The Romantic Challenge

by Francis Chichester

  ‘Flat! that’s me, after that announcement by the Navigation Department. I really thought it was going to be a good run today. The log had been showing frequent touching of 10 knots and average speeds of 9 knots or over. But it was not to be. Conclusion: it confirms strongly that you cannot have a winner every time.’

  Shortly afterwards, Gipsy Moth was becalmed for several hours in a heavy rain squall. At 3˚50’N she reached the edge of the Doldrums. I had to face it; the run south had turned out a complete flop. Gipsy Moth needed at least 20 knots of wind for a straight line speed of 8.5 knots. With only a 1,200-mile belt where there was a fair chance of such a wind speed, Gipsy Moth had sailed through 600 miles of it, from 20˚N to 10˚N, before the wind had once touched 20 knots, and on that day, the 24th, I think she did well to make good a fix-to-fix run of 202.5 miles. But now that she had run into the edge of the Doldrums, the dart to the Equator was finished. At 1034 the log read: ‘Been going round in circles for 2 hours.’ The rain had been very heavy for four hours. I could have filled my tank ten times. As it was, buckets stood about overflowing, three pillowcases, a blanket and a sheet, also a pair of underpants, lay in the best places in the cockpit and on the doghouse where they would get a thorough freshwater rinsing. Periodically I went to wring them out.

  I had arranged to call up England at eleven o’clock, which was just when I should be position fixing. It meant that I might not be able to get a noon sun fix because the sun passed almost directly overhead and it was only possible to get a fix from it in the few minutes when it was swinging from a bearing of due east to a bearing of due west which it would hold for the rest of the day. At 1155 I logged: ‘Hurray! Blue sky ahead; but it must be reached quickly if I am to get a position fix today. I will get the sextant and the “doings” ready in case of luck. Later. Noon. A wash-out; no fix possible.’

  At noon on the 26th Gipsy Moth had sailed 185 miles in the past 24 hours, and my estimate of the position was 03˚23’N 37˚37’W; if correct the run was only 159 miles. It was no use moaning; I turned Gipsy Moth on to E by S and kept her as near east as she would head without pinching up too close to the wind. I wanted to make good a reserve of easting before turning round on to north or north-west for a second speed attempt on the way home.

  I settled down the next day with charts and sailing directions to work out the best tactics for the home run. After analysing the winds which gave the fastest speed on the run down, I proposed to sail on a heading to keep the wind three points, 35˚, aft of the beam on the starboard side. First, what was the expected wind according to the Admiralty chart? On the run south the wind ranged from NE to NE by E in the narrow belt where its strength was of any value for speed. There was more north in it on the fringe of the 1,200-mile belt. The answer was a sour lemon; I could not start from here. The heading needed to have the wind 35˚ aft of the beam would take Gipsy Moth up the River Amazon! In order to start from close to the Equator and sail the heading relative to the wind which I wanted for speed, I should have to sail east right across the Atlantic to the Congo before starting. The alternative was to work north before starting. I wanted to start from as near the Equator as possible to take advantage of the current. Offshore, at the latitude of the mouth of the River Amazon, and along the coast of Brazil and French Guiana, fairly close inshore, the current was predicted at 1.5 knots in the Admiralty chart for March: continuing past Surinam, Guyana and Venezuela to Trinidad, it was predicted at 1 knot. It certainly was a whale of a current, but I could not make use of it without foregoing running with a poled-out sail; and the wind forecast was not strong enough to give a hope of success without the running sail set. The best tactics were to tack and head northwards for a day. This would make a big difference to the angle of sailing off the wind and I should have a clear 1,500-mile run to Trinidad, with a good wind all the way. I would probably get involved in the Caribbean islands again and I did not want that to happen, but in search of speed I had no other choice. Gipsy Moth was still 120 miles north of the Equator, but I decided to proceed no farther either to the south or east. I would tack to the north and work northwards for at least a whole day; then start the speed run towards Trinidad.

  So at 1420: ‘Tacked for home and loved ones (I hope). A whacking great rain storm just to leeward and also I think another ahead. It looks like a big belt of them. I snapped a sight of the sun to get at least a longitude of the point of departure. These rain storms seem to last about four hours which means, if involved in this one, that I shall have no chance of a star fix at nightfall. I could not get a single star this morning because of cloud and was lucky to catch Jupiter and afterwards to find Venus in a clear patch in the daylight.’

  But at 1725: ‘I made a thorough bungle of today’s operation. Gipsy Moth was chugging along quite happily to the ESE, making some hard-to-get easting, and I had promised myself an easy day or two’s sailing. Then I fell like a real sucker for the opportunity of making easting and northing at the same time with a favourable tack; but landed almost at once in awful muck of torrential rain and fresh wind—backing steadily until Gipsy Moth was heading more or less for Trinidad, which was just what I did not want to do from a position so far south. I keep on plugging away in the hopes of getting through the belt of dirt and then back on to the right course.’

  In the end I could no longer stand the north-westerly heading with its pounding and excessive heel, so I put on the spreader lights and went forward to drop and bag the No. 1 jib; then I re-hoisted the mizen stays’l and close-hauled Gipsy Moth again, still on the starboard tack. After that she plugged along at a modest 5 knots but at least it was in the right direction and without discomfort. By midnight the wind had backed nearly to the north and Gipsy Moth was again headed north-west. I was dead against using up westing by heading north-west until I had started on the speed run; so I went on deck again and tacked to the eastwards.

  At dawn on the 28th Gipsy Moth was still plugging eastwards. I had a look at the main mast from different angles to see how it was taking the strain in the worst kind of conditions without jumper stays. Obviously there would be much more strain in a storm or even a strong gale, but otherwise, with a fresh of wind up to 30 knots, with the stays’l set but no heads’l set to the masthead, the conditions were the worst for strain on that upper part of the mast, which the jumper struts were designed to support. From the deck I could not see any movement in the mast and was relieved, although it was what I expected. The load I would be anxious about was when a big jib and also a big poled-out running sail were set in a strong wind. The compression load then must be formidable and the lack of effective jumper struts might cause the mast to bend forward.

  I would also have to do something about the slide fastenings on the mizen before the whole sail broke away from the mast. They had been parting one by one. The sailmakers used a short length of broad tape to fasten the slides to the eyes in the luff of the sail and this tape seemed to chafe through easily.

  All in all, I decided that I would be glad to get away from the Equator. It is a sort of no-man’s-ocean with huge black-grey rain squalls appearing from nowhere, creeping up in a sinister way. It seemed barren of life. I saw only two birds, Mother Carey’s Chickens, in three days, and few flying fish. The sun, being in the same latitude as Gipsy Moth, could not provide a fix, though it would, of course, give a longitude any time it was visible. There was no chance of a position fix until dusk and by then the rain had arrived and shut off the heavens from sight.

  At 1300: ‘Today is not one of my best: I feel jaded, depressed, with no vitality, energy or go in me. Of course everything seems to go wrong when feeling like that. So much so sometimes as to make me laugh. Item—I picked on six eggs one after the other which were bad. Item—On throwing one of the eggs out to sea through the companion, after getting bored with carrying them out for a ceremonial burial one by one, I jerked my head in the act of throwing, hit the roof and cut open my scalp. Item—It never stops raining with periodic deluges which would make
Noah feel at home. With these squalls the wind mounts to 30 knots. Item—I have not been able to get a sun fix since 25 March, three days ago. I had the good luck, though, to snap a fix at 5 a.m. yesterday of two planets, Jupiter and Venus; I say lucky because I only saw one star through the clouds all the time and that was gone before I could draw a bead on it. Item—The boom-end lug used to secure the clew of the loose-footed mizen stays’l has bust apart. It is in an awkward place because I must get the sail stretched out to the end of the boom somehow. Thanks be to Bart again for finding me a big hacksaw at El Bluff when I discovered that mine had walked off. I was left with only a tiddler with a 5-inch long blade. I was expecting a dirty job because the last piece of stainless steel which I had tried to hack off, the big runner clew ring on the 4,000-mile passage, had just laughed at this little hacksaw blade and bit lumps out of it. However, I hoped that this boom lug might be an aluminium alloy in which case it would be easy enough to cut. Item—Nearly all the mizen sail track slide fastenings have now parted and I shall have an hour or two’s work fixing them.…

  ‘I decided to do something about the deckwork but as soon as I emerged into the deluge it blew up to a gale squall of 40 knots and I was freshly amazed how cold it was. I could truly say I was wet to the skin since I had nothing on except a thin oilskin top and the water soon forced its way under that. The wind steadily veered until Gipsy Moth was headed south: I thought very poorly of that, so tacked, and headed north. After which only one slide still held the mizen to the mast track. All the others had gone from the line of reefing right up to the head of the sail. Fortunately it was the top slide which remained. I had re-fastened it at Bluff, using some of the tarred twine which the trawlermen drew from Bart’s stores. If this top fastening had parted the slide might well have jammed at the top of the track and could have caused trouble; so I dropped the mizen. I felt as if Fate was having a laugh at me because immediately I had finished struggling with furling the loose mizen in the gale and deluge, it stopped raining and the wind eased. Meanwhile, with only one sail left set, Gipsy Moth was rolling like a permissive word and at 1½ knots not exactly dashing along. I dealt first with the jagged bust boom-end lug which sawed off easily. I then filed the remains smooth enough not to cut the cordage and made a complicated lash-up of the clew ring to the end of the boom, using the best anchorage I could find. It might not work but at least it is working at present. I felt I had finished all the extra chores which could be expected of me on my Sunday day of rest and went below to settle down; but I could not stand the thought of sitting there while Gipsy Moth made leeway westwards so I went back on deck and dug the No. 2 jib out of the hold to hank it on. Again I reckoned I had finished for the day but this time I could not bear wasting the rainwater sitting round in buckets; so I lifted it along the deck and poured it into No. 1 tank.’

  On the 29th I found the source of the bilgewater which was sloshing to and fro in the main cabin in a trickle running down the mast. It was not coming through the mast coat which seals off the whole of the deck where the mast passes through, but through a hole in the mast itself which admits the bunch of electric cables to the interior of the mast. I guessed it was due to the cataracts of rain. There are two separate cables to the spreader lights, another to the masthead light, a fourth to the wind direction indicator and another to the propeller at the masthead which measures the wind speed. There was not much I could do about that, because if I plugged the hole the mast would fill gradually with rainwater and that would do no good at all.

  In the late afternoon, I finished repairing the mizen and set it again. It increased the speed from 3 to 6¼ knots, a great relief, because the sailing of the past few days had been the most disagreeable I have known. The log read like a dirge: sails hoisted to be dropped an hour or two later, repeated bearing away in rain squalls, deluges of rain; tack, tack, tack, due to the wind shifting round the clock; and day after day failed attempts to get a fix.

  I tipped nine more gallons of water, half of it fresh rainwater, into the big 41-gallon tank on the starboard side, making 12 gallons in that tank. I decided to keep on filling it if the opportunity offered because Gipsy Moth would be constantly on the starboard tack for several thousand miles and this would keep her more upright or, to put it another way, less unbalanced, and she would sail more efficiently. A boat heeled may look dramatic but its speed is cut down.

  The position at noon on 29 March was 02˚06’N 34˚06½’W, 126 miles north of the Equator, with Gipsy Moth still headed east.

  Getting the fix was quite a joke. The sun, or more properly the spot vertically below it, was moving north at the rate of 23 miles a day. That may not seem much, but it never stopped. It was rather like the tortoise and the hare with Gipsy Moth as the hare, making good northing of, say, 0-150 miles per day. The sun, tortoise-like, did not stop or slow down. On the 29th it was about 90 miles north of Gipsy Moth, so I took one sun sight and then went on working for only fifteen minutes, knowing that the sun was going to whip round quickly from east of Gipsy Moth to west. I had a good pitch for observing the sun before noon when it was in the east, sitting on top of the cabin roof and looking forward. I could just see the sun clear of the mast and rigging forward of my position. When I went up only fifteen minutes later for the second shot I could not get the sun into the sextant’s mirrors at all. I scanned the sky through the sextant, across the mirror and up and down. ‘This is absurd,’ I thought, ‘I must move all the sun shades and hunt for the sun glare in the naked mirrors.’ It was then I found that it was now, only fifteen minutes after the first sight, on the other side of the yacht and over the stern. Although I had known in theory that it would be moving very rapidly at noon, it was astounding to be caught out like that.

  On the 30th I was able to record that ‘yesterday was a fine day with the sun shining all day. It was pleasant working in the cockpit in the sun and I was able to get a sun fix for the first time since 25 March. On the whole, though, I think this is a goddamned depressing dump of the world’s unwanted weather, and the sooner I get out the better I’ll be pleased.… Meanwhile, exercises and breakfast. I have worked out an excellent routine, taking about thirteen to fifteen minutes, which I can carry out while lying in my bunk no matter how much Gipsy Moth is rolling or pitching. These consist primarily of bending forward to bring my head between my knees, then twisting my torso first to the right and then to the left, then head between knees again, then back to lying flat on my back. Relax everything. Have a really good stretch, first of all with hands clasped behind my head, stretching one elbow behind my head and with legs held straight lifted off the bunk, stretch the toes of the corresponding foot upward with a good stretch. Then the same for the other foot and the other elbow. Relax everything. Draw in a full lungful of air and when the lungs are full, hold the position while counting ten, while keeping the throat open as if trying to get more air in. In other words not locking the air in the lung. Then breathing out as fully as possible and after that holding the lungs in the empty position, again with the throat open as if trying to get out more air while counting another ten. Then I circle the toes of each foot seven times with the leg held straight sticking up about 30˚ from the bunk. Circle the foot seven times for each leg.

  ‘Repeat this sequence four times, at the end of the second time circling the feet in the opposite direction; at the end of the third time stretching both toes as far aft as they will go, followed by stretching them as far forward as they will go, and repeating this seven times. After the last sequence I twist the feet sideways at the ankle first outboard and then inboard seven times.

  ‘I gradually developed a very complete second sequence of exercises when I was standing upright in the navigation galley space. About ten exercises. What a world of difference they have made both to my physique and to my outlook on yacht life.’

  At 1130 on 30 March I again tacked for home and the loved ones, and on 31 March at 1409 I started the speed run. The odd time of the start was due to getting a longit
ude then from six shots of the sun. The position was 03˚41’N 33˚48’W.

  I could only get a meridian longitude because here Gipsy Moth had again caught up with the tortoise sun and both were now 4˚ north of the Equator. However, an accurate longitude was the important starting line for this speed run westwards. For the latitude I depended on the dawn fix from Venus and the sun which I had been lucky to get then. I moved this fix forward to the 1409 time of the fresh longitude, working it up by dead reckoning, and from it obtained a satisfactory latitude for the start. The position put Gipsy Moth with the north-east corner of Trinidad bearing 285˚ and 1,670 miles distant. Therefore I considered 285˚ as Gipsy Moth’s limit of heading; she must head as much as possible to the northwards of it, which permitted a poled-out runner to be carried to the best advantage.

  Then the line connecting the self-steering gear to the tiller suddenly parted, chafed through. I was expecting something of the sort to happen: I had actually said to myself ‘I bet something will turn up because I am enjoying so much this damn good brandy sour after finishing all the deckwork.’ I could not leave the tiller for more than a few seconds because when I did so Gipsy Moth either gybed or came up hard to the wind with the poled-out sail aback. I had to nurse the tiller with an elbow or knees while I found my lifeline and harness, then some suitable cordage for a new tiller line, some rope, a knife and some tape in order to fit the line through the various leads and four blocks to the self-steering gear.

  I had poled out the No. 2 jib as a try-out; 50sq.ft smaller than the 300, its clew is much higher and I rigged a snatch block to its sheet to prevent the clew from bouncing the pole up into the air and straining it, but after a while I came to the conclusion that it was not as effective as the 300.