Whales sleeping on the surface at night are a problem for yachts. A boat under sail makes little noise anyway but if the whale is asleep its first indication of the yacht’s presence will be when it gets hit by it. It is worst with racing yachts because of their speed, and the impact can be enough to seriously injure or even kill the whale and destroy the yacht. The one consolation for our lamentable lack of speed at present is that while a collision might dent both the whale and us a little bit, it is not likely to be life-threatening to either.
We have no way of knowing what type of whale it is. It could be a relatively small Minke, a 50-foot Humpback or an 80-foot, 150-ton Blue. Or any other of the species which leave the Polar Regions annually to winter in warmer seas. There is nothing we can do in the darkness but hope for the best and keep plodding on and we gradually leave the sound of breathing behind.
Which is fortunate, there being no emergency services in the Atlantic. Help depends on whether you are close enough to another vessel that it can pick up your SOS on its VHF radio. As a rule of thumb, if you can see another boat you are within range of its VHF signal, supposing of course that someone is actually listening; and it is possible to spend days without seeing another vessel.
However, we do carry an Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon. Once activated, an EPIRB sends out a signal to a satellite which is then directed to a search-and-rescue centre in Falmouth, England. This centre will then divert the nearest ship to you, but typically when it arrives it offers only one choice: to be taken off your boat and put ashore at its next port of call. If you refuse to abandon your boat, the ship will continue its journey without you.
Cloud cover gradually increases and the night becomes very dark again. With no moon or stars to relieve the darkness you become instantly aware of any illumination when it does appear. A small white light emerges, to the east of us, probably a yacht. You can usually tell because a heavy ship’s light travels in a straight line except in the roughest weather while a yacht, by its relative smallness and lightness, gets buffeted up and down and sideways by sea and wind so that its light bobs about.
On David’s last watch another yacht passes close enough for him to see that our fellow-traveller has his cockpit light on. Since he is overtaking us, he clearly has his engine on as well, because we are becalmed again.
17
Assorted Visitors
It is Sunday morning and the only things I can see are the planet Venus and a quarter moon. When dawn does come it is a reprise of yesterday except that instead of silver and shades of grey it is a Symphony in Silver and Blue. And breathtaking. At last the wind has gone to the north, which would be good for us if only it would strengthen, but unfortunately it is still very weak.
At 7.50 I suddenly notice a cargo ship on our port side, coming from the east and only about three miles off. It is rather worrying that I have not seen it until now and I am not even sleeping on watch. On the contrary, I have not simply caught up on my sleep but feel energised.
At noon David calculates that we are just about halfway to our destination. We had anticipated that by now we would have completed the whole passage. David’s brother will be expecting to receive a telephone call about now from the Cape Verde Islands to say we have arrived, and begin to wonder why he hasn’t.
Late afternoon a tanker passes to starboard, a mere two miles off and heading north; not long afterwards it is followed by a second. Two tankers and a cargo boat all on the same day! And as if that weren’t excitement enough, between the second tanker and us is what looks like a loose buoy – either the navigation or weather kind – which appears to be travelling rapidly in the opposite direction to us. How or why we cannot say. It is almost as if it has some motive power of its own, but it can’t have. If it is a buoy it will be made of steel and weigh several tons. Covered in seaweed and plunging forward like a monstrous wrecking ball it is not something with which you would want a close encounter. And at night, of course, you wouldn’t even be aware of its existence until it hit you.
Some while later we spot water spouts directly ahead of us and go forward, David grabbing a camera. One thing we learned about whales on the southern coast of Spain was: change course to get a look at them and they will vanish; but keep your course and they will gravitate to a point directly ahead of you and wait for you to arrive so that they can have a look at you. Because whales are as interested by something suddenly appearing in their world as we are in ours. When you do get close to them, they begin to sink so that you pass over them. They will then pop up again a safe distance behind your stern. In this way they have observed your boat from four angles – from the side, in front, below and behind.
As we get closer, one-by-one they begin to sink as usual. All except the one lying exactly where our bows are headed. We get closer and closer until we can positively identify it. It is a sperm whale and around 60 feet long.
Its name comes from the spermaceti oil contained in cavities in its huge head which accounts for roughly a third of its overall length. Spermaceti was used to make candles, soap, cosmetics and machine oil until replaced by petroleum.
It was to obtain this valuable oil, along with other products, that these animals were slaughtered in vast numbers. Although thanks to its size and massive jaws the sperm whale could sometimes defend itself against whalers. In the most famous examples, a sperm whale attacked and sank the American whaling ship Essex in 1820; and thirty years later the Ann Alexander. The sinking of the Essex, and the killing of an albino sperm whale known as Mocha Dick which had fought off whalers for several decades, inspired Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick.
It is thought that the whale uses its spermaceti as a buoyancy aid as well as to execute rapid dives as deep as 3km, or nearly 10,000ft. Water at this depth is extremely cold, and spermaceti oil remains the only lubricant capable of keeping equipment functioning in the freezing conditions of space exploration.
We are now a couple of boat lengths away and on the verge of an incredible photograph. David aims the camera. I begin to panic. Why isn’t it sinking? Is it sick? Dead? Asleep? One boat’s length from it my nerve cracks and I bolt for the controls. David’s camera jams and we never do get a picture. To add insult to injury, the moment I wrench the wheel violently to port to avoid impact with this great monster, it drops like a stone and all that is left on the surface are two huge, flat circles of spinning water where it had lain only moments before. The wretched creature has been playing chicken with us.
Sunset this evening is incredible, as if some celestial artist has taken the pink and gold light of the setting sun and used it to paint pictures in the sky. On the north-west horizon there is an island complete with palm trees, houses, hills and forests. While high in the eastern sky, the subject is a huge mountain range covered in snow above a wooded valley.
During the night, the planet Venus is so brilliant that the light it sheds on the sea is as bright as any moon. It is also a very starry night.
As our eighth day at sea dawns, the sky turns azure and all the stars vanish, although Venus and a narrow sliver of moon continue to shine. The sun rises in shimmering red and gold. Silhouetted against it, gliding slowly backwards and forwards on outstretched wings, is a solitary petrel.
The wind has increased a little and is now from the north-east, which is directly over our stern, so we have to bear off a little or the genoa flogs. But at least we are getting a slightly increased speed. The wind even reaches 10 knots briefly at times. Noon to noon we are 65 miles closer to our destination, so things are improving.
Since leaving the Canary Islands, Voyager has been following what is known as the Trade Wind Route. Traditionally, from late November until April, the Trade Winds blow clockwise in an oval shape in that area of the Atlantic Ocean between Central/North America and Europe/North Africa. Complementing this congenial wind is a gentle current flowing in the same direction and there is even a theory that, since both wind and water are with you, even if everything on your boat fro
m rigging to rudder was ruined at the same time you would still, ultimately, albeit very slowly, fetch up on a Caribbean beach. It is not unknown for even abandoned yachts to do exactly that.
This is the same route that Christopher Columbus followed 500 years ago and mariners use it still. You travel south until roughly 20°N 30°W, then make a turn to starboard which takes you west to the Caribbean. And as you have entered the tropics, the weather is getting warmer. Accordingly, from as long ago as the days of the square-rigged sailing ships, received wisdom has been: ‘Head south until the butter melts, then turn right for the Caribbean.’
For those of us from a chilly, over-achieving north this says it all. Ease. Warmth. Laid back. All that’s needed to get you ready for the delights to come is Bob Marley in the background, a hammock slung across the foredeck and a long cold drink with a little parasol in it.
The only problem for us is that there have been no Trade Winds. No gentle current either. And no tropical warmth. Instead we’ve had lumpy seas, winds ranging from squalls to lengthy periods of nothing at all, and a distinct chill in the air. Whether the fault lies with El Niño, global warming or the start of the New Ice Age is anybody’s guess, but it is frustrating.
We are about 300 miles off the African coast at present, opposite Mauritania. At 6.45 a not particularly impressive sun, sinking behind some rather mundane clouds, does something quite extraordinary and turns the whole of the western sky into red and gold molten lava.
It is a very dark night despite the stars.
Our ninth day dawns with us sailing due south. We should really be going south-west but the wind is preventing us. We also have heavy rolling waves which are much bigger than one might expect from the light winds we are experiencing, but which Herb says are the result of strong winds hundreds of miles to the north of us. He also says that we can expect these conditions – light winds and heavy seas – to last for the next three days. Our only sighting in 36 hours is a single light on the eastern horizon around 5am.
At daylight two petrels appear. I run inside for the binoculars to try and see if they are Leach’s or storm petrels but by the time I get back they have disappeared. Something similar occurs about six hours later. The setting sun is an enormous silver disk which slowly disappears behind silver-grey haze and cloud leaving not the tiniest wisp of colour behind it.
And that’s it for the day. Not even a small piece of polystyrene or an empty detergent bottle to excite the eye until 11.15 tonight as we change over the watch. With both of us on deck we use the opportunity to shift the sails and change course. We have been on our present one, with the wind over our port quarter, long enough now to be able to bring it onto our starboard quarter and head directly for the island of St Vincent and its capital, Mindelo.
As we sit together in the cockpit and chat for a few minutes, before David goes off to bed, a bright light travels on a shallow trajectory from east to west very fast and low in the sky. It is behind our backs, on our port side, but as I turn my head towards David to ask him something I catch sight of it out of the corner of my right eye.
In shape it resembles an enormous airliner. It has great holes in its side through which you can look into the blazing inferno of its interior and it is being propelled by a huge fiery red tail. It is also very obviously losing height until it is so low that at one moment I have to peer around David to continue following its progress.
Then suddenly its pace slows, and its fiery red tail diminishes, until it comes to a stop directly off our stern and the tail vanishes altogether. How far away, it is impossible to tell. It could be less than a mile. It might be much more. On a dark sea there is nothing by which to judge distance. What makes it seem close is being able to see through the gaping apertures in its shell into the roaring furnace of its core.
After hovering for a few moments, it breaks into roughly three sections and the great blazing pieces fall into the sea. The middle part is the biggest and drops first, leaving the outer ones momentarily suspended in space before they too drop into the sea, accompanied by gobbets of liquid fire. The whole thing is probably over in less than twenty seconds. Neither of us says anything. We are too startled. Reflecting on it later, we suppose it must have been something from a space programme, burning up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
It is some time after David has gone to bed before it occurs to me that, whatever it was, even a small alteration in our respective routes could have put Voyager directly under it when it fell. And no-one would ever have known what happened to us. It totally changes your perspective on all the times you’ve heard some expert in Houston saying blithely over the airwaves, ‘Oh, it’s perfectly safe. It won’t hurt anybody. It’ll just fall into the sea.’
As I go about my duties during the rest of my watch – checking the horizon and the instruments and filling in the log – I reflect that this has also been a prime example of that provoking adage: Be careful what you wish for, because it might happen. Earlier this evening I had joked about so little happening that an empty plastic bottle floating past our hull would be a major event. Within hours, but for the Grace of God and a mile or two, we could have been flat-packed on the seabed under tons of molten space debris.
Today is Wednesday and our tenth day at sea. A check first thing this morning shows that we are still 194 miles from Mindelo and there is still no sign of the Trade Winds or the current which normally accompanies them. Instead, as Herb predicted, the wind is a light nor’easter combined with big rollers. Except that at present we have rollers coming at us from both the north-east and the south-east which is making for a very confused sea. And when two of them collide just where Voyager happens to be, it makes for a very bumpy ride.
When the sun set yesterday evening it was a huge silver disk surrounded by silvery haze and cloud. It looks exactly the same when it returns this morning, as if it has been lurking just below the horizon all night and re-emerged for duty without bothering to change its clothes.
It sheds no colour, no warmth and little light and doesn’t so much rise as float unsteadily upwards and sideways like a slowly deflating helium balloon. By 8am it is too bright to look at directly but there is still no warmth or colour, rather like a winter sunrise at home.
Half an hour later I am absently gazing at the water and think I see a flock of small birds flying away from our hull. But when I look more closely I can see that they are not birds at all. I have just seen my first-ever flying fish. There are about a dozen of them, around four inches long with black backs, silver bellies and transparent wings and they fly just above the waves for some distance before disappearing into the sea.
At 10am, when David starts the port engine to charge the batteries, a red warning light comes on. We have a broken fan belt. He fits a new one. A cargo boat heading north is the only traffic we see all day. But we should like it to be thoroughly understood by the Universe, please, that flying fish, a cargo boat and a broken fan belt is more than enough excitement for us after last night’s fiery visitor and that we do not desire anything more. Although we do achieve 103 nautical miles in 24 hours which is the best we have achieved so far.
Thursday morning, just after dawn, a tiny land bird flies alongside us, close to our starboard rigging despite being so many miles from land. Whether it has come from the Cape Verde Islands, or is heading there, it shows no interest in landing on Voyager and I find that my admiration for the stamina of very small birds just keeps on growing.
There are also an enormous amount of flying fish today. They really are extraordinary. For a start, why do they do it? There are no insects to catch. And it can’t be that pleasurable because they land with the kind of agonising belly-flop that put me off diving into a swimming pool for years. But they do do it. All day. Thousands of them, resembling sardines with wings, from tiddler to small trout-size. They steer with their tails dropped into the water. The tiny ones go briefly in a straight line, while the mature ones curve and dive, resurface and curve again over a di
stance of around 30 feet before crashing into a wave and disappearing from view.
The wind becomes lighter and moves to the east.
A check of the log shows that in eleven days at sea we have sighted only fourteen other vessels: seven as navigation lights at night plus the yacht with its cockpit light on, and six commercial ships during daylight.
18
Mindelo
Today is Friday 10th December. Light easterlies persist but now we are close enough to Mindelo to be able to put on an engine without fear of running out of fuel. At 2am we can smell land in the darkness. By 6am we can see lights from the direction of the islands. An hour and a half later we can identify São Vicente. Although we entered the tropics a week ago it has been very cool out at sea, with a high reaching only 22°C. But as we enter the big bay that leads to Mindelo Harbour, despite heavy cloud and no visible sun, the tropical heat hits us.
Within three hours of our first sight of land we are anchoring off Mindelo, capital of São Vicente and one of the ten largest islands making up the Cape Verde group. This archipelago takes its name from Senegal’s Cape Verde, or Green Cape, which is the westernmost point of the African continent. Sadly the islands are no longer green due to prolonged drought. This particular one was discovered in 1462 by captains in the service of Henry the Navigator. The date was 22nd January, the feast day of St Vincent, and so it was named.
A former Portuguese colony, the Cape Verde Islands gained independence in 1975. Of the ten islands, São Vicente is the one which has traditionally had the most contact with the outside world. Originally this was through American whaling fleets, which took crewmen from here. Later from British bunkering – the loading of imported coal – onto Atlantic steam ships from the mid-19th century until the mid-20th.
A Thousand Miles from Anywhere Page 11