Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (12 page)

There was no movement from the other boats; perhaps Jeff was watching from behind portholes, frightened lest I return for more
cake and conversation. Then I heard a faint chugging and round the headland came the bow of a boat, standing on which was an attractive woman, complete with movie camera. Her long, blonde hair streamed down her back, caught by the breeze but held partly in place by a fawn-coloured topee of Indian vintage. The bow belonged to a lifeboat with an ultra-short mast. At the tiller, like an old-time film producer complete with thick black glasses and also hiding under a fawn topee, was a man. Ye gods, I thought, it's Bogie and the
African Queen
. They circled around the lagoon a couple of times, still filming. I dashed to comb my hair and emerged in time to see them anchor, whereupon I rowed across.

Juli and Dontcho were Bulgarians permitted by their government to carry out an experiment in the
Kon-Tiki
vein. They had left the coast of South America intending to sail to Fiji, proving that you could survive long periods at sea by dragging a fine mesh net behind and collecting plankton, the small organisms that are found in the oceans. Soon after leaving they had lost their mast and were making do with a jury-rig. Dontcho was a scientist with black hair to complement horn-rimmed glasses. Shorter than myself, he was a bit overweight so the plankton must be doing their stuff, I thought. He could speak little English and relied on his lovely wife, Juli, a concert pianist, to translate. Slim and tall, she could well have been in films, her skin darkened by the sun to contrast strikingly with her blonde hair.

Their lifeboat was madness. The Bulgarian government had insisted that they carry a powerful transmitter and had supplied a 24 volt set, knowing the boat had only a 12 volt supply so that it could never be used. Heavy gauge stainless steel bottle screws and shackles that made my mouth water were used to put tension on thin ropes. The fibreglass water tank had been built with the wrong resin, souring their water. Their method of navigation included timing sunset to obtain longitude. They had been trying to correct their watches with BBC time checks, ignorant of the constant time signals from the American station WWV. Although they had three portable receivers on board only one worked, and that poorly.

After all my own blunders, and remembering the help I had so freely received, it was satisfying to contribute in return. We soon had all three sets blasting out WWV signals, and the water tank cleaned. Doncho and Juli made a great deal of any kindness shown them, a truly brave and lovely couple of whom I became very fond.

Solitaire
and I will always look back on the Marquesas as a Shangri-la, an earthly paradise. On the morning after our arrival I walked to the nearby ramshackle village situated on a hillside. Looking down on the lagoon I could see
Solitaire
still slumbering in clear waters. I cleared the French Customs and then tried the village store. Some of the things on display, eggs and tomatoes for instance, I was not allowed to buy. Items in short supply were kept for the villagers but there was no shortage of mouth-watering delicacies.

Stalks of bananas, coconuts and bread fruit, which makes the world's best chips, were plentiful as was that goddess of fruits, pamplemousse, a grapefruit as large as a football, sweet and streaming with juice. Eaten for breakfast with a cup of coffee, you were set for the day. I bought some of the cheaper food including flour, rice and baking powder.

Everyone was going back that night to dine and watch some native dancing. Tickets were $3 each so I decided to give it a miss. I had less than $60 left and there seemed little chance of my finding work until reaching New Zealand or Australia, more than 5,000 miles away.

On the way back to
Solitaire
I spotted the Canadian boat we had met in the Pacific and went over, minus golf clubs, to inquire if they had managed to cash their cheque. They apologised for not stopping with me longer and made up for it by inviting me to dinner the next day.

At six that evening I sat on
Solitaire
's deck drinking a coffee and watching the other yachts and their crews preparing for the native dancing. As the dinghies moved ashore, Jeff and Judy came over to
Solitaire
. The crowd had realised, by the food I had bought, that I was short of money and had clubbed together to
buy me a ticket, deciding not to collect me until the last minute so that I could not refuse. I tried always to repay this sort of kindness, but it seemed that I always ended up at the wrong end of the stick.

An American yacht with five young men on board came into the lagoon with alternator-charging problems. A broken holding bracket was the only trouble so I fitted one of my spares for them. During our conversation it was mentioned they had a taste for English gin and as I still had two bottles on board left over from my Brazilian beach party I wanted to make a present of them, but this they refused, insisting on paying the full local price. The battle went on for a week, with me holding the ace and the only two bottles on the island. I would go over with my gin and describe the pleasure of rolling this nectar around the mouth, of feeling it trickle down a parched throat, watching them grow more desperate. It seemed like stalemate. On the morning they left, I waited until they had their anchor up, rowed over and placed the bottles on their deck as they slipped by with cries of ‘Up the British!'

An hour later they were back again with engine trouble so I went over to lend a hand. The battle of the gin bottles was not mentioned. Good, I thought, they've accepted their defeat with grace. At dawn the next day I was rudely awakened as they sailed past
Solitaire
to raucous Yankee battle cries. I waved them good luck, then breakfasted on pamplemousse and the $20 bill they had stuck in my coffee jar. One of them must have swum over while we were messing with the motor. There was a note: ‘No Englishman's going to get the better of a Yank.'

One of the people never to visit
Solitaire
was the filthiest old man I have ever met. The store had run out of bread one day and I was directed to an overgrown path on the village edge down which, they told me, was a bakery. I pushed through the creaking door of a ramshackle shed into a black interior, adjusting from the tropical colours to dusty gloom within. I felt rather than saw the diminutive Chinese man, who shuffled forward smiling, saying the only words I ever heard him speak, ‘Me British.' He reached in a pocket and brought out a tattered British passport. Reluctantly I
bought one of his hot rolls and, halfway down the path, hungrily broke off a piece. My taste buds turned my feet in their tracks to buy another.

Each day thenceforward I bought two of his rolls and each day he would show me his passport and say, ‘Me British.' I wished I had an old medal to give him – if not for his bread, then for being a true patriot.

Solitaire
and I loved our easy life. A freshwater stream ran into the lagoon, diluting its sea-salt concentration. The goose barnacles nodded their heads worriedly, turned black and died. I had relished much contentment, particularly during my second marriage, but if you had asked me whom I disliked or envied I could have named none. It was a feeling destined to last until I returned home nearly two years later. Him I would normally have disliked I now only pitied, the wealthy in their homes or yachts I no longer envied, but once evening fell I uneasily needed to return to my boat. Money, of course, would have helped me to do more for
Solitaire
, buy the best antifouling, more sails, charts, pilot books, but I had chosen this life and regular wages would have meant regular commitments. I expected to pay my way, but I wanted to choose the method. My pleasures were cheap: I had never smoked, and drinking was for special occasions. My clothes would consist of shorts and an open-necked shirt, my feet bare.

I felt affection for the people I was meeting; they did not consider the world owed them a living. I would visit their yachts and, if the owner happened to be working, would simply join in. I had boxes of spares left over which always came in useful. My rubber dinghy allowed me to ferry large loads ashore and my 5-gallon containers proved useful for getting water to the other yachts.

Since there was only food to buy, money had little meaning for the natives.
Solitaire
inevitably had more fruit on board than I could ever eat, picked by myself or traded for things I no longer required. Locals would place stands of bananas and the odd fish on deck. It was normal practice to row across to new arrivals and discover what help they required.

The cruising world is both large – meeting people from many countries – and small, particularly when greeting new arrivals and receiving news of old friends. People are like mirrors and reflect what they see: if you are genuinely pleased to meet someone and bubble inside, that feeling will be returned. But if you did not fit in and took advantage of friendships, you would be slowly ignored, wither and fade away.

When subsequently I looked back on the time I spent in the Marquesas Islands I remembered half a dozen eggs. Juli and Dontcho were among my first friends to leave and on their last morning in Hiva Oa I wanted them to breakfast with me, the first time
Solitaire
had guests for a meal. I spent a good deal of time deciding on the menu including pamplemousse for starters, of course. Tinned butter could be obtained in the village, a bit expensive, but a special treat, which would go down well on the crusty rolls from my Chinese countryman. I would buy a couple of eggs each for the three of us, and finish with the marmalade given me by the French couple. All went well until I discovered there was a shortage of eggs on the island. After trying the village store, I chased every cockcrow in the hills. All the other yachts were reduced to powdered eggs and that night I went to sleep knowing that I would have to accept second-best. It was quite late when two strangers in a dinghy woke me: they had just arrived in the lagoon and, having been told by the people on the other yachts of my quest for eggs, they had taken the trouble to bring them over. I think that's what cruising is all about.

It was time to waken
Solitaire
from her slumber. Fatu Hiva, where many of our friends were, would be our next stop, with no navigation problems this time. Although the island was 50 miles away, on a clear day you could see her majestic peaks reaching into the clouds so I decided to sail through the night and arrive at dawn. There were a dozen yachts at anchor when we hove to but not a soul to be seen on the boats or beach. The anchorage is small compared with the size of the bay, which must be one of the most impressive in the world. A shelf extends off the beach for a
few hundred feet, then quickly drops away to 15 fathoms. Winds are invariably offshore and now and again blast down between the mountains at 60 miles an hour. For all that, it is a safe and beautiful harbour, once berthed.

Solitaire
circled the other craft feeling like a child that had not been invited to her best friend's birthday party. Meanwhile I was blowing on a whistle and shouting. Jeff's trimaran was there; it crossed my mind that he had warned the others of my verbal diarrhoea and I imagined them hiding in their cabins, the locals concealing themselves behind trees, in case this new horror spread to their village.
Solitaire
nudged her way between
Dinks Song
and another yacht as I peered through portholes, expecting beady little eyes to peep back.

When the echo sounder showed less than 20ft, I let go the anchor.
Solitaire
moved slowly astern sulking, as if to say, ‘I know when I'm not wanted.' Everything was as dead as a dodo. Had we dragged our anchor, no harm would have been done, as only open waters lay behind us. If
Solitaire
felt she had been cast aside and snuck away in the night, the worst that could happen would be bringing a reluctant child back against wind and tide.

After a cup of tea I put down my head and slept. Jeff woke me the following morning to tell me that one of the village lassies had been married. The yachties had joined in happily, the ladies helping to prepare the bride.
Solitaire
and I fell easily into the life of receiving guests and visiting other craft although most of my time was spent with Jeff and Judy. As there seemed to be a shortage of girls on the island, Jeff arranged to take a dozen of the village boys to another island, which had a similar problem – in reverse. The islands spoke French, which both Jeff and Judy could understand so there would always be a few Polynesian men on
Dinks Song
.

Through whom I was introduced to two new forms of food. When approaching the island, I had seen palm trees perched on the sides of the hills sheltering sloping tables. These were used for drying bananas, which retained their flavour but became quite
chewy. I later found them in Tahiti, where they were far more expensive. The second food was a piece of a giant ray that came into the lagoon. Apart from a seat in the front row, we had a running commentary from the boys. With a half dozen lads on the paddles, the chief went out in one of the native canoes, by tradition the only person allowed to harpoon it. We watched him jump from the bow of the boat onto the ray's back, putting the full weight of his body behind a thrust. Then he virtually flew from the water as if dropped into a cauldron of boiling oil. I asked one of the young gentlemen how often the village acquired a new chief.

When the poor ray was dragged ashore it looked more like whale worked on by persistent steamroller. The natives started to hack with meat cleavers and the shoreline reddened with its blood, the sea taking on the appearance of a washing machine that had gone berserk as the sharks came in to feed. The yachties, who for days had swum over to
Solitaire
, started using dinghies, but memories were short-lived and soon Jeff was giving his water skiing lessons again. When he and Judy left with their cargo of amorous young men, it was to be for only a few days. In fact, it was the last time I saw them.