20th July. 0040 hrs. That last move of mine was a good one. When I resurfaced at ten past nine after my snooze, I found the ship going well. Miranda must have called a conference after I left and they decided to show what could be done if only I would leave them alone. Master Ghoster was pulling really well and they were doing 5 knots.
We were lucky to get away from that place. On the way out we were sailing through one of the tide rips and only just gaining on it. For quite a time the stern of the boat was in the tide rip and the bows were in smooth-surfaced water.
Since we emerged in the dark we have twice been waylaid by a motor vessel. I watched it while it waited for us to come up to it. When we were close it crossed our bows – too close for my comfort; one never knows what these powered vessels know about yachts and I had no navigation lights so he could claim he thought me stationary if he bit me. After that he sheered off but he or another similar turned up again an hour later. Are they coastguards (but don’t you think they would speak to me if they were?) or do you think they were considering hi-jacking me or whatever they do now in American thrillers? I must stop because my eyes refuse to stay open.
1915 hrs. It’s not racing but it has been a wonderful sail, or should I put it better as ‘a wonderful day at sea’? It was hot enough to lunch in the cockpit stripped for a sunbath. That was wonderful after the past month. But from a racing point of view I’ve had to pay for it by having thick fog during the night and half the morning and a very light wind this afternoon dead in the eye from New York as usual. So we have been ambling along at 1-2 knots. Bang goes my chance of finishing tomorrow morning, which would have made the crossing forty days.
Suddenly becalmed, I had to go and sort out the schemozzle. I hope it is for a wind-shift to the north-west as promised by the forecaster. Yesterday he said it would be southerly to sou-westerly today and I ambled off all the afternoon on the southerly tack in anticipation of this southerly wind coming. But it has been the usual WNW. all day.
When I started this race I had high-flying ambitions of finishing in four weeks; then I had hoped for thirty days. Now forty days is going west, I suppose I shall find the rivals who have gone by the Azores south route will all be in New York.
I sighted my first land or landmark today since the Eddystone. It was Black Island at the entrance to Long Island Sound. I was sorry in a way because I thought it would have been amusing not to sight anything between Eddystone and the Ambrose light vessel.
Sighting land does make navigation easy, it was only necessary to take off the bearings of the two ends of the island to get a fix in a minute instead of waiting for radio beacons to start their signals, then get the bearings, in fact lots of bearings usually.
I have worked like a beaver all day … cleaning and washing the cabin, the stove, everything … shave, hair cut, washing shirts. Sheila dropped me a pretty broad hint I think when she said it was quite unnecessary for a single-handed voyager to turn up looking like a tramp with a filthy boat. She is right, too. But still a little sordid squalor is rather nice sometimes when the alternative is hard labour with brushes and things.
I quite understand why people used to – and still do – go into retreat. During a month alone I think at least you become a real person and you are concerned only with the real values of life.
21st July. 0020 hrs. What a disappointment! When the wind came it was a northerly instead of southerly and gave us a broad reach. We fairly scuttled along at 7¼ knots for an hour and a half. I got quite excited at the possibility of a good romp to the finishing line.
But it was not to be; the wind has just backed to northwest and we are hard on the wind again. You would think, wouldn’t you, that in a 4,000-mile race we might have had a good fast reach for one day.
It was rather a crisis when the wind stole upon us out of the calm. I set Miranda and clamped her to the tiller-lines, then started hoisting the mainsail. But I had it half up when it fouled the confounded R/T aerial. So I had to lower it and partly lower the aerial to get it out of the way.
I had the main half hoisted again, when I suddenly noticed that Miranda was not in the attitude I expected. I had to drop the main right down again and bustled aft to the stern. I found Miranda’s clamp was not working. This was a serious matter. If anything happened to M, I should be in a bad way … I dismantled the clamp and found a spindle was rusted in.
This was soon put right. What a relief! Up went the main and we were off. A wonderful thing, going fast at night. Can’t keep awake. Good night. Good night.
0400 hrs. Still at it. I never got that sleep I mentioned. We were off course and by the time I had checked sheets of both genoa and mainsail and retrimmed all round something else had cropped up. I don’t mind; it is pretty exhilarating to be charging through a starlit night at 7· 1 knots, which is what we have averaged since 2300 hrs. A broad reach which we are back to is the most difficult to trim for self-steering to keep a steady course within a few degrees. Normally, with sea room I wouldn’t mind Miranda ranging over an arc of 30 or 40° on a broad reach but here we are sailing along the 100-mile straight front of Long Island and a change of course while I slept could soon have us charging up the beach at this speed.
Though there are lights (marine and air) along the island you can only see one at a time, which makes it hard work – longer work. I’ve just done a thing I don’t approve of unless there is nothing better, taken a running fix of an airport beacon. I rough-checked the result with two radio beacon bearings. None of all these is reliable on its own in the night but they form a picture. I’m trying to keep a certain distance from the coast, 8 miles, to be just outside the steamer lane close inshore. I’ve seen quite a number of steamers pass.
63 miles to go at 0330: I wonder if this wind will hold.
0930 hrs. I made contact with a New York coastguard on the R/T and I am standing by the set at the moment expecting him to call me back after speaking to Ambrose Light. I had a wonderful sail last night – 64 miles in 9¾ hours. On the strength of it I told the coastguard I would be at Ambrose at 1330 if the wind holds. I fear it must drop however.
It is a day of days … fine, cloudless, sparkling, calm-enough sea, nice sailing wind – the yachtsman’s dream. 24 miles to go. What do you think? Will that black-bearded Viking be in already? I wish this coast guard would call me. I want to get on with my ship’s husbandry (I had to sign the registration papers for the yacht as the ‘ship’s husband’).
1050. Becalmed. Set Ghoster. Lowered main. 3,979 miles (3,919 on log plus 60 unlogged at start and during voyage).
1143 hrs. Faint breeze. Started moving under Ghoster only. Hard at it tidying decks and cabin. Very disappointed that I cannot possibly arrive at 1330 when I said I would if the wind held. Cannot get contact on R/T with New York coastguards. Hoped a fishing-launch would approach so that I could ask it to R/T New York coastguards.
1330. Decided to have some lunch when the faint breeze livened up and I decided it was worthwhile setting the main.
I never got my lunch till twelve and a half hours later, two hours after the following midnight. From this moment everthing was excitement and action.
As soon as we began to move seriously I tried again to call up the New York coastguards. Suddenly a clear voice broke in which I could hear plainly. ‘This is the Edith G at the Ambrose Light. Your wife is on board and wants to speak to you.’ I was surprised at this voice. I knew it but couldn’t place it. (No wonder! It was Captain Percy, senior captain of BOAC – a fellow court member of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators who had been sent by the Grand Master, Prince Philip, and the Master K.G. Bergin, to welcome me on arrival. The last time I had heard his voice was at a court meeting of the Guild in London.)
He said: ‘Your wife wants to speak to you.’ I could hear a word or two from her but she was pressing the wrong button. Then Percy came on, strong-voiced: ‘We will meet you … What is your course?’ – ‘270 °.’ ‘O. K. Two-seven-zero,’ he said.
; From now on, of course, my lunch was off. I watched every launch near by. I was now out of sight of land and it felt wrong to have left Fire Island to head out to sea again. I took another set of bearings from Ambrose, Barnegat and Fire Island to check my position. At 1550 I was met by a fishing-boat with my wife aboard looking very smart in her Mirman hat and friends waving greetings.
As soon as I could decently do so, I called out, ‘Any news of the others?’ The reply was honeysweet, ‘You are first.’
But I was not to cross the finishing line all that easily. The wind veered and freshened. I had to down the ghoster and set old No. 2, the old warrior. Then I had a snappy beat to windward to reach the light vessel.
At 1730 I rounded the light vessel. The race was over 40 days 11 hours 30 minutes after the starting gun. Distance sailed 4,004½ miles.
Epilogue
My voyage turned out wholly different from what I’d expected. For example I only expected a ration of one gale for the whole trip. And although I had considered the 10% probability of fog over 1,600 miles, I never expected that I would, in fact, sail through 1,400 miles of it equal to 21⁄3 Fastnet races through continuous fog.
I certainly never expected to have headwinds for 2,600 miles of sailing. I was hard on the wind tacking all that distance which is foul sailing in Atlantic seas.
I think my yacht is too big for single-handed racing. The sails and booms are too big to handle in rough weather. The mainsail and genoa are each 380 square feet and, as previously stated, the yacht is nearly 40 feet long overall with a mast 55 feet high.
For solo cruising with smaller sails set it is not too big. If another solo transatlantic race took place and handicapping was asked for I would agree happily provided I was given a handicap for having too large a boat. A 9-tonner is the ideal size, in my opinion. All the same, I consider the idea of a non-handicap race a good one. And if the race is to do good for yachting, and I am quite certain it has already done so, then avoid handicaps. The value of the race is to find out the fastest ocean cruiser racer which one man can handle. If one man can handle it, then it must be all that easier for a crew to sail. In order that a big yacht can be sailed solo, devices and techniques for self-steering and easy handling must be perfected which will benefit yachting in general.
Miranda, my self-steering vane worked well – by the end of the race very well. By that time I’d learned a great deal more about sailing and could achieve much more from the trimming of the sails and of Miranda.
My rivals had much simpler and smaller vanes. With a rudder outside the transom of the boat, a tab rudder can be fitted to the trailing edge rather like the trimming tab at the trailing edge of the rudder of an aeroplane. It needs only a small vane which is a great advantage. Curiously the tab works in the opposite sense to the rudder. That is to say if you want your rudder moved to starboard the tab is moved to port and the pressure on the tab pushes the main rudder over to the other side. I think it might well result from this race that self-steering devices will become readily available for yachts. Personally I believe that I shall never try to cruise again without one. It means that two, say a man and wife, can cruise comfortably night and day with a self-steering device, and live a very pleasant life instead of being bound one or the other to the helm all the time. It’s been said that when the Hiscocks sailed round the world they hardly ever met at sea because one was always on the helm, and the other asleep.
Here is what happened to some of my rivals. Blondie has only one sail on Jester, a kind of Chinese lug sail, which rolls down like a blind. His great success with this boat in his 48½-day crossing proves there must be something in his rig which might be going to revolutionize yachting. His theory is that yachting today is in the same state as would be automobile driving if every time you came to a hill you had to stop, jack up the back axle and change the back wheels for smaller ones in order to get uphill. I think he had good weather after the first three days when he had the same gales that we all had and he quite obviously dropped a long way behind the conventional-rig boat. He went as far in three days as I went in the first two.
It would appear however that he did gain at first by going far north, that he did get into the west-going circulation of the depressions and at times he romped along. He gained particularly on me during the three days which I lost in the storm. By July 1st he was ahead of me in longitude although a long way farther north. At one point of his route he was only 300 miles from Greenland. Personally I think he made a mistake going up so far north and that at the beginning of July he was in a poor position. He must come down southwards to get round Newfoundland whether he wanted to or not. I think he lost a lot of time through that. By the time he reached Cape Race, on July 14th, he was 6½ days behind me. After that coming down the eastern seaboard of America he passed outside Sable Island and outside Nantucket light vessel. In other words his route was farther off the coast than mine. Blondie said he only took the helm for one hour between Europe and America but had to spend a lot of time adjusting his wind vane and steering apparatus to get his boat sailing right.
Blondie seems to have had an experience similar to my queer adventure off the Nova Scotia coast. In his case he was approaching the south-west corner of Ireland and, according to his dead reckoning, was well and truly in a safe position. He went below and turned in. Presently to his amazement the yacht tacked itself and went off on the other tack. He put his head up through his cubby hole to see what had gone wrong and a short distance away was the Irish coast with the waves breaking on the rocks.
David Lewis in Cardinal Vertue had some interesting experiences too. As mentioned in my account, June 13th, he lost his mast soon after leaving Plymouth. He started off with a small jib, but thought he would change to a big genoa to race the other boats and the extra press of sail snapped his mast in two. He put back to Plymouth and Mashford Bros., the five brothers who own a well-known boatyard in Plymouth, worked all the weekend to rebuild and re-rig the mast by Monday, two days later. David started again, and followed much the same route that I did, along the 50th parallel. He passed over Flemish Cap just east of the Grand Banks which I also passed over. Fifty miles south of Cape Breton he encountered a Canadian frigate which closed him on his weather side, drifted down on top of him and carried away one of his spreaders. After that he proceeded along the Nova Scotia coast in thick fog as I had and at one time he heard and then saw breakers ahead of him, tacked immediately but lost his log on the rocks in doing so. He proceeded along the same route as myself down to Cape Cod. In a Force 7 blow he sailed through Pollock’s Rip just south of Cape Cod although he hadn’t intended to. He went inside Martha’s Vineyard and went aground for a while in Woods’Hole in the middle of the night, as a result of getting very tired with no rest for two nights. His main boom, swinging, hit him a crack on the head and fractured his skull; but David’s fibre is tough and he battled on. He crossed the finishing-line 56 days after the start of the race.
My dreaded rival, the black-bearded Viking, went down past the Azores to the 36th parallel. He reached Bermuda on July 24th, 43 days out. From the Azores New York is only 500 miles farther than Bermuda. At his rate of progress he would have made New York in 50 days had he gone straight there and I believe he could have given Blondie a close race if he had not hauled into Bermuda. As it was, his time for the race was 63 days. His race was intensely interesting to me because I had nearly decided on the same route – the ‘flying-fish route’ as I called it in expectation of finding flying-fish on deck for breakfast at that latitude – instead of the ice-fog-headwind Great Circle. I gave the Great Circle route three votes and the flying-fish route two votes. After the start when I had been kept on a south-westerly course for three days by the strong headwinds and was off Ushant I very nearly continued on south-west to the flying-fish route. Today I wonder what would have been the result; I certainly do not know. (By the way, my wife and I kept close to this route on our sail home from New York and we did have flying-fish on the deck twice.
Also a number of small squid.)
Jean Lacombe in Cap Horn arrived on August 24th. He seems to have followed the flying-fish route as far as the Azores but then instead of sailing along the 36th parallel he kept to the 39th. According to ship sightings, he placed himself in the middle of the strongest stream of the Gulf Stream about 1,000 miles east of New York and had only advanced 100 miles during 10 days. He would have to sail 4 hours a day, perhaps more, to make good the current of 1–4 knots against him before he made any progress towards his objective. I think that he cannot have had a copy of the U. S. hydrographic charts. These charts not only show the average of all the winds over many years, the iceberg limits, sea temperatures, fog possibilities, percentage of gales, hurricane tracks and magnetic variation but also the average tracks and speed of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic currents for each month. Had he changed his position by 180 miles south or by 250 miles north-west he would have got out of the main Gulf Stream. Not only was he making the slowest passage but also had the smallest boat, so that he had the doubled disadvantage of taking longest and having least room for stores. Even on the Great Circle route we had about 0·4 knot current against us right across. That is to say about 9½ miles of adverse current to make good every day before starting to make any progress towards the destination.
When I got into New York I had to proceed to Staten Island. There to meet me was a captain of the U.S. Air Force and his mission was to find out if I had had any uncanny experiences or felt peculiar or if I had done anything odd during my 40 days of solitude. I couldn’t think of anything but of course after being alone for that time one is naturally anxious to oblige. Psychiatrists seem to attach great importance to hearing voices. Yes, I suddenly remembered, I did hear voices once. This was off George’s Bank in US waters and I was opening my last bottle of gin. Startled by voices I popped out into the cockpit and there were the owners – about five people sitting up on the top deck of a big steamer just going by, obviously enjoying their evening cocktails.
Alone Across the Atlantic Page 18