Racundra's First Cruise

by Ransome, Arthur; Hammett, Brian ;

  FITTING OUT KITTIWAKE.

  There were more boats, beyond the little harbour, and, though it was teatime, and we had already made up our minds that we had not the smallest chance of finding what we wanted, we decided just to walk along and look at what there was. This part of the beach was deserted. The boats lying higgledy-piggledy were mostly wrecks. It was scarcely worthwhile to walk further. However, we picked our way over half melting ice and stinking seaweed, which had been preserved in ice throughout the winter in order to pollute the spring. Here and there where the ice had melted the seaweed gave way between us, and we stepped ankle-deep in slush. We had just made up our minds to go back when we came upon a spectacle that would have been surprising in any other country.

  A young man in the tunic, boots and breeches of a cavalry officer, but with a cap that showed that he belonged to the mercantile marine, was sitting on a stone scraping barnacles from the bottom of a stout dumpy little yacht lying on her beam ends on a patch of sand. The little yacht was carvel built, in Finland, as we afterwards learnt. In these parts they invariably spoil clinker built boats by using planks too wide for the purpose, which presently fall apart. The little yacht had a bluntish nose and a stern obviously built for comfort rather than for speed. She had a cabin, quite extraordinarily roomy for her diminutive size.

  He decided to purchase the boat and his handwritten notes describes his first trip after having paid the deposit.

  April 13

  The owner, who was going off to Zoksa to superintend the docking of a little steamer, proposed to take Kittiwake round to the Yacht Club in the harbour. He collected a stout lad with a leaky dinghy, and sent me off in the yacht. I found that though the ballast was on board the floorboards were not, and it was easy to see that the ballast was very badly laid, many of the heavy pieces resting actually on the bottom boards. Presently the dinghy arrived again with the owner, the boy, and the carpenter who was said to have begun making the pump, but had actually come to take preliminary measurements.

  KITTIWAKE AT REVAL.

  I as purchaser, not having yet taken possession, refrained from taking responsible part in the proceedings of making sail and getting away. The owner and the boy worked together, the boy shinning up the mast to reeve the jib halyard. It was very gusty, one squall following another from the shore. The wind being from the land, there were no waves. Still it was a goodish day in which to test her, and my doubts as to her top heaviness were confirmed when I heard the owner, wildly battling with the hanking of the jib on the forestay, remark, “We shall have to put a couple of reefs in the mainsail.”

  We got off without incident, and sailed round the harbour; even with two reefs down she sailed with the water on her deck and under her coamings, we had to luff up to every extra bit of squall. She heeled over at such an angle that it was impossible to sit in the cockpit. At least sitting in it, one felt as if one was in the pouch of a catapult, which at any moment might project one violently into the sea. One had to get outside and perch on the weather coaming or lean on the hatchway. That of course was the penalty for having so delightful a cabin.

  We went about and sailed east round to the new harbour. She made a very fair pace. She manoeuvred beautifully, but was a bit of a handful running before the wind, having a distinct tendency to spin one way or the other, and to execute one jibe after another. This of course was partly due to the squally wind, coming from behind the rain, and shifting every minute. Going about with her, however, was a treat. She was on with the new tack before she was off the old, with a joyful flick of her skirts. I felt she was a good deal too skittish a temperament for me, but decided that if I survived two months of her methods of education I should be fit to sail any boat and to survive.

  At last we sailed back to our starting point and then along the shore to the harbour, turned around with the wind behind us, and then into the harbour, tacking up into the opening between the moles. We sailed along quickly into the harbour and found that the only available buoy was tucked away under the combined stems of a tug and a big sailing barge. I remarked rather tentatively, in my capacity as passenger, that he had brought no oars, and no anchor chain, only a short length for tying up to a buoy. “We shall not need them,” he replied. “We can get to our moorings.” Instead of waiting to be helped by someone in a dinghy who afterwards enjoyed his discomfiture, he tried to pick up the buoy in this impossible position; with the natural result that he carried away his bowsprit (oak) broke his bobstay (wire rope) and half the strands of one of the port shrouds. Your purchaser lent and reached our moorings with considerable emphasis.

  (Autobiography) For practice we started taking her out of harbour every day. She was top-heavy and heeled over to her cabin-top even with two reefs down and we had to steady her with scrap-iron ballast, hoping wishfully that she would learn good manners. But we lost faith rapidly, and this made us more and more determined to have a really good boat, big and comfortable to live on board for months on end and fit to be sailed to England if and when we wanted to do so.

  Two days after Kittiwake’s first sail Ransome and Evgenia met Otto Eggers, a well-known German designer and boat builder of racing craft who had a large boatyard in Reval (Tallinn) before the First World War. Estonia’s new nationalism had left him without a yard, but still designing.

  COFFIN MAKER’S DINGHY.

  (Diary 1921)

  15 April

  In the evening went and fell in love with Mr. Eggers, with the probable result that we shall have a boat built by him. The enthusiasm of the fellow when he is talking of a possible boat simply carries me off my feet and hundreds of pounds out of my depth. He proposes a perfect boat to go anywhere single-handed with every kind of tweak. Talked it over with Evgenia who herself is bowled over by Eggers. She too votes for getting his boat.

  21 April

  Evgenia says she can live until April 21, 1923 with no new clothes?!!!!

  In May the dinghy that had been ordered from the local undertaker arrived.

  4 May

  Dinghy arrived. Complete failure.

  Evgenia refuses even to try it, or to be rowed in it, or to take it with us so it may be regarded as 11,000 wasted Esthonian marks, and we are still without a dinghy and should be starting. (In Evgenia’s hand:) Evgenia herself is a complete failure (In Arthur’s hand) Only partial.

  On May 11 the Ransomes’ undertook their first major voyage in Kittiwake to take the boat from Reval (Tallinn) to Baltic Port (Paldiski North), a more convenient place to keep and sail the boat during the summer and a lot nearer to their lodgings at Lodenzee. He typed an article detailing the trip:

  REVAL TO BALTIC PORT

  In the evening of May 10 we dined on the Esthonian ship “Kalevipoeg” which was leaving for Stockholm the next day, and after dinner went on board the Kittiwake and made all ready for a start before turning in. Our one portmanteau filled the whole space between the bunks, and were so narrow that lying on our backs we projected on one side into the luggage and on the other pressed hard against the sides of the boat. It was a clear night of stars and the barometer was steady. We hoped to get away at dawn but this was our first night on board, and we found it quite impossible to get to sleep until something like one in the morning. The alarm clock broke into abrupt song at three a.m. We disregarded it and slept on until about half past six when there was a heavy bump, followed by impatient hammering on the cabin roof. I extricated my feet from under the after deck, doubled forward like a snake and looked out of the cabin door to find two Esthonians in a dinghy alongside.

  “Good morning,” said one of them. “We have just got in from Loksa. It’s a fine wind. Come on with us and sail together to Baltic Port.”

  “Have you got any vodka?” said the second, who had evidently drunk all he had, and had had a considerable quantity.

  “We are talking about something else,” said the first.

  I craned over the cabin roof to see their boat, and saw that she was at least twice as big as the Ki
ttiwake, and said that though we were going to Baltic Port we could not expect to keep up with them.

  “Have you got any vodka?” said the second again.

  “Choose a more reasonable moment,” said his companion.

  “But, if we have not got enough vodka ourselves...”

  His companion disregarded him, said we should meet at Baltic Port and pushed off. They rowed quarrelling to their yacht, and we never saw them again.

  However, they had done their work in calling us, and indeed there was a pleasant wind blowing from the south off the land, which should have carried us very comfortably out of the deep bay. So we set about dressing. How dressing for two in a cabin not large enough for one, encumbered by a lamp that seems as big as an arc light and as active as a football, with the whole space between the bunks packed with oars, boathook, the oars and mast of the dinghy, a kitbag and a portmanteau, not to speak of a Primus stove, with its threatening little roar of fire hotting up our coffee is not an operation that can be performed with speed. It was actually seven thirty before we were setting the mainsail and eight before we had the anchor up, and with the oars were slowly pulling out of the harbour.

  I moved Kittiwake with the oars, for the wind had dropped, and I could have seen to shave in the water of the harbour. The old man who looks after the Yacht Club shouted to ask if we had written our destination in the book for that purpose. I told him we had not, and that with a dead calm it was likely that we should have no destination at all. At nine we were drifting outside the harbour, and decided that in any case we would spend the day on the water. There was no wind where we were, but the water was ruffled further out, and the smoke from the tall factory chimneys had an encouraging unanimity. The air was stirring and presently our sails filled, rather half heartedly, and we had steerageway. In about an hour’s time we had reached the boom that lies off the breakwater on Karlo Island. At this point the wind, such as it was, swung round to the N.N.W. It was just enough to keep us moving.

  Reval some two sea miles away lifted its castle rock, its tall thin spires and towers, and the monstrous gold-domed Russian church breaking with a strange exotic touch of Byzantium the Gothic and Scandinavian outlines of the place. Few towns are more beautiful from the sea. The coastline on either side is low and the great rock lifted from the sea is from a distance almost like an island. From where we lay and drifted we could see the low shore of the bay curling round and out to sea, to the island of Wulf, low on the northern skyline. Far away we could see the landmarks, the white house on the shore and the triangular ruined end of the Briggitten monastery. To the northwest was the long low island Nargon, with the lighthouse on its northernmost point, just visible in the mist.

  We were wondering if we had any chance of losing sight of Reval that day, but decided at least to get as far as the point before turning back. With the wind in its present position we had to fetch away again before attempting the point, which we did and by noon were off the second promontory of Karlo.

  We kept moving, but no more, and had to throw matches overboard to convince ourselves that we were not really standing still. We calculated that we were making something well under a mile an hour. I thought of anchoring under Nargon for the night, but thought it better to keep on, as my chart was not in sufficient detail to show the way into the anchorage there, though it showed clearly that there were plenty of rocks along the shore, and I remembered that the Kittiwake drew five feet, so that I could not simply beach her, as I was able to do with the Slug the year before.

  At teatime we were between Nargon and Surop, in the place where last year, on just such a clam day, we had had to fight our way across to shelter in a squall that gave us all we wanted and a little more. Through the binoculars, we saw the Kalevipoeg which had left Reval at two, standing out to sea. We could already see the two lighthouses on Surop. One conical, low on the shore, and the other, shoulder high in trees standing on the rising ground of the promontory.

  E. set the Primus going in the cockpit, and filled the thermos with hot water for the evening’s grog, for it was now clear that we should spend the night at sea. We made a good meal at the same time, of cheese, bread and butter, sardines, beer and biscuits. I did not feel altogether happy, because the barometer now began to move down, and calms on the Baltic are nearly always broken by unpleasant weather. Also, we now had nowhere to take shelter until we made Lahepe Bay, with its awkward entrance from the east, or finished our journey by rounding the precipitous point of Pakerort.

  We drifted on, and the sun set in a low bank of darkish clouds. Rags and tatters of cloud appeared as if from nowhere overhead, and yet what with the little wind, and the drag of our abominable dinghy, let alone the sturdy build of the Kittiwake, we hardly moved at all. At eleven p.m. we were close off Surop. It now became quite dark. The moon disappeared behind clouds and the wind strengthened a little from the northwest, though not enough to account for the swell from the same direction, which, together with the falling barometer made me sure that a blow was coming from the same direction.

  A perfectly horrible three hours followed, during which I had to steer by the lights of Surop and Nargon, now and again catching a faint glimmer of the Pakerort lighthouse far ahead, and making our way slowly past the light buoy northwest of Surop, and so towards Lohusaar point, the rocks of which I had had good opportunity of observing last year. I did not want to lose any opportunity of getting along, because I was certain that the weather was on the point of changing.

  When at last the sun came up through a cage of thin bars of cloud we found we were quite near Lohusaar, and could see the immense crowd of seabirds on the rocky islands near the point, and hear our first cuckoo of this year calling in the woods on the shore. Thirty yards from us a seal was puffing and blowing. The barometer had now fallen a full tenth, and the swell from the N.W. had markedly increased. I drank a glass of coffee (my teeth were chattering after sitting at the tiller all night) made a short tack out to sea and then setting a course that would take us comfortable clear of Pakerort, gave the tiller to E., and had half an hour’s rest in the cabin.

  A little after six the wind freshened, and for the first time we began to move at a respectable pace, but with the wind the sea got up and the Kittiwake, though she lifted her nose fairly well, none the less was stopped almost dead at each considerable wave, so that we had not anything like the pace we should have had. We got across the mouth of Lahepe Bay and for the first time saw Pakerort near. Red cliffs, sheer down to the water’s edge, a tall slim lighthouse on the point, the very sight of it put fresh heart into us for we knew we had only to round it to get between Pakerort and the Roogo islands, and to find our harbour, which lies along the western side of the point. Still, the wind was extremely strong and, the waves stopping the poor Kittiwake almost dead at each blow, I began to be afraid we should not weather the point without another tack to sea. However, the wind obligingly shifted a degree or two northwards and at 8 a.m. we passed just inside the first buoy off the lighthouse, at 8.25 passed the second and, a minute later, let out the mainsheet and steered southward running about half a mile off the shore to avoid a reef which projects just north of the harbour. The wind and waves were now on our starboard quarter, and I had my work cut out to bring the bigger waves right aft one after another so as not to give them a chance of spinning us round broadside on, as they very clearly longed to do. They hurled the dinghy first one side, then the other, now broadside on, now charging down upon us like a battering ram. I hauled in the dinghy’s painter bringing her nose as near as I could, so that she could not get much momentum for her blows. But there was so much wind that I could not leave the tiller to fix a fender, and the dinghy hit our counter with the regularity of a steam hammer and seemingly nearly as hard, whenever the waves did not do worse with her and, lifting her bodily, threw her nose actually over the counter and seemed likely to bring her bodily on board.

  KITTIWAKE AT BALTIC PORT.

  Before passing the boom on the end
of the reef and turning southeast for the harbour mouth, I went about in a smooth patch, to avoid jibing in such a sea when my steering was still further hampered by the dinghy. The Kittiwake in spite of all her handicaps accomplished this satisfactorily, and at 9 a.m. we were rushing before the wind down to the entrance of the port, where we had already seen the red funnel of the Cato, a British steamship and a friend of ours, which had left Reval a day or two before. We rounded the entrance, and met a strong puff of wind through the narrow passage, made still narrower by the Cato’s tall block stern towering above us. We had not room to tack, so, very clumsily, and tired out, we hauled down our sails, fought up against the wind inch by inch with the oars and, finally catching a rope’s end flung from the Cato, were towed along her sides and made fast after a twenty five hour passage.