The Romantic Challenge

by Francis Chichester

  In addition to this, the Perkins 4107 Diesel engine (525lb) was aft of the mizen, and the six batteries (say 420lb) were aft of the engine. The result of this was that Gipsy Moth had a heel of several degrees to starboard, and was badly down by the stern.

  I tried to remedy this as best I could by careful stowage of my stores amidships and by, for example, stowing in the forepeak 120 litres of water in jerricans (say 2751b), two anchors, 20 fathoms of chain, plus the sails and anything else Sid Mashford and I could think of, but there is a limit to what one can do in this respect and I reckon that the bad trim cost Gipsy Moth anything up to ¼ knot.

  On speed runs I think one of the most important items is the self-steering gear. Time after time I had to take in sail because Gipsy Moth slued up to windward or, with the runner up, turned downwind. The sail which had to come in was nearly always the tops’l, because it made Gipsy Moth gripe up into wind. I hated dropping that sail; it pulled like a shire horse (and as I write I have on order one double the size for more speed, so the problem will be greater). At first I thought this slueing was due solely to bad balance caused by the weight aft, but on consideration I think that the self-steering needs more power. Great power is needed to check a 29-ton boat from slueing to starboard when the stern is slapped hard to port by a wave and the tops’l sheet also pulls the stern to port while Gipsy Moth lays over to port in a 25-knot wind. The Gunning gear was excellent—I was always admiring its performance—and for Gipsy Moth I think it only needs the skeg and oar a foot longer and a modification to give it more scope in its lateral swing through the water and double the power.

  Few sail changes are needed. I shall be arranging for the 450 medium-sized running sail which I needed so badly when Gipsy Moth was sailing at full speed until the pole folded under the strain of the 640. The storm-jib which was torn into strips in the storm has been redesigned but that does not affect racing speed.

  There is not much to say about the broken gear. Although I would have come much closer to my 4,000-mile target if the poles had stood up, I doubt if I would have made up that 465-mile shortage on target in the 20 days. Nevertheless, gear must be strong enough for the job for which it is intended and Robert Clark has specified new poles which should be 75 per cent stronger.

  There is one problem which has me completely foxed at present, but somehow it must be solved. How can a yacht with a hull as fast as Gipsy Moth’s be slowed up in a storm? God spare me from another trouncing like I had in the North Atlantic! Streamed warps would be gone in twenty minutes with a fast yacht, due to the snatching, and a drogue would be snatched off in ten minutes, I carry one for use at a mooring to keep the yacht tide-rode instead of wind-rode and I noted when lying at Mashfords’mooring at Plymouth on return that it was hard to recover the drogue against only the tide. Spoilers, as on the underside of aircraft wings to spoil the airflow over the wings and cut down the speed for landings, are the ideal thing; but to fit these to the curved hull of a yacht would be a hopeless proposition. I had an idea for slipping an inflatable rubber ring over the stem to work its way down to the keel before filling it with air to make a sort of horse collar. I think it would be a wonderful brake, but what one can think up in an office chair and what one can do in a storm are two very different things.

  No one could succeed in this project without luck, and throughout this voyage I had the most amazing good luck. Consider those broken spinnaker poles, for instance: fifteen feet of jagged-edged metal boom attached to a full-bellied 600sq.ft sail beating about like a mad balloon could be a lethal weapon and also could do great damage to deck and gear. Yet in no case did the broken halves actually part until I broke them apart myself. There were a number of falls I had, many of which could have been serious. There was that terrific bashing I had when I was thrown across the cockpit, which could so easily have finished off my remaining kidney. What amazing good luck!

  Then there was the matter of my leg when I was thrown up against the roof of the cabin. Judging by the pain afterwards and the fact that I was knocked partly unconscious, I think it was lucky the leg was not broken, which would have been awkward with the boat half-full of water and the leak to be mended. Time after time it struck me how good my luck was. There was the landfall at Nicaragua when it seemed again and again as if something were trying to drive Gipsy Moth ashore, and in each case I awoke in time. Was all this luck, or a capricious handout by Providence, or was it due to Gipsy Moth being blessed in a service aboard in the Beaulieu River by Tubby Clayton and Rector Baddeley of St James’s Piccadilly, our parish church? I do not know. If I try carrying this examination of luck into Gipsy Moth’s own behaviour I feel my brain will twist into knots.

  But I would like to retract something I wrote in my book Gipsy Moth Circles the World. Sailing up the Atlantic in May 1967, on passage toward Plymouth from Sydney, I said that after the Southern Ocean it was like entering an enchanting lake. At that time it was. Most yachtsmen experience the North Atlantic at its best and mildest in summer. But as I discovered in Gipsy Moth V, in mid-winter the deep depressions chase each other across from Newfoundland south of Iceland just as they do in the Southern Ocean. This is not the place to compare them in detail, but I think this quotation from Alan Villiers’s excellent book The War with Cape Horn1 illustrates the power of the sea—and exactly what I mean:

  The Marion Josiah, a 2,400 ton sailing ship, lost three men when coming up to Queenstown in winter 1906. A great sea pooped her, smashing the wheel, washing away the mate and two helmsmen. The mate and one helmsman went overboard. When the sea cleared the decks, it was found that the other helmsman had been washed along the deck and smashed almost to pulp against the for’ard house.

  I was lucky to survive the storm which hit me in the North Atlantic.

  But as Captain Slocum, whose kindly spirit must surely sail with every singlehander, said to himself: ‘Let what will happen, the voyage is now on record.’

  London, Hodder & Stoughton; New York, Scribner: 1971.

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  Appendix: Reflections in the Sea

  by Argus of Yachting Monthly

  February 1971

  As would be expected, Sir Francis Chichester’s new project is interesting and majestically ambitious. Put in the simplest terms, it is to sail singlehanded, non-stop for 20 days at an average speed of 200 miles a day.

  Why 200 miles per day? And why 20 days? I cannot tell you. Perhaps because both are nice round numbers, while their product of 4,000 miles is rounder still. What may be said definitely is that it is a soaring aim worthy of one who has a habit of success. But frankly I cannot believe that there will be success this time. Two hundred miles a day entails an average speed of 8.35 knots, and that average has to be sustained for two-thirds of a month, entailing appreciably higher speeds being maintained for part of the time; and this in a boat handled by one man. No fully manned offshore racing yacht has ever made such an average for—I think—even a week. But there is one important difference: Chichester has chosen what should (and indeed must, if he is to succeed) be a course in steady fair winds; and they must be continuously strong as well.

  The down-wind course is in the tradition of ocean-going commercial sail, which depended on the belts of the Trades and could not have operated otherwise, when deep-laden hulls were driven by square rigs unable to lie closer to the wind than 65-70 degrees. The fastest among such ocean carriers sometimes made 400 miles a day, but this was rarely achieved and not held for more than a day or so at a time. In terms of relative speed, Chichester is aiming at an appreciably higher figure. The clipper ship running through the Trades at 400 miles a day had a relative speed

  speed (knots)/√length (feet)

  of about 1.1. Chichester, to reach his target, must make a relative speed of 1.3.

  Speed being a function of length, clearly Chichester has required the longest ship he can handle alone. Yet is she big enough for the intended speed? She will need every fraction of her length to maintain that average of 8
.35 knots. We hear a great deal about the maximum theoretical speed of sailing yachts being equal in knots to 1.34 multiplied by the square root of the waterline length in feet. This speed for Gipsy Moth V is only 8.7 knots, so it is fortunate that the widely endorsed supposition is untrue. It is the sailing length, or length of the hull immersed when sailing in full career, that is important, and this in a yacht with overhangs is appreciably more than the waterline length (static). The faster types of yacht will under ideal conditions exceed their supposed theoretical maximum, speed as derived from the waterline length. I estimate Gipsy Moth’s maximum speed on a broad reach in calm water as about 10 knots, or 240 miles per day; but such a speed could be held only for minutes rather than hours or days.

  The yacht’s sailing length when running down wind at high speed is about 49ft. This happens to be the same as that of the American offshore racer Ondine, which in 1963 made a day’s run of 248 miles, averaging 10.2 knots. The reports of this were fairly reliable, and it was regarded as a memorable performance; and bear in mind that the period involved was 24 hours only and there was a large crew.

  Once Gipsy Moth V exceeds about 7.25 knots, she begins to be over-driven, throwing up a considerable wave system and running along a steepening part of the resistance curve. At her necessary average speed of 8.35 knots her resistance will have increased by some 50 per cent compared with that at 7.25 knots. At 9 knots, a speed that will have to be held for appreciable periods to maintain the average, the boat is sailing on a wave longer than her static waterline, the crest of the stern wave being right aft along the counter. These facts reveal the degree of hard driving that must be entailed in holding the required speeds. And the boat will be in broken water, which raises the resistance and is particularly harmful in the high speed regime. Moreover, the source of power has to be constant. In human terms this means that one man for 24 hours a day should be trimming sails already operating at near their maximum output of power, to assure the last atom of performance. The rig is a staysail ketch.

  Some notable speed performances are recorded of two earlier Clark designed yachts. In 1949 Naiande, of 26.3ft LWL, maintained a speed giving V/√LWL of 1.67 for 3 hours, and in 1946 the 31ft LWL Corinna was recorded as holding a speed ratio of 1.63 for 1 hour. These were moderately heavy displacement full keel yachts. There is a record of a 32ft waterline sloop that made the 132 miles’passage from Ajaccio in Corsica to St Tropez in 19 hours. This gives a V/ √L ratio of 1.25, and for a passage of this length the performance may be regarded as excellent. But Gipsy Moth V must maintain a speed-length ratio fractionally more than this for thirty times the distance! In 1951 Pat Ellam and Colin Mudie in the tiny and light displacement Sopranino maintained a speed-length ratio of 1.03 on passage from the Canary Islands to Barbados.

  The crucial technical factor that must make Chichester’s objective so difficult to achieve is due to the size of the boat in relation to the required average speed. The following resistance figures may not apply precisely to Gipsy Moth, but their general proportions are correct. When the yacht is sailing at a comfortable clip of 6.5 knots, her resistance is about 45lb per ton of displacement. When the speed is raised to 7 knots the resistance becomes about 60lb per ton. At 8 knots it is 100lb; at the required average speed of 8.35 it is 125lb. But to maintain this average it would seem that she must spend part of the time sailing at about 9.5 knots; for inevitably there must be many occasions when the speed will drop below 8.35 knots—when, sailing singlehanded, the trim will be less than perfect, when the wind will let up (specially near the coasts) or swing right aft. At 9.5 knots the resistance jumps to no less than 2501b. This speed, as it happens, gives a speed-length ratio of 1.45, which is comfortably in excess of the oft-assumed ‘theoretical maximum’. As shown above, it is nothing of the sort; but it is unquestionably a speed that cannot be often reached or held for long, let alone exceeded. Yet Sir Francis, alone and with a 57ft two-masted yacht on his hands, must for some periods flog her up to and beyond this speed, near the hydrodynamic limit of performance, and hold her there. It is a tremendous ambition.

  It is the fact that the yacht must be held for such long periods in the extreme upper part of her speed range that gives the operation the air of impossibility, and makes one wonder whether anyone but Sir Francis could have the confidence to attempt it. He will have to double the average speed made by Geoffrey Williams when he won the Transatlantic race. To assist him he will have more sail area and free winds. I have suggested that 10 knots is the maximum speed of Gipsy Moth, and one that only under the rarest conditions could be reached. Sir Francis must hold an average for 20 days and nights of 83 per cent of this speed to achieve his object.

  During his circumnavigation in Gipsy Moth IV, Chichester’s best average was an 8 days’run at 176 miles per day. This magnificent performance is, I believe, a record in any singlehanded craft for such a period, single or multihull. But in Gipsy Moth V, despite her greater length, it is going to be necessary to maintain a higher relative speed (V/√LWL of 1.3 instead of 1.1) for a period of two-and-a-half times as long. If this record is achieved, it will—technically, so far as the boat is concerned, physically so far as the man is concerned—be a staggering performance. And apart from the boat and the man, it should be emphasized again that the Trade Winds will have to behave immaculately. Calms or light winds will cripple the venture. The voyage may be no less than 4,000 miles but it resembles a runner trying to establish a record for the 100 yards. He cannot afford to ease off for even a few seconds.

  August 1971

  Following my notes in February, on the project of crossing the Atlantic at an average speed of 200 miles per day under sail single-handed, Sir Francis Chichester has now provided me with detailed information on the results achieved. This evidence of a 22 days period, when the object was to achieve the highest possible, speed together with its accurate measurement, provides, I believe, the most valuable data ever to have been offered on ocean speeds under sail. From henceforward, whenever the subject is under discussion, no one will be wise to neglect using it as a yardstick of the possible though, in fact, rarely attainable.

  It is easy enough on the basis of the physical principles involved to disprove many of the speed claims made for sailing ships and yachts. But how hard it is to find reliable records. So far as the fastest speeds of the clippers are concerned, we shall now never have them. We have had very little on yachts too, at least of dependable results covering appropriately long periods. Hence the table of noon-to-noon runs achieved by Chichester during 22 days crossing the Atlantic (pages 92–3) is a record of permanent value, the lack of which hitherto has given wings to many ethereal claims.

  The object was to sail 4,000 miles non-stop and singlehanded at an average speed of 200 miles per day. I described it in February as a ‘soaring aim’unlikely to be successful. ‘If this record is achieved, it will—technically, so far as the boat is concerned, physically so far as the man is concerned—be a staggering performance.’ Well, it was not achieved; but the performance was impressive enough. It was closer to the target than most of us would have guessed.

  To summarize the results briefly: the voyage extended from 1130 on 12 January to 1925 on 3 February. The time for the 4,000 miles run was 22½ days, giving an average of 179.1 miles per day. In the course of the whirlwind rush two spinnaker poles were broken, and for 3 days 8 hours of the last 5 days’record run, during which an average of 200 miles per day was maintained, the two poles were set lashed together. To achieve the object of 200 miles a day the average speed over the whole passage would have had to be 8.33 knots. The actual speed was fractionally less than 7.5 knots.

  This average for 22 days in a vessel 42ft LWL and 57ft LOA throws a new light on possible speeds under sail. It may be 0.83 knots less than the target. But it is also quite as much more than most judges would formerly have considered likely.

  Turn now to some of the best day’s runs (see table). The longest was 231.5 miles on 30–31 January. The average
speed was then 9.6 knots. I wrote in February: ‘We hear a great deal about the maximum theoretical speed of sailing yachts being equal in knots to 1.34 multiplied by the square root of the waterline length in feet. This speed for Gipsy Moth V is only 8.7 knots, so it is fortunate that the widely endorsed supposition is untrue.’ It is more reasonable in this connection to consider the sailing length of the hull, which is more than the waterline by the length of the overhangs that may be effectively immersed when sailing in full career. In Gipsy Moth V I reckon this to be about 49ft. On this basis her relative speed above would be in excess of 1.36.

  When making 9.6 knots, the length of the wave created by the yacht in her progress would have been 51ft, or only 6ft less than the overall length of the yacht. Sir Francis Chichester has written, ‘Your forecast of the behaviour of the yacht during this last voyage, which totalled 18,581 miles logged, was amazingly accurate, even to the stern wave being continuously level with the counter when she was sailing her fastest.’ But this, of course, is the inevitable hydrodynamic condition when driving at such speeds. The more amazing thing is that such speeds were held for so long in a yacht singlehanded in severe ocean conditions.

  It will be seen from the noon-to-noon fixes that more than 200 miles was made on 8 days, or for some 36 per cent of the period at sea.

  Chichester tells me of two other periods during which Gipsy Moth V maintained more than 200 miles per day. The first was on the passage from Plymouth to Portuguese Guinea, when in two days, noon to noon, a run was made of 431.6 miles for a point-to-point distance, of 405 miles. On the passage home, he says, ‘I diverged for a jaunt to the equator and tried for a faster 5-day time. During 3 days Gipsy Moth made good, noon fix 31 March to noon fix 3 April, 601 miles.’ Shortly afterwards a 5-days run of 932 miles was achieved.