‘What you want are some infra-red bulbs and you could string them along the mast, and then you’d have to erect some sort of tent over them. They’d give you enough heat. What’s the length of the mast? Have you got a power plug where you’re building it? Right, I’ll get you fifty lamps—they’re ordinary brooder lamps—and have them wired up for you. Anything else you want?’
‘Yes. I want 200 10-inch bolts for wooden clamps to clamp the mast together when we glue it.’
‘No problem,’ he said, ‘we can turn those out in very short order. I’ll let you have those tomorrow, as there’s certain to be a truck going in to Concepcion. You can let us have the whole lot back when you’ve finished with them as we can always use them. No charge for those. Now come along to the club and have a drink, otherwise I’ll get stuck in this bloody office all night.’
Before we left the club Bob told me to bring any other problems to him and I began to hope that Tzu Hang might become one of his causes. We came to know that ‘No problem’ well and it smoothed out many creases.
The scaffolding planks that we were able to get from the Arsenale were 36 feet by 10 inches by 2 inches. In order to use single planks for the mizzen we cut it down to 36 feet, which was a foot shorter than the design we had drawn. We had decided to shorten the whole rig, to do away with Tzu Hang’s bowsprit, and to have just a single headsail, so that she would be easier to handle for the two of us alone. But that was not the only reason, for the fact of the matter was that we were beginning to think, tentatively and rather timorously, of another shot at the south. The mainmast was reduced to 47 feet above the deck, and a little more than 54 feet over all.
The first task was to glue the scarves of the several lengths of planking that were to make the mainmast. We made a long tent over the planks from spare sails and some tarpaulins, strung up our lights and switched on the heat, and the temperature rose sufficiently for the glue to set firmly. The planks had already been machine-planed in the workshop, but John decided that they were not fair enough to be glued together, and the whole had to be hand-planed again. Next he traced out the lines of the masts and cut the planks to shape with a small electric hand-saw that we were able to borrow from the carpenters’ shop.
There were four planks for the mizzen and four lengths, scarfed together, for the main, and as soon as they were cut to shape, we started on the gluing. John was in charge and Beryl and I were his two apprentices. First two lengths were glued together, and covered with newspaper so that the next lot didn’t stick to them. Then the next two lengths, the other half of the mast, were glued and laid on top. Then they were all clamped together, by bolting wooden clamps along the whole length of the mast. We started with the mizzenmast, cooking it in its long coffin-like tent for eight hours, but as sometimes the lights went out and because we couldn’t keep them on after hours, it was always two days before we dared consider that the glue was safely set. The two halves of each mast were then hollowed by hand, and then glued together in the final operation. While the glue was setting, John prepared the booms which also had to be glued. All the major carpentry was now finished except for the final planing and shaping of the masts, and what remained to be done, the spinnaker booms and the dinghy, we would have made ‘outside’.
It was time for John to leave. He explained carefully how the masts should be shaped and made templates for us to check our planing, but he obviously had grave doubts as to whether we were capable of doing it correctly … and so had we. He had been so long with us and had put so much of his skilled time and work into Tzu Hang, that it was hard to think of her without him. He seemed to be one of us and part of Tzu Hang. We had been through a great adventure together, and we knew the worst and the best of each other. When he left us we felt strangely forlorn.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STILL IN TALCAHUANO
FOUR months had gone since we had arrived in Chile. It seemed almost impossible that four months could have gone and yet so much remain to be done. John had stayed on longer than he had intended at first, to accomplish less. As well as the dinghy and the spinnaker booms, there remained to be done all the mast and boom fittings, all the rigging, the pulpit and the rails, and the mainsail had to be altered to fit the shortened mast. On top of this a large shipment of sails and rope, blocks and stainless steel wire, and all kinds of other things was still to be sent from England, and now that we knew something of the hazards of delay and theft through which it would have to pass on its way out, we began to wonder how much we would see of it, and whether it would arrive in time.
The officers and men in the Arsenale, with whom we came in contact, did all that they could to help us, but what work they did was done more or less unofficially, in between official jobs. We couldn’t press them too hard, as we never knew whether we were being charged for the work or not, and anyway we were visitors in a foreign land and had to be patient. Yet they didn’t like to disappoint us and to say that something couldn’t be done. It was always just a question of time, and time meant so much to us, who were so anxious to get away, and so little to them. The Admiral had said that we should leave in October, before the southerly wind blew strongly and while we might still get a wind from the north to help us south. Then too we would find less wind in the Channels, and it was of the south and the Channels that were we thinking now.
Late October or November is a good time for going north too. The southerly winds are beginning, and they would take us north to the south-east trades, and we would have a fair wind and current to the Equator. We could be through the Panama Canal by Christmas, and we could spend the rest of the northern winter in the West Indies, and be home by June or July. It was the easiest, the most sensible, and the most attractive route to take, but it would be a confession of failure—that was the crux of the matter—and we didn’t like to make it.
All the same, when I woke up in the night and heard the wind hooting round the corners and buffeting the windows of the secure and comfortable house in which we lived, I felt a sense of foreboding as I thought of those big and lonely seas further south. I felt as if I was being driven by something out of my control, unresisting and yet unwilling, towards a fate that I had to face. These gloomy thoughts were sometimes interrupted by an impish whisper which seemed to say that the something out of my control was Beryl. I don’t think it was. She had the same feeling too.
One of the reasons for our slow progress was the difficulty that we had in speaking Spanish. Beryl, who tackles almost any language without shame, achieved wonders with her French-German-Spanish patois, and to see her talking, her hands flying in all directions, so that her audience winced away from her, was to believe that she was a fluent linguist. Sometimes, at a cocktail party or a dinner, she would be surrounded by people, each with an eager, alert, and slightly puzzled look. I have seen the same expression on the face of a Scotch sheepdog which had been bought recently by a Norfolk shepherd. But even Beryl’s ingenuity with languages couldn’t overcome the difficulty of explaining some yacht fitting that we required, and often we understood that something was actually being done for us, when we had really been told that it was hoped that it would be done, sometime in the future.
Another reason for the delay was that we had no means of transport, and had to go everywhere by microbus. In spite of the furious driving of the bus drivers, this was a slow and exasperating way of getting about, and we wasted a prodigious amount of time in the bus queues. Diós es mi Co-piloto was a favourite slogan, written up on the roof above the driver’s head, and they drove with such assurance and apparent negligence, that it did seem as if they thought that He was in the co-driver’s seat, and at least in partial control. As they drove side by side down the road, in a desperate race to get ahead of each other to steal the passengers at the next bus-stop, they bowed and crossed themselves at the scenes of previous accidents, marked by little altars and burning candles at the side of the road. We became as hardened and inured to danger as the other passengers, and it was only when we saw them crossi
ng themselves too, that we realised we were up against it.
‘¿No le gusta Chile?’ they used to ask.
‘Mucho gusta.’
‘Aren’t you glad you came?’
‘Very glad.’
‘Could you have come to a better place?’
‘We couldn’t have come to kinder people,’ we used to say, but in fact, from the point of view of fitting out a yacht, Chile was not a good place to come to, because there was no yachting industry there. Owing to import restrictions it was difficult to find much that we wanted, and the sort of equipment that was available was appropriate for iron-hulled fish-boats and rarely suitable for a yacht.
We wore out our shoes and our tempers trudging round and round the shops of Talcahuano and Concepcion, in endless pursuit of some substitute for the many things that we wanted, but couldn’t get.
Brass hinges were unobtainable, although we could get brass-coated ones, useless for a sea-going ship, and brass screws were always hard to find. We could find a dozen here and a dozen there, and we used to go over them in the shops with a magnet to see that we weren’t getting brass-covered ones. The shopkeepers used to join enthusiastically in the sport. Shackles too were scarce until a number of German shackles made an appearance in the shops. They had a suspicious lustre about them, and after a few weeks they were covered in rust.
But our ill-wind brought good to one of the chandlers in Talcahuano, for Beryl brought him luck if ever she visited his shop. ‘Señora,’ he said, ‘please come every morning even if you do not buy. It is a most extraordinary thing that if ever you come in the morning, I have exceptional—prodigioso—sales in the afternoon. You are very lucky, Señora.’
Next day I asked him what effect Beryl’s visit had had.
‘Fantástico,’ he said, ‘the sales were doubled.’
Beryl began to enjoy this reputation and to hope that there might be something in it which would pay off in the future.
The carpenters on La Fortuna, our sister ship on the sea wall, couldn’t understand our eagerness to be off. They had a nice job in the open when the sun shone, and they were away from the workshop boss, and could have a pleasant rest and a smoke in a nearby shed when it rained. ‘When are you going into the water?’ they used to ask us.
‘Next month.’
‘Never!’ they shouted, laughing. ‘We’re going into the water next month too,’ and they patted the old bareboned hulk which had made so little progress since we had arrived. But they were always ready to down tools, and to give us a hand if we needed it, and if they saw Beryl putting up the heavy iron ladder which we used for getting up on to Tzu Hang, there would be a scurry of helpers from La Fortuna.
One day, when we were all holding a discussion group over one of our problems on board Tzu Hang, there was a sudden rush from the deck to the scaffolding on the seaward side. Fortuna’s men had turned and gone together, without a word spoken, in an intuitive communal movement, like a flight of dotterel along the seashore. I found them all lying along the planks of the scaffolding.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘It’s the Admiral,’ they hissed. ‘He’s inspecting the dockyard.’
One by one they dropped down to the ground, still keeping under cover, until they were once more, although for the first time that day, hard at work on La Fortuna. From where we were, it looked as if the Admiral, then in charge of the whole naval establishment in Talcahuano, was inspecting the old Admiral’s launch, and wondering perhaps what had happened to the propeller-shaft.
In spite of all this friendly assistance there were days when we felt we were living in a nightmare, where nothing was ever quite finished, where people never said exactly what they meant, and where everything that we wanted was just out of reach. Only in the evening did things begin to return to normal, when, after being bent double under the roof of a lurching and crowded bus, Beryl and I used to jump out in the dark and the rain opposite the station, and splash across the street towards the Avenida Pedro Valdivia. Past two smart and ultra-modern taxis, past a row of wretched cabs with poor disconsolate horses, past a crowded wine-shop at a corner, and over a vast uncovered trench in the footpath, until we saw the lights of Edward’s house shining warmly through the tall iron railings. Then we used to fumble with cold wet hands for a key, unlock the gate, unlock the door, and there find Carmen waiting to take our coats and clucking at the weather. Then the sitting room door would open, and Edward would say, ‘Ah! Just in time for a Pisco sour before your bath.’
On Sundays Edward and Beryl and I would take off into the hills behind Concepcion on long walking expeditions, carrying hot empanadas, a Chilean Cornish pasty, wonderfully flavoured, wrapped in a cloth in a basket. The heart of the empanada, the very essence of its flavour, was found somewhere near the centre, where an olive ringed by the white of a hard-boiled egg was concealed. Of all the excellent Chilean food the thought of an empanada makes my mouth water most, but locos and erizos, two kinds of shellfish, are dishes for the most fastidious of gourmets. Chilean wine we found excellent too, and cheap, and Pisco, a form of gin but distilled from the grape, made splendid cocktails, either with lemon as a Pisco sour, or with vermouth.
During the winter there was an epidemic of rabies, and the dogcatchers were out around the town in a truck, tossing out small pieces of meat loaded with strychnine for the stray dogs. Even without the poison the mortality in dogs was high, partly due to a disregard for danger by the dogs, a disregard that they shared with many pedestrians, and partly due to the furious driving of the microbuses.
On one of our Sunday walks a small dog came yapping out from behind a hut and bit me in the ankle. I have never been bitten before, except when involved in a dog fight, and I was furiously angry. With a rush of adrenalin and bellowing like a wounded bull, I picked up a stick and threw it at the dog. All the pent up repressions of the past months were released with the stick, but the dog dodged it easily, and it hit Edward instead.
‘That dog’s not mad,’ said Beryl, ‘I’ve never seen anything look so pleased with itself.’
‘No, but Miles is,’ Edward agreed.
Marta, Jack’s beautiful, grey-eyed and shapely wife used to come to the Arsenale sometimes, to give us a hand with the work, and now that spring was on the way, we took advantage of the warmer weather to paint the ship. From the top of the wall where Tzu Hang was standing, to the water below her, was about 14 feet. The dockyard hands were always passing, walking along the top of the wall, especially when Marta was with us. On one of those days Beryl and Marta were alone on the boat, when they heard a splash, and then a terrified wailing: ‘!O Mama mía, o Mama mía, ayuda, ayuda!’ The carpenters of La Fortuna were running to the rescue before Beryl and Marta had realised what had happened, and they lowered a long scaffolding plank and towed the poor fellow to a ladder.
‘What happened, what happened?’ Marta called to them.
‘He was looking at you,’ they said, and doubled up with laughter.
A few days later and while we were still waiting for news of the rudder-post, which had vanished into the submarine base in order to be turned down to the right size, we were painting the masts in the Taller de Botes. While we were painting, Jim Byrne, a solid and hospitable Yorkshireman, who was in business in Concepcion, arrived to see how we were getting on. Jim was always plotting how best he could give us a hand. I don’t know whether he spent more time in wondering how he could help us, or in wondering how he could do so without appearing to inconvenience himself. It is a Yorkshire trait, and we could always see through it. Now he said that as he had had nothing to do, he’d just come down to watch someone else working for a change, but he soon had a paint-brush in his hand, and was grumbling something about ‘getting the stick from Moll for the paint on my trousers’.
While he was at work Señor Martinez came floating delicately, and as dapper as ever, through the workshop. ‘Do ask him, Jim, how the rudder-post is getting along,’ I said, and he was so
on buried in conversation with the natty Señor. When he came back to us he was able to tell us all Señor Martinez’ difficulties, and how much he was trying to help us and keep the costs down, but what it all boiled down to was that owing to pressure of work in the other departments, he could really only help us with the carpentry. It would be better to take the rudder-post, and all the castings, over to Shwager’s at Coronel, and to Bob Smith, who spoke the same language. Without more ado we got the rudder-post, loaded it on to Jim’s truck, and set off for Coronel.
We found Bob as usual working in the office long after everyone else had left, and only dimly visible through the cloud of cigarette smoke, which always hung about his table. He listened while I tried to explain what I wanted.
‘How are you going to fasten the post to the rudder?’ he asked.
‘We were going to weld it on to two arms, like this,’ I said, and drew him a sketch.
‘Well I don’t know anything about yachts, but I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘What sort of strain is going to come on the rudder?’ and he pulled out his slide-rule.
‘Normally not much, but if we were lying to a sea-anchor in a storm it might be pretty considerable. You see there would be about twenty tons of boat drifting backwards, and then there would be the rolling.’
‘Well you can’t do that, mate,’ he said, ‘it’s against all the bloody principles of welding. You can’t put a bloody strain across a long weld like that. It has to be on the line of the weld.’ I knew that he would always say exactly what he thought. ‘Here,’ he went on, ‘look here,’ and he started drawing in his turn. In the end he had an enormous fitting cast in the shops, through which the rudder-post passed and was then locked in place by a long key. ‘There,’ he said, after it was made, ‘you won’t lose that one.’
‘And even if the wood goes, we’ll still be able to steer with the rudder fitting,’ Beryl added.
I drew the plans and diagrams for all the mast and boom fittings and gave them to Bob, and he put his men on to making moulds and castings. The mast-fittings were let out on a contract to one of his engineers, and it was some time before they were completed, as they were hand-made from sheet brass, and it wasn’t until the end of September that we had everything back. Meanwhile I had spliced up all the shrouds and stays at their upper ends. I didn’t intend to finish them until we had the masts in, and I could measure them under tension, to make certain that they were the right length.
Once Is Enough Page 16