The Romantic Challenge

by Francis Chichester

  There is one thing about rough weather—and things were rough outside—nothing is to be done on deck. If the boat is trimmed to sail comfortably and safely, the crew can sit back and relax. One obvious reason for stopping maintenance and deck-work in a gale is because it becomes dangerous to move about, particularly in a boat at speed. I have to be careful, above deck and below, not to be thrown between handgrips. I always try to make sure that one handgrip is sound and firm so that if the boat suddenly jumps off the top of a wave, or lurches madly to one side, I shall not be twisted away from the grip. However, in spite of this fine theory, I am often caught between grips and knocked about. Also I always intend not to be caught out with something in each hand, such as a plate in one and a mug in the other, when moving from the galley to the cabin. Sometimes it seems so quiet that nothing can go wrong and I make a dash for it. Then Gipsy Moth gives a big jump, everything comes to grief, there is tea all over the cabin and I am left the mug.

  At 1600 on the 23rd the wind began veering right round the clock from south, through west and north, to finish up in the north-east six hours later. First Gipsy Moth changed over to the port gybe and gradually came hard on the wind on the port tack to end up as close to the wind as she could lay on the starboard tack. The heading then was between N by E and NNE, about 45˚ off the heading I required to make the Mona Passage. It was dreary going, and by the next afternoon I had dropped the No. 2 jib and was not far off needing the mizen stays’l down as well. The foredeck was taking a lot of water green and the wind was 35 knots up to 40 in a clear sky. I thought it must be associated with one of the northerly busters. I must have hit one of those two days in a hundred on which gales of Force 8 or more were predicted by the U.S. Hydrographic Office for this 5˚ rectangle of latitude and longitude.

  One of my chief blessings was not having to do anything I didn’t want to. Gipsy Moth was headed away from land and there was no racing urgency to carry all sail possible regardless of discomfort. I slept that night from about 8.30 p. m. until 7.30 a.m., except for a couple of hours at midnight—the longest sleep I had at sea on the voyage. At midnight I at last dropped the mizen stays’l (the wind was up to 43 knots), then I had a meal after filling the primus stove, the bottle of meths, and the meths priming can. After that I watered the garden and wound the chronometer before turning in again. I was fagged out; it had been a constant strain since I left Bluff with the strong unpredictable currents and a succession of calms and gale squalls, often with the wind swinging right round through 180˚, seeming bent on sailing the boat into the breakers.

  When I woke, the wind had dropped to 27 knots; but it was not the wind that was important but the sea. Just as I was entering in the log that the sea had quietened down, a wave slammed the side of the boat and cascaded into the cockpit, and the wind, which had seemed to have lost its driving, forceful, get-out-of-my-way note, piped up again. I thought the reefed mizen would be worth while in giving a better heading into the wind. Without the main stays’l Gipsy Moth would not come up closer to the wind than 70˚-75˚, however much the tiller was put down to leeward, and the large amount of rudder needed to keep her to that acted as a brake.

  Wednesday 24 February, 0957: ‘Mizen reefed at last. It takes longer to do any job in a gale and of course the mizen is damn awkward with the boom high above the cockpit and the tiller knocking one’s knees, doubling them up, as one straddles it with a foot on each side on a cockpit seat. However, I am bursting with pride at the result. As I had made a botch-up of the job last time, I ran through the operation step by step in my mind. The result now looked neater and the reefing had been an easier job. It made all the difference to the sailing; first it got rid of the lee helm which was braking the forward movement severely. Secondly it enabled the heading to be pointed up 40˚ nearer to the wind. Thirdly it put the speed up from 3.5 to 5.25 knots.’ I came up on deck to see a small trawler cross close ahead amid cloudbursts of white water as her bows ploughed into the waves.

  At noon, the day’s run made good was only 104 miles; the position 13˚44’N 75˚52’W. That was fair enough in a gale when not racing, but I was concerned about the leeway and the track made good. The fix was no less than 35 miles to leeward and the track made good, roughly north, was 20˚ to leeward of the heading sailed. I was puzzled by this. I felt sure there had been nothing like as much current when I was running down to Nicaragua (the noon DR position was almost on top of my dawn fix of 1 February). The Admiralty chart gave the current as west-going, 1 knot. From the islands north of Venezuela to here, the current was the strongest in the Caribbean. That would account for 24 of the 35 miles, but what about the remaining eleven? I could not account for them.

  The course for Mona Island in the Mona Passage was 061˚, distance 540 miles. To reach it Gipsy Moth must keep on her present tack for 225 miles until near Jamaica, where the adverse current was only half a knot; then on the port tack for 470 miles until south of Mona, and finally a starboard tack into the Passage. Or could I make a quicker escape from the Caribbean? Instead of tacking when near Jamaica, another 200 miles on the present tack would fetch the Windward Passage, and most of that 200 would be in the lee of Haiti; winds would be light and the current variable there. It would be a tough task for a singlehander afterwards, breaking out through the cays and islands of the Bahamas and I would have to mug up the information about the various passages; for 320 miles I should be lucky if I got a few short snatches of sleep. On the other hand Gipsy Moth would be moving steadily north to lighter winds. I decided to make for the Windward Passage.

  Noon, 25 February: ‘Today another poor run of only 94 miles between fixes and Gipsy Moth sailed 123.5 miles to make good that distance. She was set 41 miles to the WSW by the current and the leeway in the gale. The track made good showed nearly the same angle of leeway as yesterday, 18˚.’ I would have to keep Gipsy Moth close-hauled hard on the wind if she was to make Cape Tiburon, the south-west point of Haiti, at the approach to the Windward Passage.

  ‘Today, the 25th, is the anniversary of our wedding 34 years ago. I opened up one of the bottles of Veuve Cliquot which Gilo had given me before I left Plymouth. Before I could start to draw the cork it went off like a gun trying to blow a hole through the cabin roof. I tried to say a toast to Sheila’s and my happiness together, but a gulp stuck in my throat. Thirty-four years is a very large slice of life. Well, I drank the toast anyway, and another to Gilo’s happiness.’

  After the Champagne I tried to call up Portishead to congratulate Sheila on having survived a third of a century of married life, but it was a wash-out; there was not a peep out of Portishead. I was not surprised, with a huge mountainous lump of land like Haiti in between. I needed cheering up; the going was hellish rough with Gipsy Moth knocking out 6½ knots hard on a Force 6 wind in a rough sea, 35˚ off a wind of 25–35 knots. Day after day of this did not make for a joyful spirit.

  From the 0603 planet fix on the 26th, the course for Cape Tiburon, 114 miles away, was 007.5˚. The chart gives a west-going current prediction in this area of half a knot but I added an allowance for a 2-knot current. The leeway for the past eighteen hours had been 17.5˚, nearly the same as for the preceding two days, and it would take a 2 knot current to cause that. This gave a steering course of 27.5˚, but I could not ease my heading of 45˚ because a reserve was needed above 27˚ in case of a wind shift backing northwards.

  At 1400 I reckoned that Gipsy Moth was now far enough upwind to permit altering course 20˚ off the wind and I eased the sheets of the mizen and the mizen stays’l accordingly. Blessed, blessed peace! My new course was no promenade stroll but it was a heavenly amble by comparison.

  The fatigue due to pounding hard on the wind is well known and I can well understand that people went mad after a long period of it. I find tenseness and uncertainty about the navigation, or any strain, tiring too. I should have to make Cape Tiburon in the dark and there were no lights there. If I allowed for the leeway Gipsy Moth had had all the way across and it lessened,
Gipsy Moth would be charging towards the land in the dark. If I did not allow for it, there was a low-lying island, Navassa, 31 miles to the west of Cape Tiburon. This was shown on the chart to have a light flashing at two- and fifteen-second intervals, but was it working? If not, a set to the west might push Gipsy Moth on to Navassa. I was concentrating tensely on the best way to deal with this.

  I badly needed a fix but this was impossible. There were no radio beacons or radio aids and I could not get a star fix till nightfall. However, I could use the sun to make sure I was on the right heading. I used part of the same navigation system I devised to find Lord Howe Island when flying alone in a seaplane from New Zealand to Australia in 1931. I wanted to sail to the middle of the passage between south-west Haiti and Navassa Island, say Point H. The principle of what I did is as follows: Supposing that I was where I thought I was, call it Point X. I waited until the sun’s direction was at right angles to a line joining H and X. In astro-navigation terms both H and X were then on the same circle of equal altitude of the sun. The circle was so large that part of it could be regarded as a straight line. I worked out what the sun’s altitude would be from anywhere on that circle or line. Then I observed the altitude with the sextant. If the sextant reading was greater, say 30’, than the calculated one, Gipsy Moth must be correspondingly nearer, by 30’, to the sun. That is, she must be that amount, 30’ or 30 nautical miles, off course on the sun side of the line between X and H.

  My sun position line at 1700 showed that Gipsy Moth was only 1½ miles west of the course for H; the leeway had almost completely stopped. This was very strange, though it did agree with my feeling that it had eased. How could the current suddenly cease to flow? I acted on it, changing course accordingly; but could there be some mistake in the sights? How could the current vanish almost suddenly? I would have been less anxious had the sights shown that the current was persisting. An hour and a half later, at nightfall, I took a three-star fix with great care. This confirmed it: no leeway. From having too much current I seemed to have passed abruptly to not having any.

  By the star fix Gipsy Moth was 19½ miles south-west of the nearest land, Gravois Point in south-west Haiti. There was a light on this point but tantalizingly its range was only 9 miles. Point H, halfway between Cape Tiburon and Navassa Island, was 53 miles to the north-west. The track to it would be roughly parallel with the coast and within 10 miles of it at Cape Tiburon. The required heading was 310˚ and Gipsy Moth would run into land if the heading changed 18˚ or more northwards.

  At 2100 I could see the mountain range on Haiti silhouetted against the night sky; the range runs east-west from 2 to 20 miles inland with a highest peak of 7,400ft. I could not see any of the land to seaward of it or identify any peak. For hour after hour I periodically swept the northern horizon with the night glasses but could pick nothing up. At 0123 the DR position was logged at 11 miles WSW of Cape Tiburon—and sometime about then I fell asleep on the chart table and woke an hour and a half later to find Gipsy Moth headed 340˚ instead of 310˚; she had changed her heading while I slept. I felt guilty at placing myself in the hands of Fate like that at a critical time; only twenty-five minutes later I saw a weak wink of light. It showed intermittently, but after watching it for some time I decided the blinks fitted a ten-second period framework. Although the chart gave the Navassa Island light as flashing at two- and fifteen-second intervals, there was no other light within 36 miles so I accepted the ten-second light as being Navassa. It was also where I expected the Navassa light to be according to my DR. Every flash fitted into a ten-second framework and exactly ten seconds, although some of the flashes were missing. This might have been due to waves in between obscuring it, but I doubted that; the island is low-lying, but the light itself is on a hill of 395ft. Its bearing was due west of Gipsy Moth and as it was also due west of Cape Tiburon on Haiti it meant that I was clear of Haiti and could turn north. To give Gipsy Moth her due she had been trying to turn north every time my back was turned for the past two hours. The next land, Cuba, was 90 miles to the north so I could have a sleep; I found I was tottering and I am apt to make stupid mistakes through lack of sleep.

  The Trade Wind lost its bite after Gipsy Moth had rounded the south-west corner of Haiti and she was becalmed or merely ghosting to a faint breeze, often in the wrong direction, all day. The calm sea surface under the hazy sunshine gave me a feeling of unreality after the violent movement of the past few days. But Gipsy Moth was not to escape so easily from the Caribbean. The same conditions persisted through the night, with Gipsy Moth sometimes ghosting at 2 knots to a zephyr from the south. If the expected 2-knot south-going current was running, she would be nearly stationary in the darkness. The distance from the Navassa Passage to Cape Maysí on the Cuban side of the Windward Passage is 120 miles, and by 0600 the next day the distance made good was only 47.5 miles of it.

  Even the Windward Passage would not mark escape into the open Atlantic. There were still 180 miles to go to be free of the great barrier of the Bahamas, a thick ring of thousands of islands, reefs, rocks, sandspits and cays, most of them unbuoyed and unlighted. There were five likely passages through the Bahamas. The most desirable was the Turks Island Passage to the NE by E, between Turks Island and the Caicos Islands, the most favoured passage for steamers. I would like to have made it because near the end of the 1960 Singlehanded Transatlantic race from Plymouth to New York, I dropped a Plymouth Gin bottle overboard from Gipsy Moth III at George’s Sound, Nantucket, with a message inside. Two years later, possibly after a tour round the ocean in the Gulf Stream and the Portugal currents, the bottle landed up on the beach at Turks Island. However, after thinking about it, I was sure it would be crazy to attempt reaching the Turks Island Passage, however much more desirable, unless it could be done without a tack. The Admiralty Routeing Chart gave the average current between. Haiti and the East Bahamas as half a knot. Tacking against Trade Wind and current, with Haiti to the south and a whole string of islands, cays and banks to the north, was not for me if I could avoid it.

  The next passage to consider, working anti-clockwise, was the Caicos, to the NE by N; then the Mayaguana, N by E; the Acklins Island-French Cays to the north and the Mira-por-Vos Passage leading to the Crooked Island Passage, which was also 180 miles from the Windward Passage and lying N by W from it.

  The Caicos was unlighted both on the Caicos side and the Mayaguana Island side and to reach it would mean sailing past the unlighted sides of Great Inagua and Little Inagua Islands. I ruled it out.

  The Mayaguana was the one I liked best. If Gipsy Moth could hold to her present heading she should fetch up to the leeward side of Great Inagua Island on the way to Mayaguana Island. The distance from Cape Maysí to Matthew Town at the south-west corner of Great Inagua is 45 miles. At 6 knots Gipsy Moth should arrive there at 0245. There is a light at Matthew Town and also a radio beacon, though I had not been able to pick that up. From there a track N by E would take Gipsy Moth through the centre of the Mayaguana Passage, 87 miles distant, where she should arrive at 1715. That seemed the best prospect. It would be important to arrive in the daylight so as to see the land, because there is no light at the south-west end of Mayaguana.

  As Gipsy Moth approached Cuba, the land looked sombre and savage, as if a storm was all over the near end of it, while the sun was shining in a summery sky 15 miles off the land to the east.

  At 1636 a fresh breeze was coming in and I reefed the mizen. At 1755 two shore bearings put Gipsy Moth’s position 6½ miles offshore, but not yet abeam of Cape Maysí. The sea was exceptionally rough, with short, steep, and high-breaking seas. It was somewhat like passing Portland Bill in rough conditions except that the Bill is ¼ miles long and Cuba 600, with its tip, Cape Maysí, 15 miles across, compared with the Bill’s ¼ mile. The wind was heading Gipsy Moth in towards the land and the closer she came to the shore the rougher it would be. If I tacked to the east, away from the land, it would still continue rough for several miles before Gipsy Moth was out of the
turbulence. If I could hold the present heading Gipsy Moth might scrape past the cape without a tack, in which case, although it would get rougher still it would not last for so long. I ought to tack, but I thought it would be exciting to see if Gipsy Moth could get by.

  Considering there were no great waves, the seas were the most violent I have ever seen. The wind had got up to 40 knots and Gipsy Moth was thrown, bounced, slammed. It was exhilarating, because she was going through it all like a witch. She never would have got past the cape without tacking but that the sails were exactly balanced; this was due to the reefed mizen which seemed to act like the feather of an arrow, and improved the heading I could hold by about 20˚. It was at this point that I discovered why the leeway had amounted to between 17.5˚ and 20˚ during three days of the Caribbean Sea crossing. I was standing on deck hanging on to the mainmast weather cap shroud and watching the main stays’l, the mast top and the running gear to satisfy myself that they were standing up to the terrific snatching strains they were being subjected to, and I could clearly see Gipsy Moth being cast to leeward at every big sea and sliding away on the leeward slope of waves. It would add up to a lot of leeway in a day, when pinched up hard on the wind as she was. The leeway had eased when approaching Haiti not because the current eased but because Gipsy Moth turned off the wind. I was not used to this because the previous Gipsy Moths had a lot more keel and made very little leeway.

  Gipsy Moth was still not round the cape when darkness fell, but I seemed to be through the area of turbulence, although the wind was still up to 40 knots.

  At 1830 the Maysí light, flashing every twenty seconds, was bearing WNW, but the north coast of Cuba was beginning to open up to view.