Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (14 page)

When I recalled Hiva Oa in later years, I remembered the Chinese man who thought he was English. Tahiti, for me, meant a small American boy. The local paper printed my story on a Saturday and next day it was customary for children from the cruising ships to attend Sunday school with the locals. I was walking past the church when an avalanche of these terrors descended. Within seconds I had them climbing over me, one even trying to pull off my shorts, so small I had to get on my knees to hear what he was saying. ‘Mister, I'd sure be proud to shake
your hand,' he said. It was like holding a butterfly. For days after I would smile when I remembered his serious face. He made me feel good inside, wishing that he would always stay young and innocent and not change with the years like Tahiti.

Sunday was always the best day of the week. Now that I was earning good money I could afford to buy the excellent French wines, the crusty rolls and make crisp, fresh salads. The harbour front was Papeete's main street and
Solitaire
was only a few yards from the sidewalk. Sunday was the day that the visits I had made in the week were returned, a day we all looked forward to.

My last hours on the island were spent scrubbing
Solitaire
's antifouling, not a particularly pleasant chore as the waste from 90 yachts was dumped in the harbour. The sensible thing would have been to go over to the unspoilt Moorea but there had been too many delays and I had to push on.

Saturday, September 25th, was set for my departure and I had chosen Gladstone, about halfway up the east coast of Australia, as my destination. It was just below the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef, the ideal place from which to start the following stage of the voyage. Another consideration was that I would have to remain in port for five months during the hurricane season and, as Gladstone had a large aluminium plant and was building a power station, I thought it should be possible to find work there. I would have liked to have visited Auckland but New Zealand was further away and had few job prospects. I would make the final choice halfway through the voyage when the current started to swing south towards Auckland.

The first leg would take us just below Rarotonga, 700 miles to the WSW, 200 miles south of Tahiti, which had a strong RDF station to confirm our position. After that our course would be virtually due west, dropping only another 200 miles in the next 3,000. Provided we did not go further south than Gladstone's latitude, we should have a good passage. The pilot charts showed much the same pattern as our previous voyage: winds over our stern from the east to south-east around Force 4, with only three
per cent calms and a few gales close to Australia, but no worse than an English summer. In all, a voyage of 4,000 miles, no more than 40 days at sea if the pilot charts were correct.

The most upsetting thing about the trip was the places we would miss: magic islands whose names rolled off the tongue, Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora, Tahaa, Fiji. Each year that would change as more and more hotels and flats destroyed them. It seemed foolish to be wishing I could have been in the South Pacific 50 years before when they would change that much again in the next five. I was giving up seeing them just to sail around a piece of rock called Cape Horn.

As food in Australia would be cheaper than Tahiti's, I kept my stores to a minimum although the cash situation was quite good: in fact I was richer than when I left England and now had $700 in hand. The tucker I would not be running short of was onions as an Australian yachtsman had asked me if I had plenty on board and was amazed when I told him I had never even considered carrying them. Onions last for months and are full of vitamins, he lectured me, and to make sure I got the message, he turned up with a sackful. He must have told the story to all the other cruising people because
Solitaire
was soon packed with them!

The one thing I did not take was a cockroach, although Tahiti breeds some of the world's finest. After dark you could see whole families of them walking along the sidewalks, every now and then stopping to inspect a yacht before deciding whether or not to make it their new home. I believe every craft suffered from them, certainly all those I ate on. You would be eating dinner when they would walk across your plate, splashing through the gravy without so much as a by-your-leave. Because they were a topic of conversation and, cockroach-less, I could not join in, vicious rumours were spread. It was reported that they had been seen walking up
Solitaire
's shore lines and that on reading her name on the stern there had been a panic to disembark again. It was also claimed that I spent half the night trying to entice the poor creatures on board with bits of cheese which was a lie since I
discovered they did not particularly like it! When
Solitaire
sailed through the reef to start her voyage she had not a single cockroach on board and at the time I was concerned, remembering stories of rats deserting doomed ships.

We had arrived in Tahiti on June 19th and left on September 25th, after
Solitaire
had been rested for more than three months. The early stages of the voyage went well enough with a pleasant sail close to that island paradise, Moorea, but during the night things started to go wrong. We ran into fierce squalls and a batten pierced the mainsail, which meant that the batten pocket could not be used again that trip, and a 5-gallon water container burst – nothing to worry about at that stage since I still had another 25 gallons left.

I picked up Rarotonga's RDF signal on the third day out, 400 miles away! A week from Tahiti and Rarotonga hove in sight 20 miles to our north. The pilot charts had been correct up to that point. From then on had I reversed the information it would have been near enough correct. Instead of stern winds from the east at Force 4,
Solitaire
was pushing into winds from the west dead on her nose, anything from Force 6 to complete calm. Under these conditions we could not sail close to the wind as short, choppy waves kept pushing her bow to one side.
Solitaire
, facing a fighter with a long, left jab, would shake her head to recover and try to move forward, only to be hit again. At the halfway mark, passing under the Tonga Islands, I nearly decided to give up and head for New Zealand, 1,000 miles to the south.

Had I changed course then we would have had a current of 10 to 15 miles a day in our favour and, had the winds stayed constant, we would have been sailing with them abeam.
Solitaire
, staggering like a punch-drunk fighter, refused to give up but carried on for Australia and Gladstone.

We had one particularly bad storm that led me to conclude that I should dispense with battened sails. Battens were forever fouling the shrouds, particularly when running, and if they broke they inevitably damaged the sail. Certainly they allowed a larger sail
area with a roach but the increased speed was not worth the trouble as I was racing no one. In future I would have battenless mainsails with a straight leech and would also change my reefing system. Although roller reefing was fitted to the boom, I had never used it, preferring to slab reef since my halyards led back to the cockpit.

For the first time in this particular storm I decided to try the roller reefing. The job was nearly done when a squall strained the leech where it wrapped around the boom. The sail shredded in half, making its repair a lengthy project. For the rest of the trip to Australia I had to tie the main off at its last reefing point, cutting the sail area by more than half!

This was turning out to be another protracted voyage thanks to light winds and a small sail area. We were becalmed a few times and I went over the side in the dinghy to clean the waterline, which was largely unencrusted. Some 700 miles from Australia the split pin holding the self-steering rudder broke and I made the rest of the trip without its help. Normally I would have lost the rudder but since I had never liked this method of attachment, I had drilled it and connected a safety rope. Our landfall was Lady Elliot Island, 60 miles off the Australian mainland, which we passed on November 30th. That night we had an electrical storm and I sat watching the lightning under bare poles as if in daylight.

Next day we drifted by the Bunker reefs, sighting land with the dawn. I motored all that windless day to arrive at six o'clock local time in the broad creek on which Gladstone lies, after the longest time we had spent at sea so far, 69 days, beating our previous record by a day. We had logged 4,212 miles.

Australia is psychotic about the import of animals, plants, seeds or food. Normally when clearing Customs I have been asked if I had drugs, guns or drink but the Australian Customs man who boarded
Solitaire
could not care less if I was head of the Mafia or carrying an atom bomb.

‘Right, naaaaa, do you have any pets on board?' is the first question.

‘No sir,' I replied, ‘not even a cockroach!'

We went through the plant and seed bit.

‘Right, sport, I want all your food laid out on deck.'

So I went below and fetched my remaining bag of rice, which I placed in the middle of the deck, and then I stood looking at him with my tail wagging and my tongue out, like a cocker spaniel that's just done its business in the dirt box.

‘Maaaaaate, maaaate, aaaaall of it!'

I turned out every locker and cubby hole trying to find something I could give the poor man. I kept inviting him to come below and search
Solitaire
.

‘Maaaaaate, I don't want to search your flaming boat.'

At last I found two slices of dried meat in a sealed glass jar, which I think the Americans gave me in Panama. My maaaaaate smiled and locked it in his briefcase.

While this was going on, a tramp had been sitting on the side of the dock taking it all in and swigging from a pint of milk through his matted beard. By the time he had heard my story there were tears in his eyes and he offered me his bottle without a word. I drained it in one gulp and handed back the empty.

Mr Customs asked the question I'd been dreading: ‘How long do you plan to stay in Australia?'

During the past two weeks I had been picking up their radio broadcasts and, apart from learning of a shortage of work, it seemed that every disaster that occurred was due entirely to the English or, as he is better known, the Pom. Poms ran the unions and were responsible for the strikes, Poms ran the government and were responsible for the country going to the dogs, they controlled the weather, and that was the reason for all the bush fires. There was a disc jockey I'd been listening to whose pet saying was, ‘Punch a Pommie every day!'

By this stage I was thinking I might be allowed to take on water before being set adrift. With the hurricane season coming on, I really needed a visitor's permit for six months and when I explained this, I was told to call at the Customs Office next day to pick up one for a year!

The officer told me about Gladstone and the best places to eat, several times asking if I was all right for Australian currency. In fact I bought myself some fish and chips and ate them in
Solitaire
's cockpit, during which time I was invited to dinner the following night by one couple and to a barbecue that weekend with another. My mooring problems were solved when an Australian offered to share his berth free of charge. Sometimes I think that certain types of radio broadcasters and newspaper reporters would be better employed collecting garbage rather than dishing it out.

Over the next few days I tried unsuccessfully to find work. I could not be taken on as a skilled electrician because I had no Australian licence and unskilled work was carried out by apprentices, but my luck changed when I called on the local boatyard to buy a shackle. The manager, a Yorkshireman, asked if I needed work and then said I could cut the grass around the boats on hard standing. After that it was making racks to store wood, fibreglassing, painting. In the end I spent all my time working for the boatyard. Sometimes I would help tie up ocean-going cargo ships; my last job was putting the yard's transport in shape and, as in Tahiti, I could have stayed on as the company wanted to build fibreglass dinghies and there were opportunities to work on charter boats. I liked the people who were always more than fair; even grass-cutting carried the same wage as everyone else's in the yard.

I managed to stay in Gladstone for more than five months without getting into serious trouble, although I nearly managed to kill myself when working on a large charter boat that could carry 300 passengers. One lunch time, having just returned from buying some fish and chips, I had reached across and put my meal through a ship's window and, stepping onto a catwalk to board, fell 10ft into the water twixt ship and dock. Luckily I managed to grab a rope and haul myself out before the gap closed.

My first thought was to eat my fish and chips before they grew cold but as I quickly ate, all this funny red stuff began running down my front, re-soaking my shorts and shirt. When my workmates returned I was rushed to hospital.

On the operating table, blood from a gash under my chin was flooding the place and half a dozen pretty nurses gathered round me.

‘I'm sorry for being a nuisance and making such a mess,' I apologised.

‘We need the practice,' a chippy one replied.

‘Lift me off the table and I'll go break a leg,' I offered.

‘You do, sport, and we'll break the other one!' Which started me laughing and the blood gushing. Even when they were stitching me up, I was still laughing.

There were few things I disliked about Australia. Food was reasonably priced and for a dollar I could fill my frying pan twice with chops or steak. Flies were a pest, particularly the little sandflies which looked like specks of dust but could bite like tigers.

Terrell Adkisson and I joined up in Gladstone for the first time since Panama.
Altair
was berthed 100 miles down the coast but he spent a week on
Solitaire
and we made arrangements to sail through the Barrier Reef together. While in Gladstone I met
Brolga of Kiama
with Rob and Lyn Brooks who were just about to start their voyage around the world. New arrivals in Gladstone creek were not normally greeted by fellow sailors, but I had always liked the Pacific Islands' friendly customs so, although only a visitor myself, I would always row over to newcomers to see if I could help. Rob and Lyn have always made a point of the fact that in their own country it had been an Englishman who had first enquired.