It seems to me that the rest of the equipage were determined I should not get to sleep till I had tacked and they all kicked up hell’s delight until I did so; it does seem amazing to me that the whole ship was quiet again as soon as I had tacked away from the coast. I am recording plain unmistakeable facts. I do not try to explain them.
I tacked again at dawn and I am approaching the coast again (farther along of course) in fog of medium density. The radio beacon bearings, not only don’t agree with my DR but are not agreeing with each other. Even if I had an accurate time, which I have tried hard to get with no success, I could not take a sun-shot because of the fog. Accurate time would have enabled me to get an accurate longitude yesterday which would have been a good basis for the night’s dead reckoning. Oh, well, I have always thought the fascination of navigation is not so much getting a fix as getting yourself out of the other kind of fix when you are in it. So I must leave you and put the old skull cap on for a bit of intense guess-work.
1700 hrs. I just cannot understand it but I am accepting it. Going back to July 9 there was a discrepancy between the DR and the fix by sun and radio bearing; the DR position was 23 miles due west of the fix. I accepted that and started the DR afresh. On the 11th, two days later there was another discrepancy of a similar amount 32 miles due west. I took no notice of this but carried on the DR plot started two days earlier. Another fix on the 11th at 1800 hrs. made it 25 miles west. At 0745 this morning a bearing from Sable Island made it 23 miles. At 1130 another Sable Island backed by one from Sambro light vessel now coming within reliable range made it 23. Now at 1625 I have just had three bearings of Sable Island, Sambro light vessel and E. Point (north-east point of Novia Scotia). Conditions for observing are perfect with a smooth sea and steady ship and all three bearings meet at one point. And this point is 22½ miles due east of the three-day-old DR plot. I must accept it. I wonder if it could be a current trick.
I am used to making mistakes but I can nearly always account for them. It’s odd that the same error built up in two days running on the 8th to the 9th and the 9th to the 10th of July. Could the Labrador current have been strongly reversed for two or three days? It has always puzzled me about the many wrecks on Sable Island when the men concerned seem to have always thought they were well clear of it.
I should not be surprised if they get very big and strong eddies occasionally caused by the Gulf Stream and the Labrador conflicting. The Labrador is accepted as a half-knot average and the Gulf Stream a half-knot upwards. It flows at 6 knots farther south but is not usually more than 2 knots in the heart of it up at these latitudes.
Now I am happy with my fixes and am charging forward as fast as possible headed for the land in dense fog. It is one of those dilemmas, this tack – we are hard on the wind as usual – is nearly good enough to clear Nova Scotia but not quite. But the longer I can carry on in this direction, the better, because the other tack takes me away from the land at the cost of heading east of south.
At one period today we were just pointing sufficiently well to have cleared the land but it was nearly calm then, since when we have been slowly headed back to the northwest.
I must say I have fairly wallowed in the peace and quiet of today. As I was drinking my cup of tea this afternoon; what a contrast with tea-time yesterday when Gipsy Moth, practising her jumping, sent the jug of tea up into the air off the table. I couldn’t help laughing, it seemed incredible that so many tea-leaves should come out of one spoonful of tea. They went not only over the table but over the settee opposite, right across the floor and the side of my settee below me was plastered with tea-leaves. The laugh was due to those that entered the aperture under my settee and lodged on the dustpan kept there.
It has been very muggy and hot today and I can almost believe I shall not need woollen underfugs and an oilstove in New York in July, though that seemed incredible a day or two ago. I hear the announcer of Cape Breton talking of 80° F. ashore there now, which seems pretty odd only a few miles away. Still no chance of drying anything with the dense fog. I wonder if I shall get dry the jerseys and things I got wet passing the Eddystone Light, June 11th, before reaching New York. This afternoon I felt all my trousers and wore the pair which felt the least damp, a pair of track pants.
Although there has appeared to be no wind at times we have ghosted along all day mostly over 4 knots. If one kept still on the yacht, i.e. did not rock it or disturb its trim in the water, I believe it would sail with a tea-towel set in a zephyr. Anyway a good excuse for me to have a lazy day lying down sleeping and reading instead of doing the twenty jobs I ought to do such as trying to mend the navigation lights.
Our run yesterday was 118 and today 110½. Total to the hour logged, 3,056.
Oh, dear! I suppose I must get to work again. I said this coast was like N. Brittany. It has certainly got as many off-lying rocks all the way along and it stretches a long way – more than 300 miles. At the moment I am about 95 miles E. of Halifax.
Each of these radio bearings has four corrections to be worked out and applied to it. That’s not quite true, one, the coefficient ‘A’ for the hand-held compass used in the operation is a constant and so is the magnetic variation for the time being. Then there is the deviation of the compass according to the ship’s heading and due to the magnetism in the ship, the engine, the 4¼-ton iron keel, etc. Lastly there is the quadrantal correction due to the radio waves being bent by the rigging on their way in. This varies according to the direction of the beacon relative to the ship’s heading.
This is thirsty work and the sun would be over the yard-arm if it weren’t for the fog. Anyway, it is six o’clock, which is the time for all good men and true to down a noggin.
13th July. 1045 hrs. Breakfast at last. I’ve been kept hard at it since 0600. In fact I might almost say before that because I had to get up at three o’clock and lower and furl the main. The ship was like a squawking kid who has lost its sister at a church bazaar. The genoa and main decided there was too much wind to suit them; they stopped the ship, banged, flogged, rattled, whistled.
There was not much wind, perhaps Force 5, with a lovely fine moonlight night, the fog cleared away. But together they were not going to budge. As soon as I had the main furled and left the Genny to it, she was as happy as could be, started off straight away with hardly a sound and pulled the ship along at 4¾ knots for the rest of the night.
At 0600 hrs. I got up to tack ship. Then I reefed the main and rehoisted it. It is a labour for Hercules that reefing by oneself. I started counting the number of times I went along the deck from the mast to the cockpit and back, crouched and forced to use a hand grip somewhere nearly the whole way; but after I had counted to nine trips I forgot to carry on.
Mind you, the reefed sail is a nice job. The previous time I reefed I tried the ordinary way of just rolling up the sail. It had a horrible crease or fold about three feet in from the leech.
While I was at the tiller there was a loud sigh and I looked up, startled, to see some enormous dorsal fins curving slowly down into the water. I didn’t see them again but think they were the same kind as I saw on the Great Banks.
As soon as I had got the main reefed and set I went below and started getting breakfast and making the coffee when the hullaballoo started again. One would think the Genny hated the mainsail. It was hard to stand up in the cabin, the bows burying themselves, the cockpit with 6 inches of water in it. I could see they would only create an increasing hell until I did something about it so I left the coffee on the table and handed the Genny, replacing her with that hardy warrior No. 2.
Now it is fairly quiet with the sun streaming into the cabin from the cockpit. If there was not so much sea flying about I could dry out some things on deck. But it is no good. They will only get wetter. This chattering won’t do; navigare necessare est, as I think Henry the Navigator said.
2045 hrs. I just can’t understand it. I hear on the radio from Sidney, Cape Breton Island, from Halifax and this morning Bo
ston came in range. They all talk of light winds or south-westerly 15-m.p.h., and temperatures mentioned are in the eighties. Here am I, only a few miles away with not a really fine day since I left England.
This afternoon it blew up to gale very quickly with thick fog and a horrible sea but no one says a word about it. It has been a day of frustration; I seem to have worked hard all day for nothing. Every sail change has been wrong an hour later.
I was within a few miles of Halifax this afternoon and called them up on the R/ T. Asked the operator to send a telegram to Chris Brasher of the Observer. I had difficulty in hearing him and had to ask him to repeat time after time. He had to ask me too. He got very suspicious. What was my call sign? Why hadn’t I got any other channels?
I tried to explain that the GPO had taken out the crystals so that I couldn’t use the other channels but it did sound pretty far-fetched put into words. Could he speak to the ship’s radio operator? I tried to explain that there was no one else on board, but that sounded a bit queer too. ‘Was this Lord Beaverbrook’s yacht?’ No, it wasn’t; his son’s Drumbeat had put into St John’s to have a new mast fitted and had a crew of ten whereas this was a single-hander.
Then he said he couldn’t hear me very well and suggested I should try somebody else. I said hastily that it didn’t matter about the rest of the message if he would send off what I had already given him. I said, ‘Check up with Cape Race, they sent a telegram off for me a few days ago.’ I feel I have done my duty but my brush with civilization made me feel jaded.
Soon after I tacked to the south again as I was getting near Halifax harbour entrance and I did not want to be in a steamer lane after dark in the thick fog. I have been sailing along this coast of Nova Scotia and Breton Isle for 150 miles off and on and have not seen a sign of it. It will be odd if I get to New York without seeing any land since Eddystone Rock.
When I turned away from Halifax I began making everything snug for what looked like a really dirty night. I dismantled the R/T aerial because it was chafing the reefed mainsail badly. After I had dealt with everything, the jib and reefed main were making such frightful heavy weather of it that I started putting my oilskins back on to set the trysail and hope for a night’s peace. As I was dressing the wind lulled as quickly as it had blown up.
It is now so quiet that more sail seems needed. But I am not to be drawn. No more sail to be added till dawn. One takes life much too seriously.
I got quietly ticked off by the Primus stove, which for some days had burnt more and more feebly. I wondered if I could do anything about it and fiddled with it, cleaned it. Looking down from above, the two top pieces having been removed, I tried the turn-on knob and got a strong jet of paraffin straight in my eye. Wearing glasses I was all right, but I took it as a strong hint not to be so serious.
12. July 14th to 21st
Free Wind at Last – The Ship in the Fog – Promise of Gale
– Under the Storm Jib – School of Porpoises – Mother Carey’s
Chickens and Mollyhawks – A Perfect Sailing Day – The First
Dry Patches – Starlit Night – Tide Rip on George’s Bank –
Overcrowded Sea – Fishing Smacks – The Nicolas Bowater –
New York on the Chart – Radio Bearing of Cape Cod –
Nantucket Shoal-Thick Fog and Flat Calm – The Sound of
Texas Tower – The Lurking Motor Vessel – Wonderful Day
at Sea’ – The Forty Days in Danger! – The First Land Sighted
Since the Eddystone: Block Island – Cleaning and Washing –
Along Long Island – Talking to New York Coastguard – The
ETA at Ambrose Light – Becalmed – ‘Your Wife is On Board’
– ‘You Are First!’
14th July. 1055 hrs. It isn’t rational; here am I biting my mental fingernails through frustration and yet if I arrived and returned to a city life I should be thinking of such a jaunt as this all the time and wishing I were away on it.
The wind I have longed for is here this morning. It has freed at last, a northwester. Unfortunately it is younger sister to a dead calm and besides advancing me only 2 miles in an hour and a half, it causes about five times as much work as a sailing breeze. At least we are headed in the right direction even if only at 11⁄3 knots.
I saw a ship this morning so have visual evidence that there is someone else on this planet. It seemed to be headed for me in the fog, sounding its foghorn and I uneasily got out my little tooter and a loaded Very pistol. It crossed my bows and I saw its ghostly
outlines through the fog.
15th July. 1115 hrs. I got myself out of a bagful of toil and trouble by a bit of canny laziness; never a dull moment! But wait a minute and I’ll tell you of yesterday while a pot of Guinness sends its humanizing tentacles through my desiccated arteries – I’ve been in oilskins since six o’clock this morning.
I glibly say ‘Never a dull moment’but yesterday was terrible. I didn’t write any more, I was so low-spirited. Nothing does down a racing man (sorry, I had to make a dash for the tiller when we gybed. I’m afraid Miranda hasn’t yet learnt properly what a gybe is) than a calm. Apart from being stuck, that awful slatting of sails and banging of blocks and tapping of halliards gets one down. And then the work is far more than in an honest straightforward gale; lowering and hoisting sails, changing sails and trim.
Finally at 2330 hrs. last night I gave up trying to make use of the faint puffs which kept on tantalizing all day. I lowered and furled the main, lowered the genoa and tied it down to the foredeck. If I went on trying to sail, the best result would only be a mile or two advanced during the night and me too dog tired if a real wind arrived next day to take advantage of it.
At 0400 hrs. I felt a breeze, so rousted myself out of my berth. I tried to make a cup of coffee but the Primus jibbed. I went on deck and began unfurling the main. Then I thought ‘I’ll make sure first what this wind is.’ I had poked my head up and assessed it at north. Now, certainly, it was north-east. That meant, no mainsail but twin spinnakers with booms fully rigged. That was a man-size job especially in the dark and I decided the Primus must work and I must have some coffee before I set about it. This was when, after a second cup and some breakfast, my canny laziness took charge and I decided to return to my blankets and sleep till dawn.
At the back of my mind must have been the big smooth swell which had begun creeping in from the south yesterday afternoon. That meant a storm somewhere even if the surface of the swell was oily calm. I woke at six to find a Force 7 wind in full whine with promise of a vicious little gale.
I thanked my stars that I had not been caught out with all that spinnaker nonsense with the terrific to-do of rigging it all first and then double the effort to get it all in in a gale two hours later. However, a real northeaster was too good to miss so I hopped up as quickly as I could and after bagging the genoa and making the loosely furled main snug I set the little storm jib and did the best I could to set the ship running before the wind.
Unfortunately running puts a heavy load on the rudder and as Miranda has to have her spanker topped-up to avoid fouling the backstay she has not enough power to control the rudder. So we wander downhill between south and west with an occasional gybe to north of west which requires my darting up to put the helm over and bring her back to south of west.
After a second breakfast I set the trysail. While doing so I watched a vast school of porpoises. They were near but not taking any notice of Gipsy Moth unless Gipsy Moth was making them surface.
As soon as I set the trysail the ship became quiet and seemed to amble or sidle quietly down wind. From the cabin I could clearly hear, quite far off, the hiss of the combers as they came up astern. They are not very big and yet it is amazing in how short a time they build up from a calm sea. Now I can hear the hiss of heavy rain on the sea as well as on the deck.
I wish this blow would last two days and put me well south. I wouldn’t mind being pushed into the Gulf Stream becau
se it ought to be followed by a northerly which would give me a free wind to make straight for New York.
1605 hrs. What a vast difference between running before a gale and bashing into it. I was in the cockpit watching Miranda’s handiwork and could not tear myself away for an hour … the keynote of the blow seems a big deep sigh. If one is fussy and listens to the detail the whine and occasional shriek of the wind are there. Of course the cockpit is a very sheltered spot with the dodgers rigged at the sides.
The Mother Carey’s Chickens whom I dread seeing in fine weather because bad nearly always follows after you have seen them, look wonderful skimming the surface. They seem very intrigued by the log-line which I see snaking its way over the waves and from side to side like a piece of loose string dropped wriggling on the floor. One would think the log rotator would pull it out straight and would find it difficult to follow such a tortuous path. I saw one Mother C’s Chicken peck at the line. There are bigger birds, Mollyhawks I guess, which seem to be enjoying themselves zooming up into the blast.
I was watching to see if the combers would poop us. It has always been said that the disturbance of the water by a ship causes the waves to break. This boat has such a clean design of hull that she scarcely disturbs the water as she slips through at 5 knots.
The fog has gone, thank heaven! I’m glad to get away from Nova Scotia. I coasted it for 150 miles, I suppose, without a glimpse because of the fog. I’ve got the stove going again, though, it is so chilly and clammy in the cabin.
Alone Across the Atlantic Page 16