Never Fear

by Ian Strathcarron

  In New York after the finish, Sheila told Francis about cousin Tony’s offer. Back in London Francis told Tony about his new clipper route round-the-capes-round-the-world plan. Tony was enthusiastic and agreed to finance it, under one condition: Gipsy Moth IV must be built by Britain’s premier yacht builder, Camper & Nicholson at Gosport, who had – after all – built his grandfather’s yacht. Francis was in no position to refuse; in any case he had no reason to suspect that this alliance of the elite – Camper & Nicolson, Illingworth and Primrose, Chichester and Dulverton – would not produce the perfect girl child in which to follow the clippers around the world, and beat them too. In the fallout that followed, it’s worth remembering that the designers faced an almost impossible task with the technology available in the early 1960s: to design a boat that was long and light enough, and full sailed enough, to be handled alone at speed by a man of sixty-five in the Roaring Forties and around Cape Horn.

  The fact that at the first meeting Dulverton magnanimously announced that money was not to be an object only made matters worse, as it removed all sense of responsibility for time and money from the designers and builders. Without these constraints the impulse to fiddle and tweak became irresistible for people who love nothing more than an unbudgeted fiddle and tweak. At the second meeting Camper & Nicholson gave Dulverton their cost estimate, based on all their experience and the design in front of them at the time. Somewhere in there was the word ‘approximate’. Even as Dulverton opened the envelope, the designers and builders were dreaming up modifications that would render any estimate – and the word ‘approximate’ – useless. While they were throwing away Tony’s money, they were also throwing away Francis’s time.

  Gipsy Moth IV at Camper & Nicholson for the rebuild (UK Sailing Academy)

  Building was due to start at the end of 1964 and to be finished by September 1965, ready for autumn and winter sea trials in the Solent – masquerading as the Southern Ocean. But almost immediately the squabbles started: Illingworth wanted her to be long and light, Francis wanted her to be a smoothed-out version of Gipsy Moth III; Illingworth designed a single-skin hull, Campers insisted on a six-ply laminated cold moulding; Illingworth drew an enormous and heavy self-steering installation, Francis pleaded for a simpler and lighter Blondie Hasler model; Francis had specified a flush deck to help the southern ocean rollers on their way; between them Illingworth and Campers had committee’d up all kind of sticking up appendages; the mast was supposed to be only slightly heavier than Gipsy Moth III’s, instead it was twice the weight – and that overweight was in the worse place, on high. Sheila had designed the interior to be sea kindly and sensible, Campers lost the design and quickly threw together a landlubber’s special, with flying-open drawers and slippery surfaces; Francis knew how much mainsail area he could handle, Illingworth decreased it and increased the foresails; Illingworth’s design called for a short, deep central rudder, while Francis saw himself broaching in the Roaring Forties and insisted on a full keel. Sheila summed up the chaos of the endless roundabout meetings: ‘I did my best to keep everyone coordinated and regretted very much that no one agreed it would be a good idea to make notes of the meetings of these highly expert men, who gave their views and said they’d remember it all’. They didn’t take notes; and they didn’t remember what they’d disagreed about.

  Thus the summer of 1965 dragged on, the build stopping and starting with each design argument, the costs spiralling in the background, the winter sea trials becoming an impossibility. Every week Francis would stride from St James’s Place to Waterloo, then take the train back and forth to Gosport.

  Eventually, six months behind schedule, in March 1966 the yacht was ready to launch.

  Now sea folk are a superstitious lot, seeking explanations in the fanciful for the inexplicable vagaries of Nature’s seafaring temperament. These superstitions start before a ship has sailed. Thus when launching, two bad omens must be avoided at all costs: the bottle must break on the bow when the ship is named and she must flow smoothly down the ramp, of her own volition.

  Yes, you’ve guessed it, both bode inauspiciously. It was Sheila’s task to proclaim ‘I name this yacht Gipsy Moth IV!’ and smash the bottle on the bow. Unfortunately, she listened to the Camper manager, who told her: ‘It’s all perfectly engineered, just let the bottle swing from the holder and it will break on its own.’ Of course it didn’t. Francis ‘was horrified; my heart sank; I thought, “What a terrible omen”’. An awkward shuffling of feet, knowing looks at the clouds and pursing of lips spread around the gathering. Next time Sheila did it herself, giving the champers an almighty chuck and the bottle spread its good luck shards against the bow. Now was the time for the foreman to wield his mallet against the holding chock, followed by Gipsy Moth IV sliding gracefully down the rollers. Whack! Off the chock flew – but the yacht stayed stubbornly in her cradle. Francis ‘had a cold despair of premonition in me’ but jumped down from the quay and leaned his shoulder against the cradle. Others joined him and s-l-o-w-l-y she slid down the greased ways.

  Two ill omens: top, champagne needs two attempts to wet the bow and bottom, ramp needs two attempts to slip the keel.

  But worse was to follow. Superstitions may be whimsical but there was nothing whimsical about the way the hull floated on the water, a good two feet higher above the waterline than looked natural. Francis wrote: ‘Then, two or three tiny ripples from a ferry steamer made folds in the glassy surface, and Gipsy Moth IV rocked fore and aft. “My God”, Sheila and I said to each other, “she’s a rocker!”’

  Looking horribly tender, Gipsy Moth IV on first sea trials

  But even worse was to follow. The first sea trials were a disaster. The rigging called for applying and unapplying levers and rockers with each change in direction, something Francis had specifically asked them to avoid. He quickly deemed the yacht unsailable singlehandedly. And then, yet worse:

  The next thing that happened, far more serious, was that a puff of wind, only Force 6, heeled the boat right over, so that the masts were horizontal, parallel with the water surface. I kept watching the mast and never took my eyes off it as I particularly wanted to see how far over she would go. Campers’ men told me that she lay over with her toe rail under water when on her mooring in a moderate puff of wind. Here was a boat which would lay over on her beam ends on the flat surface of the Solent; the thought of what she would do in the huge Southern Ocean seas put ice into my blood.

  Drastic surgery was needed and the team decided to cut into the keel to make space for 1,000 kilos of lead. No one mentioned this to Tony, assuming that he would keep paying away quite happily in the background.

  Francis seemed to go from woe to woe. He had requested a flush deck so that the rollers would sweep right off it; but she had all kinds of superstructure in the way. On one of these was a skylight. Francis was sailing in a Solent chop with just mizzen and foresail and the boat leaned over 45 degrees as usual. He slipped and came down a real cropper. As is so often the case, the damage was not apparent until the next morning:

  I noticed that this purple-black patch was spreading, and that it was down below my knee, and up into my buttock. Now the pain began, and I found my foot half-paralysed. Like a fool I did not go to my doctor: the truth was, I was frightened that he would try to stop my voyage. I worked hard with exercises, trying to get back the movement in my foot and leg. It was a bad handicap because I could not move easily or do my daily exercises which are essential to keep me fit. Indeed, it was to be fifteen months before I could begin to walk enough to get real exercise from it.

  When Gipsy Moth IV was re-launched she was more stable but still horribly ‘tender’, as yachtsfolk describe a boat that fails to make a lasting impression in the passing wind and waves. But now that the most glaring problem was partially solved, Francis began to notice all the others: the main cabin was cramped and uncomfortable, the deck leaked onto the bunks, the navigation table was far too small, the water fouled in the tanks, the fuel le
aked into the bilges, the basins and heads pumped backwards, the engine had to be moved and so used up even more space, the fumes backfired, the headsail was not able to power her alone, the sail combination was incoherent – in fact, Francis felt, every system on the boat was either poorly designed or poorly built.

  Well, that all sounds like a bit of a disaster, so I think I’d better see for myself and take a sail in the old girl to see if she really is as wobbly as Francis made out. But first some back-story.

  A year after taking Francis to his knighting in Greenwich, so in July 1968, Gipsy Moth IV was back there being hauled out and put into a dry dock cradle next to her inspiration, the tea and wool clipper ship Cutty Sark, where she was opened to the public. But by 2004 thirty-six years of exposure to air and trampling feet had rendered her unsafe and she was closed to visitors. Dry rot and woodworm seemed to be her fate until Paul Gelder, editor of the sailing magazine Yachting Monthly, launched an ambitious campaign to save her. First he had to buy her from the Greenwich Maritime Trust. The price? £1 and a gin and tonic.16 How ambitious? She would not only be rekindled by the craftsmen at Camper & Nicholson, many of them coaxed out of retirement, but to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Francis’s voyage and a hundred years of the magazine, she would sail around the world again – this time for pleasure and education.

  Her second circumnavigation was eventful. Managed by the UK Sailing Academy (UKSA) in Cowes, which still looks after her now, she set off on a multi-leg voyage in collaboration with the Blue Water Rally and Yachting Monthly. Each leg would have a different skipper, mate and four young crew from UKSA’s training programme. All went well until one them managed to put her aground on a reef en route to Tahiti. Salvaged, she was taken to Auckland, New Zealand where Grant Dalton’s America’s Cup team generously enabled her second restoration. Two months after hitting the reef she was sailing again.

  Back in the UK she rather lost her way and in 2010, with bills mounting and interest waning, the UKSA put her up for sale. The Sunday Times reported that a foreign sale seemed the most likely outcome. Luckily for us all, that Sunday the Cambridge Weight Plan business team Rob Thompson and Eileen Skinner bought the paper and were motivated into rescuing her. Keen amateur sailors, they were determined to keep the yacht that had inspired their generation of sailors to take up the sport in British waters. A deal was struck with the UKSA to keep her in commission at Cowes. They formed the Gipsy Moth Trust, a charity with the twin aims of encouraging disabled and disadvantaged children to take to the seas and keeping the old girl fit for sailing. And this is how she now plies her trade, chartering from Cowes for the greater good. Francis would be happy enough with that.

  So, on a particularly perfect Solent sailing day, I take Gipsy Moth IV out for a jolly. With me on board is her regular skipper Richard Baggett, Bill Tate, who hopes to show me how Francis navigated by sextant, and two UKSA students, who are going to haul the ropes and generally rush around. The weather was the very opposite of Cape Horn’s: full sun, flat calm and pleasant sea breeze of 12 knots running with the current. Still, I’m grateful to stand where Francis had stood, helming Gipsy Moth IV’s tiller as he had helmed it.

  The author sailing Gipsy Moth IV off Cowes; not a Cape Horn in sight

  I find some clear water and hoist all three sails – well, I don’t personally but you get my drift. For those of you who don’t know, the perfect point of sail is called a beam reach, that is, when the wind is directly on the beam. The wind holds the yacht down into the water, the sails are full and free and offset at 45 degrees and if the sails are perfectly trimmed the hull will track straight through the water with no adjustment at the helm. I set about setting the sails just so. Too tight main or mizzen sail and the hull will tend to round up into the wind, so-called ‘weather helm’; too tight foresails and the bow will blow off, so-called ‘lee helm’. I start with the main, letting the mizzen and foresail almost loose, just short of flapping – as noted before, a flappy sail not being a happy sail. A well-set main will bring the hull just – and only just – into the wind. Time to let the main out a touch and haul the foresail in until the bow just – and only just – takes her course off the wind. Then tighten back the main, loosen off the foresail and hey presto, no hands on the tiller. At that point I bring the mizzen into play until it is full enough to look happy but not too full to be stressed. Voilà! Gipsy Moth IV is sailing herself ‘straight and level’, as Francis would have said flying his first Gipsy Moth, or ‘full and by’ sailing his subsequent ones.

  Now I put her through a simple figure of eight, whereby we have to tack through the wind, pass through another beam reach and then gybe. Tacking and gybing are no drama, albeit with the crew hauling on the ropes and me just offering encouragement.

  So Gipsy Moth IV sails sweetly enough in perfect conditions – but her behaviour in perfect conditions was hardly among Francis’s complaints. We need some waves to throw her off balance. Looking over to Portsmouth, I see a large motor yacht heading towards Cowes at some speed. At the same time the red and white Cowes to Southampton car ferry is nosing out of the harbour. I estimate where the two washes might meet and head off towards it. The ferry’s wash, even though hardly boisterous, is enough to bounce the bow overly into the waves. The stinkboat’s wash did really unsettle her, far more than would seem compatible for a 55-footer. So even now, after all the mods and tweaking over the years, she is still inherently tender.

  But it is down below that Francis’s complaints seem most justified. The saloon is cramped, stark and uncomfortable. Most of the problems, like flying lockers and backfiring loos, have been solved over the years but the straight-backed, sharp-edge design is inherently unwelcoming. Weight saving was clearly the design priority and by today’s carbon fibre Spartan standards Francis got off lightly, as it were. But today’s racer is designed for young, fit crews, not 66-year-old cancer remissives sailing alone in the Southern Ocean; some concession of comfort would not have made much difference to speed and would have done wonders for morale.

  Like Francis, I am bemused that a second heads, or loo compartment, had found its way on board. He kept quiet about the anomaly, knowing that it would be a good place to dry out sodden oilskins, something the designers had not otherwise thought about. The galley, the boat’s kitchen, is down on the starboard side next to the stairs from the cockpit and I can almost hear Francis swearing as his casserole takes another dowsing. The navigation station is tucked away behind the cabin access and so invisible from the cockpit. Even on a calm Solent day it is clear the design is fundamentally flawed below decks and, judging by the way today’s crew have to leap over protruding obstacles, flawed on deck too. If Francis was right about these, I’m sure he was also right about her behaviour in conditions I can barely imagine on this perfect sailing day.

  It’s hard to say how much Francis was the cause of his next disaster, Tony Dulverton drawing stumps on the funding. Certainly Francis went very public across the yachting and national press on his dissatisfaction with the design faults and building delays of Gipsy Moth IV. There was a feeling at the time that all these problems would best be solved quietly behind doors rather than through headlines. Here Francis – and Sheila to some extent – were their own worst enemies. His psyche needed to operate in the Francis-versus-the-world spectrum, not just overcoming the elements at sea all alone but overcoming everything that a hostile world could throw at him all alone too. And he had no sense of public relations, not only actively disliking the media but making no effort to hide those feelings. Sheila’s default outlook was to egg him on; her prickly and abrasive character did not suffer fools gladly and from her armchair she saw Illingworth, Primrose, Camper and Nicholson as incompetents and cousin Tony a damn fool for paying for it all. No doubt Dulverton read about Francis’s complaints in the press and heard about Sheila’s disdain through the family grapevine. Either or both ways, he pulled the plug and told Francis the overspent monies would have to come from Francis’s own efforts.


  Thus Francis had to spend the summer of 1966 not on the sea trials he and Gipsy Moth IV so desperately needed, nor on trying to repair his damaged and non-repairing thigh, but on raising money. Luckily Colonel Whitbread of the eponymous brewing company came to the rescue, topped up by the International Wool Secretariat and major equipment suppliers who waived costs. The Sunday Times and Guardian chipped in as media partners with running costs, too, and eventually Francis had the funds to take on the voyage, if not the time to prepare properly for it.

  Francis could be curmudgeonly at the best of times, but there was a hint of the romantic and the poet in there too. He loved the stories of how the old clipper captains would walk down to the Thames, take a riverboat down to the clipper docks at Tower Pier and ride the tide down through the Estuary and into the Channel – and beyond. He had determined to do the same walk down from 9 St James’s Place, sail with his family down to Plymouth and start his clipper-breaking attempt from there. Like the wool clippers, he would make one stop in Sydney, then sail back round Cape Horn to Plymouth, collect the family, sail back to Tower Pier and walk back home again. But the injured leg was giving him more and more gyp and the final stage of this whimsy had to be abandoned.

  Instead, on 16 August 1966, the three Chichesters were joined on board at Tower Pier by Revd Tubby Clayton for a blessing. Also in the cockpit were Erroll Bruce, who had sailed her from Gosport with Francis and Giles, Monica Cooper from the map business, the Port of London chief Dudley Perkins, and Lady Dulverton. Tubby had made a composite of Psalms 33 and 107 for the occasion: