Atlantic Adventure

by Francis Chichester

  I slept very well until eight-thirty a.m., but found the wind still around Force I, with the sea calm, and a slight swell. There was a red slit on the horizon, above the sun’s position, but it was slightly overcast. We had done 10½ miles in eight hours. One big event was that Pidgy gave tongue to a small ‘roucou roucou’. He seemed a bit more cheerful, doing some eagle antics, flapping his wings, and hopping on to the crosstree.

  I worked hard on the main engine. It was an awkward situation, face down under the cockpit, and I only just survived seasickness. I unfastened the bolt securing the gear lever, because I thought that the lever had not enough play. I found that the propeller shaft had reversed itself at slow revs, and then switched to the other rotation on opening the throttle. I secured the shaft with a piece of very old cod line. This is one use for which nylon is no good—that is, to supply a hold which will break at once if too much strain is applied to it. It worked, so I felt ready to start trying to charge the batteries, but the wind got up a little, so I decided to defer charging until a bit later.

  I also felt like lunch, and I had a splendid lunch, eating the last lettuce given me by Nancy, which was excellent with a crushed garlic clove. One advantage of the Atlantic is that one can eat as much garlic and onion as one likes, and I like a lot. I had smoked salmon first, but it was too salty, packed in brine, with Danish Blue cheese, and gingerbread to follow. I made a blunder here; I didn’t have Stilton as I had last time; Stilton just has that extra something. I had dates and raisins in my salad and, of course, a Mackeson stout to start with, and Whitbread pale ale to go on with. The tout ensemble would be hard to beat.

  I decided to alter my clocks: one feels that one had been wasting time, lunching at three p.m., whereas actually it is not local noon here until two-forty British clock time.

  Later that afternoon we had a shower of rain, and the wind quickened. I made another tent for Pidgy on the cockpit seat leaning to the coaming at one end. It had macintosh sheets (at least, their modern equivalent, a Cellophane bag folded flat). But I found that I couldn’t see him in this position, so I shifted the tent to the other end of the cockpit, facing forward. He was more out of my way there too.

  Sailing was getting much better, and we were moving fast. It is a fine sensation to be sailing fast through the smoothest ocean sea, and to watch the waves and white water seeming to rush past the cabin portholes.

  In the evening we had a squall, with rain and wind, but not much sea. We were going so fast that we bounced, but I hung on, although over-canvassed, because I thought it was only temporary and anyway we were doing 6 to 7 knots. The yacht went through one or two waves without slowing, but it was surprising to see how, if she came to a succession of waves, her jumping developed a certain rhythm, so would slow right down.

  I lacked judgement in thinking that the wind was only a short rain squall. It took me a long time to get the sails reset—an hour and twenty-five minutes. What took most of the time was sorting out the halliards, which were all crossed because of being one winch short (and my clumsiness). I handed my genoa, reefed Miranda, reefed the main, and set the working jib. Under working jib, staysail, and reefed main, we were going at least as fast as before, with the wind coming from the south-west at about Force 6. The sea bumped a cupful of tea leaves and some tea off the swinging table on to the carpet. Poor carpet. It was getting more off-white daily. I said to myself, ‘What ho! for a Squire’s gin and lemon hot.’ Then I hardened in the main, and turned in. Just before midnight I had to turn out again, because we were taking too big a pounding. I got down the working jib, and set the storm jib in its place, getting well dunked in the process.

  That was an uncomfortable night. I had to get up again at two-thirty when the wind dropped and I was awoken because the boom was banging in too little wind. I took some waking, but I had to get to work again—to get down the spitfire, to set the big genoa, and to unreef the main. I tacked to the SSE., but it was no good, so I tacked back. There followed much trimming in a light wind, and for some reason I seemed temporarily to lose my sense of balance, and couldn’t walk along the deck without holding on all the time, which was a nuisance. Day broke (June 10th) with very heavy rain, and with the wind going round to the south-west again, then it turned east and died away. I took down the mainsail because Gipsy ghosts well under her headsails but is upset by the boom slatting in light winds. I had a talk on the radiotelephone to David Fairhall and his brother, and a long discussion with the engineers about generating electric current. Then I had breakfast and washed up, cleaned the cockpit after Pidgy, and made yet another new tent for him at the after end of the cockpit seat. In the afternoon the wind backed right round through south-east and north-east to north, and we settled down to a broad reach under genoa and staysail. I ricked my back, doing nothing in particular, in the old place where I have had trouble ever since I had a crash in my Gipsy Moth seaplane. It made it very painful indeed to move about, but I thought that with a bit of luck it should be all right, because it is a temperamental ailment.

  I generated for the inboard pair of batteries for half an hour until the generator got hot, but it seemed to me to get hot only because the whole motor got hot: I wondered why. I put a pint of Castrol into the gear-box and tried again. There seemed to be much strain from the exhaust, but water came out all right from the cooling system, and I finished another half-hour’s charging for the second pair of batteries. In the evening I was just about to have a snooze when the wind backed to the north-west, so I trimmed up on the wind. We were moving well, and it was nice to be on the move again. I couldn’t get a sun sight at noon that day because there was no sun, but I managed to get one with the evening sun, and it confirmed my DR position. I found that we had made good a total of 963 miles towards New York.

  A terrific disaster (from a yachting point of view) struck during the night. I woke up at five-thirty and rolled an eye over to the ‘tell-tale’compass and found that Gipsy Moth was heading north. I thought, oh Lord, the wind has gone round; I must get up quickly and change the sails. But the next thing I knew was waking up at eight o’clock to find that we were heading east. So for an hour or two I had been travelling in the wrong direction. This was terrible—it really breaks the heart of a poor yachtsman. I went out on deck and put her round into the right direction, setting the big genoa, staysail and working jib, and was soon travelling towards New York again with a Force 2 wind.

  I was very tired that morning, and as I looked up at the rigging I thought suddenly that yachting is getting fantastic. It seemed mad not to have a rig like Blondie Hasler in his single-sailed junk-rigged Jester. I counted up to thirty different sheets, guys, and tiller lines, and it gave me a nightmare to think of them all. A spider would have a job to find his way around my cockpit. But it didn’t do any good to think like this, for the wind was getting up, and I felt that I ought to set the small spitfire jib.

  But in the middle of doing so I changed my mind, and said to myself, ‘I’ll stick to the old working jib’. So I hoisted that up again, thinking while I did so that either I was mad or that my judgement must be terrible, or something. Of course, the truth was simply that I was very tired. And there came a gust soon afterwards which made me wish that I had the spitfire up after all.

  I was kept so busy that morning that I couldn’t do anything about breakfast until nearly two p.m., when I had my only cooked meal of that day. It was a very good one of fried potatoes, onions in butter, with herring roes, which all went very well together. Breakfast—or lunch, or whatever it was—made me feel better, and I was particularly grateful that my back was better. In the afternoon I had more work to do on deck, and found it very wet. At least one thing you get for free in the Atlantic is barrow-loads of salt water over you for shower baths, and washing the deck.

  At night I was too tired to eat again, but managed a few dates and an orange in my bunk. I was interested to find that I could not get hold of the orange peel with my fingers because the nails were worn too far do
wn. I had to turn out again during the night to set the trysail because of the wind. I found that I was working very, very slowly, and was obviously tired out. But I got the work done, and the boat went really well all night, plunging away at 6 knots, and in the right direction. But, my word, it was rough. We simply bounded about all over the place, and time after time I woke up. Once I thought something must have broken because there was a terrific crash, and after that a regular thump every few seconds. I got out and had a good look round, but everything seemed intact. I came to the conclusion that it must have been a can of oil which had broken loose and was rolling from side to side.

  I found that I had developed the habit of talking to myself: I think it came through talking first to the pigeon, and then going on talking to myself. Pidgy got very fed up when a terrific sea came down on the cockpit and washed him right out of his little hut, and he wouldn’t go back again for a bit. But he cheered up later, and his beak chattered away back when I talked to him.

  Tuesday, June 12th, was another busy day. I heated water ready to do two days’washing up after breakfast, but it was not until the middle of the afternoon that I actually managed to do it. I spent much of the morning working on the motor, trying to charge the batteries. The engine varied a lot in speed, running suddenly slowly, suddenly fast, and after forty-eight minutes’charging there was a ‘plonk’as my cord locking the propeller shaft broke. Steam blew through the escape holes in the gear-box filler cap, and from the cap astern, from what I assumed to be the clutch. The gear-box was so hot that rain sizzled on it. I concluded that the clutch was engaging periodically although the engine was supposed to be running in neutral. After struggling with the engine I worked hard on Miranda, rigging up a cordage device for double reefing without having to lower her and swing her round to the backstay to do the work. This arrangement was with a light nylon cord from the mast, which hauls up the boom to the reefing eyes: it laces them up, gathering sail as it lifts the boom. It was an arrangement I had needed badly. I also found that a bottle screw which tensions the stay from Miranda’s mast top to the end of the spar carrying a 50 lb. lead counterpoise, was missing.

  There was a big drop in the barometer, and I began to expect rough weather. Rain fell heavily, and things looked very dirty. The wind gusted up to gale force, and I set my storm sails, but no sooner had I done so than the wind fell off again, leaving me feeling very depressed. I was sick and tired of putting storm sails up, and getting working sails down, and the thought of going all the way round again and setting the old sails was very depressing.

  We had about two hours of calm when we could not move at all, then a breeze got up, but still the yacht wouldn’t move because of a lumpy swell coming in from the south-west. It was quite a big swell, very rough, and throwing the boat about so much that she could not move, although there was enough wind to make her sail. I tried sailing her downwind in order to get up enough speed before turning off into the waves, but it was no use.

  Finally, she got going in the evening. The wind had gone right round the clock, and was trying to go round again. Sometimes I felt that I was going to go mad, trying to trim sails for every shift in wind direction. Anyway, the wind ended up as NNE. and then it backed a little to NW. by N., and we managed to move fairly well under a semi-storm rig. It was a grey and ruthless-looking sea—real Atlantic stuff—and it was very cold. I wore my thick, padded jacket in the cabin to try to keep warm.

  I turned in, but woke in the early hours of June 13th to find that we were running quietly enough. But we were not going very fast. What could I do to increase speed? I thought over this for a bit, and then decided to wait until daylight before doing anything, for I badly needed rest. When I got up I eased the sheets, which seemed to put up speed by about half a knot. We had some magnificent sailing later. The sun came out, shining on the great seas, and Gipsy Moth crashed through them. It really was wonderful, the way she seemed to like those big seas, and the way she went through them. We were averaging 6½ knots which, in heavy weather and in a boat of Gipsy’s size, really is something. I was very pleased with her, although I did get a bit apprehensive at times about the tremendous crashes she gave when she bounced over the waves. It was great sailing for me, but not for Pidgy. I saw him catch a sea, and from the look of disgust on his face I decided that he must be a crabby old bachelor.

  I noticed that the log had stopped, and I puzzled why. Then I noticed that all the sheet ends had been washed overboard from the deck beside the cockpit. Normally I keep them in the cockpit in seat lockers, but Pidgy fouled everything in the cockpit, so I had left them out. When I hauled them inboard I found that the log line and spinner were tangled with them in hundreds of twists. It was blowing a gale as I got them in, but the sun was shining. A lot of very clear, white, sparkling sea came on board. I downed the working jib and hoisted the spitfire so that I had full storm rig, with spitfire, storm jib, and trysail. I passed extra lashings round the bagged genoa on the cabin top, and checked the trysail and staysail sheets. After doing all this I unravelled the log line and streamed it again. My sextant took a sea sousing when I was trying to get a sight, but I put it under the fresh water tap, and gave it a bath, and hoped that it would be all right.

  I had been getting ice reports from John Fairhall, so I plotted icebergs and the ice area on the chart. It seemed good this year. The anchor light gave trouble, and went out three times before I could get it out of the cockpit. It seemed almost a waste of effort to try to carry a light. I turned in with some misgiving, for a change of wind seemed likely.

  5. Storm

  The thunderous crash of sea which woke me just after three a.m., must have come from a rogue wave, or one at the tail end of a squall, for when I rushed on deck all seemed well enough there. I eased the tiller lines a trifle to sail a shade freer. There was an intermittent moon in a stormy sky, but the sea was moderating, although there were still some visible squalls about.

  I got a good transmission to London on twelve megs, after breakfast, and then the wind fell off, and I got out the mainsail in place of the trysail. By noon we were going with all plain sail set—the big genoa, staysail and mainsail. My noon position put us 1,304 miles on the way to New York, with a day’s run of 126 miles, of which I reckoned 121 were made good. I managed to get a bit of charge into the batteries. That afternoon, June 15th, was one of mostly shifting winds, and by evening we were more or less becalmed. We were on the move again by ten p.m., but the wind still seemed undecided about what it wanted to do. The pigeon didn’t much like things, and I heard him swearing to himself in the dark.

  I was woken up, again just after three a.m., by a gust of wind which really laid the boat down. I went up to change the big genoa, but the sky did not look too bad, and I wondered whether I could hold on to it. At five-thirty a.m. I went up to have another look at things. It was still fine, but fortunately I saw what looked like a really dirty squall ahead. Although it seemed a fatuous thing to do at the time, I put up my spitfire jib instead of the big genoa. It meant a change of a 420-square-foot sail for one of 65 square feet: I thought I must be mad—you know, you wonder whether your judgement has gone to blazes—but actually it blew up pretty soon afterwards, and it went on blowing a gale for an hour or two after that. It was interesting to see that in a strong wind the boat went just as well with the spitfire up as with the big genoa. Miranda was thumping badly, so I reefed her, and that made things better still.

  I went below to try for a bit more sleep, but after about an hour and a half I most unwillingly crawled from my berth: the going was too rough for sleep. I got the mainsail down and set the trysail. Gipsy sailed well like this, but the going was still rough. I felt quite pleased that my judgement about the squall in an otherwise fine sky had been right. I made myself a cup of coffee, and then talked to John Fair hall on the radiotelephone. I had to hold on hard to keep standing as I talked to him. It seemed extraordinary that there was no sign of fog yet: at this time in the Atlantic in 1960 I had been in
fog for weeks. But although it had kept clear, I had not seen a ship since the one that circled me at the beginning of the trip.

  The sea was getting pretty rough, with Gipsy Moth flying into the air every now and again, and landing with tremendous crashes. It is fantastic what these yachts will stand up to, and I felt full of admiration for Jack Tyrrell in County Arklow, who built this boat. There seemed to be some sort of hoodoo on the electrics, for when I was setting the trysail I put my hand on the electric navigation light, and got a shock. That was the way to lose current, and it frightened me to think about, so I disconnected all the lights.

  After talking to John Fairhall I had some breakfast, but then found that I could not keep awake, so I dozed off. I awoke to find the yacht getting an awful hammering, and when I saw a dollop of water come through the closed forehatch I decided that I must act. I took down the staysail and lashed Miranda to the backstay. There was peace for a bit, but we were in a full gale from the southwest. I hadn’t secured the staysail halliard, and it flew outboard. I was lucky to catch it again. It wrapped itself round shrouds, crosstrees, etc., but at least I had it. Gipsy Moth sailed well by herself with trysail and spitfire set. The effect of dropping the staysail was amazing, but it seemed to take all life out of the boat.

  I fed Pidgy again, and gave his tabernacle another covering. He let me stroke him, so he must have been feeling pretty fed up. He looked like a sick jackdaw: it must have seemed utter hell to him.

  The rest of that day was mostly stormy, and the seas grew very rough—I estimated the waves at about 12 feet. Still, I managed to cook some lunch in the middle of the afternoon, and found the ‘cooking belt’that I was wearing a wonderful aid. I seemed unduly fatigued, and kept on wanting to go to sleep. The barometer rose a little, but then started to fall again. The sea was still very rough, but before turning in I thought that we could just about stand the staysail again, and decided to try it anyway.