 30´ south, and the wind was freshening from the north-east. On January 8, with the wind still blowing freshly from the same quarter, we were nearly down to 52° south. We could not make much headway against a roughish sea, and the starboard tack would take us back to New Zealand, while the port tack would take us further down towards the iceberg zone. I felt that there were enough hazards without going further south, where we risked the chance of meeting up with some ice, and I didn’t want to lose any sea that we had gained. So we hove to and waited for the weather to change. For the last two days of the second week we lay hove to. It was the dreariest period of the whole trip: cold, and grey, and uncomfortable.

  I am sure that Beryl and John would have preferred to have continued further south, and perhaps I was exaggerating the danger of running into ice, but at any rate they showed no signs of impatience. Beryl was soon enmeshed in reams of multi-coloured wool for John’s jersey, and John was occupied in making some ingenious device out of copper, a belt-buckle, I believe. Of all the many things which tax one’s patience on a long trip of this sort, the hardest to bear is failure to make progress in the right direction; I sought refuge in the country with Soapey Sponge and Lucy Glitters.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  INTO THE SOUTHERN OCEAN

  THE third week started with another dull drizzling day, with the wind veering to the east, so that we were able to make sail at ten in the morning, and for a short time we sailed to the north. Soon it began to rain harder, and the wind to swing to the south, and by three in the afternoon we decided to set the twins again. While Beryl and John were hanking the sails to the forestays, I led the sheets through the blocks on the deck and back to the cockpit. As I was making the sheets fast temporarily to two cleats on the deck, I saw a number of white horses away in the south-west. The sky was beginning to break up and the rain had stopped, and the whitecaps began to spread across the sea and to advance towards us.

  ‘There’s a packet of wind out there,’ John shouted back to me, and almost as he said it, a blast of cold air straight from the icefields struck us. The staysails were half way up and began to shake violently and the booms to leap wildly up and down. I hauled the sheets in as tightly as I could, first one and then the other, and only brought the booms under control with difficulty. Beryl and John doubled up on the halliards to get the sails set, and then came aft, laughing with the excitement of the struggle with the sails and the cold wind, to help me with the sheets.

  The difficulty now was to transfer the sheets from the cleats, to which they were fastened, to the tiller. Beryl and I hauled on one sheet while John took a quick round turn and a draw hitch to the tiller. Directly Beryl and I let go, the pull came on to the tiller, and John could only hold it, in spite of his strength, with the greatest of difficulty. Beryl and I then took the tiller and forced it over against the pull of the sheet, until the ship began to turn to port against the port staysail. This split the wind out of the starboard staysail, and as it began to flutter, John hauled the sheet tight, and made it fast to the tiller in the same way. Now we had an equal pull on the tiller, and if it turned out that the tiller was not quite in the centre, the adjustment was fairly easy once the sheets had been transferred to it. This was a strong wind and made setting up the twin staysails much more difficult than usual.

  We had terylene sheets and, unless they were fastened with a round turn and a draw hitch, they jammed so hard that it was almost impossible to undo them. The draw hitch never slipped. Although we had a great deal of wind from easterly quarters during the first half of the voyage, we used the twins more than any other sails during the passage. The sheets passed through two blocks and over the cockpit coaming, which was cut away and sanded down to take them. Beryl was continually putting tallow on the sheets, and as a result, in spite of the continuous movement and tension, they were undamaged by chafe.

  It was good management to change to the twins just at the beginning of my watch, because now we could all go down to tea. We got the fire going in the saloon and it was warm and snug. We still had to keep watches because we were below the iceberg limit, but the ship was steering herself and the wind was in the west.

  A sailor, or at least a navigator, is always conscious of the land about him. The sea may be empty and clear from horizon to horizon, yet he will know that just here or just over there, is the land. Sometimes, when no land is visible, he will feel hemmed in by it, and sometimes he will be conscious of the sea’s great deserted loneliness. I had never had the feeling of loneliness in the Atlantic or the Pacific. Here was a steamship route, there an island, and over us an aircraft might pass. Although for days and days we had seen nothing, we had always been aware of man moving or living not too far away. Now, as we entered the Southern Ocean, with New Zealand behind us, there was a feeling of desertion and loneliness. The Chilean coast was over 4,000 miles away, and in all that sea probably no ships at all. The only living things above the waters were the wheeling, wandering birds. Because we had just been struggling with the wind together, and because we had achieved what we were trying to do, and the ship was flying along on her course, we felt at one with the ship and at one with each other. This feeling of companionship was strong between us. Of course we never mentioned it, but I think there was a feeling of affection between all of us, quite apart
from Beryl being my wife, because we were the only human beings there, because we were a team, and because we were managing.

  That day a new seabird arrived: a dark brown mottled bird, a cross between a hawk and a gull, with white crescent markings on his wings, and a fast wing-beat. He looked as if he might like to sit on ice from time to time, and somehow I didn’t like him. He was a great skua. We also saw a small branch which must have drifted from Campbell Island.

  Next morning we found the wind going round to the north-east and, while John had his after-breakfast sleep, Beryl and I set the mizzen and Genoa instead of the twins. We were making splendid time, with an easy sea, but the wind continued to veer until we were close-hauled and under all sail. By nine in the evening we had made sixty-five miles on the log since noon, but we were still down below the northern limit of the iceberg drift, and we could not do better than a little south of east. The ominous skua was round again, showing clearly the white crescent markings on his wings.

  It was a good night. We were close-hauled, reasonably steady, and the Genoa showed taut and white in the moonlight. It was a new terylene sail. The motion was easy, and the water rushed pleasantly past the planking. I sat below the doghouse ladder while the kettle heated on the oil stove. From time to time I looked out. The moon was right on the bow, throwing its bright reflection along the sea, a path for Tzu Hang to sail down. Down below, if I looked forward through the main cabin, I could see the dim light in the forecabin where Beryl was sleeping. I could make out the blue cover on the unused bunk, and faintly the impassive wooden face of a Hawaian girl, carved out of a piece of driftwood, which we had got in Hawaii, and which was fastened to the bulkhead by the doorway leading into the forepeak.

  In the forepeak itself there was a jumble of sails; the twin staysails, the storm-jib, the working jib, and the two little topsails which we never used. On the one side was the chain locker and on the other side were store cupboards, with tools and spare parts on a shelf over them. Right in the bow there was a large shelf of stores, not immediately required, and wedged behind the samson post, another tin of earth for the cat. Somewhere also there was sixty fathoms of 3-inch manilla rope, and presiding over all, on top of the shelf in the bow, sat Blue Bear.

  I took another look round and went forward to wake Beryl for her watch. I didn’t bother to look out again but turned in to my bunk. As Beryl walked aft, she put the cat on my chest. She started to purr, as if she was trying to tell me how very pleased she was to be able to pay me a visit, and she tickled my face with her whiskers, until I lifted the edge of my sleeping bag and allowed her to creep inside. She was still purring and exploring the inside of the bag when I went to sleep.

  I awoke to a thump which shook the whole boat so that my first idea was that we had struck some ice. Almost at once I heard John shouting, ‘On deck, on deck!’ Beryl and I jostled together for the ladder, but the McLeod tartan fell behind at the corner, because she stayed for a moment to grab her boots. The mast was shaking, and there was a flapping and rustling noise, as if a sail had carried away. When we got out we found the Genoa streaming away to leeward. The pin of the sheave on the outhaul on the bowsprit had sheared, and the Genoa was now free except for the sheet and the halliard. The sheet was flapping wildly and the sail flying loose. We lowered away and hauled it in, and soon had it under control again. We lowered the mizzen and Tzu Hang continued to sail as before on the same course, but at much reduced speed. John kept saying, ‘Something hit me on the head. It must have been the sheave. I can’t think why it didn’t do me more damage.’ We went to look in the cockpit, but found only the head of the bolt which had sheared. The sheave must have flown like a bullet to sea. Anyway, we had a spare one, and after breakfast John cut and drilled two cheek pieces to hold it. He made them out of brass sheet.

  After it was finished we set the storm-jib. ‘Not the storm-jib,’ said Beryl, who is really of the hang-on-and-blow-them-away school. She is also the sailmaker, so she has conflicting interests. Still the glass was dropping, and we set the storm-jib. By the afternoon we had reefed the main. In spite of the reduction in sail we had made 146 miles by midday.

  In the afternoon the weather turned cold and blustery, and the wind, which was going slowly to the north, was bringing dark storm-clouds with it. The sea had an angry look, and there were many whitecaps; sudden gusts, which found their way round the shoulders or down the face of the swells, sent little wavelets on the tops of the waves scurrying hither and thither across the surface. In order to let John and Beryl finish their watch below, I decided to put off reefing again, and handing the staysail, until the change of the watch.

  An hour before it was time to call them there was another sickening thump and a jerk, and I saw something fall from the main cross-trees to the deck, and the main after shroud go slack. I put Tzu Hang round quickly on to the other tack and hove her to. By the time John and Beryl were up I found that the shackle which secured the after main shroud to the mast fitting had broken. Tzu Hang’s biggest weakness was that the main shrouds were shackled on to lugs at the mast fitting, and that the size of the holes in the lugs limited the size of the shackles, so that they were in fact too weak for the rigging. We lowered the main and the staysail, leaving Tzu Hang hove to under the jib only. Then we fastened a line at the top of the shroud and below the eye, and took it over the cross-trees and down to a tackle on the deck, and hauled it as tight as possible. John went up with a file and for over half an hour, standing on slack ratlines, with one arm round a wildly swaying mast, he struggled to file the hole in the lug big enough to take a larger shackle. It seemed an interminable time before it was finished, and all the time the cold rain and sleet whipped our faces and numbed our hands. As soon as the pin fitted, we slacked away on the weather rigging-screws, and then hauled down on the tackle until the eye was near enough for the shackle to be screwed up. Then we set up all the rigging-screws, double-reefed the main and set Tzu Hang on the right tack again, leaving her to sail herself while we made tea.

  ‘Hope we don’t have another day like this,’ said Beryl.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday again,’ I said, ‘because we are just about crossing the date-line. We may have to go through it all again.’

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got John.’

  ‘Good old John. Well done, boy!’

  John shook his head and clicked his tongue, ‘I don’t know how you old folks managed before I came,’ he said.

  Tzu Hang sails well in a strong blow, under double-reefed main and storm-jib, and if she cannot carry this amount of sail it is time to stop. The next few hours were some of the roughest that she has ever given us. The north-easterly wind had set up a short sea against the south-westerly swell, which never seems to disappear. Tzu Hang was flinging herself into the waves and bucking over them, and sometimes she seemed to take to the air altogether. The rice was thrown out of the pan in which it was cooking, and the pans were thrown off the stove. We turned in, but it was impossible to sleep. Yet gradually the thumps and crashes died down, and by midnight, as we sailed into a new day and yet the same day, the sea and wind were easier. Nine months before we had crossed the date-line in the opposite direction on our way to New Zealand, 1,400 miles to the north. We thought that it was quite cold and rough then also.

  The second Saturday gave us as big a contrast as ever one gets at sea. We were soon under all sail with a northerly wind and sunshine. The low cloud and poor visibility had vanished, and now, a mile away, an albatross’s wing would show suddenly like a spar against the sky, so that we would look again to see we knew not what, thinking perhaps of a small ship like ourselves, but only to see the empty sea and the swoop and soar of the birds. They kept gliding past us in a lazy inspection of all that went on in the ship, momentarily losing their balance in the air disturbed by our sails.

  Pwe came out to sun herself on the deck. She took this business of sunning herself very seriously—not as if she really enjoyed it, but rather as if it had been recommended by her
doctor. She would find somewhere out of the wind and sit with her eyes shut. The moment some spray came on the deck, or the wind ruffled her fur, she would give up in disgust. Her earth was put every day in a blue plastic bowl, chosen to match her eyes, and was usually kept under the chart table. If by any chance Beryl forgot to change it, she would go to her and complain bitterly. On fine days it was put on the bridge-deck and it was great fun to see her sitting on it and swaying to the roll of the ship at the same time. If ever she wanted any help or comfort, she would go to Beryl, but for sport she came to us.

  Tzu Hang sailed herself all through a perfect sunny day, with a slight swell from the north and a long swell from the south-west. We had a smart little grey gull with us, white underneath with a prominent black eye, like a shearwater in shape but not so big. In the afternoon we saw ten albatrosses on the water in a discussion group over a piece of seaweed. They are the most curious of birds, but almost everything must be a novelty to them in that endless empty sea.

  On Sunday we were sailing again with the Genoa, and in sunshine. John wanted to film Tzu Hang under this sail, so we put him overboard again in the dinghy. Just before we put the dinghy overboard, we saw three small brown whales lying together on the surface of the sea. Their colour was most striking, a light reddish brown. They are known as ‘white’ whales, and have this habit of congregation. We sailed up to them before launching the dinghy, hoping to get a film of them, but they sounded before we got near enough. We were sailing well, so that once the dinghy was in the water we quickly left it behind. It soon disappeared behind the long swell and looked absurdly small when it reappeared. We went about and sailed back past it, and then about again, and hove to while John came on board. Although there was no danger, I had felt irrationally anxious, I suppose because of the size of the swell, and also because of this ever-present feeling of loneliness. It must have been the smallest boat ever to have been rowed in those waters.