Atlantic Adventure

by Francis Chichester

  That was a bad night: everything seemed to go wrong. The anchor light went out three times, waiting each time until I had got it into the cockpit, and once it went out while on a hook in the cabin, without being touched. I spent the best part of two hours trying to reef Miranda, and I was just about to get into my bunk, about two a.m., when the yacht came aback, so it was on with oilies again. Another thing, the ring of my torch parted. I got a bit of sleep after that, but rose at nine o‘clock very reluctantly as I felt quite fagged out. I unreefed Miranda, and set a course again. I had a rather poor communication with London, did more sail changing, and then set to work to try to get some charge into the batteries. I managed a bit of charging, but had to stop because the exhaust kept blowing through the pipe.

  An extraordinary thing happened while I was having a shave. I looked at the barometer just before I started, and glanced at it again when I had finished. The whole thing took only about ten minutes, but the barometer was reading a millibar lower. I was so surprised that I went and checked from my log to see if I had got the previous reading right; but it was quite right, and it had dropped a millibar. So I hustled up on deck as fast as I could, and got the big genoa down, although there was a perfectly clear sky.

  Sure enough, as I put up the working jib, it started to blow again, and before I had it properly sheeted in, it was blowing so hard that I had to take it down again. Then I put up the small spitfire in its place, but even that was too much with the storm jib, which I had kept set as a staysail. So I had to take that down, and on the way down it got torn: so I was faced with mending it before I could use it again.

  I was bothered about the generator. There are two exhaust pipes from the cylinders and the starboard one seemed to consist only of its asbestos lagging, for the pipe inside had corroded through. I could see the flame inside. I decided to put a piece of tin from a beer can round it, and wrapped it all with some more asbestos from the starter motor. I wished that I could find some way of stepping up the rate of charging: it seemed to waste a tremendous amount of power from the engine, just to get a trickle of charge into the batteries, and I had only enough petrol for about fifteen hours’running left.

  That night I changed berths for fear of being thrown across the cabin—I might have broken a box of eggs on the other side. Just as I was in my berth thinking how nice it was for Gipsy Moth to steer herself, she tacked and came up aback. So I had to tog up and deal with it. The anchor light went out as usual and, as usual, I had to light it three times before it would stay alight. It was a job, too, in a gale, but I thought that the wind was moderating, and when I got to sleep it was coming from the north-west at no more than Force 6 or 7.

  The morning of June 17th found us more or less becalmed again. I used the calm to mend the staysail. My noon position put us 1,533½ miles on the way, and I found that we should miss the iceberg that John Fairhall had been telling me about by 17 miles: not much.

  The afternoon brought a breeze again at last, but it wasn’t much good because it headed us steadily. It was also raining hard. I felt unsettled, and couldn’t get myself into a settled mood; I suppose that was because we had had knock down squalls so often in the evening. But the glass was rising and promised fairer weather. I decided that I would have to tack soon, for with Cape Race to clear I must not get too far north.

  The next day, June 18th, brought fog, with visibility down to about 300 yards, and as far as I could make out I was heading straight for that iceberg. I decided that I should have to stay on deck to watch for it. I think I could have got a sextant shot at the moon during the night, but I was too lazy, and too sleepy to get up for it. I began to regret this bitterly, for it would have shown me exactly where I was in relation to the iceberg. But I did manage to get a sun shot of sorts, although there was no horizon, before the fog closed down, and I had to do the best I could with that. But working out this sight gave me what I thought was excessive westing. I was also bothered because my stop-watch had stopped while I was taking the sight, which might have made a difference of plus or minus fifteen seconds. This was not altogether happy for plotting ice data, but I worked out what seemed to be the best course for clearing the icebergs that John and David Fairhall had been telling me about.

  I felt very disappointed at the slow speed we had been making, but the pigeon perked up a bit. He sat on the afterdeck, sucking up chopped bread out of his bowl—bread chopped up into little pieces, was one of his favourite dishes. He was a very dainty eater, and would never eat more than three-quarters of anything I gave him.

  It rained pretty solidly throughout the day, until about four o’clock in the afternoon, when the rain stopped and I saw a little blue sky. I also saw a trawler, homeward bound to Newfoundland. I got another sun shot in the afternoon, and decided to treat my morning shot as suspect. The wind, which had moderated to about Force 5, began to get up again. With evening the fog cleared, but the sea was rough. The jib sheet parted with a sharp twang, and a great flogging of sail: I was lucky to get the sail down without getting soaked, as I did not have time to put on oily trousers. It was bitterly cold, and my hands were so numb that I had trouble in tying gear.

  I had great trouble in getting the yacht sailing again under the the spitfire jib, because of all the shambles of halliards, sheets and things to be sorted out, but at last I managed it. My heart dropped when I got back from the foredeck because I thought that Pidgy was missing: I thought he must have been washed overboard. But in the end I found him back in his locker under the cockpit seat, looking very forlorn, wet, and bedraggled. I gave him one of Stalker Miller’s oatcakes—nothing but the best on such an occasion—and he seemed to love it. I took him into the cabin and tried to settle him in a large biscuit tin, but he wouldn’t stay, so I returned him to his cubbyhole. I suppose he was used to roosting out of doors, but it was bitingly cold.

  With great difficulty I set the trysail. While doing this I was swung round the mast, and the top of my head came into violent contact with the reefing gear of the boom. I was surprised that I wasn’t knocked out. But with two sails the boat seemed to go mad, so I hurriedly dropped the staysail and left the trysail on for a bit. I couldn’t set the spitfire because the halliards were still fouled up after the trouble with the jib sheet. I felt that this was my fault because I ought to have turned out and shortened sail some time before the jib sheet parted, but I was working on the motor and I wanted to finish repairs to the exhaust and so held off taking in sail until too late.

  That night and the next day brought continuous storm, and I spent about sixteen hours more or less hove to. It was difficult to decide what was the best thing to do. There was a full gale from the south-west, and a very rough sea. There was enough surf to make a surf rider seasick, twisting in every conceivable way. It was no use setting more sail, and I just had to grin and bear it. I had a job to keep warm, and I was wearing long, woollen underpants, plus a thick ski sweater, plus Jaeger’s padded nylon jacket; all this, with the Aladdin stove in the cabin going full blast day and night. That stove was always much in demand for drying clothes. I had another go at setting the staysail, but it was no good: there was too much wind, and the sea was too rough. I decided to free Gipsy Moth from Miranda’s control, for I thought that she might go a trifle better without Miranda snatching at the helm. When I had done this I went below to try to cook something to eat, and I just had a vegetable nearly cooked when the old so-and-so went about. Perhaps this was to show me that I couldn’t do without Miranda. Anyway, I togged up again, and put Miranda back in charge. The wind had then gone round to the west, but it was still at least Force 8, or perhaps a bit more.

  I decided that something drastic must be done, for we were being driven too fast before the gale. I tried to slow up the yacht by backing the trysail and the spitfire jib, which I did by turning the boat round, hauling the sheets in on that side, and then putting her round again so that both sails were aback. But there was too much wind: it knocked the boat down on her side so I lowered
the trysail and tried again with just the spitfire, which is only 65 square feet of canvas. It slowed her up a bit, but she was still doing about 3 knots. That was still too fast, but then I had an inspiration. I turned out again and put the helm hard down. With the helm fixed down, and the spitfire aback, she slowed to about a knot and a half, more or less in the right direction.

  We took some heavy seas on board, and twice the shock of a mass of water hitting the yacht put out the cabin lamp. We made only about 13 miles in the right direction during the sixteen hours we were hove to, and although we did a bit better after that we had another twenty-four hours of gale and didn’t do too well. I got some sun sights on June 19th, though it was very difficult to get an accurate sextant shot in rough seas. I reckoned that the gale had lost me two days. Pidgy took it badly, and I got more and more worried about him. He looked wet and cold, and had scabs round his eyes. Finally, I couldn’t bear to see him looking so miserable, so I made him a dovecote out of a cardboard box, wrapped him in some old pyjamas, and put him into it. He just lay there for a while, but after a time he stood up. I tried him with a biscuit, and he began eating it. This cheered me up immensely, for I had feared that he was about to hand in his chips. I felt that it called for a celebration—a strong lime, with a dash of Squire’s gin. (I am not sure if I have got these the right way round!)

  During the night of June 20th–21st the storm blew itself out, and I came on deck to find the yacht becalmed upon a sunless sea. I looked round with a feeling of despair at the amount of work to be done in repairing the damage of the storm. Miranda had suffered badly; the gooseneck of her gaff had sheared off, and both the stays to her 50 lb. lead counterpoise weight had carried away. First, I tackled the gooseneck of the gaff, and it was a difficult and tricky job, because I couldn’t get at a lot of it without acrobatic efforts hanging over the Atlantic; and the Atlantic was on the jump after the storm. But I managed to improvise and fit a new gooseneck. I used a deck screw-eye, which I had inherited with the old Gipsy Moth when I bought her in 1954; with a vice and a file, it fitted. Then I fitted shackles and lanyards to replace the stays of Miranda’s counterpoise. Another bottle-screw in the stay to Miranda’s boom had shaken itself into the ocean, and I replaced that with a lanyard, too. I was still worried about the 50 lb. weight, which I thought most insecure, so I rigged a patent home-made gadget to strengthen it. I also rigged a line to the outboard end of the gaff for handling it from inboard: I had found it impossible to pull in by hand in a wind, and it had a really fierce kick.

  As I worked, the feeling of despair with which I’d started slowly left me; if one plods on eternally at a job until it comes out right the desperation disappears.

  It looked like becoming a fine morning, so I set the working jib in place of the spitfire. Then I got on with more repairs. All the fastenings on the canvas dodgers had given away, but that was natural enough, for they are made weak to make sure that they will give before anything else does. The rigging all wanted trueing up: it had had a pretty good stretch. But it was wonderful rigging, and it gave me great confidence. So did Gipsy Moth—it is a great thing in a storm to have a boat and gear that you feel that you can rely on. One tends to forget the tremendous weight of the seas that come on board; by the noise and crash that some of them make, they must weigh a lot more than a ton. One big sea landed right on top of the cabin during the storm, and I could see the water squirting through under pressure in places where I swear that water has never come through before. And afterwards there was no trace of water’s having come through at all, but I actually saw it. That sea must have weighed a ton, at least. It is amazing how the gear stands up to it. Miranda is still rather a new thing, and you can hardly expect her not to have some teething troubles.

  The fine morning turned to rain, and with the rain what wind there was shifted a bit, from west to a bit south of west. I calculated that the nearest iceberg was pretty well due west of us, and about 70 miles away. I worked out a course which I reckoned would clear the ice, and started sailing again in a modest way.

  6. The Death of the Pigeon

  This day, June 21st, brought tragedy: the death of the pigeon.

  For some days I had been becoming more and more worried about him, and during the storm I thought that he was going to die. He was half naked—you could see his skin through his feathers—and I felt very unhappy about him. Then I had an inspiration, and remembered what I called ‘the Haggis box’. That was a box that Stalky Miller, the artist who draws maps for us, gave me with some shortcake and other things in to take on the voyage. It used to be a box for a coffee percolator, so it had a round hole in it, and made a wonderful dovecote. This was the box that I used to make a nest for Pidgy when I decided that things were just too rough for him in the cockpit, and that he would have to be brought into the cabin. I secured the box to the roof of the cabin, just above the galley. I wrapped him in a bit of my old pyjamas, and after sitting listlessly for a while, he went to sleep, with his tail sticking out of the box. He slept for some time, and awoke with a start at a splash of water on the cabin porthole, and after his sleep he seemed a bit more cheerful.

  When I had finished doing repairs, and cleaning up the boat after the storm, I thought that the pigeon’s nest ought to he cleaned out too, and I also thought that the pigeon himself ought to have some air and movement. So I put him back in the cockpit, cleaned out his nest, and lined it with some clean sheets of paper which John Anderson had given me originally to prepare notes on for my radiotelephone messages. Pidgy sat on the counter for a bit, and then made to fly off, as he often did, to do a circuit of the boat. I thought that a little flight would be good for him, so I said, ‘Yes, go on,’ and waved him off. He took off, but stalled into the water a few feet away. He flapped madly to get off again, but couldn’t make it, and then flapped towards me, half in and halt out of the water, trying to catch us up.

  I put the boat round at once and touched him the first time round, but it was very difficult. You could only reach the water where the freeboard is lowest, and then only by sticking your body well out over the side under the lower lifeline. To bring the boat right up to him meant that I couldn’t see him from the helm for the last 50 feet or so, because he was hidden by the side of the boat itself. I tried to scoop him out with the gash (slop) bucket on the end of the boathook, but he thought that I was attacking him, and tried to evade the bucket. Time after time I came up to him, and several times I had him in the bucket, but he was washed out as I drew it towards me. It was heartrending to see his pathetic efforts to reach the bucket, only to shy away when I got the bucket near him. I threw over an old piece of sail to try to give him a sort of lifebelt, but I think it must have sunk.

  I spent some forty minutes trying to come up to him, and I put about fifteen times. I dared not stop to lower the sails, or to hunt for anything to throw out as a marker, because I needed to watch his tiny head incessantly so as not to lose sight of him in the sea. Finally, at the fifteenth try, I got him in the bucket, and instead of being washed out, he got ducked and stayed in. This time he was inert when I pulled the bucket towards me, and I managed to grab him with my hand, nearly going overboard myself: I had no time to fix a safety belt or such-like. I wrapped him in hot cloths, warmed from some boiling water I had in the Thermos, and applied artificial respiration for about another forty minutes. I reckoned that I was doing it all right, too, because you could see the air coming out of his mouth when I pressed on the right place. After that I filled a hot water bottle, and wrapped him with it in paper, but he was a goner. I felt very sad indeed, though I think that his time was up. His poor, emaciated, sick-looking body had only a few feathers left. I think he had been very sick, and that his number was up. But that did not stop me from feeling very depressed, and I was especially sad because after I had made the dovecote for him, and put him in the cabin, he seemed to have been perking up a little. And all the time that I was trying to rescue him he must have thought that I was attacking him, for
if he had trusted me I could have got him back on board nearly at once.

  After Pidgy’s death I just had to get on with things, so I did some more housework. I filled the petrol tank for charging the batteries, and I filled the Aladdin stove, and also the paraffin bottles that I used for keeping it supplied, because it was easier to pour into the filler from a bottle. I swept the carpet, and tidied up the cabin. I suppose I was working slowly, but I was surprised to find how long each job took, and it was evening before I was through. A breeze arrived after I had some supper, and I hoisted the mainsail and hardened up the sheets. Then it began to rain, but the sea had gone down, and it was nearly calm. We were doing about 3¼ knots when I went to bed.

  It was rather thrilling at daybreak next morning, June 22nd, to go on deck and to find that we were ghosting along through a thin fog, and a nearly calm sea. I was still feeling fagged and below par, and I felt a little sad when I took my noon sight and found that the sun had started declining southwards: midsummer was over.

  I was now well into the Grand Banks, and I reckoned that I passed right over one of the icebergs that John and David Fairhall had been telling me about: it must have melted, or drifted away somewhere else. I decided that my best course was to make some 50 miles south-east of Sable Island. I was allowing for 10 miles setting in the current, but I found that it had been setting me back about 15 miles a day: I concluded that there was an extra strong easterly set in the current because of the long southwesterly gales. We should be in a neutral south-going current soon, from meeting the Labrador current off the Newfoundland coast. I was a bit bothered about these currents because I seemed to be some 52 miles south-east by south of my position as estimated by dead reckoning over three days, which seemed a big error, and I puzzled over the reason or reasons. A finger of the Labrador current could have done it easily, and the water was certainly icy, coming straight down from the Labrador coast. Again, my sights may have been in error three days earlier, but I felt not with errors of as much as 50 miles. But it certainly had been difficult to hold the sextant in a gale, and to decide in the turbulent sea what was a true horizon and not just the back of a distant wave. Furthermore, my dead reckoning was bound to be rough, because of the time I spent below sleeping, etc. On the whole I felt that we had drifted faster south by east than I had logged during the night we had spent with only the spitfire set aback. And one knows that the current at any given point of time is unpredictable. All we do know about the current is that over a period of years it averages so much at this spot in June. I decided to stick to my noon position as logged.