Throughout the day large Atlantic rollers from the north continue to pummel our starboard beam. Just moving about the boat becomes an effort, and it is not restful to the stomach. Our queasiness passes, however, and we resume light but regular meals. I still see very little of David except at mealtimes. We are both so tired that one of us still sleeps while the other watches, even through the day. I really do not know how lone sailors manage. And not just from tiredness either.
A boat makes noises and at night, alone on watch, the imagination takes over. At least, mine does. I begin thinking of The Fog again when passing through the unlit galley there is a groan like a soul in torment. I actually cry out, it startles me so much, and feel really foolish when I discover it is the handle of a mug rubbing on a cup hook close to my ear.
Out in the cockpit I glimpse something hunched on the side deck in the blackness and recoil in horror. It is our lifebuoy. And after several hours of staring out into a black bouncing sea, I begin to see lights that are not there. In truth, there is nothing out here now but sea and sky and us. I have never before felt so exposed to the universe.
As I begin to fall asleep, after my watch, I hear a conversation above my head between a man and a woman and assume David is listening to World Service in the cockpit.
‘No,’ he says later. ‘And if I had been, I’d have used the earphones so as not to keep you awake.’
He had actually been sitting at the chart table at the time, reading a yachting magazine article about the Mini Transat Race. It is for single sailors in 21-foot yachts capable of 20 knots. Their boats are so stripped out for speed that the galley is a kettle welded onto a Primus stove and they live on instant noodles. Apparently the worst thing is sleep deprivation, to the point where one participant rang up his shore-based team to say that he had just been overtaken by a motorcycle.
There was a TV programme last winter about clinical research into sleep in which researchers woke up volunteers before or during their rapid-eye-movement (REM) or dreaming stage. Deprived of this essential phase over several nights, the volunteers began to compensate by dreaming while awake. I begin to do this now. While sitting upright with my eyes open and to all appearances wide awake I will verbalise the end of a dream I am having and wake to find a startled David saying, ‘What did you say?’
So I can perfectly empathise with a lone sailor who thinks he has just been overtaken by a motorbike.
When David takes over the watch from me at breakfast time he says he has also started hearing voices in the cockpit above his head. But when I ask him what they said he says they were talking just that bit too quietly for him to make out individual words. The wind has risen considerably this morning. When I settle into the helmsman’s chair with my cereal bowl the cornflakes keep blowing off the spoon.
Around 3pm two battered old cargo ships appear to port. One is on a course which causes us no problems. The other is on a collision course with us. There are a couple of rules of the sea involved here. Firstly, power gives way to sail. Secondly, the vessel that can turn to starboard to avoid a collision should do so.
It soon becomes apparent that the cargo boat is not interested in either of them, so David puts on both engines and accelerates rapidly out of its way. As the vessel passes close behind us we can see that there is no-one on the bridge keeping a lookout. In fact, apart from the ship’s small, round-faced cook, who emerges from the wheelhouse with one arm full of cabbages and cheerfully waves the other at us, I doubt whether anyone has noticed we are even there.
In the meantime, we have both recovered our energy today and this evening feel strong enough to finally tackle chicken pasta. I place the chicken, now well past its sell-by date, on the draining board to air and take the vegetables up into the cockpit. It is far nicer to prepare them sitting outside than standing in a galley with malodorous chicken. I also discover the aerodynamics of the cockpit while peeling the garlic. The breeze catches the paper-thin skin and it loops-the-loop before settling into the corners of the cockpit sole. One piece even flies out beyond the stern but turns round and comes back in again to join the rest. At least it explains why so much debris gathers in the cockpit’s corners.
Sunset tonight is invisible because of cloud and the sky becomes threatening, especially in the direction that we are heading. The night is very dark and the phosphorous startlingly bright. Previously it has appeared only around the boat. Now it also lights the tops of breaking waves some distance away, creating long pale strips that resemble a boat’s hull rushing towards us. Elsewhere it glitters like navigation lights in the distance, only to vanish and reappear somewhere else. Combined with the sea banging against our hull, and the wind suddenly soaring and just as suddenly dropping, it makes for a jittery night.
54
Plodding On
It is four o’clock on Wednesday morning and still very dark. I have eyeballed a white light for an hour. It seems to be forever off our port beam. Beyond a certain distance and depending on the atmosphere, colour disappears. At night it is only a vessel’s red and green navigation lights which tell you in which direction it is pointing, at you or away from you. At present, colour is not visible above seven miles. Finally I am able to identify a red light. It tells me the vessel will go behind and away from us, but it does so incredibly slowly.
The wind is erratic, oscillating between 13 and 22 knots. We are under sail but have the port engine on idle to power the radar. Our radar fairly sucks up juice and flat batteries at sea would cause huge problems. Meanwhile, it has become cold and I am huddled in my foul weather jacket. There are a few stars directly above us now, but it is still extremely dark. The moon is not due until around six this morning but I will be unable to see it, or the Morning Star, because of all this cloud.
By mid-morning, however, it looks as if the words The Simpsons should appear through the rows of white fluffy clouds. Behind them the sky is every conceivable shade of blue, from palest gold-tinted aquamarine at the horizon to a deep, glowing cobalt directly overhead. A super-tanker, enormous, crosses our path, David checks the engine oil and we try unsuccessfully again today to hear the weather forecast from Radio France. The woman currently reading it has a breathy voice more suited to seduction, or the cajoling of small children, than a mariner with an ear clamped to a crackling receiver. Not that it really makes much difference to us at present. With nothing but sea and sky between departure and arrival, all you can do is keep plodding on. It would have been comforting, however, to have been able to tune into that sonorous baritone voice and hear once again, Visibilita: discreto. Vento: diminuzione. Mare: poco mosso.
We have the most delicious meal of our lives tonight: corned beef and fresh vegetables with melting butter and black pepper. I don’t know why it tastes so good, it just does.
55
Blobs in the Night
It is just after midnight, a few minutes into Thursday and the start of our sixth day at sea, when David gets me out of bed so that we can both stare at a number of large dappled blobs on the radar screen. I turn sleepy, questioning eyes towards him.
‘I don’t know,’ he says helplessly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
Nor have I. Boats don’t look like this on a radar screen. Depending on size they appear either as a small dot or a modest dash. These things are large blobs, flat at the bottom and rounded at the top, like old-fashioned haystacks except that by measuring them against the rings of the radar screen they each appear to be around a mile wide.
‘I’m bewildered,’ says David. ‘There are no islands out here and they’re too big for whales. I’m sorry to get you up but I need another pair of eyes.’
Mine can’t help noticing that whatever these things are, we appear to be sailing straight at one of them. I point this out to him.
‘I’ve already changed course three times to avoid it,’ he says patiently. ‘But every time I look at the screen we’re heading directly for it again.’
I go outside and stare in
to the blackness. It is a waste of time. It is so dark that the only thing you could possibly have seen out here would have been a light, only there is none. David follows me outside and climbs up into the helmsman’s chair to change course again. By now he is more than half-convinced that there is something wrong with our steering. He remains at the controls, with nothing ahead of him but the instruments and impenetrable darkness.
I go back inside to the chart table and stare at the radar screen again. But with one of us watching the screen and the other the compass it soon becomes apparent that the blobs are not static, as originally thought, but moving very slowly. We are not drifting into them, but they into us.
And then, bathed in the eerie green light of the radar screen, I see another blob appear. Only this one is directly behind our stern and gaining on us quite quickly. Until now, all our attention has been focused in front of us. As one, we go and stare out over our stern. After a few moments there is a tiny spatter of water against our faces, although there is no accompanying sound or disturbance to the sea around us. We stand there, side-by-side, in a black night on a black sea surrounded by some threat but not knowing what it is.
Then another little spatter of water hits us, a little harder this time, and on the very edge of my hearing I can just detect a faint, erratic, whizzing sound and finally know what it is that’s creeping up behind us. A squall: a very strong wind travelling so fast that it can pass over you in only minutes but so violent that it can do considerable damage.
We have experienced quite a few, but always in daylight when you can see their black cloud and thick column of rain approaching from miles away. We have never been caught in one at night before. And in our inexperience we had not realised that you could see one on a radar screen.
A squall is one of the ways a yacht can lose its mast, or even a crew member, at night. Blithely sailing along with its sails filled by a moderate wind, it is suddenly hit by a very strong one. A squall is at its most dangerous when, as sometimes happens, it brings with it a sudden change of wind direction. This can cause the boom to gybe and hurl overboard any crewman unfortunate enough to be in its way; or put so much stress on a mast under full sail that it is torn away from its mountings. When a mast carrying full sail goes overboard, with its shrouds and backstays still attached to the deck, the drag on the hull is so great that it can capsize the yacht unless the crew is able to cut away the rigging in time.
We do not simply have one squall threatening us, though, we are surrounded by them. Now we know what they are, however, we reef the sails and use the radar to avoid them. It is rather like fairground dodgems only instead of a bump when one gets too close to us, we get a drenching from the flying rain at its outer edges.
Buffeted, wet, tired but intact, ultimately we sail through them and leave them behind. Conditions gradually return to what they were before – dry, cloudy and very dark – until around 2.30am when the sky clears suddenly and becomes brilliant with stars. I think that in the right circumstances it must be possible to get drunk on stars. Certainly, after a dark and stressful night, I am pleasantly tipsy on these.
The Madeira Islands
56
Porto Santo
Just after dawn we spot three peaks in the distance ahead of us. It is Porto Santo. Although the modern GPS is so accurate that it makes navigation easy these days, it is still exciting to have reached a very small island out in the Atlantic Ocean. We always knew we would find it, but it is still a relief that we have, and that the three of us are still in one piece. There is also a sort of thrill, a sense of the unknown, perhaps not unlike the first explorers felt, but without their relief at not having fallen off the edge of the world. Although it is doubtful whether they did, in fact, believe this is what might happen to them. People in the past were often far more intelligent, sophisticated and well-educated than some of our history books give them credit for. And mariners have always been aware of the curvature of the planet from the way the masthead of an approaching sailing ship slowly rises from sea level to full height.
One thing we do know for certain is that we have been travelling in the wake of the first recorded explorers, in particular two Portuguese sailors called Zarco and Teixeira. They were part of Henry the Navigator’s grand plan and in 1418 were heading for Africa when they were driven off course by a gale. They eventually found shelter in the lee of a small, unknown island which in gratitude they called Porto Santo, or Holy Port.
It was the first of the Atlantic Islands to be discovered. Portugal colonised it and its first governor was a minor nobleman remembered nowadays as Christopher Columbus’s father-in-law. And we know we are in Portuguese territory again when we finally pass the lighthouse off the south-eastern tip of the island. It is like a Mediterranean villa with trees planted around it, a little version of the one to the west of Portugal’s Lagos.
One of the surprising things about travelling by yacht is the length of time that passes between that first sight of land and actually arriving. It seems to take forever. And, indeed, it is five and a half hours between spotting Porto Santo’s three volcanic peaks and dropping our anchor off that same pristine, six-mile-long beach where Zarco and Teixeira found shelter in 1418.
Gibraltar mud rises from our anchor and chain, and lies like scum on the crystal clear water.
This crossing has been our first experience of being any great distance from land. The Balearics and Sardinia had been but a day or so away. Even the Bay of Biscay had taken us only two and a half days to cross. A concern about the distances involved in Atlantic crossings is that, should an emergency occur, two people might not be enough to handle it. However, we have done a six-day passage, covered 576 miles, weathered a crisis, recovered our energy reasonably quickly and completed the voyage safely. We get out the cockpit cushions, open a bottle of wine and put up our feet.
‘You know,’ says David, ‘I finally feel like a real blue water cruiser.’
I do, too. It is some years since I received my Competent Crew certificate at the end of a one-week sailing course in Wales, but only now do I feel worthy of the title. We lean back against the cushions and take stock. In particular, how are we? That had, after all, been our priority: to improve our health and quality of life.
David is thirty pounds lighter than when we set out last year. It is weight he has wanted to lose for decades but which had proved resistant, buttressed by an office desk and longdistance business travel. The early improvement to his respiratory system, thanks to a reduction of allergens from living on water, has also been maintained. In short, he is slimmer, fitter and healthier than he has been since his twenties.
I too am fitter and stronger than I have been in decades, thanks to the simple daily exercise required by life aboard. Just the basic tasks of sailing, maintenance, exploring each new place we visit, or simply walking the mile or so to a supermarket or launderette. And there are, of course, the added health benefits of being a non-smoker.
Life has become simpler, too. We now own neither house nor car and have on board only those material possessions which fulfil our basic wants. It is surprising, and surprisingly satisfying, to discover just how little you really need.
Our diet has also changed for the better thanks to a gentler climate and the unavailability of processed foods. There is more fresh fruit and vegetables in it now. Chicken and fish, simply cooked. Olive oil. Tomatoes. A few herbs. Fresh crusty bread. Local cheeses with olives. A glass of wine. And thou, as a Persian poet once wrote so memorably.
In short, we have become relaxed and happy in our new life, while at the same time maintaining an easy but constant vigilance in regard to what is happening to our boat and the weather, in planning voyages, gathering vital information for them and doing all those things which are not only necessary for our enjoyment but essential to our safety. And ultimately, of course, our survival. Because, as the drift net and the night squalls proved, in extremis there is nobody out there to save you but yourselves. Knowing that, and ac
cepting it, makes you strong.
So when David asks, ‘Shall we carry on to the Caribbean?’ the answer is unhesitatingly,
‘Yes!’
Acknowledgements
Offshore yachtsmen rely on information provided by the people who have gone before them and the organisations which make their knowledge, and other vital data, available. It is those who produce the charts and cruising guides, the weather forecasts and detailed advice to whom we are all indebted and who enable us to reach our destinations in safety. Among those to whom Voyager’s crew would like to express its gratitude are:
Admiralty Charts
Cruising Association
Imray Cruising Guides and Charts
Monaco Radio
Radio France Internationale
Reeds Nautical Almanac
Royal Yachting Association
The Atlantic Crossing Guide
published by Adlard Coles Nautical,
its 6th edition revised and
updated by Jane Russell
World Cruising Routes by Jimmy Cornell,
published by Adlard Coles Nautical,
6th edition
Glossary for Non-Sailors
Anti-fouling – paint put on the hull below the water line to deter marine vegetation and shellfish which reduce the speed of a boat.
Autopilot, also called automatic steering – a device to hold the boat on a set course automatically.
Backstays – multi-strand stainless-steel wires which run from the top of the mast to the stern of the yacht to support the mast.
Beam – widest part of the hull.
Blue water cruising – long distance ocean cruising.
Boom – a hinged beam attached to the mast which holds the bottom of the main sail and allows it to be set in various positions to catch the wind.
Turtles in Our Wake Page 20