Gipsy Moth Circles the World

by Francis Chichester

  I was half-excited, half-alarmed when a big mammal swam fast across the stern. At first I thought it was a killer whale. These fierce creatures kill other whales by jumping on their backs until they are exhausted. I wondered what I would do if a killer whale started jumping on Gipsy Moth. It was not a pleasant thought, and I kept a Very pistol handy, hoping to scare him off. Whether he was a killer whale or not, I don’t know.

  All this time, as well as being concerned about water I was worried about current for my batteries. I had an alternator, but could not get a proper charge from it. And to charge at all, I used too much fuel. The second week of October I had only ten gallons left; not enough, I feared, to see me through. Priority in using the batteries must go to the radio, so I rationed all other use of electricity severely, and did not allow myself electric light. There was something wrong with the charging system, and it was hard to know what I ought to try to do. On October 7 I had found two short-circuits, one between heavy duty wires and the alternator casing, the other three inches away between two light wires entering the alternator. I badly needed technical advice on how to correct these things, or whether I ought to disconnect the alternator altogether and connect the batteries directly to the generator. But radio contacts were so poor that it was as much as I could do to report my position, and I could not get through what had to be a fairly complicated message about the behaviour of the generator and alternator. At last, after nearly a month of poor or frustrated communications, I made a good contact with Cape Town and sent a message to John Fairhall of The Guardian explaining my troubles with the machinery and asking him to get advice from the makers for me. On October 14 the replies came.

  I was on the radio telephone for over an hour, and finished with limp nerves. The speaker at Cape Town had a low, deepish voice, and it was terribly hard to hear what he said as he read out a long telegram from John Fairhall with top advice from the motor engineers. It seemed very complicated, and took ages to get the words correctly to me, some technical words which I did not know the meaning of, or which were not associated with neighbouring words in the text. I turned in tired and depressed, but was up at 06.45 next morning, to the cheerful sound of rain. It soon stopped, but not before I had been able to make a pot of tea with freshly-caught rain. After deckwork and sail trimming I tackled the electrical work. One sentence in John Fairhall’s telegram asked if I had checked the drive belts for the alternator for tightness. I hadn’t, because at Plymouth the alternator had been taken out on purpose to get the belts running true and taut. I searched through all the maker’s handbooks, and found a test for showing whether a belt was tight enough. Mine were not. Sid Mashford at Plymouth had given me a special tool for tensioning the belts, and I decided to tighten them all to specification before having a go at dismantling the alternator. I started up, and got 22 amps charge. There was tremendous joy in the ship! I had found the cause of the trouble. At the same time, I felt a proper Charley for not having spotted it. The truth is that I hate motors on a sailing ship and resent them, and therefore neglect them.

  The electrical drought and the water drought ended together, and that evening I lay comfortably in my bunk, reading by electric light and listening to the lovely sound of rainwater running into the tanks. I had the luck to find among my books a Maigret which I had not read. I am a great fan of Simenon; I think his creation of personality and atmosphere is hardly equalled. Unlike those dreary American novels with miles of detailed description making one cudgel one’s brain to get a feeling of personality, Simenon achieves a powerful result with a few words. I regretted only that I had not brought my French dictionary, as there were occasional words of modern idiom or slang that I did not know.

  In spite of my worries about water and the batteries I felt fitter, and found myself less exhausted after hard work than at the start of the passage. Then I was in a feeble, unfit state, and I found it amusing to reflect that I had spent a month in the South of France in February on purpose to get super-fit. Too much planning often goes wrong and upsets things. I suppose one must do things in one’s stride without great extra effort for the successful achievement of an objective. I would talk to myself in this strain from time to time while I was doing things. I had a return of cramp in my leg, and decided that this was due to neglecting my daily drink of seawater. It is important that one should have enough salt, and the body soon feels the lack of it.

  Calms were the very devil, and sometimes it could feel quite creepy as I sat or lay alone in the cabin. The little noises seemed to be in a deathly silence in vast space, the bulkhead at my shoulder creaking, a block creaking. Day after day I waited for a big wind switch to a westerly. This was when I felt the lack of a crew, to take advantage of every light air, to tack again and again to get the best heading. There were limits to the number of tacks that I could make, because I had to get some sleep. And tacking was a laborious business, for without a helmsman every change meant altering and resetting the self-steering gear.

  In eight days (October 5-12) the Cutty Sark had gained 1,140 miles on me. My luck seemed to be at the ebb, and I had worst possible sailing conditions (barring storms) for speed. The wind would be either dead ahead, coming from precisely where I wanted to go, or light zephyrs alternating with calms. I thought wryly of the Cutty Sark down south in the big winds, going like smoke.

  I felt that I had made a big tactical blunder, getting myself on the wrong side (north side) of a huge high-pressure system. I had to travel as near southwards as I could, to cross the centre and to get east-going winds; anything with some west in it would do. I felt like a fly in the middle of a huge spider’s web. I also felt that I had been stupid, for this “high” was well known, and fully shown on the US Hydrographic Chart, and on the pressure chartlets of the Admiralty Pilot for Africa. But though I felt a fool to have got into this “high”, I comforted myself with the reflection that it is very easy to see the right thing afterwards; had I tried to avoid it, it would probably have moved to where I did go, etc, etc. I found it hard to get the hang of that gigantic weather system. I tried to determine what shape the “high” was, and just could not make it out. Judging by the winds that sometimes came it would seem that I was really passing south of a “low”, but how could that be with the pleasant, sunny weather and a barometer reading of 1035? It was all extremely puzzling.

  Gipsy Moth ghosted along, the tiller often needing my handling; I wished I had my old Miranda self-steering from Gipsy Moth III for work in those light airs. Gipsy Moth sailed on, and mostly in the right direction, though once I came on deck and found her headed back north-west! She sailed through several oily smooth patches of sea, about thirty yards across, with bubbles dotting the surface here and there. I don’t know what they were. If one can call a “high” a hole, what I wanted was to get out of that hellhole as soon as possible, reckoning that I must find more wind once across the belt of calms and fickle airs. So I did all I could to keep up the yacht’s speed, unless the heading was wildly astray from where I wanted to go.

  From time to time this relatively gentle if frustrating existence would be interrupted by squalls. They seldom lasted long, but were fierce, and I would have to take in sail. When the squall had passed, I would have to put back the sail I had just taken in, for I was determined not to lose speed by carrying too little. Sail setting and changing went on all the time, and once I totted up that I had handled 4,700 square feet of sail that day. Here is a fairly typical extract from my log (for October 13):

  “0605. Port pole and sail down and pole housed. Speed 5.4 k.

  “0610. Mizzen staysail down. Speed 4.2 k.

  “0627. Gybed. Speed 5.1 k on other gybe.

  “0643. Mizzen staysail hoisted for opposite gybe. 6k.

  “0705. Big genny rigged on starboard side dropped. I had to drop it because five or six hanks were off the stay. Changed sheet to port-rigged genny and hoisted that.

  “0747. Starboard spinnaker pole rigged and sail rehanked. One damaged hank repaired. Sail
hoisted O.K., but difficulty with self-steering. Took some time trimming it before it would hold the ship to course. The load on each tiller line has to be adjusted carefully.

  “0807. Mizzen staysail dropped and rehoisted because of twisted tack pennant. Poled-out sail trimmed.

  “0810. Gybing completed. I hope a wind change does not require me to do it all again! Now a sun sight, and then I hope for some breakfast, for which I am full (or empty!) ready.

  I was lucky that day, for the wind held fairly well until noon. But then it started backing, and at 13.00 both the poled-out genny and the mizzen staysail had to come down. As I handed the genny and housed the pole, the wind veered, so that a poled-out sail would have been just the thing! Crestfallen, I was wearily contemplating going through the whole process once more, when the wind backed again, and justified dropping the sail. A poled-out sail only just holding the wind and occasionally set aback is no sail to have up when one is singlehanded and in need of rest.

  That Benguela High or whatever it might be called meant slow sailing, but it also gave me some good sleeping, and I would wake from a sound sleep feeling much refreshed and ready to tackle anything. I would scrub the galley stove, sweep the galley floor, and hang out all my towels and dishcloths to be aired. One day I gave myself treacle pudding for dinner. I had the pudding in a tin, but it required 40 minutes’boiling. However, I was set on it, so I gave it the full time, and finished off the whole pudding with plenty of golden syrup. Meals did not always go so well. The day after my orgy of treacle pudding I dined more modestly on a slice of bread and jam, and in the middle of my bread and jam—while my knife was in the bread—a breeze got up, whang! Before I could get into the cockpit Gipsy Moth was aback, and I had to tack and sail west until I could tack back. My modest dinner took a long time that day!

  The ending of my fears of water shortage, and the restoration of the alternator which gave me back electricity, brought a new spirit of optimism to the voyage. Gipsy Moth seemed to catch it, for after the worst week’s sailing of the voyage we crossed 40 ° S and the Roaring Forties began at least to coo, if not yet to roar. It was time to “turn left”, for 7,000 miles of running down the easting on the clipper way, one of the greatest sails in the world. Seven thousand miles in a straight line (rhumb line)—there are not many places in the world where that could happen.

  6. The Roaring Forties

  Working up my sights at noon on October 18 I found that I was well over half way to Australia—at noon that day I had sailed 7,300 miles, and had 6,570 miles to go to Sydney Heads. As if to celebrate this achievement the day changed like magic from grey with misty low clouds and overcast to a bright blue clear sky, with a darker, but still bright, blue sea. Sunshine, however, did not free me from work. I had trouble with the genoa hanks which were always coming unfastened, and the big sail had to come down so that I could refasten them. I had to leave this operation with the sail down, because just before the hanks unfastened themselves I had been making ready dough for baking, and I had to rush to get it into the baking oven before it fell flat. I left the bread safely baking and went back on deck. I changed the big genoa for the 300-footer jib, and found that the yacht went better for the change. The wind was veering, and the mizzen staysail had to come down to sail nearer to the wind. Dropping that mizzen staysail I was nearly lifted off my feet—it is amazing how the strength of the wind can creep up without one’s noticing.

  There were thousands of prions flying about. These are lovely birds, silvery white seen from below, and a soft whitish grey seen from above. They swoop fast over the waves, resembling swallows. I never saw one pick up anything, but there must be something in the sea for them to eat. They did not seem interested in Gipsy Moth—probably they thought her an incredibly slow and clumsy bird. A school of porpoises played around the bows while I was struggling with the sail, but I made rather a noise with the mizzen staysail as it came down, and in a flash they disappeared.

  When all the sails were trimmed Gipsy Moth was on a close reach, and went beautifully. It was pleasant sailing through that sunny afternoon and evening, because the sails and blocks were asleep, and for what seemed the first time for many days my ears were not assailed by the cacophony of barking blocks and cracking sails. The ship sailed as if she were satisfied—to me this is like being on a good horse, riding fast, but within her strength.

  I put away my South Atlantic charts, and got out the charts for the Indian Ocean. There were not many straight charts, but US Hydrographic Office pilot charts, British Met Office current charts, a gnomonic chart, and plotting chart sheets. It was quite a thrill to shift from one ocean to another. It is not often that a yachtsman changes oceans in one voyage!

  I was rounding the Cape of Good Hope, though well to the south of it, and the weather grew more boisterous. The Forties really were beginning to roar, with strong winds increasing suddenly to gale force. I was bothered still with cramp in my leg, and began to suffer from lack of rest. On the night of October 19-20 at 2.30 a.m. I fell into a sound sleep for what seemed the first time for ages, but just after 4.30 a.m. I had a rude awakening. A dollop of water from a wave coming on board landed on the head of my bunk, and it was followed quickly by a second and a third. It was my own fault, for leaving out the top washboard of the companionway into the cabin, but this did not make it any more pleasant. I got up at once, dressed, dropped the spitfire jib, and turned dead downwind, because I thought Gipsy Moth would run dead before the wind under bare poles. Conditions were rugged on deck, with a lot of wind and water, both sea and heavy rain. I had to make sure of a good grip handy all the time, because of the rolling, and the seas pitching into the hull. After dropping the sail I felt seasick, and went below again to lie down, and try to get some more sleep. It was no good. No sooner had I undressed from my deck clothes than Gipsy Moth broached to, and I had to scramble into all my deck gear again and get back on deck as quickly as I could. Gipsy Moth had been slewed round broadside on to the waves, and she refused to answer the helm to take up any other heading. I noticed that the self-steering vane had apparently slipped, and was no longer trying to turn the rudder. I decided to stream a drogue from the stern, in the hope of bringing the stern to the wind. This I did, after collecting a shackle, a swivel, some rope from the afterpeak and the drogue from the forepeak. It didn’t work; the yacht had not enough way on her to give the drogue the power to haul the stern round.

  Gipsy Moth under bare poles in a gale would do nothing but lie ahull, broadside on to wind and waves. I was convinced by what had happened that she could not be made to run downwind under bare poles in a seaway. The rudder could not control her without a storm jib on the foremast stay. This was a serious setback; it meant that her slowest speed running downwind in a gale would be 8 knots. I had never even considered that such a thing could happen! Gipsy Moth III had steered easily downwind under bare poles, or even with the wind on the quarter, and the American-designed Figaro had steered lightly and easily when we brought her up the English Channel one night under bare poles in a strong gale.

  It was damnably uncomfortable. The wind went up to 55 knots, and the yacht was thrown about in all directions. Water kept forcing its way under the cabin hatch whenever a wave hit the deck. My sextant, which I stowed for safety in a cabin berth—fortunately in its box—was thrown out on to the cabin floor. I had one wave come right over me when I was in the cockpit; the water felt oddly warm, and the wave did not seem to strike with much force, I suppose because we were not moving. The air was biting cold with hail.

  The self-steering vane was damaged. It had sheared the bolt and pin holding it to its upright mast or shaft, and I thought it remarkable that it had not blown away altogether. I could make no attempt at repair then, because it was impossible to work on it in that high wind and very rough sea. All I could do was to lash it up temporarily.

  The storm went on all day. From time to time the wind would seem to ease a little, and I would go on deck to see if I could do anything with
the self-steering gear. In one such interval I managed to dismantle the self-steering oar and haul it inboard, because it was getting such a pounding from the waves. It seemed amazing that the vane had not taken off into the air. But always after these lulls the wind came back again, and I could make no start on repairs. The seabirds got very excited about the drogue churning up white water astern. Watching their flight against the strong wind took my mind off my own miseries. They seemed to creep up the sides of the waves uphill, very close to the water. At three o’clock in the afternoon the birds lost whatever entertainment they had had from my drogue, because the warp attached to it parted, and the drogue went.

  A big breaking wave struck Gipsy Moth and turned her right round, so that she faced north-west. I could do nothing to get her back without setting a sail, and it was too rough for making sail. I felt that it did not matter much which way she was headed because although we were being flung about all over the place, it was hard to tell if Gipsy Moth was moving through the water at all.

  By that time I had not had anything to eat for twenty-four hours, and still I did not feel hungry. I scribbled in my log: “It is the queasiness which kills appetite, I think. This is not my merriest day, but it might be worse. It is very cold out.”

  By nightfall I managed to get the yacht going again. At last the wind lulled for long enough to enable me to raise the little spitfire jib, and I gybed round. I contrived a very temporary repair of the self-steering with cordage, but it was not doing a job—the self-steering oar was still on deck. I set the tiller to take advantage of the fact that Gipsy Moth liked to lie beam on to the wind, and I left things at that until next morning. It was still appallingly uncomfortable, but we were sailing. The seas were impressive. If I looked up while working on deck I felt that I had to hang on for dear life. It seemed impossible for the monster rolling down on top of us not to submerge boat and all. But always Gipsy Moth rode up again. Some waves I called “strikers”—they would slam into the yacht viciously. I think these were waves which started to break about 25 yards from the boat. They looked about 100 feet high, some of them, so I dare say they were about 40 feet. They treated the boat like a cork, slewing it round and rolling it on its side. I would trim the self-steering gear and go below, only to find the heading 40° off what it should have been, so back I would have to go, to retrim the self-steering gear. I decided that the big waves, slewing the boat through an angle of 45-60°, must make things impossible for the self-steering gear.