Never Fear

by Ian Strathcarron

  Actually, for many yachtsmen, romantics and poets, including Francis and the author, the real winner was the Frenchman Bernard Moitessier, who was well ahead of the fleet as he rounded Cape Horn. Heading north to what seemed like certain victory, he contemplated all the brouhaha that would go with the victory, couldn’t face the fuss and insincerity and instead turned east towards the Cape of Good Hope for the fun of going around again. He soon got bored of that too and eventually gave up his wanderings in Tahiti.

  Francis with Bernard Moitessier

  It is interesting to hear Sir Robin’s memories of the dramas and shortcomings of the Golden Globe Race. Francis was on the BBC launch that came out to meet him off Falmouth on 22 April 1969 and later presented him with the Golden Globe. I ask Robin if that was the first time they had met. ‘Yes, this was the first time I’d actually met him but not the first time I’d seen him. That was on the Thames when he was sailing up to Greenwich to be knighted. I was the first officer on SS Kenya in London Docks and saw it all. That was the day that spurred me on. I thought “he’s been around the world with one stop”. The next challenge was obvious, no stops. I’d already committed to it by the time the Sunday Times came up with the Golden Globe Race idea. I was in the race before they’d thought of it.

  ‘After the race, still in Falmouth, the Sunday Times decided to host us for dinner – the supposition being that we would not get on. He would resent the young upstart and I would think he was an old fart, that sort of thing. He was nearly seventy and I was thirty, so it wasn’t an unreasonable angle. Of course the opposite happened and we hit it off.

  ‘I had huge respect for him and he was very charming to me. We had the same literary agent, ‘Gentleman’ George Greenfield, who had charged the Sunday Times £500 for each of us to host and sit in on the dinner.’

  ‘And did Francis know by then what had happened in the race?’ I ask.

  Robin Knox-Johnston finishing the Golden Globe; Francis is on the launch behind

  ‘No. Of course there were no comms in those days. There were two still at sea, Tetley and Crowhurst. Then Francis said an interesting thing, he said “what are we going to do about Crowhurst?”’

  ‘So he suspected something was wrong?’

  ‘He was already onto it. In those days we used radio stations for directional fixes. Pre-satellite. Crowhurst was claiming to be off Australia with fixes from South American aerials Francis knew didn’t reach where he said he was. Francis was already suspicious because Crowhurst was claiming he had beaten Francis’s 200 miles a day target. OK, that’s possible in a catamaran, but at that time Crowhurst should have been in the Doldrums.

  ‘The Sunday Times didn’t believe Francis, said he was just jealous. Then there were other radio comms mismatches. Francis spread his suspicions around and when Crowhurst came back there was going to be some very tight examination of his logbooks. Of course we now know he was running two of them. We all think this must have contributed to his suicide.’

  ‘And then you won the Royal Yacht Squadron’s Chichester Trophy?’

  ‘In 1969. They named it after him of course and he had won it two years earlier.18 I did and this shows you the quality of the man. He had been a member for a while and it’s quite a daunting place if you haven’t been there before. So he rang me up and asked if I knew my way around there. I said no I didn’t and he said “let me buy you dinner and show you around before the award”. That was very understanding of him – I’d only really lived at sea and never moved in those sorts of circles.’

  But the reality was that by the time Francis welcomed Robin and Suhaili back to victory at Falmouth in April 1969, his attention was already on his own next great adventure. To reprise five years: when Francis came second to Tabarly in the 1964 OSTAR, his cousin Lord Dulverton had offered to pay for a boat that could win the next Transatlantic Solo, due in 1968. Francis then persuaded him to finance – or so it seemed – Gipsy Moth IV and the 1966/67 circumnavigation instead. Meanwhile, transatlantic solo life continued and the 1968 OSTAR was won by Geoffrey Williams in Sir Thomas Lipton, a 57-footer designed by Gipsy Moth III’s designer, Robert Clark. Clark’s Gipsy Moth III had always been Francis’s favourite yacht and he saw a bigger, better version of her in the Sir Thomas Lipton. For his new venture, still an evolving secret plan kept even from Sheila, Francis would need a bigger Gipsy Moth III; he would actually need a bigger Sir Thomas Lipton. He would also need to mend some fences with Robert Clark after unfairly highlighting some of Gipsy Moth III’s few shortcomings.

  In any event, Francis had burnt his Gipsy Moth IV bridges by constantly belittling her, which was partly justified and partly self-aggrandisement. Either way, it was not good PR; it was Francis PR. She had been the star of the 1969 London Boat Show and Tony Dulverton, as the owner, had then given her to the nation to lie alongside Cutty Sark at Greenwich. While the boat was being lauded by the nation she was being endlessly criticised by Francis, with, inter alia, a long diatribe against her, her designers and builders in the opening chapters of Gipsy Moth Circles the World. In his talks he would say, for example: ‘Gipsy Moth IV has no sentimental value for me at all. She is cantankerous and difficult and needs a crew of three: a man to navigate, an elephant to move the tiller and a three and a half foot chimpanzee with arms eight feet long to get about below and work some of the gear’.

  As Francis had done twice with Gipsy Moth III, Geoffrey Williams sailed Sir Thomas Lipton back from New York to the Solent in the late summer after the Golden Globe Race. Francis made himself known to Geoffrey once he had arrived and one dim day in November 1968 the two solo yachtsmen were joined on board by their shared designer, Robert Clark. The three of them sailed from Buckler’s Hard over to Cowes, where Francis stood them dinner at the Royal Yacht Squadron. It was Francis’s first time at the helm of a yacht for well over a year but he knew instantly that Sir Thomas Lipton was inherently ‘hands-off’, well balanced in a way that Gipsy Moth IV never was.

  Over dinner Francis told them of his latest plan. On his circumnavigation he had enjoyed a very fast run home from the Azores to the Western Approaches. In ideal wind conditions and a smooth sea he had made a run of 1,408 miles in eight days, averaging 176 miles per day. With a truer-running yacht that didn’t veer off course whenever he napped, he felt that his average could have been nearer 200 miles per day. This, he told them, was his plan: a record-breaking run from A to B averaging 200 miles a day. Then and later they discussed routes and tactics, and all questions came up with the same answer: 200 miles a day would only be possible sailing down the north-east trade winds, which blow across the North Atlantic from North Africa to Central America in winter and spring.

  This trade wind transatlantic crossing is now quite routine, made both by solo sailors and yachtsmen joining rallies, but the vast majority make the crossing too early for the trade winds to have set in properly. The allure of Christmas in the Caribbean means that they leave the Canary Islands, the main jumping-off point, in early November. While a November crossing shouldn’t run into any bad weather, it can hardly guarantee the ‘milk run’ of a trade wind crossing. Better wait till spring, when a sound and steady 20 or so knots of wind should blow you across without having to adjust the sails or steering with any great frequency. I can see Francis considering this ‘set it and forget it’ approach to a transatlantic crossing as a bit of a mixed blessing: he liked a good struggle against impossible odds. No doubt the thought of endless trimming to squeeze the last fraction of a knot out of his yacht cheered him up somewhat.

  So back to the dinner at the Royal Yacht Squadron and Francis’s plans. He would need Robert Clark to design him a ‘Trade Winds Special’ version of Sir Thomas Lipton. They discussed her pros and cons, her downwind balance and her general demeanour. On the back of a menu Robert sketched a design built for running fast in the trades: the design that would become Gipsy Moth V.

  Unfortunately the menu page no longer exists, so we will never know what they had for dinner or
how Clark’s first sketches looked. Luckily his son Adrian still has the menu-plus level drawings and tells me his father said that the final Gipsy Moth V was very much as first sketched over dinner. Her distinguishing feature is what Robert called a ‘staysail ketch rig’. Instead of a mainsail she would fly two staysails [small fore-and-aft triangular sails], one running forward from the top of the mizzen mast and the other aft from midway up the main mast, the idea being to leave no gaps in the rig through which the wind could blow without pushing her along at a goodly rate. Adrian says the deal was done within a week with Francis footing the bill. Like their previous collaboration on Gipsy Moth III she would be built in Ireland, this time as Crosshaven. The build went smoothly, starting in early 1970 and finishing at the end of June.

  Robin Knox-Johnston remembers meeting Francis then. ‘I was on the Round Britain Race in Ocean Spirit and we’d stopped at Crosshaven. Francis knew I was on board, he rowed over, knocked on the hull and said “let’s have lunch”. So we did.

  ‘The place was full of yachting journalists covering the race and one of them came over and asked if he could join us if he paid for lunch. Francis said no, it was private. Very typical of him. What was said to Francis stayed with Francis. I’m the same, one of the reasons we hit it off.

  ‘I asked him what he was going to do with Gipsy Moth V. He was being a bit coy I thought. I said “Francis don’t worry, I’m just trying to find out what I’m going to be doing next after you’ve set another record!”’

  Gipsy Moth V in full flow (Chichester Archive/PPL)

  While the build was going on, Francis studied his route options. Originally he wanted to attempt 1,000 miles in five days between two points in the ocean. His literary agent, ‘Gentleman’ George Greenfield, persuaded him that box office demanded two points on the shore. With the only trade wind option being to head east to west, this meant crossing the Atlantic, thus upping the distance considerably. The standard transatlantic route from the Canary Islands to the Windward Islands is 2,700 miles. There’s no trade wind reason to start further north than the Canary Islands, so to stretch his course to the more headline-friendly 3,000 miles in fifteen days Francis would have to start in Africa and end in Central America. Dakar was just about in the trade wind zone and there was the intriguing Chichesteresque-sounding port Chichi on the coat of Venezuela. But by now Francis was into the swing of it and aiming for 4,000 miles in twenty days. This led him to Bissau, then the capital of Portuguese Guinea, now the capital of the hell-hole of Guinea-Bissau, at the eastern end of the route, and San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua at the western end.

  Sometimes really bright people, experts in their field, do some really dumb things. With all Francis’s experience and expertise in the art and science of long-distance yachting, adding this extra 1,000 miles and so putting himself outside the trade wind route and at the mercy of African hospitality was one of them. I’m surprised Sheila didn’t put her foot down, especially as Francis had just done something almost as silly on Gipsy Moth V’s shake-down cruise. For some reason he thought a run from Beaulieu to Mallorca, leaving in early August, would give him steady winds to prove out her rig. Crewed by the BBC filmmaker Christopher Doll on the way out and by Giles on the way home, it was, in Francis’s own words, a waste of time: ‘I never seemed to have good luck on this voyage, which probably means that I did not plan or carry it out skilfully.’ Quite. Everyone who has sailed there knows there’s no wind in the western Med in August and that the high pressure that sits over the Azores all summer long guarantees a headwind on the way home up the Portuguese coast, the opposite of the fast running before the wind that Francis wanted for the sea trials. He did not arrive arrived back at Buckler’s Hard until 22 October 1970, having proved nothing and not even having had an enjoyable outing. Worse, he had left himself only six weeks before his planned departure down the coast of Africa.

  Francis wasn’t one to believe in omens and portents; but if he had been, they were stacking up against him. After the own goal of the wasted voyage to Mallorca and back, he had finally set sail for Plymouth with Giles as crew on 12 December. All sailors will tell of near misses with illegally unwatched freighters, and Francis’s came off Exmouth:

  She had such a near escape from being smashed by a steamer that my blood still runs cold when I think of it. On a fine sunny morning in perfect visibility I saw a steamer 3 or 4 miles to Starboard. Gipsy Moth, under sail, had right of way. I made a note of our closing angle, checked our course, was satisfied all was well and went below to cook some breakfast.

  It seemed only minutes later that suddenly looking up, I saw through the rust-speckled side of the steamer a few feet away. I don’t think I will ever again reach the cockpit as quickly as I did then. Gipsy Moth’s bow was just about to hit the side of the big steamer. I grabbed the helm, overriding the self-steering gear by force and turned onto a parallel heading. The great iron hulk was now eighteen inches or so from the side of Gipsy Moth. I had to keep her sailing almost parallel to the side of the ship and between one or two feet off it. Giles was lying in his berth hard against the starboard side and I dreaded our side being torn away with Giles trapped in his bunk. One of the crew on the steamer looked down over the side and I told him what I thought of Crystal Kobos, registered in Panama.

  Francis sailed alone from Plymouth, bound for Bissau, on 18 December. Not surprisingly, the midwinter Bay of Biscay dished the dirt on him. These were the gales that would prove out Gipsy Moth V’s rig and his ability to handle it. His account fairly brims with the fun he is having in conditions that most yachtsmen would dread, even with a crew. But she was consistently covering over 200 miles a day and that was its own reward.

  Down the Portuguese coast the wind slowed to merely strong and gusty, but off Morocco all hell broke loose. Even Francis was impressed:

  At 3.00 am I had to take down the staysail, the last sail set. Gipsy Moth had been crashing through the night at 9 knots under sail alone out of control of the self-steering gear. I could hardly keep from being thrown out of my bunk. It seemed the outskirts of a hurricane.

  The wind pressed my clothes to my body and my vision was limited because the peak of my cap was being blown hard against my nose. I saw great sheets of spray in the air, scattered like giant bucketfuls of water. The ordinary spray burst as if it were smoke from a cannon. If only the boat could have stayed unmoving, the force of the blows from the waves would’ve been that much less. I was soon soaked. The wind blew the water up under my oilskin smock top, even though I had fastened it tightly round the waist.

  When I returned to the cockpit I spent what seemed like a long time trying to coax her downwind under her bare poles, but an extra fierce blast of wind with a slewing wave would broach her across the wind. Broadside-on seemed to be the natural stance for her racing lines and nothing less than a man at the helm would keep headed elsewhere.

  By 0400 the next day the wind had increased to 60 knots. At 1000 a big wave came aboard and there was a great crashing of crockery and gear as she was flung viciously on her side. I felt lucky that I had been forced back into my bunk rather than being flung out of it. As she righted herself I clambered out but I could not see any damage except to the spinnaker pole, which had been well and truly kyboshed by the waves.

  By midday the wind had eased to less than 50 knots. More importantly, it had not got the same savage shriek. I have often noticed the difference between two winds of the same speed. One may have a powerful, urgent, impatient note. The other, of the same speed, will not. It is some extra quality which I have never heard or read about.

  North of the Canary Islands Francis entered the north-east trade wind zone and the sea’s fury abated. He logged good news and bad: Gipsy Moth V was certainly capable of 200 miles per day, pleasurably so, but some of the rig was too lightweight and so under-strength. Fixable, Francis presumed correctly, by the under-stressed and Anglo-friendly Portuguese Navy in Guinea-Bissau.

  On 12 January 1971 Francis was sent off cere
moniously by Tiago Fidalgo Bastos, Commodore of the Portuguese Navy and Vice-Governor of Guinea-Bissau, and so started what he called ‘the Romantic Challenge’: the 4,000-mile dash across the Atlantic at 200 miles a day, a voyage of twenty days. Twenty-two days and six hours later the British Ambassador to Nicaragua and his wife, Ivor and Patricia Vincent, welcomed him off San Juan del Norte. Francis had lost his main bet with himself but won his side-bet of sailing 1,000 miles in five days. He had also won something more important: for the first time he had enjoyed rather than endured a whole ocean passage.

  When it was all over and he was safely back in London, he wrote The Romantic Challenge, a book about his adventures in Gipsy Moth V. Actually, it’s by far the best of his six books; in general he wrote as he socialised, awkwardly. For this, his last book, he wrote as he now sailed, freely. The book is partly retrospective, partly political and partly philosophical; and tucked away in the middle of a paragraph is what could be Francis’s defining philosophy: ‘Nothing equals apprehension of the future for making one enjoy the unparalleled beauty and charm of the present.’

  In fact the only poor part of the book is Chapter 4, ‘The 4,000-Mile Race’, which describes his Atlantic crossing. It’s poor because it’s boring and it’s boring because nothing Franciscan happens. It’s a most un-Francis-like ocean passage, a lovely, smooth tropical sail with a following wind, starry nights and pour-a-bucket-over-me-to-keep-cool days: no death-defying dramas, no if-it-wasn’t-for-me-I’d-be-dead episodes, not even any catastrophic gear failures. In fact, for the first time his account of an ocean voyage reads much like one of ours: