Blue Water, Green Skipper: A Memoir of Sailing Alone Across the Atlantic

by Stuart Woods

  They asked to see all the required safety equipment, checking each item off on a list, then chatted for a minute. Walter turned out to be a cousin of Bill King’s, whom Bill had told me about. He is a tomato grower, and once, when Bill was about to make a transatlantic crossing in his first boat, Galway Blazer I, Walter gave him a basket of tomatoes which had been carefully selected so that one of them would ripen each day. It had worked perfectly, Bill said, the last tomato ripening on his last day out.

  Yves Anrys and I had a chance to talk a lot as we were each doing jobs on our boats. Yves had been a reserve Olympic helmsman in the single-handed Finn dinghy class and was sailing a half-tonner similar to Harp but very stripped-out inside and much, much lighter. He is a merchant seaman and was planning to race his boat in the World Half-Ton Cup Championships later in the year.

  (left) Angus Primrose.

  (right) Yves Anrys of Pawn of Nieuwpoort, Harp’s next-door neighbor in Millbay Docks.

  *

  WEDNESDAY. I was a blur of motion all the morning, running errands, seeing to last-minute fittings, and filling small gaps in my list of necessary gear. There seemed to be no end to it, and I was beginning to have a feeling of running out of time. While in this somewhat harassed state I got a telephone message from the Royal Western office in Millbay Docks that the McWilliams and the Hollands were arriving at four in the afternoon and please to meet them.

  We arrived back at Millbay Docks and were standing outside the Observer press office, chatting with some people, when Angela called me aside. “Have you heard about Lizzie McMullen?” she asked. Oh, God, I thought, there’s been a car crash and Lizzie’s in the hospital with a broken leg or something.

  “No,” I said.

  “There’s been a terrible accident. Mike and Lizzie were working on the boat at Mashford’s yard this morning when an electric drill fell overboard into the water. Mike shouted for her not to touch it, but she did. They gave her heart massage and artificial respiration for half an hour until an ambulance could get out to Cremyl, but it didn’t help. She was dead on arrival at the hospital.”

  I froze inside; I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. Lizzie McMullen, beautiful, bright, delightful Lizzie, could not be dead; it was simply not possible. I asked Angela if she were absolutely sure, if there were any possibility of a mistake. Angela was sure. Lizzie, who thirty-six hours before had been joking about my central heating, laughing, and sipping sherry on Golden Harp, was gone. Irrecoverable. Out of anyone’s reach. Out of my life. Out of Mike’s. Dear God, I thought, if I feel this way, as if somebody had struck me with a blunt instrument, how must Mike feel?

  “How is Mike?” I asked Angela.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure friends are with him. I’ve sent a telegram.” I wanted to send a telegram, too. I sat in Angela’s office and thought for a time. There were less than seventy-two hours left before the start of the race. This would have been the most crushing possible blow at any time, but to happen now, after four years of work and preparation together. It suddenly seemed unthinkable that Mike should not sail the race. I found a pencil and wrote, “I only knew her for a week, and I loved her, too. There is no answer to the senseless. Please sail the race and win it.” I signed the telegram, gave it to Angela to send, then went out and sat in the car, numb. A man wandered over and began talking to me through the open sunroof about an ice cream seller who had been ejected from the docks because he didn’t have the proper permit. I chatted absently with him without knowing what I was saying. Angela came out and we talked for a moment, then I left. I felt I had to keep doing things, that I couldn’t stop—not just because I had so much to get done but because if I stopped I would think about Lizzie and, worse, about Mike. So I kept moving, kept ticking items off my list, but it seemed that every two or three minutes I would stop and realize all over again that Lizzie was dead, and it was just like being told for the first time.

  I spent most of the afternoon with the Hollands and McWilliams, but in a kind of daze. When they left for the airport early that evening, I went to the club. I found Lloyd Foster and asked if he knew Mike’s plans about the race. “I think it will certainly be impossible for Mike to compete now,” he said. “Of course, there’s the funeral, but there’ll have to be an inquest as well. There are just too many formalities to complete before Saturday.” I suggested that the competitors might send some flowers, and Lloyd agreed to receive contributions. Later, that didn’t seem enough, seemed too transient, and some of us thought perhaps the committee might accept a new trophy for multihulls to be presented in memory of Lizzie. This seemed much more satisfactory, more permanent, and Lloyd said he would bring it before the committee for consideration.

  I don’t think anyone who knew Lizzie McMullen, however slightly, went to bed with dry eyes that night, and I was more deeply affected than at any time since my grandfather had died. It had been a bad day.

  *

  THURSDAY. Everything began to gather momentum. There were three events scheduled for competitors: a lord mayor’s reception at midday, a competitors’ briefing in the early afternoon, and a dinner that evening. In between, I was at a dead run. The hydraulics engineer from Southampton turned up bright and early with the new pump. I spent the rest of the morning running errands and arrived at the lord mayor’s event after the speeches. Lloyd Foster called me over to confer with Henry Williams and Colonel Jack Oddling-Smee of the committee, who agreed to accept the proposed Lizzie trophy. Liz Balcon of The Observer voiced the newspaper’s approval, and both the club and The Observer agreed to contribute a substantial amount of money to be combined with the competitors’ contributions to purchase a piece of silver. Lloyd asked me to announce the trophy at the competitors’ briefing in the afternoon and said he would accept the contributions.

  I found Richard Clifford chatting with a very attractive girl and the three of us adjourned to a local restaurant for an hour to rest from the rush of the day. Richard told me that Mike had decided to continue in the race and would be at the briefing. I felt vastly relieved and very happy about that. Yves Anrys had said to me the previous afternoon, “The man’s wife is dead, that’s one problem. If he doesn’t do the race he will have two problems.” I thought that described the situation very succinctly, and I was glad that Mike would not have to suffer the additional agony of missing the race. I hoped, too, that competing might have a therapeutic effect.

  As we gathered at the Royal Western for a group photograph and the briefing, I found Mike, looking shattered but holding up well, told him what we wanted to do, and asked if he minded if it were announced at the briefing. He agreed readily. When we sat down for the photograph on the club’s front terrace, there seemed to be a thousand photographers, and I think most of us were a little taken aback at all the attention, not being used to that sort of thing. I was sitting somewhere near Clare Francis and the crush around us was incredible as all the photographers, as one man, rushed forward for close-ups of the prettiest skipper in the race. A lot of attention was focused on Mike, too, but this was more discreet, thankfully. We filed into the main lounge of the club and were briefed on the starting and finishing procedures; the Pen Duick class would start at twelve noon, the Gypsy Moth class at twelve-thirty, and the Jester class at one o’clock. The finishing line would be a line between the Brenton Reef lighthouse and a nearby buoy, and we were given a chart of the Newport area. A representative of the Ida Lewis Yacht Club of Newport, who was handling the arrangements at the other end, said that an effort would be made to meet as many competitors as possible. Other details were discussed, then I made the announcement about the new prize, to be called The Lizzie McMullen Perpetual Trophy, for the first multihull to finish. It would be a presentation of the competitors in the 1976 race and would be presented in perpetuity. There were a few more announcements, and we broke up to return to our boats.

  Ann arrived during the afternoon, and I left her to rest at the hotel while I got back to the boat. Arriving there, I foun
d that the replacement hydraulic unit had blown immediately upon installation, and the engineer was trying to cannibalize the old unit to repair the new one. I got the electrical engineer started on replacing the battery and rewiring the engine bay, working around the other engineer as best he could. This was a time when I had planned to be lounging in the cockpit with a glass of wine, watching everybody else panic. Instead, Yves Anrys was lounging in his cockpit, watching me panic. The handicap committee came by and had a look at Harp. I sat them down and explained as thoroughly as I could that Harp was not in her present condition a competitive half-tonner, that she was much, much too heavy for that and had larger rigging, steps on the mast and lots of other windage-making gear, such as the Dynafurl reefing. They nodded sympathetically and agreed that she would not rate as a standard half-tonner, and I felt I had made my point successfully.

  I raced back to the hotel to change for the banquet, and we made it on time. The atmosphere was relaxed, and although a lot of people looked tired, as I’m sure I did, everybody looked happy. Ann got her bottom pinched by somebody who turned out to be Jerry Cartwright, an American yacht designer from Newport and a friend of Ron’s. I asked her if she wanted me to hit him, but she seemed flattered.

  We sat with Yves Anrys, Max Bourgeois, and Ian Radford, with Bill Howell at the next table, so we were among friends. Jack Oddling-Smee made a gracious and amusing speech, the new editor of The Observer, the incredibly young-looking Donald Trelford, made another, and Val Howells responded on behalf of the competitors. Val had been a competitor in the first race, in 1960, and now he and his son Philip had built identical boats for the Jester class for this race. The party broke up and everybody went to get some sleep before the last full day we would have before the start.

  *

  FRIDAY. We were up at the crack of dawn and back on the boat. The two engineers were working away at it, and I sent Ann off in the car for some last-minute shopping while I worked on the boat. With the two engineers still working it was a mess, and with only a day to go.

  Lizzie McMullen was buried in the family plot at the little church in the Cornish village of St. Mellion, a few miles from Plymouth. Mike Kane and I drove up, and Richard Clifford and Clare Francis were there, too. Mike McMullen bore himself in a manner which put us all to shame. “He’s taking it better than I am,” Mike Kane said.

  Mike invited us back to the house after the funeral, and was everywhere, putting everybody at ease. He showed us around the place, a pair of workmen’s cottages he and Lizzie had been converting into a single house, doing all the work themselves. Only one room was completely finished, and it was heartbreaking to see, on a beautiful Cornish hillside with a view nearly to Plymouth, still another project that they had begun but would not finish together. I told Mike how glad I was that he would be sailing the race. He said, “Your telegram just about did it, you know.” I said I thought Lizzie would have been pleased, too, and Lizzie’s father, who was standing with us, agreed.

  On the drive back to Plymouth, Mike Kane and I got to know each other better, and I began to appreciate the pressures he was under, over and above anything I was experiencing. He was being sponsored by the American Tobacco Company, and a crew had been sent to make a film about his project. A camera and sound crew were following him around everywhere he went; they had been in California taking shots of his home and family before he left for England, and there were the usual PR men skating him around the TV and press people, too. He was longing to be out at sea, I think, leaving it all behind.

  Ann and I worked the rest of the day stowing gear and tidying up last-minute details. By early evening Harp was nearly ready. During the afternoon I met Mike Flanagan of Galloping Gael; he came aboard, introduced himself, and asked to borrow my dinghy to do some work on the topsides of his boat. I had heard that Mike was very confident of his chances in the Jester class and wasn’t shy about it. We chatted for a couple of minutes, and he seemed a nice enough guy.

  Mike Kane came to the dockside, camera crew in tow, and we had a shouted exchange of good-natured abuse for the benefit of the television audience. Robert Hughes arrived and replaced the steering vane shaft which had been bent in the altercation with the customs launch in St. Mawes. Everything was finally aboard and fitted; only some stowage remained, and we left that for the following morning.

  Ann and I had hoped to have a farewell dinner at the superb Horn of Plenty in Gulworthy, but we finished on the boat too late and decided on dinner at Bella Napoli after a drink at the Royal Western. There we bumped into Jerry Cartwright, the well-known yacht designer and bottom pincher, and a very attractive English girl, Suzy Wassman, who had lived for a time in Newport. They joined us for dinner. Jerry had done the last OSTAR but hadn’t been able to complete a boat in time for this one, and we talked all through dinner about the race, the routes, and problems I might encounter. I had missed most of the weather briefing that afternoon, turning up at the wrong place, but everybody I talked to still seemed to think it was a toss-up between routes. Only a smaller-than-usual amount of ice on the great circle made that route seem a possible favorite. I was still leaning toward the Azores route, having heard nothing new against it, but still had not made a final decision. I would not really have to do that until leaving the Channel.

  Club Méditerranée and Golden Harp to scale.

  I was also bitching a lot about the handicap I had been assigned that afternoon. Nobody knew what handicapping system the committee was using, but whatever it was, I didn’t like it. Harp had been given a handicap of nineteen days and some hours; Pawn of Nieuwpoort, Yves Anrys’s boat, identical in size to Harp but stripped out inside and much lighter, had been assigned a handicap of twenty-two days and some hours. I was giving Yves three days! Clare Francis, in her thirty-eight-foot Robertson’s Golly, was giving me only half a day! When Yves and I sat down and went through the list, we discovered still more strangeness. Harp, designed as a half-tonner, was actually giving time to a one-tonner! I had written out an immediate protest to the committee, citing half a dozen apparent anomalies, and they had told me I would get a decision in Newport. I was very concerned about this, because the handicap prize was the only one Harp had any real chance of winning, being eight feet overall and three and a half feet on the waterline shorter than the class maximum.

  In spite of all the shoptalk, the pleasant dinner eased the tension a bit and, since Jerry would be on the press boat at the start, we invited Suzy to join Ann and me on Harp for the time before the start. That way she could get inside the restricted zone, where spectator craft were not allowed.

  Tomorrow was the day, but I was too tired at bedtime to reflect much about it.

  *

  SATURDAY AND THE START. We were up at six; collected my fresh meat, a week’s supply, from the hotel freezer, where it had not frozen; stopped by the fish market for a large bag of ice, which smelled like fish; and got down to the boat. I dropped Ann, the meat, and the fishy ice there and drove to the marina, where Mike Kane had promised me some last-minute weather poop. Mike was late and I had too much to do to wait, so I went back to Millbay Docks, giving Richard Konklowski, the Czech entry, a lift. I hadn’t had an opportunity to talk with Richard before, but he was an interesting fellow, sailing his little home-built twenty-four-footer, Nike, in the race for the second time. Since the Czechs have no boatbuilding industry and import restrictions abound, Richard had had to build his boat from whatever materials he could find, making many fittings himself, even the sails.

  Since repairs on Harp’s engine had been completed so late, there had been no opportunity for the committee to seal the gear lever, and I was given an acceptance certificate and told they would trust me. (As it turned out, they didn’t have to.) This meant that, unlike the other competitors, we had a useable engine for the period before the start and did not have to be towed. So, with Ann and Suzy aboard, we were among the first out of the docks, collecting a round of applause from the crowd gathered at the gates. (Angela told me
later that all the competitors got a round of applause. I had thought it was just for me.)

  We motored out to the starting area, stowing gear all the while, and started to look at boats. I don’t think anybody got a better look at things than we, with our engine. We motored back and forth through the fleet, dodging hundreds of spectators that could simply not be kept out of the restricted area, in spite of the best efforts of the Royal Marines, buzzing about in inflatable assault craft, yelling at people. There was every possible kind of spectator boat inside the restricted area, most of them small yachts under power, but I even saw two kids in a Mirror dinghy thrashing about among the competitors.

  In spite of what sounds like chaotic conditions, everything was quite orderly, the spectators were well behaved, apart from their trespassing, and I did not see a single incident of any kind. Fortunately, it was a light day. In heavy weather things would have been a bit hairier, but then, in heavy weather, there would not have been so many spectators.

  Club Méditerranée sailed slowly around at the starboard end of the line, her decks crawling with people (spectators did not have to be off the boats until the ten-minute gun), and Spirit of America stayed nearby. I knew Mike Kane wanted badly to start before Colas, and there he was, waiting.

  The ten-minute gun went for the big class, and the huge boats started jockeying for position. ITT Oceanic, sailed by Yvon Fauconnier, was down at the starboard end of the line with Club Med and Spirit, and the other large boats were more scattered. Poor Tom Grossman, on Cap 33, had been bumped up from the Gypsy Moth to the Pen Duick class when it was found that his boat exceeded the length for the medium class. He had simply taken the word of the previous owner on her measurements, and now he was in with the big boys, the smallest boat in the class.