The Lonely Sea and the Sky

by Sir Francis Chichester

  At a favourable moment I made a rush for the foredeck, after slacking off one sheet from the cockpit to let the spinnaker pole forward, and to decrease the area of sail offered to the wind. As soon as I stepped on the deck I realised that I was in for big trouble. I found a 60mph wind, which I had not noticed in the shelter of the cockpit with the yacht bowling downwind. My sleepiness had been partly to blame, but the storm was blowing up fast. When I slacked away the halyard, the bellied-out sail flapped madly from side to side. The noise was terrific, and the boat began slewing wildly to port while the great genoa bellied out and flogged at the other sail with ponderous heavy blows. I was scared that the forestays would be carried away. I rushed back to the tiller and put the yacht back on course, and then forward again to grab some of the genoa in my arms and pass a sail tie round it to decrease the area. I had the 380-square foot genoa on one side, and the 250-foot jib on the other. Next, I slacked away the halyard to let the lower half of the genoa drop into the sea, while I struggled with the spinnaker pole on that side. I had more trouble with the jib, because I could not get the sail clew free from the spinnaker pole; the sail was like a crazy giant out of control. In the end I twisted the foot of the sail round and round at the deck, and finally I got control. It was dangerous work, and I was grateful and relieved to find myself whole in limb and unsmashed at the end of it.

  I realised that I had a serious storm on my hands. I spent five and a quarter hours on deck without a break, working hard. After lashing down the spinnaker poles, I next started on Miranda, who was already breaking up. The topping lift had parted, letting the spanker drop, and the halyard of the little topsail had gone. I could easily have got into a flap; it was now blowing great guns, and I had to stand on the stern pulpit while I worked with my hands at full stretch above my head at the wet ropes jammed tight. Miranda's mast was 14 feet high, and free to rotate with the wind. I was standing with stays and wires all round me, and could have been swept off the pulpit horribly easily if the wind had suddenly changed direction. I told myself that it would be much worse if I had iced-up ropes to deal with; not to fuss; and to get on with the job. There seemed fifty jobs to do, but I did them all in time. I lowered the mainsail boom to the deck, and treble-lashed it there. It was only after I had finished that I became aware of the appalling uproar, with a high-pitched shriek or scream dominating. I managed to strip off both Miranda's sails, and secured her boom with sail ties. I reckoned that the wind was now 80mph (I still think of winds above 60mph in terms of miles per hour instead of knots, because of getting used to the speeds of my seaplane propeller slipstream in 'mph').

  The seas had been moderate when the storm broke, and by the time I got below at 4 o'clock in the afternoon I was still able to cook myself a breakfast, a fry-up of potatoes, onions and three eggs. I reckoned that the wind was now 80mph. I went to sleep reading Shakespeare's Tempest. At 8.30 in the evening, I woke to find the sea getting up, and the ship taking an awful pounding. Some seas, like bombs exploding, made the ship jump and shake; she was lying beam-on to the blast, which was from the north-north-east and was moving pretty fast, about 3 knots. I knew that I must try to slow her down, so I dressed in my wet oilskins. First, I tried to head her into wind, but no matter where I set the tiller she refused to lie other than broadside to the wind. I had a big outer motor tyre for a sea anchor, and I shackled this on to the anchor chain, paying out 10 fathoms of chain over the stern; I also paid out 20 fathoms of 2½ inch warp over the stern. It did not seem to make the least difference to the speed.

  I put the wind speed now at 100mph The noise was terrifying, and it seemed impossible that any small ship could survive. I told myself not to be weak – what was a 90 or 100-mile wind to a man on Everest? I filled a punctured tin with oil, and hung it over the side amidships in a piece of canvas, but it had no effect at all – the oil was too thick, and we were moving too fast. In any case, it was soon carried away.

  As night came on I tried to sleep, but waiting in the dark, for the next crash made me tense, and I kept on bracing myself against being thrown out of the bunk. I was afraid; there was nothing I could do, and I think that the noise, the incredible din, was the chief cause of fear. The high-pitched shriek from the rigging was terrifying and uncanny. Two hours before midnight I came to think that we were headed into the eye of the storm. I dressed reluctantly, feeling dry in the mouth whenever I started to do anything, but better as soon as I began to do it. With difficulty, I climbed out into the cockpit. It took strength to hold the rudder full on, but slowly the ship jibbed round. She seemed easier on the east-south-east tack. When I went below again I could not help laughing; all the same books, clothes, cushions and papers were back on the floor. I dozed, but could not sleep. I lay tense and rigid, waiting for the next sea to hit. Nothing mattered to me now except survival. My main fear was that one of the spinnaker poles would break loose and hole the hull. I found that by shining a torch through the cabin ports I could see the poles where they lay on the deck, and I was relieved to find the lashings still holding. I decided then that I had made a blunder, and that the south-east heading would take me into the eye of the storm, not away from it. However, the ship seemed better off on this tack, and I left her.

  But that tack was taking me away from New York, and four hours after midnight I could no longer bear it. I dressed and went on deck again. Some of the waves were breaking clear over the ship; one filled the ventilator and shot a jet into the cabin, but everything in it was already wet. I jibbed round on to the west-north-west heading. I reckoned that the wind had dropped to 80mph, but the seas were rougher and would be rougher still later on. The angle of heel indicator came up against the stop at 55 degrees, and I watched it do so time after time. It was difficult to stand up or to move about the cabin, but the queer thing was that the Aladdin heater went on burning steadily throughout; it just did not seem to care a damn for any storm, and was a great comfort. All night the ship ploughed ahead at 2 to 3 knots, towing the sea anchor and the warp. Next morning the wind had dropped. It was still Force 9 but I went on deck relaxed and grateful to be alive. I climbed on the stern pulpit to try making some temporary repairs to Miranda, and looked round to survey the deck. It was incredible, but nothing much seemed to have happened. The dinghy was still on deck, lashed to the cabin top. (I had doubled all the lashings, of course.) Apart from Miranda's gear, which was in a mess, and her gaff gooseneck, which had sheared, the only damage was that the bolts fastening five stanchions had snapped, and a small section of bulwark has been carried away. The wind was still north-north-east. The turbulent, impressive seas, like mountainous white-capped country, rode down on to the ship. The waves were not regular. Looking down from a crest to the trough below, I estimated the height at about 25 feet. With the wind abated, I could now hear the striker seas coming. There would be a lull as the ship was deep in the trough, and I would hear the sizzling sound from the comber before it struck. I wondered if I could set a spitfire jib aback to ease the deadly rolling which made it dangerous to move about below. I hoped that none of my rivals had been caught in this storm. They might well have escaped it if I was right in thinking that it was a small cyclonic eddy, a williwaw, of perhaps only 50 miles diameter between a high and a low pressure system. The calm preceding it, and the rapid decrease in wind strength afterwards, were evidence to support this.

  By 8.45 p.m. the wind was down to Force 6, and I had a small jib set and drawing. I could not set any more until Miranda was in action again. She looked a forlorn wreck. While I was writing up my log a wave broke over the whole boat. I was driven nearly crazy by the rolling. I put one foot against the chart table so that I could peel some cooked potatoes, but the boat snapped over on to the other beam and the whole saucepanful of potatoes shot over the cabin floor.

  Next day I worked for fourteen and a half hours non-stop, repairing the damage to Miranda. There was no wind, or very little, but the seas were 24 feet from crest to trough, and steep. The rolling was really nasty,
back-snapping stuff. It was difficult to stand on deck, and even when I tried sitting on it I was suddenly slid from one side of the deck to the other. I wanted to reach the top of Miranda's mast, 14 feet above the deck, to replace a parted rope. I started climbing up, wriggling my way through the network of wires, stays and cordage. As I neared the top, the yacht rolled and I swung round with the rotating mast until I was clinging to the underside of it. I hung on tight, waiting for the yacht to roll back. She gave a kind of flick roll, which made the mast continue turning – with me clinging to it. The next roll caught it at exactly the right instant, and in a few seconds I was spinning round and round fast, clutching the mast like a scared mouse. After my first astonished fright I was not worried about myself, because the yacht was not moving, but I was scared stiff that Miranda would snap under the strain. Then it struck me what a fantastically comic sight it must appear, from a fish's eye view, to see me spinning round like a monkey clinging to a pole. I burst out laughing. But I was relieved when I had succeeded in hooking the top of the pulpit with my instep, and managed to stop the spin.

  One curious thing about the storm was that, although it blew the burgee to shreds, it left untouched a pair of underpants which I had buttoned round the handrail on the cabin top, hoping that they would dry in the calm spell before the storm started.

  I interrupted my work twice to get sunshots when the sun appeared, but did not stop to work them out. Next day, however, I worked up my dead reckoning for 8 days to 27 June, allowing for every change of course and speed, and allowing for the speed and direction in which the yacht had moved during the storm. The lie of the anchor chain with its white wake had given me our line of travel. The sun fix showed that my dead reckoning position was 98 miles too far west; I had forgotten to allow for the head-on Gulf Stream, which at half a knot would set me back 96 miles in the eight days. On 29 June the Mauretania passed a mile away, looking vast, powerful and steady in the dirty-grey weather. I tried to signal with my Aldis lamp, but it would not work. With three blasts of her foghorn she was on her way, leaving me forlorn. This was only the third ship I had seen since the start, although I had heard two pass me in the fog.

  During my third week I made good only 284 miles in a straight line. I lost two days in the storm, one day repairing the damage, and a fourth day when I was so exhausted that I sailed badly. The remaining three days of the week I was soused in fatigue, although I did not realise it at the time. The night of 1 July was a sample; the wind was dead in the eye looking at New York, the sea was rough and nasty, and I could not get off to sleep until 1.30 a.m. An hour later I was woken by the thunderous crash of a wave breaking on deck. I went on deck after donning my whole oilskin rig, but found nothing smashed or even displaced. I was overtired and jittery. I stayed on deck, trying to get more than the 2.8 knots Gipsy Moth was doing and which I thought not nearly enough, but I could not trim her to sail faster, however I tried. The truth was, that she was being overpowered. It was a Force 7 wind, and I did not realise it; I was getting used to wind. At last it dawned on my dopey brain, and I tried to reef the mainsail. I began slacking away the mainsail to ease the pressure on it, which was jamming the reefing gears. The ship at once shot ahead into the night like a scalded cat, and the more I slacked away the mainsail the faster she went until, by the time the mainsail was practically weather cocking with the sail weaving in the wind, I reckoned our speed at 10 knots.

  It was exhilarating sport, tearing through the black night with the seething, foaming bow waves dazzling white in the bright light from my pressure lamp rigged in the stern. When I moved forward to the mast I saw the fantastic sight of a huge black giant in the sky ahead moving as I moved. I thought I must have rubbed Aladdin's lamp and that here was the Genie; it was my own huge shadow, projected on the fog ahead by the lamp in the stern. In the end I lowered the mainsail and, standing on top of the dinghy lashed to the cabin roof, I gathered in the madly flapping sail by armfuls until at last I had it subdued and furled. The speed was still 5 knots with only the working jib set, so I left it like that and finally got to sleep at 8 o'clock in the morning. I was up again at 11, feeling exhausted.

  Everything seemed to go wrong in that week. I ended it up on the night of 2 July by freeing Miranda and leaving the yacht to sail herself through the night. I refused to struggle any longer with one sail change after another. During my half sleep I could hear the yacht turning round in circles, and in the morning the log showed that she had moved only 9 miles during the night. Wearily I struggled out of my blankets after five hours, when I longed for another twelve hours sleep. As I was making some coffee I was thrown across the cabin, which not only caused great pain to the tail of my spine, the first part of my body to hit the other side, but shattered the Thermos flask I was holding, so that it took me ten minutes to sweep up the splinters scattered all over the cabin floor.

  At the end of this third week Blondie, who had escaped the storm, had sailed farther in a straight line from Plymouth than I had. However, he had been bearing away to the north, passing within 300 miles of Greenland, and he was still 85 miles farther from New York than I was. Lewis had gained on me too, and was now only 350 miles astern.

  During the next week's sailing I came to terms with life. I found that my sense of humour had returned; things which would have irritated me or maddened and infuriated me ashore made me laugh out loud, and I dealt with them steadily and efficiently. Rain, fog, gale, squalls and turbulent forceful seas under grey skies became merely obstacles. I seemed to have found the true values of life. The meals I cooked myself were feasts, and my noggins of whisky were nectar. A good sleep was as valuable to me as the Koh-i-noor diamond. All my senses seemed to be sharpened; I perceived and enjoyed the changing character of the sea, the colours of the sky, the slightest change in the noises of the sea and wind; even the differences between light and darkness were strong, and a joy. I was enjoying life, and treating it as it should be treated – lightly. Tackling tough jobs gave me a wonderful sense of achievement and pleasure.

  For example, on 5 July I was fast asleep, snug among my blankets at 9.30 at night. I woke with a feeling of urgency and apprehension. A gale squall had hit the yacht, and I had to get out quickly on deck to drop sails. This is one of the toughest things about sailing alone – switching from fast sleep in snug warm blankets, to being dunked on the foredeck in the dirty black night a minute later. Conditions have to be at their worst to demand the urgency, and I had that dry feeling in my mouth as I dragged on my wet oilskins in the dim light. Then I was standing in the water in the cockpit, and from there pressing against the gale. I made my way to the mast, and wrestled with the mainsail halyard with one hand, slacking it away as I grabbed handfuls of mainsail with the other hand and hauled the sail down. The sail bound tight against the mast crosstree and shroud under the pressure of the wind, and the slides jammed in their tracks. The stem of the yacht was leaping 10 feet into the air and smacking down to dash solid crests over my back. The thick fog was luminous when the lightning flashed, but I heard no sound at all of thunder; it was drowned by the thunderclaps from the flogging sails. I scarcely noticed the deluge of rain among the solid masses of seawater hitting me.

  When I got below, my oilskins off, sitting on the settee in glorious comfort sipping a bowl of tomato soup, I had a wonderful sense of achievement. It was a positive, but perhaps a simple thing, dealing with a difficult and tricky job in a thrilling, romantic setting, When next I left my blankets I found that Gipsy Moth had averaged 6.1 knots for the past four hours with only a storm jib set, which showed that there had been plenty of wind.

  This was the sort of life I led day after day and night after night. Everything in the boat seemed to be wet. One morning I was delighted to see a dry patch on the cabin floor, only to find that it was a piece of light-coloured material which had slipped out of a locker. I began to worry about a fuel shortage for the Aladdin heater, which was going day and night. Whenever I had the Primus stove alight I heated a b
ig saucepanful of salt water, and wrapped clothes round it to dry them out a little.

  By this time I was over the Grand Banks, and in fog nearly always, thin fog, thick fog or dense fog, always some kind of fog. Before I started I had intended to heave to and keep watch in fog, but in the event I never slowed down; I was racing, and what difference would it make if I was stopped anyway? I had expected 300 miles of fog, but actually I sailed through no less than 1430 miles, equivalent to two and a third complete Fastnet Races. It did not slow me down directly, but indirectly it did, because sometimes I would lie in my bunk for hours before I got the necessary peace of mind to drop off to sleep. My reason told me the chance of being run down in the broad Atlantic was infinitesimally small; but my instinct said you must be a fool to believe that. There was something uncanny about charging at full speed through this dense impenetrable fog, especially on a dark night.