The Romantic Challenge

by Francis Chichester

  By midnight it was a halcyon night, with a bright moon shining into the boat from above the stem. The shimmering silvery path on the sea and the benign looking stars in the summery sky reminded me of those wondrous nights in 1931 when I was waiting to attempt the last stage of my flight across the Tasman Sea in the Gipsy Moth seaplane which I had rebuilt at Lord Howe Island after it had been sunk in a gale in the lagoon. Nothing equals apprehension of the future for making one enjoy the unparalleled beauty and charm of the present.

  Flying fish were striking the deck. Most of them thrashed their way back to the sea, but I had seen four left behind. One I picked up by the wing and I was going to throw him back, but he had already passed out, so I kept him. It is a wonder that any survive hitting the deck of a yacht. I don’t know their flying speed but would think 25mph the lowest for keeping airborne with their small wings. These are narrow and long, looking as if made of shiny, transparent plastic with thin spines from body to wing-tip to keep the wings extended. They have so much body for such small wings, although they are mostly not much bigger than a pilchard.

  All this romantic delight did not go with the speed I wanted. Even so, the run from noon to midnight of 90.7 miles sailed was good considering that Gipsy Moth had not once been up to the 8.3 knots which she had to average to make good her daily rate. I logged: ‘It is difficult to sleep because it is so exciting and gripping trying to get the most speed possible. I believe that with this rig and 5 knots more wind Gipsy Moth could whizz along.’

  From now on the log was filled with entries about changing sails or trim or course: ‘Decided to drop the big runner and try hardening up to windward for more speed. It improved the speed considerably by the looks of it.’ ‘I set forth accoutred cap-à-pied to boom out the biggest runner, but after working out the true wind, I changed my mind; by sailing 20˚ to windward of the required course, Gipsy Moth is doing well, whereas setting up the running gear may reduce the speed, because it will entail sailing up to 20˚ below or downwind of the required course. Incidentally it will mean much banging of gear and a lot of work; so I have decided to leave it alone meanwhile.’ ‘I find I make rash and hasty decisions after being pinned down to an R/ T session for 40 minutes or an hour and usually getting fussed up about that.’

  Third day’s run to noon fix Friday 15 January 1971.

  Position: 12˚29’N 22˚53’W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 192 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 3,568 miles.

  Days remaining: 17.

  This was better. With 192 miles made good I was only eight miles below the 200mpd target. The fact was, however, that I had failed for the third day to reach the target and was now 168 miles behind it; Gipsy Moth needed an average of 209.9 miles a day for the remaining seventeen days.

  Working at a faster than normal pace in calculating sun fixes bred blunders. I wanted a fix to give an accurate position to the BBC; I knew there were mistakes in my calculations but I could not trace them in time. So I reverted to the old squarerigger captain’s practice of using a noon latitude which does not rely on accurate times. The operation is simple enough and so is the theory: At noon the sun is on the meridian and therefore due south of the yacht. The point vertically overhead in the heavens is a point vertically above the latitude of the yacht. If the sextant is used to measure the angle between that point and the sun, and that angle is added to the latitude (which, to be academic, is called declination) of the sun, the result is the latitude of the yacht. On a fine day with a smooth sea the operation couldn’t be easier.

  To show how much time is needed for really accurate navigation: I had taken four separate sun observations spread over a period of six hours. Apart from the measuring of the sun’s height angle above the horizon for which I would take the average of three to six shots as a rule, there was the calculating to do for each observation, and finally the plotting of a position line for each observation. Each position line would be a small section of a vast circle on the surface of the earth centred at a point vertically below the sun and with radius governed by the angle between the sun and the point vertically above the yacht. These position lines would be moved forward to the time of the last observation according to the distance and direction sailed by the yacht in the interval. Then theoretically all four position lines should meet in a point.

  In this case I knew my rule of thumb latitude to be accurate and with its help I was able to decide which of the other observations was accurate and thereby get a fix to transmit to the BBC in London. I cannot bear to have a mistake put away with my calculations however, so I worked away until I found out what the blunders were. It would be difficult to find anything more silly and elementary: the first measurement of the sun’s altitude demanded that the appropriate position line should be moved 22 miles towards the sun; I had moved it 22 miles away. My fourth hurried check shot observation of the sun had a simple addition error in the calculation. I have described this incident at length in order to show the immense value of taking three or four observations instead of just two, either of the sun or of stars or of planets. Incidentally, my DR position was 9 miles short of the sun fix adjusted to noon, so for the first time Gipsy Moth had been in a favourable instead of an adverse current since leaving Africa. ‘Hurrah!’ I logged.

  At midnight Gipsy Moth had sailed exactly 100 miles in the previous twelve hours. ‘It’s a start! It’s a start!’ I wrote triumphantly. But an hour after midnight the speed had dropped to 7.3 knots and I was getting fussed; it was not fast enough. Also the heading was 24˚ to the north and to windward of what it should be. I went on deck and hoisted Big Brother. It is a big, awkward sail to hoist even in a pleasant light breeze of 12 knots. If it is first hauled out to the boom end, the bunt of the sail can form a great belly which beats up and down at risk of hitting the sea in front of the stem and being ridden under the keel; if it is first hoisted before being hauled out it is liable to belly out ahead of the bows and to beat to and fro on each side of the topmast stay. So I laid it out along the deck, furled it by folding it into itself and tied the long ‘sausage’ at intervals with lengths of soft ‘rotten’caulking cotton. This enabled me to outhaul it without any trouble at all; then when I hoisted it, the stopping ties burst apart one after the other, letting the sail break out and fill.

  I still had the problem however of how to coax the self-steering gear to control the yacht when running with so much sail set. I began to wonder if I could counter the effect of Big Brother’s turning moment on the stem by leading the sheet of the tops’l to the end of the squared-off mizen boom.

  For the moment I tried paying off the boom sail forward in hopes of keeping the wind more abeam, but as soon as the wind died down the heading always fell off downwind and the self-steering gear did not then seem to have enough power to bring the boat back on course. I tried paying the boom sail farther forward until it was forward of abeam to see if that would cure the trouble. Come the daylight I would try rigging the biggest wind vane, but I did not want to do it in the dark.

  An hour later this latest trim of the sails seemed to be working all right. At least there had been no trouble and the speed was good. ‘And so to bed,’ I logged, ‘and I hope to get some sleep after I have finished this can of pea soup which tastes delicious.’ Two hours later, although I felt fagged out, I still could not sleep; I was too tired, I suppose, or else the can of soup had been a mistake.

  I went on deck and thought that the mizen which I had paid well off was doing no work, so I hardened it in. The heading promptly fell off from 285˚ to 270˚ or thereabouts which threatened to put the wind dead astern. This would at once slow down the speed so I hurriedly reset the mizen as it had been before. ‘If only the wind would increase from 7 to 16 knots!’

  At 0700 Gipsy Moth gybed herself and the self-steering could not get her back on heading, so I had to wake up and rescue her. The wind had now backed a lot and Gipsy Moth was heading west with the wind abeam. With Big Brother poled out well forward
she was doing nicely with little wind and would have done very nicely if the breeze had freshened. But the wind had been easing all night and was now down to only 10 knots; the mileage dropped short of the 200mpd rate by 8 miles and I had no hope of making it up by noon unless the speed went up to 9.7 knots.

  I was hard at it day and night, continually trimming sheets and adjusting the self-steering to get more speed out of Gipsy Moth. On this morning I fitted a sheave at the end of the mizen boom and passed a rope through it with a narrow sheave at the end of that for outhauling the tops’l sheet to the end of the mizen boom. Also I attached a handy-billy to the outhaul of the boomed sail with a stopper on it so as to outhaul the sail as far as it would go towards the end of the boom.

  Fourth day’s run to noon fix Saturday 16 January 1971.

  Position: 13˚00’N 23˚58’W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 183.5 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 3,385.5 miles.

  Days remaining: 16.

  Gipsy Moth had sailed 191.8 miles but had only made good 183.5 fix-to-fix. That was a cold slap. She was now 185.5 miles short of my four-day target and would have to average 211.6 miles a day to catch up. I certainly had fits of depression but it was no good feeling desperate; the winds should be increasing as Gipsy Moth sailed westwards and there should be a favourable current lift.

  At 2010 my spirits got a lift. ‘That’s what I like to see,’ I logged, ‘the needle indicator of the speedometer vertical, i.e. at 10 knots. This is the first time since Bissau that it has been there. This is exciting. I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to make the speed I wanted. I was half apologizing to the BBC spokesman tonight for my failure to reach 200 miles in a day after four days sailing.’ And there were other diversions. Sheila’s hanging cupboard adjoined a chest of about six drawers where I kept the ship’s papers, instruments and equipment, manuals, electrical batteries, bulbs, spares and so on. Near the foot of this chest of drawers on the cabin sole, I was startled to see a big, darkish-green creature stand up square and defiant, facing me like a crab at bay with two big claws like semi-circular pincers raised ready to nip the attacking enemy. I judged he was more than an inch across. Was this fearsome looking creature a poisonous tarantula? Certainly its foreclaws were not hairy as I imagined those of a tarantula would be, but it looked dangerous and vicious. Fixing it with a beady eye, I reached for my death-ray Aerosol and directed a lethal jet at it. It turned and scurried under the chest of drawers, disappearing between a cabin floorboard and the skin of the hull. I expected to see it curl up dead where it stood but it made off at full speed. No doubt it was killed by that stream of death, and I felt a twinge of remorse; but how could I live under the threat of such a horrible creature? As it turned out, I could have spared my sorrow.

  At midnight the wind was behaving very oddly. It was as if it had just been mixed in the stratosphere and was being poured on to the earth from a vast jug. Near calms gave place in a few seconds to spurts of 20 knots coming from any direction between north and east. One moment all the sails, the booms and the gear seemed to be in a banging turmoil, the next moment they were all asleep and Gipsy Moth was sailing fast, slipping through the balmy night. ‘“On such a night”—it made me think of Jessica and Lorenzo’s night together in “The Merchant of Venice”.’

  At 0335 I brought Gipsy Moth’s heading up 15˚ closer to the wind which increased the speed a knot, but half of that increase was lost as the breeze eased during the night. I thought that, come daylight, I must try the half-sized running sail and pole it well forward of abeam so that Gipsy Moth could sail with the relative wind slightly forward of abeam. That was where the speed seemed to lurk in a light 10-12 knot breeze.

  I had unpleasant, nightmarish dreams mixed with one that I was wanted on deck. In my dream I was worried and sad about Dorothy Parker, ‘the wittiest woman in the world’, the title of her biography I had been reading in one of my sackful of newspapers. She divorced her drink-prone husband while he was away at the war, and he, unknowing, came back full of love on the day of the wedding breakfast of his beloved wife to her new husband. How I suffered for that man in my dreams! I woke at 0400 to find the speed was ¼ knot better, so I decided to leave the pole rig alone till dawn.

  Two hours later I awoke and wondered again what could be done with the foresails to improve the speed. I first thought of poling out the 300 jib instead of Big Brother, but when I arrived on deck I decided it would be best to drop the latter altogether and harden up to windward so as to put the wind forward of the beam. But while I was at work on deck the wind veered and I could not get the wind forward of the beam without steering north; so I reckoned I had made a blunder and re-set Big Brother. I trimmed it better than before though and thoroughly checked all sail settings.

  Padding around the deck barefooted during the night, I had collected two flying fish. At dawn I found three more; and when I went to prepare my breakfast I was startled to find one lying in the galley sink. It could only have arrived there by shooting through the skylight in the roof of the cabin, and that when I was on deck because there must have been an infernal row. This seemed such an extraordinary thing that when I was talking that evening to the BBC I said nothing about it, for fear they should think I was trying to pull their legs.

  Fifth day’s fun to noon fix Sunday 17 January 1971.

  Position: 13˚41’N 28˚55’W.

  Distance fix-to-fix: 180 miles.

  Calculated distance to finish: 3,210.5 miles.

  Days remaining: 15.

  Although Gipsy Moth has sailed 196.9 miles, the 180 miles,

  fix-to-fix was still 10 per cent below the 200mpd target.

  Immediately after noon I rigged the big windvane. The medium-sized one seemed unable to activate the self-steering rudder when Gipsy Moth was carrying a lot of sail in light airs, and she had lost several miles in the morning by coming up to the wind or, more frequently, falling off until the wind was dead astern, or even a-lee. I could have continued with the medium-sized vane if I had balanced the sail area, but the balanced result deprived the mizen of its pulling power, which meant a considerable loss in speed. This big vane was 5ft high and broad at the top. It looked wobbly and it was. I rigged a small cord shroud from each side at the top of the leading edge to stay the vane to the bracket in which it was fitted. This looked like being successful and I noted that it would probably be a good thing to rig another pair of stays to the top of the trailing edge.

  The big vane seemed to keep Gipsy Moth on course to within a few degrees. Its drawback was its obvious fragility if the wind piped up. It needed to be built much stronger because of its big area, but then it would have been too heavy for the lead counterweights I had.

  All morning I had been working stripped of clothes, but now it was time to don a hat or I should have sun trouble. I was hard pressed with deckwork and other jobs, and even by six that evening, when I was due to call the BBC, I had not got my sun sights worked out. I had got fidgety with impatience which made things worse. First I had had a muddle over the stopwatch I was using; I had noted down two different times for when I had started it at zero. Then I could not remember which was the right one. Then I made some mistake in reducing the noon shot for latitude. So I threw out the calculating method and went back to the old rule of thumb method which I had used a couple of days earlier and which was possible because I knew that I had taken the sight at exactly local noon. This cleared up the second mistake. In the end the position lines from the three different sights all met in a point. No navigator fails to utter (mentally if not actually) a sigh of satisfied relief when that happens. But what now puzzled me was the 16-9 miles discrepancy between the day’s run sailed and the run made good fix-to-fix. The sailing had been pretty well in a straight line. How could there possibly be that discrepancy between 196.9 miles sailed and 180 miles made good? If it was due to the log over-reading, it made it almost certain that my project must be a failure. Or was there a consistent mistake in work
ing out the sun sights? For example, an error of exactly I minute in the times used for the three position lines would account for 15 miles of the discrepancy which would then leave only a difference of under 3 miles between the DR position and the sun fix, which was reasonable. Or had I sailed into an eddy of the Atlantic current which had set me back 15 miles? Later I believed this was the correct answer.

  The wind was strengthening slowly but steadily. It fluctuated in long waves of three or four hours between crests, but each crest was a knot or so stronger than the last. At 1900 the true wind was E by N, 25 knots. With Gipsy Moth running before it, the relative wind as it appeared on board was NE by N, 17 knots. Gipsy Moth averaged 9 knots for a short period at that time under the big runner with the No. 1 jib, the main stays’l, the mizen stays’l, the tops’l and the mizen.

  By 2200 I could hardly stand in the cabin. Gipsy Moth was lurching from side to side with all the deck gear banging, clanking and overstraining. This did not seem right, so I went on deck and first dropped the tops’l which was causing most of the trouble and does little or else unwanted work when there is enough wind to heel the boat well over. Then I re-trimmed the other sails, hardened in the boom vangs—the handy-billies which I used to downhaul the stays’l and mizen booms to eyes in the deck—eased the heading off the wind so that the wind would be coming in aft of the beam, and then hardened in the sheet of the big runner to bring the clew and pole somewhat farther aft. As soon as I was satisfied with the set of the sail and the pole, I took up the guys of the pole to keep it quiet. The result was that when I went below it seemed like the quiet of a churchyard, though the speed had only dropped from 9.12 to 8.95 knots. By midnight Gipsy Moth had knocked up 104.9 miles in the previous twelve hours, which was promising; but I had had so many disappointments that I was not going to be carried away by enthusiasm this time.