Never Fear

by Ian Strathcarron

What is always so lovely about enthusiasts is that they are always so … enthusiastic. Mike, the very first model yachtsmen I approach, can’t himself help me, but ‘You see that old boy over there, just to the left of the bench, with the bright green cap? He’ll help you. He’s got an old vane type he’ll show you.’ And he has; and he does.

  Thus the following Sunday Gregor Halsley arrives with two yachts, one radio-controlled for himself, one vane-steered for me. I must say they were both beautiful. In fact all the model yachts had the graceful sheer and purposeful hull of a classic 12 metre racing yacht. I ask Gregor how the self-steering worked and what Francis would have been looking for to transfer to Gipsy Moth III.

  ‘The principle is easy enough’, says Gregor, taking vane-steered Yonolla out of its pram. ‘It’s just a sod to get right. Black art and dark magic all part of the game. I’m out of practice but imagine you want to steer to that weathercock.’ He is pointing to the top of the east entrance to Kensington Palace. ‘Today the wind is coming from over there.’ He is now pointing to the park entrance by the Royal Garden Hotel. ‘Forty-five degrees south off your target course. So you adjust the vane to point into the wind and the yacht with its tiller centred to point at the weathercock. Then you lock these two together. Should she steer off course either way, the wind will force the vane back into it and so make the tiller steer back on her course. The vane moves the tiller, the tiller moves the rudder, the rudder steers the boat, hey presto!’

  We give it a go. There is just as much sticky sun and barely more wind than last week but enough to fill the sails and work the vane. Now I see why Gregor brought not just the yacht and its pram, but a broom with its brush end swathed in a bandage. Yonolla heads off on starboard tack but of course, with the steering locked to the vane, cannot tack herself to fashion a course towards the weathercock. Thus Gregor has to rush round on foot to intercept her at the shoreline and give her a good shove onto port tack. Then he has to walk briskly around the pond in front of her to do the same again onto starboard tack until ten minutes later she arrives approximately at her destination.

  Miranda

  ‘Quite exhausting’, I say.

  ‘This is on a calm day’, Gregor replies. ‘On a brisk day you’d be running around the pond to reach her shore point before the yacht did.’

  As a result of his research at the Round Pond and after studying a model yachting design book (which Gregor reckons must have been Model Racing Yachts by B.H. Priest and J.A. Lewis), Francis designed his self-steering system, which he called ‘Miranda’, thus: From the book he learned that the vane – in Gipsy Moth III’s case actually a flat sail – had to be four and a half times the size of the rudder. As Francis rather ruefully admitted, ‘I cannot describe how ugly it looked on the beautiful Gipsy Moth III’. But the design imperative was strength, not beauty, and the engineering challenge was to design a system that would be sturdy enough to withstand the worst of the Atlantic howlers, yet light enough to pick up the odd light breeze or even zephyr.

  While Gipsy Moth III was having her leprechauns realigned in Buckler’s Hard, Francis was in the library of the RORC studying the June, July and August editions of the British Admiralty North Atlantic Ocean Routing Charts. These give highly detailed historical weather patterns by the month and the precise locations that he needed to predict which course best to lay for Gipsy Moth III across the Atlantic.

  He knew that they were going to be in for a rough ride:

  Three thousand miles, plugging into the prevailing westerlies, probably strong, bucking the Gulf Stream current, crossing the Grand Banks off Newfoundland which were not only one of the densest fog areas of the world, but also stuffed with fishing trawlers. No wonder the Atlantic had only once before been raced across from east to west. That was in 1870, by two big schooners, the Dauntless and the Cambria.

  The Ocean Routing Charts showed him that the shortest route from Plymouth to New York, the Great Circle route, is 2,900 nautical miles but considered by navigators to be the worst option, neither fish nor foul. The more northerly route brings the promise of stronger winds but bigger seas and fouler weather, to include the certainty of fog and icebergs; the more southerly route shows gentler winds, flatter seas and fairer weather. In a fully crewed yacht of Gipsy Moth III’s size the northerly route would be preferred, whereas sailing solo the southern route would be more sensible. Naturally Francis planned to go north in search of speed; sleep would somehow take care of itself. He also knew that circumstances and forecasts at the time – hopelessly unreliable by today’s standards –would probably make the actual decision for him. Which they did: Francis eventually sailed the direct Great Circle route and had a horrible, if fast, time of it.

  In the bar of the RORC Francis was helping Blondie Hasler get the race organised. There was much to admire in the Cockleshell Hero.

  He was a quiet-speaking, interesting man; short, round and bald-headed with a red face. He never seemed to move a muscle while speaking. He steadily and quietly pursued his affairs. Blondie was also an expert ocean racer, and one year, with a novel type of boat for ocean racing, came top of the smallest class of the RORC for the season’s racing.

  The two never became friends, being such different characters. Whereas Blondie was quietly determined, still waters running deep, and discreet, Francis was overtly determined, mercurial by comparison, thin-skinned at times and quick to claim the credit. They fell out before the race when Francis questioned the entry requirements and after the race when, having won it, Francis failed to correct the public perception that it had been his idea all along.

  One problem Francis did not have was Sheila fussing about him. Quite the contrary:

  I was fascinated to think of the entrants starting from the same port at the same time for the same destination, testing themselves and their boats against the loneliness of the ocean. I saw immediately that this would be the cure, the final cure, for my husband, that he need just this kind of venture.

  But at this stage all was not well with the race. In spite of widespread publicity in the yachting press, only two tentative volunteers had stepped forward: Dr David Lewis, who sailed Cardinal Vertue, and Valentine Howells in Eira. Both yachts were the same size as Blondie’s Jester, 25 feet, and Eira, being a Folkboat, was more or less Jester’s sister ship.

  By the time Blondie and Francis met, the notice had been on the RORC board for two years. One or two club jokers had written discouraging asides on it. (Blondie recalls ‘the Club Secretary was kept busy rubbing out the proliferation of unsolicited, usually adverse, comments’.) The race was just considered too outrageous, too difficult, too dangerous – as Francis said, ‘too hair-brained’ – for public acceptance or media interest. This then frightened off the sponsors. It also frightened off any organising yacht clubs, officially needed to record the racers starting at one end and record them finishing at the other. Then for the competitors there was the expense: not everyone could take six months off work, the time needed for the sea trials, the race itself, the regrouping in America and then the voyage home eastabout – all this before the expense of the specially equipped and victualled yacht itself. The race appealed to genuine Corinthians like Blondie, David, Kim and Francis, less so to anyone vaguely normal or confined by vaguely normal circumstances. At one point, when it looked as if our four heroes would just have to race each other, with no financial backing or yacht club sanction, they all agreed to put half-a-crown (£0.12p in today’s money) into the kitty and the winner would claim the ten shillings (or £0.50). Thus they formed the Half Crown Club, to which every finisher was entitled to life membership.

  However, Blondie’s Cockleshell exploits had led him to know a fellow Royal Marine, David Astor, who owned and edited the Observer – in 1960 still a highly respected Sunday newspaper rather than the sorry hand-wringing wretch it has become today. Initially, the Observer offered a first prize of £1,000 and £250 for each yacht competing. Then Astor’s suits, sensing a PR disaster of sinking yachts an
d drowning heroes, warned him off. Luckily his Sports Editor, the Olympic champion and broadcaster Chris Brasher, warned him back on again. The Observer became title sponsor for the Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race, OSTAR, with the kitty dressed up as a story option rather than prize money in order to stop the suits flapping. Now that the Observer was on board to take the worst of the flak if it all went wrong, the yacht clubs soon fell into line: The Royal Western to fire the starting cannon off Plymouth and the Joshua Slocum Society to blow the foghorn in New York.

  Apart from working on the routing and helping Blondie get the race under way, not to mention running the map and guidebook business, Francis’s main preoccupation was the struggle against the clock to make Gipsy Moth III race-ready. It was not until a month before the start that the yard had fitted Miranda – yet Francis was thrilled:

  I crossed the bar at the entrance to the Beaulieu River, headed the yacht across the Solent and locked the vane to the tiller. Gipsy Moth started tearing through the water, sailing herself entirely. Her wake was almost dead straight; it was fascinating to watch. That was one of the most thrilling moments of my life. Gradually I found out that Miranda required just as much skill to get the best out of her as does setting the sails of a yacht in a keen race. Also it gave me the same pleasure to succeed.

  Sheila meanwhile had more important plans for Gipsy Moth III, her official blessing. For this they called in their long-standing friend, a very well-known figure at the time, Revd ‘Tubby’ Clayton. Tubby had achieved fame during and after the First World War with his refuges for soldiers and parishioners. He never went anywhere without his retinue of boy disciples and three of them joined Tubby, Lord and Lady Montagu and Francis and Sheila on board Gipsy Moth III for the blessing.

  Luckily for our story, Belinda, Lady Montagu, remembers the occasion well: ‘Earlier that day we were playing with Edward’s [Lord Montagu’s] new speedboat at the top of the river. It was early in the year, so quite cold. One of Edward’s friends was waterskiing. They all had new wetsuits. Very flamboyant, as you can imagine. I was in the boat and Edward always did everything in double-quick time, so he turned it very sharply and we nearly toppled over, upside down. Out I went into the river. Of course I was then completely soaking wet, made worse because I had earlier been waterskiing in my duffle coat. It really was quite a sharp morning.

  ‘We all went to Buckler’s Hard to change into something dry and a bit more solemn as Tubby Clayton was arriving to bless Francis’s new boat. Tubby always had a couple of young men to look after him and he always had his dog, Chippy, with him.

  ‘We all crammed into the cabin. Tubby robed himself in the forepeak. It was a really strange party. We all stood around in the cabin and sang verse after verse of ‘Those in Peril on the Sea’. There was no accompaniment; it was really quite hard work. And of course none of us were blessed with wonderful singing voices. But Tubby insisted we go on and on right through every verse. And then he said a prayer of blessing.’

  Francis takes up the story:

  When Tubby imperiously demanded to be disembarked, I found that Giles had gone off with the dinghy. So, somewhat fortified with ‘Liffey Wather’ [Scotch whisky], I offered to motor the yacht down to the jetty at low water of the spring tide, with mud banks showing horribly on each side. Turning thirty yards below the jetty we went onto the mud, where we were presently heeled over 45 degrees. To run aground within an hour of the ships being blessed must be a record.

  I find two other local memories of those final, frenetic days before the race. Growing up in the area in the 1960s – I was eleven when all this happened – we all knew the Martin family at Buckler’s Hard. Mr Martin, Bill, ran the marine workshop and fuel pumps and Mrs Martin, Rhoda, ran the village shop. Luckily another friend and neighbour, Mary Montagu-Scott, Edward Montagu’s daughter, not only runs the Maritime Museum at Buckler’s Hard but is a keen chronicler of local characters and their folklore. Before Mrs. Martin died she was interviewed about her life at Buckler’s Hard. From the tape, concerning Francis:

  Francis and Gipsy Moth III on the Beaulieu River

  ‘I knew Sir Francis very well. Did his stores for going round the world you know. I’ve got a couple of books autographed by him. He was really a friend. I used to de-eye all his potatoes and preserve his eggs. It was very interesting. He pickled them to keep them fresh at sea. One day he said to me when he came back, “Mrs. Martin, I’ve got eggs you preserved for me that are good now but eggs I bought in Plymouth that have gone bad”. I did it with liquid paraffin, no it was Vaseline. All over the shells. He was a vegetarian too so it was very difficult.

  ‘He took tinned cake and tinned marmalade and tinned jams. I used to have to get these specially made for him. Oranges and grapefruit he was very fond of, but not so many as they didn’t keep. But the potatoes always amazed me as they all had to be de-eyed as they sprout so quickly in the dark. Chocolate he had to have, lime juice.

  ‘Lots of vegetarian food, baked beans and cheese. Long keeping milk’.

  Both Mr and Mrs Martin are long gone but luckily their son, David remembers Sheila organising Gipsy Moth III’s victualing with his mother. ‘She was what’s known as a piece of work, but Mother had her measure. He was good as gold, Francis, always had time for us. Old-school gent. But I remember giving her a wide berth. Mind you, we were only young.’ We were. I remember David and his parents but I didn’t run into Sheila. Sounds as if I might have remembered her if I had!

  Bill Grindey, the Buckler’s Hard harbour master, whom we’ve met before, remembers ferrying out the supplies in his launch; he also remembers Francis’s hundred number formula: ‘He used to say a hundred all round. So a hundred pounds of potatoes, a hundred fresh eggs, a hundred apples, a hundred onions, a hundred carrots and a hundred oranges, and so on and also a hundred bottles of Guinness. And some whisky and sherry, I’ve no doubt!’

  Mrs Rhoda Martin, Buckler’s Hard’s and Francis’s shopkeeper

  The last local memory from the hectic days before the first Transatlantic comes from another friend and neighbour, Ken Robinson. At the time Ken was Lord Montagu’s go-to man for just about everything. One day they were pottering down the river on their way to Gull Island to ‘borrow’ some gulls eggs for lunch. ‘On our way down we passed Gipsy Moth and saw signs of life on board. On our way back we stopped by, knocked on her hull and Edward shouted up something like “Francis, would you like a couple of gull’s eggs for lunch?” So Francis took them, thanked us and off we went. A few days later we did the same. Again, we saw signs of life on board and naturally we thought it was Francis busying himself as usual. So on the way back we knocked on the hull again and Edward said, “Francis, more gulls eggs for you”. But this time it was Sheila! She was furious. “Don’t you know he’s a vegetarian? Of course he doesn’t want gull’s eggs!” And off we went, smirking and giggling like children.’

  After a quiet sail down from Beaulieu to Plymouth, Francis, Sheila and Giles tied up Gipsy Moth III alongside the three other British entries, like four brothers of the lonely sea. Their surroundings were much more workaday than their adventure, perhaps foretelling the ill fortunes to come: all were tied up to a decrepit old landing craft-cum-workshop in Millbay Dock.

  The Chichesters had of course met Blondie Hasler many times before but it was Francis’s first chance to meet the others and to see Blondie’s boat, Jester. When Blondie had put the original notice for the race on the RORC noticeboard nearly three years earlier, he emphasised that ‘the race had two purposes: (a) sport and (b) to encourage the development of suitable boats, gear and techniques for single-handed ocean crossing under sail. (When Francis first introduced Sheila to Blondie, she asked him what was the purpose of the race. ‘To cut down the chores in sailing’, Blondie replied. Sheila wrote: ‘I immediately fell in love with this and thoroughly understood it’. This part of the aim bypassed Francis completely.)

  The sport side of this was self-evident as the four competitors lined
up to race 3,000 or more miles to New York. The second aim though, was open to interpretation: Jester was Blondie’s vision of supreme simplicity, a 25-foot Scandinavian Folkboat with an unstayed mast and a Chinese junk-style sail – and just four ropes with which to control the sail, all from the security of the cockpit. He told Chris Brasher that he considered his main problem on the passage would be boredom; to relieve same he had on board the last fifty issues of the New Yorker, which he had not had time to read this last year.

  Blondie was a quiet and discreet hero and we can only surmise what he thought about the 39-foot, 13-ton Gipsy Moth III as he looked at her across the dock. Whereas Jester had one sail, the cutter-rigged Gipsy Moth III had eight, three of which were likely to need adjusting at any one time, more or less constantly. He would have looked at Miranda too, a 14-foot high complex of bars and ropes needed to drive Gipsy Moth III’s rudder directly, then looked back at his own self-steering invention, a neat servo-assisted device driving just a trim tab attached to Jester’s rudder.

  If Jester was the apogee of the spirit of Blondie’s rules and Gipsy Moth III quite the opposite, the other four competitors were lining up with Jester’s philosophy. Eira, Valentine Howells’ entry, was also a Folkboat but with increased sail area to pick up more breeze on the southern route Val intended to take. Of the four other competitors it was this boisterous Celtic Viking, the man-mountain Val, that Francis warmed to most personally and feared most competitively. Here was a man who not only sold his farm to finance taking part in the race, but whose ‘Live-Long’ grog was as fearsome as the man himself. The recipe? Smash up two dozen whole eggs, including the shells, stir in juice from six lemons, leave it to do whatever it does for two days, pour in two bottles of Pusser’s British Navy Rum. Two cupfuls a day to Live-Long.