In the automotive world, the JB Power organisation does a ruthless annual survey of cars over three years old with at least average mileage. The only survey we are aware of in the marine world at this time has been when the magazine Yachting World surveys equipment used on the ARC – the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers – which takes about three weeks. Even then some new equipment fails to last the duration of the cruise.
Fortunately for us our autopilot’s one night of aberration is not repeated, but these big rollers are having a novel effect on our Christmas tree. Everything else on board is fixed in place, and simply goes up and down with the boat. The tree, weighing little and only lightly tied to stop it falling over, rises with the swell but comes down slightly after everything else, so that it constantly undulates, gently, in its corner.
Summer Dream overtakes us during Happy Hour and we raise our wine glasses to its crew as they pass. Her skipper calls us up on the VHF while his wife steers. Before he signs off, and almost as an afterthought, he asks if we have made contact with the big fish net. With our entanglement in a massive drift net off Morocco still vivid in his mind, David says, ‘Good Lord, they haven’t put one out here, have they?’
But the Big Fish Net turns out to be a self-help network of yachtsmen transmitting for a limited period on a specific channel on SSB radio each morning. One problem from our point of view is timing: the Net transmits at the same time that we tune into World Service News. Another is that we have tuned into yachting networks in the past only to find them dominated by one individual complaining endlessly about people anchoring too close to him and the spiralling cost of Spanish marinas. Nevertheless, David says we will give it a try.
The night begins with a big, very bright moon over the port quarter. But after a while black squall clouds travelling north obscure it sporadically until finally a dense grey cloud settles in and obliterates it altogether. Before the squall reaches us I make my way to the galley and put the kettle on.
Before we left England I bought a collection of teas. I pop one of the fancy teabags into a mug and while the water boils I open the packet of little cone-shaped sponge cakes from Mindelo’s tiny supermarket. Another name for a coconut pyramid, where I come from at least, is a madeleine. And it was a madeleine, though not shaped like this one, whose long-forgotten taste instantly transported Marcel Proust back to his boyhood and inspired a series of novels exploring involuntary memory. Just as the small black bird in the circle of light had sent my thoughts back to the performer Max Wall.
This madeleine of mine does not prompt a memory, however, so much as a reflection. Out in the cockpit, indulging myself with sweet sticky sponge cake and jasmine tea, I watch lightning explode inside a long low strip of cloud to the south-west. It says much about the distance I have travelled, and not just in nautical miles. In a relatively short time I have gone from mortification at the mere thought of being alone at night under sail in rough weather, to sitting here in the darkness observing an approaching squall like an aficionado – complete with refreshments.
Gradually the wind begins to oscillate across our stern, but not satisfied with simply wafting back and forth, its speed fluctuates wildly between 4 knots and gale force. Not surprisingly, Voyager is handling badly and in need of regular attention. Our desired course is 275° but the nearest I can get the autopilot to work consistently is 260°. That puts us 15° off-course but, with something the size of the North Atlantic in front of us, there will be plenty of time to correct it later.
In between times I am trying for as much quiet as possible. David was on watch most of last night and I want him to get as much undisturbed rest as he can tonight. While he is asleep in the port cabin I sit at the chart table in the saloon and prepare to write the Christmas card I bought for him in the Canaries.
Writing a Christmas card this far from where he is sleeping seems a quiet enough activity. But as I carefully remove its cellophane wrapper and open it there is a high-pitched hysterical screech. Even as I rush across the bridge deck to check the gas alarm I realise that it doesn’t screech to the tune of Jingle Bells and that I have unwittingly bought a ‘musical’ card. I have a devil of a job writing in it while keeping it quiet. The inscription is very shaky.
David takes over the watch at 1.30am. It becomes an increasingly squally, difficult night and he ends up doing another 7-hour watch, mostly in the rain again. With the wind strength increasing, he decides that repeatedly shifting the genoa, our biggest sail, is too heavy a job to leave me with, and he doesn’t wake me until 8.30. Although we don’t know it yet, several hundred miles away these unpleasant conditions are afflicting other people with much more serious consequences.
When David does wake me, and with no respite from the weather in view, we take in the genoa, put on an engine, switch on the radar and briefly watch the squalls together in the dry of the saloon before David goes off to bed.
23
The Festive Season
It is Christmas Eve. We are halfway there and a thousand miles from land in any direction. David catches up on his sleep after breakfast and I take down the news. The saloon looks very festive. The tree is dripping with red and gold ornaments and small paper angels. The undulations of the tree give the angels an added dimension. Across the front windows we have tinsel, also red and gold, and a red velvet bow. The Christmas cards from family and friends that we collected from Mindelo’s post office are strung between the boat hook and the barometer. There’s a green bow and some artificial holly over our dining area and silver-green streamers over the radar. Everything is unbreakable. We can’t afford shards of broken glass under bare feet. There are squalls throughout the day and a heavy swell over the stern.
We have a Christmas Eve lunch of salmon pâté, slices of the big Edam cheese we bought whole and which has kept beautifully, fresh tomatoes with basil in olive oil and a glass of red wine. This is followed by some of Santa Cruz’s delicious marzipan cake. It should have been the Christmas cake I baked but for the moment I can’t remember where I stowed it and we can’t wait while I mount a search.
We also listen to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College chapel at Cambridge University. It has always been something of a tradition to tune into the BBC’s Christmas Eve broadcast and, knowing that we should be unable to access this year’s programme, we brought along a tape of last year’s.
I don’t know if being a thousand miles from anywhere concentrates the mind particularly, but I never really thought about the unquestioning obedience demanded in Genesis before: that Adam and Eve remain in ignorance, that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac. I am particularly taken with the prohibition in relation to the fruit that would ‘make one wise’, prompting God’s question: ‘Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?’ And by Adam’s response: ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat, saith Adam.’
Not unlike our encounter with the Portuguese Navy last year, stopping us at sea for obscuring the name of our boat. ‘My wife’s airing her laundry,’ saith David. And most of the items draped around the cockpit his. That still rankles.
The sky tonight is heavily overcast with black clouds travelling north, but so far no sign of squalls. There are, however, lightening flashes in the south-west again and the wind fluctuates wildly, from almost nothing, up to gale force and back again. And also like last night, the wind’s direction is as inconstant as its speed. With it fanning between our port and starboard quarters, the genoa keeps backing. Meanwhile, not far behind us, Van Dyke is reporting to Herb that he has clear skies and ideal conditions. We put in an extra reef.
We get a few squalls during the course of the night, but finally the wind settles at east 4–5, occasionally 6. I’m becoming rather partial to coconut pyramids and jasmine tea out in the cockpit around midnight.
It is a very rough sea during the early hours but with the present wind, even with three reefs in the genoa we maintain a good speed.
In fact, even heavily reefed our night time speeds are faster than in the daytime. It rains at 2am and is so heavily overcast and dark that it doesn’t manage to get light until after 8am. Then the sea becomes calmer.
It is Christmas morning. It is also two days since our conversation with the skipper of Summer Dream and his mention of the SSB radio network. Perhaps it is because of the day it is, with its sense of communion and goodwill to all men, that we decide to give World Service News a miss this morning and try the network instead.
Had we been bored with our progress, which we aren’t particularly, our first dip into the Big Fish Net would have chastened us. An elderly English couple are making the crossing in a boat called Nirvana which has spent the previous five years on the hard. Battered by squalls and big seas, one of their shrouds has broken and they are having problems with their sails. They are also having difficulties with their batteries and automatic steering. They are exhausted and at the end of their tether. Other yachtsmen counsel them; most importantly to heave-to and get some rest.
A roseate tern with a black cap and long white streamers curving from its tail makes three circles above Voyager, looking directly into my eyes before turning away and flying south. They do that, seabirds; get close up to you when you are perceived as no immediate threat to them. They concentrate on your eyes, taking the measure of you, assessing your intentions. For myself I am just so happy to see it, looking so pure and clean and lovely, on this of all mornings, that like a fool I actually wave to it.
There are also masses of flying fish about today and another unaccountable smell. I have formed the theory that smells become encapsulated somehow and float across vast distances before shedding their fragrance on some unsuspecting mariner. This may apply to sound, too. A friend once told us that on a voyage between the Azores and England he and his crew stood on deck and listened to a party in full swing. It unsettled them not a little, they being many hundreds of miles from land at the time and with no other vessels in range. I have been spared ghostly knees-ups so far, but to the smell of orange blossom and pipe tobacco smoke of the last few days is now added the distinctive aroma of a barbecue.
We have a very happy day, with a tape of Christmas carols and a bottle of fizz. We have Charles Dickens’ novels aboard and enjoy a reading from A Christmas Carol and Christmas at Dingley Dell from Pickwick Papers. We have a turkey dinner with sage and onion stuffing, sauté potatoes, carrots, sweetcorn, asparagus tips and gravy. There is pudding and tinned custard standing by, but we have no room left for more than coffee and a hoarded Belgian chocolate each. Our appetites are much smaller these days. Our waistlines, too.
The temperature this evening is 27°C. We listen to Round the Horne, classic 1960s BBC radio comedy, on the Walkman during our watches and, on my final one, fortified by jasmine tea and the last of the coconut pyramids, I read Dickens’ short novel, The Chimes. It is in the same volume as A Christmas Carol, although I have never read it before. Set in the days surrounding New Year, its themes include new ways of thinking and new beginnings which seem rather appropriate as we enter not only a new year but a new millennium and a very different kind of life.
From midnight to midnight we cover 106 miles in what has been our best sailing day yet. It has been very overcast but there have been no dramatic wind changes, just really pleasant sailing conditions. Van Dyke has also caught up with us. Or, more accurately, the yacht is now in our general area which means that its skipper’s nightly exchange of information with Herb will provide an accurate picture for Voyager.
After yesterday’s respite, the rollers resume with a vengeance on Boxing Day. In these conditions you are always on the move. Whether standing or sitting you are simply another loose object and, like the Christmas tree in the corner, you undulate constantly. There is no relief from it. Even lying in bed you slide up and down inside your skin. I have begun to wonder what it will feel like to be on land again. Voyager has been at sea now for fourteen days and all things being equal we anticipate a further five or six.
Around 5am there begins a seemingly endless sequence of squalls. As dawn approaches you can see them in front and behind you, like black beads strung on a necklace, stretching from horizon to horizon. As one passes over your head, another gathers behind it, moiling and broiling with seething enmity. For every one or two that slowly passes over you another breaks directly overhead, drenching you in a rain that is physically painful, driven as it is by 25-knot winds.
It doesn’t begin to get light until after 8 again today. Sunrise is around 9am at present, although we don’t get to see it because of the heavy cloud. At least during the daytime you can see the squalls coming. The problem is the cloudy nights, when they are invisible in the pitch blackness.
Despite a surfeit of wind at present, our wind generator is unable to keep up with our power consumption. Therefore we still need to run the engines to recharge the two 110-amp domestic batteries which power the GPS, the navigation lights and all the other pieces of vital equipment, not to mention the one which pumps drinking water up from the tanks to the tap. And, of course, as back-up to get us out of trouble in the event of the kind of crisis with which we are about to become acquainted at second hand. It is difficult to tell on a rolling boat, but with concentrated staring at the fuel gauge we think we have somewhere between 110 and 120 litres of diesel left in our tank. This should be ample for our needs.
From now on David will don the headphones and listen to World Service News in the evenings in between listening into Herb, thereby leaving the early morning slot free for the Big Fish Net. With its boats scattered across the Atlantic, each reporting its individual weather conditions, he can get valuable information about what we can expect on our patch. There is, in addition, the human drama unfolding daily on this frequency. The elderly couple on board Nirvana, we are glad to hear, have benefited from heaving-to and found the strength to repair their yacht’s broken shroud and carry on.
In the meantime, another English couple on a 33-foot sloop called Wanderer, have lost their mast and rigging. It happened during a squall in the early hours of Christmas Eve but news of it reaches the network only now. With their mast and sails gone, the couple had been unable to start their engine because of a broken starter motor and they had been left wallowing out of control 560 miles from Antigua. Another yachtsman had offered to come and take them off, but they had refused to abandon their boat. Then something extraordinary had happened. An Australian couple called Don and Sally, on their 40ft yacht Jupiter thirty miles ahead of them, had turned back and begun towing them.
The additional information that comes crackling through the static of the SSB radio headphones is that in the early hours of this morning Wanderer had overtaken the tow rope as she slid down a wave in a squall. The tow rope had got caught around the boat’s Aries self-steering gear, spun the boat 180° and torn the gear away. We begin praying for a really boring passage.
Heavy rain soaks the bathroom and the bow window sills; the wingnuts holding the weatherboards over the front windows have come loose. It is not until the afternoon that we can take advantage of a lessening in the sea swell to go forward and tighten them. We also take the opportunity of running the water maker but after about an hour the sea swell returns and, with the boat now lurching violently from side to side, David has to turn it off. The wind is also lessening and we are again caught in that vicious cycle whereby the roll of the boat keeps shaking the wind from the sails which in turn prevents us keeping up enough speed to counteract the rolling. In the meantime, our current tank of propane gas runs out and we change over to the full one.
It is difficult to hear Herb this evening; World Service, too. Although one item of news does manage to squeeze through the atmospheric interference: Derby 0–Aston Villa 2 away from home.
This morning there are dark clouds in the early hours but by 6am there is a very bright moon while Venus, huge and low, hangs over our stern. By the time I hand over the watch at 8.30 Venus has disappeared
and the moon is directly above our masthead, hemmed in by cotton wool clouds. They have reduced its glow to a diameter only twice the size of the moon, creating around it a narrow rust-red halo that is rather sinister.
Meanwhile, via our SSB radio the drama on the Big Fish Net continues to unfold. The news this morning is that Nirvana, with its repaired shroud, continues to prosper. And a yacht not far away from her is relaying the relevant part of Herb’s nightly broadcast to the couple on board at a time when they, and their batteries, are most receptive.
Also, on another part of the ocean a solo sailor, Jim on Freedom, has arranged to rendezvous with Wanderer and Jupiter to hand over a jury rig that may enable Wanderer to sail independently. David had wondered briefly about the possibility of lending them one of our starter motors, as their engine is the same as ours, but a glance at the chart had shown that we had absolutely no chance of catching up with them.
Any such thoughts soon become academic, anyway, when an Englishman on a big motor-sailer, with a very big engine – its deep, throbbing note can be heard over its VHF transmissions – sets out from Antigua to take over the tow from Jupiter.
The stricken boat had been part of a blue water rally and along with gallons of extra fuel the motor-sailer is carrying gifts from their fellow-yachtsmen already in Antigua (Boddingtons beer, gin and ice cream are mentioned) plus extra crew. The new boat’s ETA is Wednesday. In the meantime, at least three other yachts have begun converging on Wanderer and her tow, to stand by and offer assistance if necessary.
A Thousand Miles from Anywhere Page 15