Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed

by Les Powles

  Reluctantly I did make two voyages without Solitaire. The first was the delivery of a Rival 41 to Newport, Rhode Island, USA. It was during the time when the dollar was on a par with the British pound. Buying British boats became a good deal for Americans. I was walking by the offices of a charter company situated in the marina, when the owner, Peter, popped up with the offer. Without a second thought I turned the job down. At that time stony-broke, I was on my way to arrange to tie Solitaire alongside the Town Quay for drying out and antifouling. On learning the cost, I sadly made my way back to Peter: ‘Er, about that delivery...’

  If I were to list my many faults, at the top would be that I’m pig-headed and unable to take on responsibility. This could be proved by the break-up of my two marriages and the promotions I turned down.

  The yacht was fitted with an Aries self-steering wind vane plus autopilot. I would have much preferred to have taken the boat on my own, but because of insurance problems, Peter arranged for a crew of two 20-year-old lads, Rob and Angus, to make the crossing with me. Both were strong, fit and experienced yachtsmen.

  The trip went reasonably well, I thought. A slow passage with headwinds most of the way. I taught the guys to do astronavigation. True, we did find our way on course to Brazil a couple of times. I will admit to a bit of back seat driving: ‘Watch that squall cloud coming through!’ It’s a fact that if they were on deck at night and happened to blink, I would go charging up screaming, ‘Christ, I thought you’d fallen overboard!’

  Later, in a Newport pub and over a celebration pint, I asked for my valiant crew’s verdict. They gave it with enthusiasm and in unison: ‘Les, you’ve just sailed that bloody boat over here singlehanded.’

  No such problems with the second delivery. Bob Livingston was one of the quiet, unassuming New Zealanders that over the years I would grow to respect. Half his time was spent in Egypt running his surveying company, the rest in Lymington with his English-born wife, Sally. With no previous experience in sailing, Bob had bought a first class cruising yacht, a 45ft steel Endurance. While he was away I kept an eye on it for him and ran the engine from time to time. The funny thing about Bob was that although he was much younger and fitter than me, deeply tanned by the desert sun and looking like he belonged at the wheel of a boat, he would never take the helm. Sally, on the other hand, was a natural – you could see and feel it the moment she took the wheel.

  When Bob decided to berth the boat in Cyprus to be closer to his work, he asked me to be the skipper. He would join us for different stages of the voyage. For crew I would have Sally and Ian Large, who had crewed for Rome part of his last voyage – by now a close friend of mine. No longer desperate for funds, I turned the offer down. I did say that if they ever became stuck I would fly out and get them to Cyprus. A professional delivery skipper was employed and I shouted, ‘Good luck!’ as they left the Yacht Haven. Good luck they didn’t have...

  Three weeks after they had set sail, there was a cry of ‘Les!’ from the pontoon. Sally had arrived. The delivery skipper had turned out to be a modern-day Captain Bligh. Bob, a man of few words, had, on arrival in Gibraltar, gone straight to the nearest travel agent, bought a ticket and put the chap over the side. When I asked Sally for a few days to clear up my affairs, I was told: ‘The taxi has been ordered to take us to Heathrow Airport – we’re on the first flight out in the morning.’

  The trip through the Med was enjoyable: we made the most of the stops, never at sea for more than two or three days, with relaxed watch-keeping during the days. Never able to sleep at night with other people on board, I would take over when the rest of the crew wanted to turn in for night.

  Disaster struck on our very last day in Cyprus. Ian had been the first to leave for home. Bob had returned to Egypt the day before. Sally and I had showered and put on fresh clothes for our flight home. The yacht was moored stern-to on the north pier in Larnaca Marina. We had laid out a couple of bow anchors and a boarding ladder was used. It was while trying to push this plank into the cockpit that I over-balanced and fell into the stagnant oily waters. I came up looking like a drowned rat, blood streaming from a flattened face that had tried to put in the boat’s steel stern. All modesty gone, I changed into clean shirt and trousers. There were a few funny looks when we arrived at the airport. Water was still squelching out of the top of my shoes as I climbed on board the jet. During the flight home, Sally tried to hold an intelligent conversation, but every time she looked at me, she burst out laughing. It was to be the last laughter I was to know for some time.

  By this time I was just beginning to come into my 60s. Looking back, health-wise I didn’t think I was too bad: first voyage around the world at 50, second at 55, the starvation diets I’d put my body through. Despite all these adventures and lack of vitamins, I still had all my own teeth. At a pinch, I could still see without my reading glasses.

  The only problem I had was with my breathing. Soon after my return from the Southern Ocean, I developed a very bad hacking cough. At the same time, the passages in my nose seemed to close. To walk up a steep hill or try to run any distance would put me out of breath. To think of my mother or Rome could cause the same effects. The guilt would come flooding back. My doctor’s diagnosis was that I had asthma and introduced me to the magic of Ventalin inhalers. One puff and I was running around like a two-year-old. My nose would require an operation, and for this there was a waiting list.

  Financially, I was just keeping my head above the water. The British Government was paying my berthing fees with unemployment benefits. I think that anyone who joins a dole queue believes they’re losing part of their self respect. To overcome this, I continued to give free talks to schools and charities.

  There were two of these talks that I will always remember, the first because it would introduce me to another friend for life and his family. The talk was at the Lymington Civic Centre. A buffet with wine was provided. My glass would be filled every time I managed to empty it. Things began to get a bit hazy. I could clearly remember the first slide being shown; after that I must have been flying on autopilot. I woke up on Solitaire the next morning with a terrible head and a large chocolate cake sitting on our chart table.

  Frightened even to show my face, I was swilling down aspirins with cups of tea when Ken Swann turned up to say how much everyone had enjoyed the night. Ken was someone I’d known for some time without ever really talking to him. His yacht was parked on a pontoon at the back of Solitaire. Always one of the first to arrive in the mornings, there would be shouts and waves, but that’s about all the conversation we had. A bit older than me, he reminded me very much of my old friend Rex Wardman. Ken’s yacht was called Cedarwing. The similarity of the two men became more apparent when I asked where the name came from. Turned out it was his call sign when he’d been a pilot. It took me some time, but I found out that during the war, Ken was in the middle of his second tour of operations over Germany (when you were very lucky to survive one) when the war ended. After that, he’d gone into civil aviation. He started flying clapped-out German Junkers 52 and finished with one of the big Airlines on Boeing 707s. Later I would meet his wife Althea, son Anthony and daughter Caroline, both in their mid twenties.

  In a way, that morning I was to suffer two hangovers. When in a crowd of people and someone else was doing the talking, I would much prefer to listen. But after any long voyage, there would be a build up of ideas and it would be hard to shut me up. It was the same when you stuck me in front of an audience. With all the questions I’d answered over the years, the book and articles I’d written, all it would take to set me off would be to put a few slides on a screen and my mouth would slip into gear. The downside of these talks would start the moment they were over. I would start to worry that I’d said too much, that in trying to explain something it had sounded as though I was boasting. The real hangover would normally hit me a few days later when I would be joking with someone, only to find they were waiting to go into hospital for a heart transplant or a clo
se relation was dying of cancer. I would swear that I’d never make a fool of myself again. The promise was never kept.

  The second talk was perhaps the best and at the same time the worst I would ever give. It came about from a knock-on effect. John Bradfield was a quiet, charming, elderly man who ran a private school called Walhampton, situated just outside Lymington. Soon after my return from the non-stop voyage, he called to introduce himself and asked if I would talk to the children. From that I was passed onto another local school for boys and girls from broken homes – their ages running up to 17. Later, two more teachers called from other schools where children had parent problems. This time their ages ranged from 9 to 14. I was told that only the children over the age of 10 would be allowed to attend, since the younger ones would grow restless. I said I would like to talk to them all, but before beginning they should be told that anyone wishing to leave could do so. This was agreed to. However, I was told that there was one boy aged nine who was disruptive and uncontrollable. Johnny would not be allowed to be there.

  From the start the talk went well. I got one hell of a lift from the eager young faces. The questions at the end were some of the most intelligent and searching I’d ever been put through. One young boy at the front really tied me up in knots over something I’d said, that ‘at times you could feel so tired and miserable, that it would be a pleasure just to go to sleep and never wake up... The thing that stopped you was the hurt you would inflict on family and friends.’ I tried to explain but in the end I felt like I was trying to teach a blind man the meaning of colour.

  Later, when I was having tea and cakes with the teachers, I said how much I’d learned from being there, but that it was a pity they had kept Johnny away. It turned out that the boy who had listened to every word, who couldn’t understand the meaning of love, was Johnny.

  Due to giving these talks, Grace and I needed a cheap set of wheels. Apart from visits to Terry’s grave, I drove Grace down to Heathrow Airport for flights to South Africa. Terry’s husband, Martin Maudling, who had MS and was in a wheelchair, was now living in London and we wanted to pay him calls.

  For about a year I’d noticed an old Mini car sitting in the car park like a ruptured duck. On closer inspection I saw that the poor thing couldn’t move. The rear sub frame had rusted through and the body was resting on its rubber tyres. When I managed to contact the proud owner, he said I could have it at a give-away price. The sub frame was renewed and I finished up with a car that would last until I was ready to set sail once more. It would cruise at a steady 55 miles an hour, using a gallon of gasoline for 45 miles. I was more than happy.

  This happiness was to be short-lived and I was to start on a slow spiral down into depression. In a short space of time I was to lose my father and my friend Rex Wardman. My father died in his sleep, which in a way was a blessing. After we lost Mom, he hardly ever left the house. My brother Roy, who was now living in a council flat, would visit him every day and cook and clean for him. It was my brother who found my father. It was always understood that when we lost Pop, the house would go to Roy. There were too many bad memories with the house, and my brother decided to sell and live off the interest in his council flat.

  When Rome died, to give comfort people would say he went the way he would have wanted – at sea with his boat. The same could have been said about Rex Wardman. Rex had raced yachts most of his life, sometimes owning two or three at the same time. A man used to being in command through his service in the RAF and later in his business, a man who never felt the need to raise his voice, and a first class skipper, he died of a heart attack two minutes before the start of another race, his yacht already surging in full flight.

  The next two deaths I would never learn to live with; there could never be any words of comfort. During 1986, I had taken Solitaire out of the water to allow her to dry out, before giving her three coats of epoxy resin to prevent osmosis of her hull. Early in July 1987, I was in the main marina showers when I was told a policeman was waiting to see me. The conversation was very brief:

  ‘You have a brother called Roy?’

  ‘Yes, officer.’

  ‘He is dead, he hung himself.’

  I remember arguing that they had made a mistake, that I loved my brother and he would never do that to me. When I phoned the police station in Birmingham, I was told to report there as soon as possible to identify my brother’s body. That weekend I’d promised to drive Grace up to Oxford to visit a distant relation. I told Grace what had happened and promised to pick her up for her return journey.

  After I had arranged for my brother’s cremation and settled his affairs, I returned to Solitaire, hoping that some warmth would come back in our lives. Solitaire still sitting on hard standing, it felt like she had died too. As I climbed on board, there were no movements of welcome, no swaying of mast, no slapping of halyards. I was too low and tired to even make a cup of tea. At least things couldn’t get worse.

  There was a tap on Solitaire’s hull. The train journey had proved too much for Grace. She had suffered a bad stroke and was lying paralysed in Oxford’s Radcliffe Hospital. I was to take fresh clothes to her. I think from the moment I saw Grace, I knew that we had lost her and that she was already on her way to join her children. The doctors and nurses said the same thing, ‘She just wasn’t fighting to stay in this world.’ I would drive up to Oxford two or three times a week, but when I held her hand, the squeezes became lighter. Finally I had a phone call from one of the nurses to say that if I wanted to say goodbye, I would have to be there that afternoon. There was a last kiss on her cheek. By next morning she’d gone.

  The only family I had now were my father’s sister Jean, as well as Irene and Tony. There was no longer a reason to remain in England. I started to think about getting Solitaire back in the water and making ready for another voyage.

  I finally got Solitaire back in her berth but it had been a long slow battle. My breathing had become a major problem. The routine in the beginning had been to stay awake all during the day and late into the night. Before going to sleep I would take two or three puffs from my inhaler. This would carry me through until halfway into the night when I’d wake again short of breath. After using the inhaler again I could normally sleep until dawn. Now all this had changed. When I woke now it was to find that I had completely stopped breathing and was in the middle of a nightmare: looking down at my brother’s poor body, or terrified to find myself in the water with Rome and watching our boat sail away without us. Having stopped breathing, it would take five or ten minutes to get any benefit from the inhaler. For the rest of the night I would sit upright to get air into my lungs, too frightened even to think about sleep. The doctor gave me tablets to help me relax. But I still had the nightmares.

  I wasn’t the only one with problems. Solitaire was having her own troubles. When she had been taken out of the water, I should have removed her old engine oil and topped up her diesel tank. I’d forgotten to do this. Worse still, the motor was run without changing them and became clogged. Day after day parts were stripped off and cleaned. Other jobs were started and left. The main cabin became a complete shambles. Friends were constantly calling to ask how I was getting on. Tired and covered in dirty oil, I became bad tempered and snappy.

  When I finally got the engine to run, I decided to set sail the following day. I paid all my debts. That night I was trying to get our navigation lights to work when my old mate Dennis Skillicorn and his wife Marie turned up. Dennis wanted to do a final tape recording for the BBC. I said it was my intention to sail down to Gibraltar and from there follow Joshua Slocum’s route around the world, sailing west about and through the Straits of Magellan. After Dennis and Marie had left, I was too tired to do any more work and spent the rest of the night trying to get through another asthma attack.

  The following morning I was standing on the pontoon trying to work out my next move. I wasn’t keen on sailing down the English Channel without any navigation lights, but to work on them wo
uld mean another day’s delay. Brian, another mate of mine, turned up on his way to work to enquire how I was getting on. I can remember snapping back, ‘If you bloody people would stop pestering me, I might make some progress.’ Without a word, Brian turned and walked away. It seemed at that moment that following Rome’s death, I’d been walking down a very long road and it turned into a blind end. I didn’t know whether to run after Brian to apologise or to work on Solitaire.

  There were a couple on a nearby yacht. The day before, the lady had volunteered to give me a pre-sailing haircut. They came over to ask if there was anything they could do. ‘Yes, you can let go my lines!’ As I started to leave the marina, I saw that they were following me. They passed me in the Solent and started waving, heading towards an anchorage behind Hurst Castle. There they circled and started pointing down, trying to get me to stop as they’d seen I was in no fit state to start the voyage yet. I dropped Solitaire’s anchor and, satisfied, they headed back to their berth.

  I spent three days there. The first 24 hours were mostly spent sleeping. I finished wiring the electrics and tidied up the main cabin. Feeling much better, I thought about returning to Lymington to say goodbye properly, but in the end decided on running down to Dartmouth where I could write letters and make phone calls. I found that at sea my nose still remained a useless piece of equipment that could neither sniff, smell or blow. However, my breathing improved and with so many things to worry about, the nightmares became less frequent. Solitaire spent a week in Dartmouth. Then, with all the wiring sorted out, we set sail for Gibraltar on June 7th, 1988.

  Soon all the old sounds returned, the freedom of once more being in the open sea. The trip was to take 13 days. It could have been much quicker if it hadn’t been for an unwanted visitor. We were well out to sea and clear of all the shipping lanes when a pigeon came on board. Despite all the pointing he wouldn’t leave until we had gone off course and back in sight of land.