Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (24 page)

Sunday
. Solitaire
still being thrown about in high angry seas. Very high winds during night with impressive waves. Double-reefed main. Little sleep, moments of fear. Worrying to have
Solitaire
drop from the top of high waves. What will the Southern Ocean bring?

Monday
.
Pram cover over main hatchway broken (can be fixed later). Only making 80 to 90 miles a day. I can't push
Solitaire
harder in these conditions. Panic this morning: one clock was five minutes adrift, the other had stopped. This shaking can't be doing them any good. Changed batteries just to be on the safe side and wrapped them in foam. Thank goodness for the portable radio: at least I can get time checks and reset the clocks. Bilges full of water again. Have not been eating well. Impossible to go in cockpit with these breaking seas. No room to move about below with water containers covering the cabin floor. I spend hours grasping the chart table and looking astern.
Solitaire
feels as if she is smashing through doors without a chance to run at them, a steeplechaser with obstacles too close together. Not being given time to recover from one jump before finding the next racing towards her. It's just bash, bash, bash with no chance to build up speed. Suddenly to find herself plunging down into pits being brought up short with shattering jerks. The sea is shaking with mirth at our confusion. Mast and rigging alternatively slacken and stiffen.

Tuesday
.
High wind squalls started at 0300. Seas high and angry, double-reefed and working jib. Not my idea of sailing, one of the times I'd rather be watching TV. It's three weeks since we had a good day's sail. Anyone who thinks this is pleasant is mad, mad, mad.

Wednesday, August 27th
.
Noon and the end of the worst week at sea for a long time. During the week we passed 500 miles west of Ascension Island. It was while moored to a landing barge in 1978 that I'd been scared by some of the biggest swells in the world. The pilot book puts them at more than 30ft. I'm confident the seas are
due to similar abnormal conditions. To find such conditions in an area that the chart suggest were reasonable does not augur well for the areas shown as bad! It's difficult to work on deck and gazing over the stern from the cabin for hours hardly helps. Reading makes the time fly and helps shut out unpalatable thoughts, and it's warm.

When I was not frightening myself looking down at breaking seas I would sit on my bunk with a book or sort out the mysteries of the NATO food parcels. I found some plain chocolate that went down well and suddenly became aware that I was the proud owner of ten tin openers!

The eighth week at sea was a week of contrasts. The southeast winds from the Cape of Good Hope would soon start in a clockwise direction, veering first to south, then south-west, finally becoming the Roaring Forties 1,500 miles to the south. While they made up their minds what to do they swung back and forth, giving beautiful tropical days with time to sort out leaks and damage. I repaired the pram cover and the forward escape hatch, putting a beam underneath it and securing that to its hinges to ensure it would not fly open in a capsize. Anchor and chain were stored in the stern locker, which also contained the exhaust outlet. Were the anchors to smash the exhaust seacock the sea would flood in faster than I could pump it out so I brought the anchor below and secured it under a bunk. Sorted and repacked our supplies, doing everything I could to prepare us for the storms ahead. The end of the week came with one of the trip's biggest surprises.

I was on my bunk with nose stuck in a book, enjoying one of the better days and thinking I might wander on deck for a noon sight, when I heard the most horrible sound as if we were in the middle of a herd of groaning, pregnant elephants. Ye gods, I thought, the nearest elephant should be 2,000 miles away. I threw the book to one side and dashed on deck to find a few 20-ton whales making improper advances. We were in the middle of a school of these magnificent creatures, some so close that I could have jumped on their backs for a free ride. I rushed below for a camera and managed a couple of shots as they departed.

In the eighth week we logged 627 miles, 5,384 miles in 56 days. We had fallen below our 100 miles a day. The Cape of Good Hope lay ESE, 2,220 miles away. The ninth week started well when the winds went round to the north-east. For the first time in weeks we had a free wind blowing at three to four and came onto a broad reach with the poor old number two genoa and a full main. We glided along without the old smashing and banging. Then the sheet broke and the genoa flew free. However, I soon had it repaired and we continued on lazily. Further south, a shirt joined the shorts I had been wearing during the day. At night I no longer lay on top of my sleeping bag but climbed inside for warmth.

On September 9th we celebrated two full calendar months at sea. Back home they would be making ready for an English winter while we sailed into a South African spring. I became more of a crew than skipper, following quietly whispered commands as I soothed
Solitaire
's occasional displeasures, taking the strain from her weak body. ‘I'm hard pressed,' she would complain and I would reduce sail. ‘You're driving me too hard.' I would ease the self-steering so she could take the waves on her quarter.

The ship's log grew repetitive: grey sky – grey sea – grey skipper. Breaking into choppy seas, I really am sick, sick, sick of it. But repetition breeds over-confidence and stupidity. Returning from changing a headsail one stormy night I put the kettle on for tea and reached down to remove my safety harness – it wasn't there!

At the end of our ninth week at sea we recorded a distance of 776 miles, but the tenth was far worse, with only 646 miles to show for it. I'm sure the slow progress was mainly my own fault, although the pilot charts did not help too much. Tristan da Cunha now lay 550 miles south of us. The South African high-pressure area with the light winds and calms was still to port.
Solitaire
had started to sweep in a gentle curve to the south-east to pass well under the Cape of Good Hope.

It's a mistake that many people make in life: you see your target and head straight for it. I should have used my golfing experience and made a dog's leg of it, heading further south towards Tristan,
perhaps entering the Roaring Forties before turning south and making for Australia. If it was a mistake to take the direct route it was one I could live with. Many better-qualified yachtsmen had made the same mistake in this area. The pilot charts proved unreliable: instead of skirting the high-pressure area we must have sailed into its outer fringes of calms. Well, as Gracie Fields used to sing, every cloud has its silver lining. The silver in our present cloud was that the calms allowed us to do more work sorting things out.

During my tenth week at sea I started to use words in the ship's log that would have been unusual on our first round-the-world voyage – ‘nerves' and ‘depression':

Engine: Run for one hour, diesel and water containers stowed.

Food and water: Should have enough food to reach New Zealand, a quarter of water used.

Temperature: Now 70°F (90° on the equator), so am wearing sweater in early mornings, and really need sleeping bag at night.

Antifouling: A few goose barnacles, seems to be working well.

Solitaire:
In better shape than when she left England apart from number two genoa.

Crew: Has moments of deep depression, worrying about
Solitaire
's gear and sailing under jury-rig. Although Cape Town is 1,500 miles away and hoped to make it in 70 days, so far we have been lucky and I have no reason to complain of our progress. So why do I feel so depressed?

The end of her tenth week brought new records for
Solitaire
: on her first voyage her longest time at sea had been 69 days, the greatest distance travelled around 6,000 miles. These had now increased to 70 days and 6,614 miles; not an earth-shattering achievement, but for the speck moving across the oceans it was important. We were sailing into the unknown with new problems that would have to be overcome. Somehow
Solitaire
had to survive the gales of the Southern Ocean, somehow round Cape Horn. If at that stage I had been asked my main concern I would have answered that it was my own part in the voyage, not
Solitaire
's. The urge to round Cape Horn was as strong as ever and nothing
would stop me, but I could not understand my mental condition. Unless I could sort myself out I was likely to end the voyage in some form of mental straitjacket.

A long-distance sailor on his own must be many things: captain, cook, navigator and doctor but, most important of all, he must be able to understand himself and recognise his own limitations, mental and physical. It sounds easy, but people living ashore pay psychiatrists thousands of pounds a year to understand themselves, despite having family and friends with whom to discuss their problems.
Solitaire
and I were cut off from the outside world. We had no transmitter with which to make the odd call, ‘I say, old boy, I wonder if you could help me? I'm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and I've gone off my rocker.'

When I left England everything seemed so straightforward. I would sail around the world for my own satisfaction and would survive for my own love of life, the desire to see family, friends and England again. To make the voyage I would be prepared for tiredness, cold, hunger and long periods of fear. On my first voyage I had been frightened only for short periods, mostly during the Brazilian episode. I believed I could stand this type of fear for five months or so but I felt it would not attack me until I reached the Southern Ocean. But after crossing the Equator and beating into seas that normally would have given little concern I became frightened, my nerves rubbed raw for no apparent reason. At one stage I thought I knew why: some of Chichester's descriptions of the conditions I could expect were so vivid that I put down the book vowing not to read it again until we were safely home.

Solitaire
's rigging might not survive a capsize, but all who had made this voyage had suffered at least one. What then?

I bitterly resented my lost year thanks to the sail manufacturer and the unjust outcome of the court case. That I felt so apprehensive so early in the voyage proved that, at heart, I was not brave. At sea I would turn anything I could to my advantage, not an unusual trait. It's surprising how after spending their lives without a God, many become aware of Him when in need. I used friends: ‘What
would Rome or Rex do in this situation?' Others had survived, why shouldn't I? Ah, well, time would tell.

Each day brought danger nearer. In the eleventh week we logged 470 miles, six more than the previous week, in the same old mixture of calms and gales. The worst started on Friday, September 19th, when we ran with screaming winds, under working jib only while rogue breaking waves slammed into
Solitaire
ripping one of the heavy canvas spray dodgers in half. What worried me was that I was over-reacting to conditions we had been through a dozen times before. On my first voyage I had been unconcerned, indeed would have listened to the wave's onrush with interest, putting aside my book for a few moments to hold onto the bunk, awaited the impact, then continue reading. If I was reacting in comparatively safe conditions, how would I cope with real danger when it came?

I spent two days repairing the torn dodger. On September 22nd I recorded our longitude as 00°15´E, in other words we were 15 miles east of Greenwich. Once past that date line the working of our navigation would alter. And September 23rd was the anniversary of my Brazilian adventure when I had started to think about a second voyage around the world. This time I would make the correct adjustments when using navigation figures. As yet I had no desire to contemplate a third voyage!

By the end of our eleventh week we had sailed 7,084 miles. As I reported in the log:

We had rode one gale during the week and were becalmed for its last 12 hours. New Zealand will take forever at this rate. Plenty of sea birds about from small petrels to aircraft-sized albatrosses. Visits from my dolphins after staying away for two weeks. Nice to have my friends back. I have been photographing my fellow travellers with Rome's camera. Still managing to read a good deal. Thank goodness I enjoy books so much. Long days in these conditions would seem endless if you could not lose yourself in other times and places. I'm reading one of Annegret's books called
Hawaii
by James A Michener. Have hardly put it down for three
days. Antifouling still working well apart from barnacles on the rudder, propeller and a few on the topsides. More than satisfied.

The twelfth week started with Cape Town 720 miles to the east, a good week's sail to safety, steaks, hot baths and warm beds. We could be tempted only under jury-rig. Once past Cape Agulhas I could open Rome's second parcel. I planned to round the Cape 300 miles south of Africa for two reasons: to keep well below the west-flowing 5-knot Agulhas Current, and to avoid the 90 fathoms continental shelf. The seas, 12,000 deep beyond the shelf, would be kinder. The problem in sailing so low was that my charts ran out at 37°S. I covered the extra 180 miles by sticking an odd piece of paper to the chart and pencilling the lines of longitude and latitude onto that.
Solitaire
was about to round her first objective on a scrap of writing paper.

The week was wet and miserable, navigation made difficult by heavy rain clouds. The winds played tricks. Were the pilot charts chuckling quietly, having suggested winds from the north to southwest Force 5 to 6? Any of these would have been acceptable but
Solitaire
had to battle against winds on her nose – from the south. The odd day we had stern winds brought our first thick fog. At least we knew that no other ship would be within a couple of hundred miles of us, ghosts of lost square riggers excepted, for only a pig-headed fool would venture so far south.