by David Barrie
Alcyone, April 1981
In 1980 I became the part owner of a Contessa 32 built by Jeremy Rogers. These legendary boats are widely acknowledged to be among the best modern cruising yachts—a classic design with beautiful lines, but strong and seaworthy, even if they offer less ample accommodation than many boats of a similar size. Tough people have sailed Contessa 32s into high Arctic and Antarctic waters, and around Cape Horn. We called our new boat Alcyone, after the brightest star in the Pleiades, and equipped her with long-distance cruising in mind.
Alcyone was launched in Lymington on March 1, 1980, and we spent the first season getting to know our new boat. There were many weekend excursions to local haunts like Chichester Harbor, Newtown on the Isle of Wight, Poole and Lulworth Cove, followed by a longer trip to the Channel Islands, Normandy, and Brittany. My wife’s brother, Chris, and I had ambitiously put our names down for the Two-Handed Transatlantic Race of 1981, but that proved unrealistic: not only would the passage take up to a month, but the preparations would also absorb several weeks and we would then have to bring the boat back. It was going to be impossible to take so much time off, so we had to reconsider. We decided to aim for the Azores, a widely scattered group of volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic in roughly the same latitude as Lisbon.
Colin had often spoken of the beauty of these islands, and at a distance of 1,300 nautical miles they were far enough away for the voyage to be a genuine challenge. During the early part of 1981 we began making preparations—which included the purchase of a new Freiberger sextant and some exotic Portuguese charts—and then in March I had commitments in New York. Returning in mid-April it was a rush to get everything ready in time for our planned departure. On the sixteenth Chris and I drove down to Lymington and loaded the boat. At 11:30 on a clear, cold night the two of us set sail for Cherbourg, where we planned to stock up with duty-free liquor and other vital provisions. We streamed the Walker log as we passed the Needles lighthouse at 12:30 A.M. and headed south across an almost empty channel in a freshening northeasterly breeze. It was very cold. I soon started to feel seasick and regretted the fierce curry we had eaten earlier, but it was a quick passage and we reached Cherbourg by ten the next morning.
Having done all our shopping the day before, on the morning of Saturday, April 18, we filled up with water and made our farewell telephone calls. This was before the days of satellite phones and Alcyone carried only a short-range VHF radiotelephone, so from now on we would be out of touch until we reached Ponta Delgada, in perhaps two weeks’ time. Though Alcyone was a good, strong boat and the distance to the Azores was only half the width of the Atlantic, I felt just as I had on the eve of our departure from Nova Scotia back in 1973. I was very conscious that this time I was going to be responsible for the navigation—and that I had not been able to practice with the new sextant.
The wind was moaning through the rigging and the halyards of the yachts tied up around us in the marina were slatting noisily against their masts. It was blowing a brisk force 7 from the northeast and the air was icy, but it was a perfect wind for our purposes and we were not going to waste it. So at 11:50 A.M. we motored out into the great harbor behind the massive nineteenth-century breakwaters, hoisted the storm jib, passed out through the western entrance, and shot off down the channel with both wind and tide hurrying us on. By 3 P.M. the island of Alderney was abeam, and at nightfall we were well on our way. At 10 P.M. we were steering 240° and the wind had moderated to force 4, though it was still very cold. Chris and I took turns wearing a large woollen balaclava that was very welcome on our night watches. The log records simply: “Orion on starboard bow and Alcyone!” The wind eased during the night and at dawn Chris raised the big genoa in place of the much smaller jib. When I came on deck later that morning the sun was shining, and we had a large breakfast of scrambled eggs, French bread, and coffee.
Soon after 1 P.M. on the second day out, when the sun was almost due south of us, I brought out the sextant and tried my hand at a mer alt. It gave our latitude as 49°02', which seemed plausible. That was encouraging, but later in the day when I tried my first timed sight to generate a fix, the complexities of the sight-reduction tables defeated me. That was worrying, but I now also discovered that in our hurried departure we had forgotten to make a note of the frequencies of the powerful radio beacons in the Azores before we set sail. Designed for transatlantic aircraft, and with a range of several hundred miles, these would have made our navigational task simple. Now it was too late to obtain them and we would have to rely exclusively on celestial navigation to find our way. We were back in the nineteenth century.
This was a much bigger challenge than I had expected. What if we missed the islands completely and ended up sailing to South America? What if we ran out of food and water? All sorts of crazy fears ran through my head. For an hour or so as we headed steadily westward I was ready to turn back, but, encouraged by Chris and a shot of whisky, I got out my navigation books, did some homework, and found the solution to my problem with the tables. It was actually quite simple after all. During the night we used RDF to fix our position and the wind moved into the east, now a comfortable force 4–5. A full moon broke through the clouds and at 5:45 A.M. I took the altitude of Polaris, which gave our latitude as 48°25.9'. Then at 9:30 A.M. on day three I took a sun sight and drew my first position line on the plotting chart. Yes, I could still do it! Now I could relax. At noon the mer alt gave us our first celestial fix: 48°09' North, and 7°57' West.
We were crossing the continental shelf and would soon be in deep, oceanic water. Our battery-driven quartz watch (not clockwork this time) was one second slow by the radio time signal at 2 P.M. The weather was sunny with a few clouds, and gannets were folding their wings as they dive-bombed the sea around us hunting their prey. Chris made goulash for supper, and then we shared the night watches—four hours on, four off. The northeasterly wind was still cold and the balaclava remained in use. At 2:20 A.M. a ship passed us going in the opposite direction, and I tried to raise her, but without success. A Polaris altitude at 5 A.M. gave a latitude of 47°35' North, and I noted in the log that the barometer was slowly rising, which was a good sign.
As we headed south and west, the weather grew milder and the sea changed from a sludgy gray-green to clear, dark indigo. This was blue-water sailing. The old daily rhythm soon returned—taking a morning sight, followed by the mer alt and then perhaps one or two further sights in the afternoon or at dusk. The log records sights of the moon, Jupiter, Alkaid, and Arcturus, as well as Polaris and, of course, the sun. The helpful northerly winds persisted and we made fast progress, the little circles that marked our daily position steadily advancing across the chart. On the sixth day out we passed through an enormous raft of by-the-wind-sailors. A few inches across and with a little bluish sail on top, these small medusas—closely related to the Portuguese man-of-war—carpeted the surface of the sea so thickly that they washed aboard every time we dipped our bows into a wave. The imprisoned IRA activist Bobby Sands monopolized the BBC news, which we were still picking up. Terrible though it was, his hunger strike seemed far more remote than the seven hundred miles we had travelled could explain.
After eight days at sea we were nearing our goal, well ahead of schedule. The winds had eased, the air was warm, and we were reaching gently through calm seas. As darkness fell, the skies were cloudless and the waning moon rose in the early hours amid a blaze of stars and planets—the brilliant Jupiter and Saturn almost in conjunction ahead of us in the southwest, Regulus in the west, Alkaid and Arcturus high above us, Antares low in the southeast, Vega, Deneb, and Altair off in the north and east. The horizon was well defined, and I sat up half the night taking sights, partly for the fun of it: it was a good sextant and my skills were returning. Lots of position lines appeared on the plotting chart and it looked as if we were being set to the east by a current of about half a knot. We were now steering for the western end of São Miguel, the main island of the Azores. The water
was very clear, and, as we whispered along in the soft breeze, I stood in the cockpit watching as our wake streamed out far behind us—a long, green-glowing milky furrow, sparkling in the darkness with flashes of planktonic fire.
Suddenly I saw three or four luminous, pale green torpedo tracks heading fast toward us. Just as they were about to hit, they shot downward, disappearing under the boat. I looked over the side in astonishment but for half a minute or so could see nothing. Then deep, deep down a faint group of lights began to corkscrew vertically upward, growing brighter and brighter until at last they broke the surface close alongside in a shower of sparks. They were dolphins, and now I could hear their voices. I called Chris up on deck and we both watched—entranced—for half an hour or more as they created aquatic arabesques beneath and around us, as if for our delight. It was at once the most beautiful and the most mysterious spectacle: a flight of angels could hardly have been a greater surprise, or felt more like a blessing, but as suddenly as they had arrived, the dolphins departed, leaving us bereft. We kept watch, hoping they might return, but they did not. Perhaps our company was too dull.
A landfall, according to Conrad, may be either good or bad:
In all the devious tracings the course of a sailing-ship leaves on the white paper of a chart she is always aiming for that one little spot—maybe a small island in the ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent, a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked form of a mountain like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters. But if you have sighted it on the expected bearing, then the Landfall is good.3
The following morning, Monday, April 27, after consulting the log and taking a sun sight, I raised my head from the chart table and announced that high land should soon appear fine on the port bow, at a distance of about twenty-five miles. Within an hour, at 9:50 A.M., the cliffs and hills of São Miguel obligingly emerged from the blue haze, and as we drew near we caught the sweet scent of the trees and damp soil that covered them. “Land on the nose!” Chris wrote in the log, and it was, in truth, a good landfall. Although I had known our position, and knew that I knew, I was delighted and relieved to see the physical proof. How many sailors before me have felt as I did? The light of the sun and stars—reflected in the twin mirrors of a sextant—had shown us the way, as it had countless others before us.
In warm sunshine we rounded the lighthouse of Santa Clara, on the west end of São Miguel, at 3:30 P.M. and followed the south coast until the massive breakwater that protects the harbor of Ponta Delgada came into view. At 4:30 we anchored in fourteen feet of water, just nine days out from Cherbourg and having covered nearly 1,300 nautical miles by the log at an average speed of 5½ knots. The waterfront looked exotic with its palm trees and white stucco houses. Once ashore, we went through the tedious bureaucratic processes of clearing customs and border control, and then found our way through the old town to the São Pedro Hotel—a grand old building in the Portuguese style, its long, elegant windows and doors framed in grey volcanic rock.
Chris and I were tired, dirty, and happy. We had arrived several days earlier than planned and had—even if unintentionally—navigated in the old-fashioned way, relying entirely on compass, log, clock, and sextant. We made phone calls to announce our safe arrival, got cleaned up, and ate a big dinner in the elegant, paneled dining room, looking out over the harbor, where Alcyone rode at anchor in the light evening breeze. A vase filled with fresh bird of paradise flowers reminded us that we had left a cold English spring far behind. Perhaps we should have drunk a toast to all those who had made our modest achievement possible, but we were too pleased with ourselves to think of it.
It now seems right to repair that omission. So, belatedly, I offer my tribute to the generations of astronomers, mathematicians, and instrument makers who brought celestial navigation to perfection, and to the dedicated and courageous mariners who charted the world’s oceans with a sextant in their hands. To salute them in the words with which Matthew Flinders remembered his beloved Trim might seem eccentric, but I think they would understand:
Peace be to their shades, and Honour to their memory.
Epilogue
As Saecwen was sailing across the Atlantic in August 1973, the United States Air Force was on the point of developing the satellite navigation system that would before long supplant the sextant: GPS. The first phase of the program was approved in December 1973, though of course Colin and I had no idea that the skills he was teaching me would soon be outmoded.1
Although GPS was not the first satellite navigation system, it was far more sophisticated than its predecessors, and the challenges facing its developers were formidable. The engineers had to design and build more than twenty-four satellites, each carrying an atomic clock specially shielded against the effects of cosmic radiation, all of which then had to be delivered by rocket into carefully calibrated orbits. Each of these satellites transmits extremely precise information about its location in space, together with a time signature (accurate to a few nanoseconds). By comparing the signals received from four or more of them, a GPS receiver anywhere on the surface of the earth can fix its position to within a few yards, as well as determining its velocity and elevation. So sensitive is the system that it has to allow for the distorting effects on the onboard clocks of the high velocities of the satellites—in accordance with the predictions of Einstein’s special theory of relativity—as well as the pressure exerted on each satellite by the light of the sun.2Although the service started to function in a limited form in the early 1980s, it was not until the mid-1990s that GPS became fully operational. It is reported to have cost the U.S. government $12 billion to develop, and its maintenance is also expensive; in a remarkably generous spirit, the U.S. government made GPS freely available to the public, worldwide, in 1983, though—for reasons of national security—only the U.S. military had access to the most accurate positional data until May 2000, when the system of “selective availability” was ended. The Russians have developed a similar satellite system—GLONASS—and other nations are following their example, as is the European Union.
Though the technology it employs is vastly different, GPS bears a conceptual resemblance to the “new” celestial navigation described in Chapter 15. A GPS fix is, in effect, the product of the analysis of equal-altitude circles3 derived from the signals each satellite transmits. The array of satellites is designed to ensure that at least four satellites are always “visible” above the user’s horizon at any time, anywhere in the world. Each satellite can be likened to a star that emits not light, but radio signals that reveal its precise position in the sky. Unlike the light from a star, however, these signals are also stamped with the exact time of their transmission. While the celestial navigator deploys almanac and sight-reduction tables to define and then solve the trigonometric problems arising from a sextant “sight,” the GPS user relies on computer algorithms in the receiver to perform analogous calculations—instantly, effortlessly, and automatically.
I first encountered satellite navigation when I was sailing across the South China Sea from Hong Kong to Manila in April 1984. I was navigating with the sextant I had used going to and from the Azores three years earlier, though the experience of working out sights under a tropical sun that passed almost vertically overhead at noon was very different. Beyond the strong winds of the northeast monsoon we were becalmed off the coast of Luzon. I have never been so hot. Shoals of flying fish burst from the sea, sometimes crash-landing on our deck. During the night, ceaseless lightning flashes turned the tall thunderclouds over the land into colossal, flickering Chinese lanterns, but they were so distant that no sound of thunder reached us as we gently rolled on the still sea. Next day the heat and humidity were so intense that when I tried to draw a position line on the chart the damp paper ripped, and it was a relief to be able to turn on the satellite navigation set. It was an earlier, less sophisticated system than GPS known as TRANSIT, and it took some time before enough satellites came “up” over our horizon to generate
a fix, but after a few trials it became clear that the new technology was indeed extraordinarily accurate.
Paradoxically, the very accuracy of satellite-based navigation can give rise to navigational problems. Positions marked on paper charts often fail to match those delivered by GPS, and sometimes the discrepancies are surprisingly large. I have anchored in a Hebridean bay only to discover that, according to the satellite fix, the boat should have been halfway up a neighboring mountain. It is easy to see that clashes of this kind could lead to disaster. The trouble is not just that the old surveyors, relying on their sextants, were unable to fix their positions with the precision of GPS, or that mapping the surface of a sphere onto a flat sheet of paper results in distortions: these are indeed serious issues, but the problems run deeper. The earth is not a perfect sphere; as discussed earlier, it is flattened toward the poles, but it also exhibits other, more complex irregularities that must be taken into account if positions on its surface are to be accurately charted. These detailed eccentricities were not appreciated when the first charts were made and anyway would not have signified much when navigational methods yielded fixes accurate (at the very best4) to within a few hundred yards or so. Unfortunately, however, there are several different models of the earth’s shape, each of which may yield a slightly different position for a given set of coordinates. In the age of GPS, it is essential to know which of these models your chart is based on and to adjust your receiver’s parameters accordingly.