Atlantic Adventure

by Francis Chichester

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  Contents

  Francis Chichester

  Introduction

  The Voyage

  1. The Start

  2. A Pigeon Joins the Ship

  3. Trouble

  4. Ups and Downs

  5. Storm

  6. The Death of the Pigeon

  7. In the Gulf Stream

  8. ‘A Marvellous Sail’

  9. Independence Day

  10. At the Receiving End

  Appendix: About Gipsy Moth III

  Francis Chichester

  Atlantic Adventure

  Francis Chichester

  Aviator and sailor Sir Francis Chichester is best known for being the first and fastest person to sail around the globe single-handedly in The Gipsy Moth IV. Following this achievement he wrote several books and made films about his sailing experiences.

  Born in Devon and educated at Marlborough College, Chichester emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 18 and spent ten years in forestry, mining and property development. On his return to England he learned to fly, and in the original Gipsy Moth seaplane he became the first person to complete an East-West solo flight across the Tasman Sea, for which he was awarded the inaugural Amy Johnson Memorial Trophy.

  Chichester wrote many popular books on his air adventures, and during WWII he wrote the manual that single-man fighter pilots used to navigate across Europe. In 1964 Chichester published his autobiography, the bestselling The Lonely Sea and the Sky, and was knighted three years later for ‘individual achievement and sustained endeavour in the navigation and seamanship of small craft’.

  Chichester used his navigation experience to create a successful map-making company, Francis Chichester Ltd, which today still publishes pocket guides and maps which are sold throughout the world.

  Introduction

  BY J. R. L. ANDERSON

  January 1962 came in with one of the vilest stretches of weather that even the English climate can produce. ‘They order things better at sea,’ I thought, as I made my way to the Boat Show through the chaos that afflicts road, rail, and bus transport in England every time there is a fall of snow. A full gale off Cape Horn would have been taken by the crew of a sailing vessel in a more matter of fact way than London takes a few inches of snow. The weather is relevant to this story: those detestable days in early January were certainly one of the reasons why the first discussion of Francis Chichester’s project at his house on the evening of January 6th fired the imagination. And the weather dogged us afterwards: a wretchedly cold spring and early summer interfered seriously with the tasks of fitting-out, and sent plans for numerous trial trips in Gipsy Moth III spinning. The splendid achievement of Francis’s record-breaking voyage in 1962 was carried out against a background of delays and frustrations, mainly brought about by the weather.

  But much of this is private history; of no consequence against the later reality of Francis’s achievement. What happened was this: at that time I was Vice-Commodore of the Silhouette Owners’ Association, a body uniting those of us who sail in that remarkable small sailing cruiser known as the Silhouette. I had corresponded with Francis on one or two matters in the past, and I asked him if he would present the trophies, won for various events during the year, at an annual party that the Association holds in London. Generously, he said that he would, and he invited me to go along to his house first for a drink. It was while we were sitting chatting in the beautiful drawing-room of his house in St James’s Place that he rather casually mentioned that he was thinking of making a single-handed crossing of the Atlantic again. He had won the world’s first single-handed Transatlantic race in 1960 in a time of forty and a half days from Plymouth to New York, surviving a great gale, and beating his nearest rival, Colonel J. G. Hasler, in Jester, by a clear eight days. He had been presented with a trophy by the Duke of Edinburgh, and he had been acclaimed ‘Yachtsman of the Year’.

  That, one might think, would be enough for any man, particularly a man approaching sixty-one. Not so for Francis. He had been disappointed with his own performance in 1960, and he thought that he ought to be able to do better. He had lost four days during a gale, and he thought that there ought to be at least a statistical chance of making a passage without meeting a severe Atlantic gale. (There may be a statistical chance of this, but it didn’t turn up on the 1962 voyage.) Anyway, he wanted to have another go.

  But a single-handed passage in a small sailing boat is about the most expensive way of crossing the Atlantic known to man. True, one can be penniless and lucky in some old boat held together by hope, and potter down through the trade winds to the West Indies, do some island hopping, and hope ultimately to make New York. But that was not what Francis wanted: he did not want to potter, he wanted to race. And he did not want the easy run of a trade wind passage: he wanted to drive himself and his boat more or less across across the Great Circle route direct from Plymouth to New York, knowing that on an east-west crossing he would have the currents of the Gulf Stream against him all the time, and a chance of headwinds for much of the time. This sort of passage cannot be attempted in an old boat held together by hope.

  Francis had a fine ship in Gipsy Moth III, designed by Robert Clark, and built by John Tyrrell at Arklow in 1959. But Gipsy Moth is big for single-handed sailing: she is all but 40 feet long, 13 tons Thames Measurement, and her gear is a formidable weight for one man to tackle. Against this, she existed, she belonged to Francis, and she was unquestionably strong enough for the job. But Francis had not been altogether pleased with her performance under her original sloop rig—that is, with a large mainsail, and a single foresail or jib. He had called in John Illingworth, one of the greatest ocean racers of all time, and among the best of modern yacht designers. Illingworth suggested that Gipsy should be re-rigged as a cutter, to divide her headsail area among two sails, a jib and staysail, and to reduce the area of her mainsail a little. Cutter rig, although theoretically not quite so efficient aero-dynamically as the Bermudan sloop rig, would have other advantages for single-handed sailing and, Illingworth thought, would make Gipsy Moth somewhat better balanced.

  Francis also wanted to replace his original wooden mast with a spar of metal alloy. All this would be expensive, and then there would be all the other costs of the expedition. Would the Guardian, Francis asked, consider contributing to the costs in return for the narrative of the voyage?

  This was not easy to answer. I told Francis that personally I was greatly interested, of course, and would do whatever I could to help, but that the decision on the financial side of things could be made only by the Editor, Alastair Hetherington. We discussed things a bit more, and the idea that finally made his crossing one of the most remarkable newspaper achievements for many years was born. Francis said that Marconi Marine had offered to equip Gipsy with a small battery-operated radiotelephone, with a theoretical range of perhaps 3,000-4,000 miles. If this worked, could we, as a newspaper, carry a daily account of his voyage while he was actually making it? It was an exciting idea. There have been many small boat voyages, and many
fine books written about them, but these had all been written, or at least published, after the voyage was made. For a single-handed navigator, alone in the North Atlantic ocean, to be in touch with the world by telephone was something quite new. The question was, could it be done?

  The odds seemed, on the whole, against it. Radio at the best of times is inclined to be eccentric, and a radiotelephone in a small boat seemed to have pretty well everything against it. On a big ship radio aerials can be insulated efficiently, but on a small sailing boat this presented many difficulties. Moreover, salt water is a constant enemy to everything electrical, and large areas of spray-drenched sail are about the worst thing possible to have in the vicinity of a radiotelephone. However, these were all fairly obvious difficulties, and there might be ways of overcoming them. I went to see Mr G. F. Wilson, Assistant Inspector of Wireless Telegraphy in the Marine Radio Department of the Post Office, to ask his views on the project. Mr Wilson already knew of the proposal, because Francis had discussed the idea with Captain F. J. Wylie and Mr Eric Stride, of the Radio Advisory Service, and they had interested the Post Office in it. The help of the Radio Advisory Service was invaluable.

  Mr Wilson called in Mr S. W. Woolford of the External Telecommunications Executive, who would be deeply involved if the venture actually came off, and we had a long talk about things. Expert opinion was that if the radio-telephone could be satisfactorily installed—a fairly big ‘if’—it could be expected to work, but that it was unlikely to give much in the way of reception beyond 40 degrees west of Greenwich. New York is 73 degrees 50 minutes west of Greenwich, so that 40 degrees west was little more than halfway. But there was more to it than this. Expert opinion is bound to be cautious, but the best experts are always ready to experiment.

  The Post Office would guarantee nothing in the way of radio reception—indeed it could not—but Mr Wilson offered all the facilities of his department, and we all wanted to have a go. The chances were against good reception beyond 40 degrees west, but the radio might go on working well beyond that point. Nobody could say what would really happen, because such an experiment had never before been tried.

  I reported all this back to Alastair Hetherington in Manchester, and Francis and Sheila Chichester came down to see him. We had another long discussion, and the upshot was that the Guardian agreed to come in on the adventure. It was a gamble, we might very well lose contact with Francis and Gipsy Moth after the first few days, but if the radio worked it would be a wonderful achievement, so we went ahead.

  All this was at the end of January and early February. Francis and Sheila went off to France for a brief holiday, and it was arranged that fitting-out should begin seriously in March. Gipsy was lying at the Agamemnon Yard at Buckler’s Hard on the Beaulieu River, and on March 8th I drove down there to meet Francis. It was a bitterly cold day. It was too early in the season for the hotel at Buckler’s Hard to be open, but a small bar was, and we lunched on beer and some biscuits and cheese that I had brought down with me.

  In spite of the weather, we were a cheerful party—Francis and Sheila, Mr D. J. Darby, and Mr D. R. Watson, two Marconi Marine technologists, and later John Illingworth. Gipsy was in a shed at Buckler’s Hard, stripped, with her mast unstepped, and looking as miserable as boats out of their element always do. She was unwrapped by the yard people, and we went on board for hours of discussion and measuring about all that had to be done. It seemed endless.

  However, plans were made, and everybody got down to work. Gipsy’s new metal mast had been made and had arrived, and the special steel wire rope for her rigging, made by John Shaw at Worksop, was well in hand. The rigging had to have specially designed terminals, which were being made by M. S. Gibb at Warsash, and we went to see Mr Gibb, who promised to do everything he could to get them made promptly. The original intention was that Gipsy’s mast should be stepped at the end of March, leaving the whole of April and May for sailing trials. This did not happen, because the appalling weather held up everything, and it was not until nearly the end of April that Francis was able to take her out for her first sailing trials under her new rig. He describes these himself in his own narrative later.

  On May 11th I joined him at Portsmouth to accompany him on extended trials in the Channel. The Navy had generously lent Gipsy a mooring off Whale Island, and we intended to sail with the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s fleet on the Lyme Bay race from Southsea. We didn’t expect to do much in the way of racing against fully-manned ocean racing yachts, but Francis wanted to see how Gipsy, sailed single-handed, would keep up. I was simply a passenger: I had agreed that Francis should do everything single-handed, and my sole function was to keep watch in the busy shipping lanes of the Channel while Francis got some rest. This trip was interesting rather than anything else. It started badly. We were lying off Whale Island, surrounded by the somewhat muted might of England in the form of a number of cocooned warships. When the time came to leave our mooring there was scarcely any wind at all to take us to Southsea, and Francis decided to motor down there under Gipsy’s engine. He went to start the engine, and then he looked up through the hatch. ‘Do you think’he said, ‘that an engine will go without any oil at all?’ I said that this seemed extremely improbable. Francis had sailed over from Buckler’s Hard, and by some miserable mischance the oil filler cap had been left off, thus every time Gipsy heeled, oil had run out from the engine. There was a fearful mess in the tray under the engine, and no oil showing on the dipstick at all.

  ‘Well,’ said Francis, ‘we are supposed to be a sailing ship, so we shall have to try to get ourselves out under sail.’ There seemed a breath of wind, so he hoisted the mainsail and we cast off our mooring. But the breath of wind was rippling the water a couple of hundred yards away: where we were, we were completely blanketed by the cocooned warships. We began drifting slowly towards one of them.

  ‘There might be a scrap of oil in the sump,’ Francis said, ‘and the only thing to do is to see if we can run the engine long enough to get out into the fairway.’ He pressed the starter, the engine fired, and we began to move. I was at the tiller, and there seemed plenty of water to get clear. The next moment we were aground. What was worse, it was about ten minutes off high water.

  It looked as if our Channel trials would be spent hard on the mud off Whale Island. Francis got out a kedge, and we hauled as hard as we could, but Gipsy would not budge. A small naval motor boat came up and took a line, but still she would not budge. Salvation suddenly appeared in the shape of Captain Peter Thompson, R.M., with a large and powerful marine picket boat. She took a line and Gipsy slid thankfully off the bank. The engine ran long enough to get us into the fairway, and we were clear.

  We ran slowly down to Southsea to make the starting line for the RORC race, and just about managed it, but it was miserable sailing. There was next to no wind, it was bitterly cold, and a succession of thunderstorms flung buckets of freezing rain at us. The RORC fleet set spinakers, and began to disappear over the horizon. We decided to experiment with the radiotelephone. It was not a very successful experiment. We had to call Niton Radio in the Isle of Wight, and local thunderstorms made conditions difficult. However, we got through in the end, and established contact with David Fairhall, the Guardian’s Shipping Correspondent, who was waiting to receive the call at the Post Office’s Marine Radio Terminal at Brent. The best that could be said was that we got through. Then we settled down to sail. We had pretty well everything during the night from dead calm to a Force 8 wind. There was a bad moment when Francis hurt his hand when a spar to boom out the jib jumped from the socket to which he was fitting it, but what might have been a horrid accident mercifully turned out to be no more than a bad scrape. Francis tried Gipsy under various combinations of sail, and she behaved well. Next morning we tried the radiotelephone again. We got through much better, and Francis was able to report that Gipsy was hard on the wind, doing a good 7 knots.

  We made our way back to the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, and the final beat
up the Channel from Southsea was fun. There was a decent wind, and Francis sailed Gipsy like a dinghy, racing close in to the promenade at Southsea before going about. She turned on her heel like a dinghy, and behaved magnificently. It was a splendid sail.

  Francis was due to leave Plymouth for his crossing to New York on June 1st, so there was little more than three weeks left for all that had to be done. How everything got done I still don’t know, but it did get done. The Marconi people did a wonderful job of installation on the radio. The ‘Kestrel’ transmitter/receiver was installed in a space about as big as that taken up by a table-top domestic refrigerator, just inside the cabin hatch. A twenty-four-volt bank of ‘Exide’batteries was placed in a specially lined acid proof tray. Near them was the small petrol-driven generator for charging them. Mr W. Maconachie, of Marconi Marine, wrote an article about the installation for the Guardian, and I cannot do better than quote from it. ‘The installation of the transmitter and batteries,’ he wrote, ‘was fairly routine stuff, and not much more difficult than a similar exercise on one of the smaller fishing craft that use radio equipment of this type. On the aerial/ earth side things were different. Earthing on this wooden boat was arranged through a copper plate fixed to the outside of the hull, well below waterline level to allow for lying over, with an earth bolt brought inboard through the planking. The greatest length of aerial run on a line least likely to be obstructed by sail movement was found from close to the masthead to the port and starboard rails abaft the break of the cabin positions already occupied by backstays. The thing to do was to replace the backstays by aerials, while retaining the strength of the stays so that the aerials could do a double job. This was accomplished by providing special stays of stranded stainless steel, broken just below masthead and above deck by twin insulators of a high breaking strain, and splicing into the lower end of each stainless steel aerial a connecting “tail” ending in a spring battery clip of the crocodile type. This arrangement provides two independent transmitting aerials, close together at the top, and separated by the beam of the boat at deck level.’ The twin aerials were necessary to provide a working aerial unobstructed by the mainsail on whichever tack Gipsy might be lying over. Separate receiving aerials, independent of the transmitting aerials, were also fitted. The best position for these was judged to be that already occupied by the shrouds, but the pattern for the transmitting aerials on the backstays could not be followed, because even high strain insulators might have introduced a dangerous weakness into the vital shrouds. Instead, a length of insulated wire was taped tightly to the inboard side of the shrouds, and the ends taken down through the deck to the receiver.