by Les Powles
It had become very dark and I was becoming painfully aware that my feet were turning to ice. There was more than a foot of water in the cockpit. With the spray-dodgers lost, seawater broke over us more quickly than we could jettison. It forced its way up my wet suit and over the top of my boots, freezing my legs and feet.
Somehow the trailing long line, with its weight and spinners, had wrapped itself around the self-steering gear, and as it was nearest I decided to make a start with this. Waves continued to break over us and an aching body joined my frozen feet. For the first time my body temperature worried me. In winter’s seas you might be lucky to last half-an-hour if you fell overboard off the English coast but if I went over in these latitudes I would have only minutes.
For the first time I realised that many of Solitaire’s features that had worked perfectly on the shake-down cruise were a disadvantage in these seas. The skirt that ran around the top of the cockpit, 3–9in above the deck, had prevented water streaming into the cockpit. Now it also trapped and held it until Solitaire was thrown on her side and the seawater partly spilled out. The cockpit that had been perfect in Tahiti, Australia, and South Africa was far too large. Instead of holding parties of ten or twelve happy guests it was now holding tons of freezing seawater. The cockpit was made from a single moulding with a 14in seat halfway down its side dropping to the cockpit floor. The seats lifted to provide locker space. I had modified the two lockers so that the channels around their covers were self-draining. On the first voyage the covers were held in place only by shock cords since I could not afford anything more expensive. I had attached half-inch ropes onto the hull, fed them through holes in the locker tops and secured them in this Mickey Mouse fashion. When leaving the cabin you stepped onto a centre shelf which held the mainsheet traveller. An adjustable pulley and block ran from the traveller to the end of the boom, holding the latter in place.
The main trouble with leaving the cabin was my heavy clothing coupled with Solitaire’s violent pitching and tossing. What I really needed was something to hold onto and use as a lever. The pram cover frame was far too weak to suffice.
I centred the mainsheet traveller, which meant that the ropes to the foot of the boom passed in front of the hatch, giving me room to squeeze by, using them as a handhold. All I wanted now was to strip off my wet clothes and brew tea, but once I had struggled below I remembered I still had to pump out the bilges. So back I went out into the cold, the breaking seas and the howling winds. Then came the bliss of holding the kettle on top of a dancing stove to produce a life-giving, hot, sweet cuppa. When I started to think about changing my wet clothes I realised I had insufficient replacements and those I had were the wrong type for these conditions.
The suitcase I had carried around the world in 1968 now contained one suit, a dozen assorted nylon dress shirts and sports shirts, and five sweaters. Rex Wardman had also given me a lovely thermal jacket for Christmas, and Margaret a pair of quilted trousers. She had driven me to the Surplus Army and Navy stores in Southampton, where they were selling off old ex-navy diving suits for £10. Unfortunately when we arrived they had sold out apart from one moth-eaten suit that was falling to bits. It was a green fur-lined one-piece affair that I tried on and spent an enjoyable half-hour running around like the Incredible Hulk, frightening customers.
On the way back to Lymington I had asked Margaret if I could put it on again and lean out of the car window. At the time we were driving through the Southampton Red Light district.
‘You do and I’ll throw you out,’ was Margaret’s reply.
The thought of a green man knocking on doors in that area had me chuckling for days. Funny how the mind wanders when you are cold and tired!
In a storm like that we could be badly damaged at any time so I had to keep my wet weather gear on. Even if I changed my sweater it would be dry only for a few minutes before soaking up the water from my jacket. The best I could do was take off my boots, empty them, and wring out my socks. After that I wedged myself on the floor behind the water containers and pulled a sleeping bag over my head to retain some body heat. At first it was too cold to sleep but, as my clothes reached body temperature, I started to drop off – only to be brought back with a shock to find myself sitting in 2in of water covering the cabin floor. The bilges were full again despite my pumping them dry within the last two hours. We must have taken in well over 100 gallons in that time.
I waited for Solitaire to steady herself, slid back the hatch cover and put my head out into a shrieking, screaming world of horror. Massive seas were crashing on my poor boat, trying to bury her alive, giving her no chance to recover, to fight back. The cockpit was full of water. The lockers that I had made self-draining for the odd breaker were under boiling seas that would be gushing under their covers and running forward under the engine mounts to fill the bilges and then, more slowly, the cabin itself.
Given any other choice I would have gladly taken it. Instead I picked up the bilge pump handle and pushed through the hatchway. Timing it wrongly, I dropped up to my waist in freezing water. My boots filled and the seas worked up inside my legs. Solitaire rolled and half the water left the cockpit. I banged my face on a winch and started pumping. Mom and Dad would be warm in bed now, I thought. God, I’d love to see them! I kept on pumping. Sometimes I thought I had nearly finished only to have another wave break over us. For all I knew the cabin could now be completely filled with water, the driest place in the boat precisely where I stood. If we were sinking, how long would it take to reach the seabed, 2 miles down? The water grew denser the deeper you went. There were aquatic creatures down there without eyes – would they turn as we slipped past? Solitaire’s white shimmering shape, a lonely figure dressed in red still attached by lifeline. How long would it take? Hours? Weeks? Would Solitaire blame me for letting her down? Was being tied to your mistakes for eternity a definition of hell?
Once the bilges are dry the pump passes air only and the handle needs little pressure to move it. When I believed I could be no colder, that I could no longer keep my eyes open for another second, the pump started sucking air. I staggered below, took off my boots, wrapped a towel round my feet and boiled a cup of tea, warming my hands over the flame. After squeezing the water out of my socks I put on my boots again, longing for sleep and sank onto the floor behind the water containers – where I found myself in deep water. Two minutes later I was back in the cockpit, pumping.
The night lasted a millennium. Each time I thought I could close my eyes more freezing water streamed through the cabin floor. The seas were replacing the blood that ran in my veins, the heart pumping ice water to the brain faster than I could jettison it over Solitaire’s side. It was numbing, stupefying. At times I was unaware whether I was the bent body in the cockpit or the huddled shape on the cabin floor. At last the sky lightened with dawn. After so long in a black, screaming hell, eyes blinded by stinging salt water, I would see again.
I slid back the hatch cover and for a moment wished I had remained blind. This could be no storm, for storms had waves, the stronger the winds the faster the waves, the higher they reached. Waves marched majestically across oceans like regiments of soldiers. But this was no ocean, just a shrieking horror of unmoving mountains reaching up to a black sky. Suddenly in the distance a flock of small grey birds with outstretched wings tried to scramble up the lower slopes, like so many little old ladies with raised skirts splashing through puddles. As we dropped deeper into the valley the howling wind seemed to slacken and Solitaire settled onto the sea’s green floor. Over there was the perfect setting for a thatched cottage.
The real nightmare was that despite the deafening sound nothing moved. Then the top of a mountain turned white as though covered with snow and an avalanche descended, slowly at first, very slowly, then gathering speed, roaring down on us, trying to kill its trespassers. I slammed the hatch shut, expecting Solitaire to be rolled over and over like a puppy at play. When the avalanche reached us there was not the crash I had expec
ted. Instead the sea flowed over us, carrying us sideways for a few hundred yards before it released its grip and promptly ignored us, a matchstick in its path. For a moment Solitaire staggered upright in its wake and again I opened the hatch. The air was filled with stinging sleet. Solitaire lay buried in the snow, her outline marked only by the stanchions that stood up like sticks on a cold winter’s day. Solitaire rolled, spilling half the water over her side.
Surely nothing could live in this mad world. Waves would kill us without noticing. Somehow I had to get the boat moving to give her a fighting chance. The first thing was to replace the self-steering wind vane consisting of nylon stretched over aluminium frame, no more than 3ft long. But the screaming wind tried to tear it from me and it was a fight just to hold it. There was no way I could get it working.
I considered putting up a small headsail to try steering myself. But if I was at the helm I would be unable to pump. Even if I managed both, the winds were still from the north so I would have to run south. And land to the north was more than 300 miles away. If I lost the mast it could take weeks to reach land under jury-rig and any attempt to round Cape Horn would have to be put off for a further year.
Suddenly I was aware of something I had been putting off all night. I had to use the lavatory – or rather the bucket, for the lavatory was out of the question since I’d have been thrown around like a pea in a tin whistle. But the bucket and chuck-it method was far too risky. Then I thought of an idea that was to serve me well for the rest of the voyage. Plastic bin liners were the answer. In order not to foul the bucket I used one of these, putting a couple of sheets of newspaper in the bottom for added strength. After sealing the bag I waited my chance and threw it into outer space, assisted by a wind blowing at more than 100 miles an hour. I believe it was the first time this type of payload had been put into orbit.
It was time to look after Solitaire again. I went back into the pumping routine, removing boots and socks, a cup of tea, then more pumping. During one of these periods in the flooded cockpit something happened that I would have given anything to reverse. Time seemed to slow. Whether it was the contrast between the howling winds and the stationary mountains I don’t know. At times the illusion was so complete that I felt I could step off Solitaire, leaving her freezing cockpit, and run down the green valleys, exploring their secrets. The only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that she would not be there awaiting me when I returned.
Another sequence of thoughts started after another wave hit us without the following swell that would have rolled Solitaire, partly emptying her. I found myself repeating, ‘There was no need for this, no bloody need at all.’ A week before leaving England a friend had given me a new bilge pump, which sat in one of the lockers because I had been unable to afford the piping with which to fit it in the cabin. Had it been installed I need never have stepped outside; my clothes would have remained reasonably warm and I would not be standing in misery, tormented by sodden clothes, cold, tired, battered and bruised.
I started to understand the bitterness I’d felt since leaving England, a country I had loved as long as I could remember, when to hear a choir singing Land of Hope and Glory would cause tears to spring to my eyes. I’m not sure when I started to lose this feeling for my native land. Perhaps it was the court case. Perhaps it was after watching an Englishman run for his country and collect a contract to sell a product on TV he had never used. Perhaps it was just that I’d grown old, seen too many lands, met so many friendly people. Whatever the reason, the loss was mine and Solitaire’s. I regretted it, but the rest of the voyage would be made without the help of patriotic choirs.
At three o’clock on this day we had been storm-wracked for 24 hours. I had been unable to sleep during that time, I was soaking wet, had swallowed a gallon of tea but had eaten nothing. In the past I had survived much longer without food or sleep, but my main worry was the cold, as I had no previous experience to fall back on. There was no point in putting on warm clothing when once in the cockpit I would be as wet as ever. I thought about leaving the stove turned on. We had three 32lb-bottles of gas on board, and, as on the last voyage, I had used only one bottle every six months. So there was some to spare but essentially I wanted to keep the extra gas for rounding Cape Horn. In any case nearly all my time was spent outside the cabin.
After discovering that I could not replace the self-steering vane I started to consider how to live in the Southern Ocean by correcting my mistakes. I should not have tried lying abeam to these seas or removing the self-steering wind vane. I knew I must always keep up enough sail to control our position to the waves. I could have done little with the self-steering gear at the time as the vane was much too big for the wind strength, which demanded smaller, stronger vanes. I had three plywood vanes from the first voyage, which were unusable in their present state. The blade-holder supported only about 4in at the bottom of the vane and pressure had to be distributed, so I cannibalised one to supply feathering pieces for the other two vanes and finished just before dark.
Meanwhile the winds were still coming from the north at hurricane strength. I could only sail south, deeper into the Roaring Forties. All I could think of was getting into the Indian Ocean past the Cape of Good Hope. Once there we would be less restricted and could ease our way out of these howling, desolate seas. With luck we would find warmer weather and give ourselves a chance to dry out and renew our strength for future battles.
I spent another miserable night praying for the winds to abate. If my guardian angel could not arrange that could he please swing them to the west, giving Solitaire wings to leave these watery mountains? No craft could continue to take such punishment and I felt like the condemned man waiting for the trap to spring. As I watched the sea break on us I could see the hangman reaching for the lever. Again we were lifted and carried effortlessly on a boiling cloud, and then, after a few hundred yards, released as a cat plays with a mouse. Sometimes I was permitted to pump Solitaire dry before it sprang again, sometimes I was halfway through the hatch dreaming of wrapping my hands around a hot cup and rubbing the circulation back into cold feet when there would be a roar and once again we would be buried.
I was reminded of the Germans outside Stalingrad during the Second World War. Ill-clad in their normal dress uniforms they died in a Russian winter. I remember one upright corpse standing frozen, staring through dead eyes. Someone had stretched out his arm and pointed a finger, turning him into a road sign. At least it seemed a useful way to end your life. When I stood in freezing water up to my waist, unable to move my arms or open my eyes, I wondered if my last effort should be to point to Cape Horn as a service to following seamen. Instead I kept pumping.
Dawn came and somehow we struggled through another day. In fact it went better than the first. Although the storm had not abated I felt it could get no worse and as we had survived one day, why not this one? The cat and mouse game the sea played with us was wearing a bit thin. It was not the dying I feared or even the method. I would rather drown than lie for years, suffering without hope, watching my family and friends walk past a shell for which I had no further use, hearing a priest quote from a book as unreliable as yesterday’s newspapers. Yet there is some supernatural force, for without it Solitaire would have started on her journey to the bottom long ago. I had no wish to die. There were many things I wanted to do, horizons still to be scanned. And I wanted to see my family once more, just once more, so I kept on pumping.
During our third night of storm I realised that with the dawn Solitaire would have to take over the responsibility of keeping us alive. In the beginning I had worried that I was not eating. Now nothing mattered but the pumping. Sleep no longer bothered me; sleep was something that happened between life and death. If I closed my eyes now I would die. Dying bothered me but not sleep. All that mattered was the pumping.
With the dawn I would fit a new wind vane and hoist a head-sail. It would make no difference if the winds failed to drop or if they still blew from the no
rth. It was all I could do, my last card. All that mattered was the pumping, but tomorrow I would be able to pump no more. Most of that night I spent in the cockpit, no longer crouching to avoid the breaking seas. Solitaire and I became one, moving in a numb stupor, beaten to our knees. Solitaire staggered defiantly while I worked the pump, readying her for more punishment. My Solitaire had started as an idea in South Africa, something I would use as a common prostitute for my own pleasures, after which I would pass her on to the highest bidder. My love affair with her started on a reef off the Brazilian coast and our courtship had been long and happy. For two days we had celebrated our marriage, a ceremony far more binding than the others I had been party to. In sickness and in health, that was true, but till death us do part, never. We would survive or die together. I would never leave her.
Dawn arrived with no drop in the wind’s strength, the sky still black although I could see over the mountain peaks to the limited horizon. Without their protection the wind screamed in the rigging, a loose halyard vibrating against the mast like a runaway machine gun. In the valleys I fooled myself into thinking the storm was tiring, then Solitaire would rise to the sound of the stuttering gun.
When I had pumped her dry again I started to fit the small plywood vane drilled with an extra hole to take a rope, which I tied round my wrist. I waited my chance and fell into the cockpit with it pressed to my chest. I gripped the pushpit and started to straighten up and for a moment thought I was in a January sale with a mass of bargain-mad housewives tearing at me as though I held the crown jewels. After nearly being swept over the side I managed to rope myself close enough to the self-steering to use both hands to slot in the vane. The blade was adjusted so that its edge faced into wind. The shock cords were taken off its rudder and I freed the locking device. After more than 50 defenceless hours at last we had a means of fighting back.