Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed (3 page)

After completion the decks would be lowered into position with a 2in lip running around the outer edge until it came flush with the top of the hull. It was then through-bolted, and later capped with wood to make the toe rail. The inside corner would be glassed-in to give more strength and make it watertight.

Brian asked for layers of fibreglass to be left out as he wanted a lighter, faster yacht, but he put strength back by running two Iroka beams along each side of the boat, under the deck, which were then glassed in position. He also put a third beam across the rear cabin bulkhead. Through-deck U-bolts took the standing rigging.

I followed Brian's example despite the fact that I had been adding weight instead of reducing it. By this time people were saying I was over-building
Solitaire
, using backup systems to back up systems but I knew she would have to look after both of us until I could learn the ways of the sea and sailing.

If you asked the driftwood what they remembered about me, they would probably reply, ‘Leslie? Oh yes, he was the one who cut a blooming great hole in the bottom of his boat.' In fact it was 9in wide and 4ft long. I had never liked the skeg, which was hollow, and, when banged with a fist, would vibrate. I spent a weekend in Tony Marshall's garage building a replacement of Iroka, a modification which one day was to save
Solitaire
– and
me. The size was increased to allow 10in to extend into the hull for bracing with a hole drilled ready to take the stern tube and propeller shaft.

For a few days the boat sat with a gaping hole in her bottom. To lifted eyebrows and inquiring looks, I would merely say, ‘Mice.'

In June my mother was taken to hospital which meant that I had to return home. I managed to find a good position with Ken Mudd as a quality assurance engineer for British Leyland.
Solitaire
was moved 80 miles overland into a field where I fitted her out, buying unplaned planks of Iroka for her interior. Most of the work was carried out with the help of an old friend, Tony Marshall, who had started out as a carpenter. Len Westwood, a foreman motor mechanic at British Leyland, helped to fit a new 18hp Saab diesel engine.

When the time came to install
Solitaire
's ballast, I bought 2 tons of scrap lead but could not decide how to pour the casting. I considered using an old bath as a melting pot, but the snag was manoeuvring this lump into the boat now that her deck had been fitted. When in doubt I did what I always did – phoned Brian Gibbons. He had got over this problem by building an adjustable die with which you could make ingots to suit the shape of the keel. Having borrowed it I spent two days in Tony Marshall's back garden where we cut a 32lb gas bottle in half for use as a cauldron. For heat we used coke with a couple of car air blowers. The resultant 80 castings fitted to perfection and with a few gallons of encapsulating resin the job was completed.

Solitaire
began to show her beauty and was ready to be christened in seawater. A government agent had visited and presented her with a British birth certificate. She was painted and antifouled; mast, boom and rigging ready for fitting.

Although Rome had been stationed up north we kept in contact with weekly letters and the odd visit. He already had a berth in Lymington, his home town on the south coast. In March 1975 he took his yacht there, so I went along to lend a hand and to learn the ropes. There I was introduced to his mother, Grace, a fitting
name for such a lady with her easy smile and quick laugh. Born in South Africa, she still had tinges of the accent. I met her lovely daughter Terry and Terry's husband, Martin Maudling, son of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, which started another lasting friendship.

By now I had reached the stage where people began to say, ‘It must be great to own your own yacht and sail around the world. I'd love to do the same but...'

‘But' is always the crunch. Invariably it would be followed by ‘I'm still paying the mortgage' or ‘the wife's not keen' or ‘the cats have had kittens'. If people were honest with themselves, they would admit they led a contented life and had no reason to change it.

As for me, I was 49 years old, had a well-paid, secure job, with no possible chance of finding another if I gave it up, but I had no buts. The dream I had had in South Africa six years earlier was stronger than ever so I surrendered my safe future and moved
Solitaire
to Lymington where she was immersed in seawater and baptised.

The launch went without a hitch,
Solitaire
bouncing like a beautiful baby, just above her waterline. The father, however, was to find himself in embarrassing situations over the next few months in trying to understand his child.

John, the dockside foreman, and his lads had gently lowered her into the water and stepped the mast. Only one end of the rigging wires had connectors, which had to be secured to the tangs on the mast. Everything was held in position by the halyards. Later I would cut the stainless rigging wires to length and fit Norseman connectors... I had been telling John how I had built
Solitaire
, impressing everyone with my plans to sail around the world singlehanded. Then I asked where I could park my boat. John pointed to a berth less than 50 yards away.

‘Would you please take us over?' I asked.

He was busy, he replied, and since there was no wind or current I would have no problem. ‘Slack water' was what he actually said. I then explained that I had to check the engine, look for leaks and
change my socks. When I finally ran out of excuses, I admitted I had never berthed a boat or tied one up in my life. We chugged over at a third of a knot to catcalls, cheers, and cries of ‘Bon voyage' and ‘Send us a card from Cape Horn'.

Two days later I was in trouble again. I had completed the work on the rigging and had fitted the boom when a stranger asked, ‘When are you fitting your kicking strap?' What on earth was he talking about? Suspecting that he was pulling my leg, I gave a vague wave of my hand and said, ‘Maybe tomorrow'. The solution seemed easy: go to the chandlery and buy one. Next morning I was waiting for them to open.

‘Good morning. I'd like to buy a kicking strap, please.'

‘We don't have any made up.'

‘When will you have some made up?'

‘Well, we never make them up, we sell the parts.'

‘Fine, I'll buy the parts.'

‘What size, sir?'

‘What do you mean? I'll take average.'

‘How much rope do you need, sir?'

‘Oh, a few feet.'

‘Don't you think you should measure the length you require... sir?'

‘Right, I'll be back.' As I left the shop I had a brainstorm. Back in the marina I found the first yacht with someone aboard who looked intelligent.

‘Hello, that's a fine craft you have there. And a nice kicking strap.'

A puzzled look. ‘What are you on about? Mine's in the locker.'

Rome arrived to help me buy the necessary pulleys and ropes to put tension on the boom – the kicking strap. After that he took
Solitaire
into the Solent to supervise my first faltering steps. She handled better than his own yacht, he said, with less weather helm, which might be due to my using lead ballast instead of iron. My sailing, however, was less impressive. I took over after Rome had shown me how to set the sails for different points of sailing. An
hour went by with Rome becoming very quiet. Fine, I thought, he's taught me all I need to know. Now I can pop off round the world.

‘Nice day, Rome.'

‘Not bad, we could do with a bit more wind.' (We were becalmed at the time.)

‘Er, that's it then, my old mate. I'm all set to go, eh?'

‘Well, Les, I'd give it a bit longer.'

‘How much longer, Rome? A couple of days?'

‘Maybe a year.'

Later, when he had jumped in the dinghy to take pictures of my sailing by, I said, ‘Rome, just one quick question before you paddle off. How do I stop the bloody thing?'

‘Les.'

‘Yes, Rome?'

‘Make it two years.'

The following week I took
Solitaire
out alone, a single-hander for the first time. I had given much thought to this, deciding that the cautious approach would be best with the engine on slow tick-over so that if I bumped into other boats only small pieces would be removed. I realised my mistake soon after leaving the pontoon when wind and current revealed how quickly
Solitaire
could move sideways. Craft that minutes before had seemed deserted became festooned with happy, smiling yachties joyously waving fenders, old truck tyres... and boat hooks. Out in the less restricted Solent, things went better until I hoisted the mainsail and genoa. There was a tangle on the genoa winch due to my failure to feed its sheet through the deck block, and the mainsail was not filling properly as I had forgotten to slacken the topping lift. Thereafter I had no other problems. She would sail close to the wind unattended, even allowing me to make a cup of tea!

The mechanics of sailing were never to trouble me, but I deeply regretted not having had the opportunity to start in dinghies as a boy, to learn to do things correctly from the start. Bad habits take years to break, whether swinging a golf club, driving a car or sailing a yacht. I had some help in that I had been born a coward.
I disliked arguing and would always walk around people when possible. As a boy I had stood in my school playground with blood streaming from my nose and soaking a torn shirt, hands open by my side. The bully had continued to slap my face, egged on by the jeers of the other children. It wasn't that I was afraid, just that there seemed no point in fighting. Only when I realised I was trapped did my hands become fists.

I approached the sea in the same way, hands open. I had no wish to fight the sea, to claim false achievements, to feel anger. At the first sign of the sea's disapproval I would lower my colours and drop sail: only when
Solitaire
's life was threatened would I fight back. The sea was far stronger than any ship so I had to always try to live with it, hands open.

I stayed out a couple of hours, anxious then to return to the marina to try out a new theory. My approach to berthing had been quite wrong; far too slow, it allowed outside elements to take over. The marina berths consisted of long pontoons, both sides of which had fingers to form an H, each U-portion taking two yachts. Should you fail to stop when entering your berth, the bow of your boat slowly rises up the pontoon before sliding gently back into the water.

I went down the long line of boats at approximately 5 knots in a graceful curve, sweeping round at the last moment to line up on our berth. A boat's length away, I pulled back on the pitch control lever, which provides forward, stationary and reverse drives – and it jammed. In the next few seconds I broke several world speed records, none recorded. When I opened my eyes it was to find
Solitaire
lying alongside her berth docilely, indignant at the delay in having her lines made fast.

Later a twit arrived. ‘I say, old boy, everyone was concerned by your departure, but jolly impressed by your return.' I would spend much time wondering whether he was serious or sarcastic.

The main hold-up to our departure now was the lack of self-steering gear. This had been a long drawn-out affair starting in Birmingham a year before. Three leading manufacturers had
quoted roughly £250. After Rome's remarks about
Solitaire
's lack of weather helm, I felt she could be steered by any of these gears, and settled for one that was compact and neat with a direct drive onto a balanced rudder. This was the beginning of a long association with Hydrovane, one I have never regretted. Indeed, the independent rudder would one day save
Solitaire
.

Group Captain Rex Wardman turned up at crack of dawn one morning soon after my arrival in Lymington and banged loudly on
Solitaire
's side.

‘Come on, Rome, you lazy devil, time to get up.'

I stuck my head out of the hatch. ‘It's not Rome, it's Les, and you've got the wrong bloody yacht.'

Rex was a little shorter than me, and a little older, having joined the RAF in the 1930s to fly many of the aircraft I had watched and admired as a boy. A jolly man, he lived life to the full, brushing problems aside with logic and a flick of the hand. As an experienced sailor Rex had been one of the first to take a berth at Lymington. Over the coming years it would be hard to count the number of times he and his wife, Edith, were around when I most needed them.

On this occasion, after inspecting
Solitaire
, Rex muttered, ‘It seems hardly fair to keep buying yachts when some people go into a field with a bucket of resin, a roll of fibreglass and build their own.' The final insult, on seeing the piece of old wood I was using as a tiller, was ‘I don't think much of that.'

He enforced the point by taking a kick at it and left me thinking that that was the last I would see of him. Minutes later he staggered down the jetty with two beautifully laminated tillers on his shoulders.

‘I've changed my yacht to wheel steering. Give one of these to Rome and keep the other for
Solitaire
.'

Without even waiting for thanks, he was off again.

Rex took me racing in the Solent a couple of times, not that I really enjoyed it. I found the sport a bit hair-raising, especially the starts, watching all that money being thrown about with seeming abandonment. On one occasion Rex had a beautiful crew member
whom I assisted in the galley, and by the end of the day felt I had made a fair impression. Helping her ashore she belched in my face. ‘Leslie, how could you?' she said and stalked off with another crew member, which just about summed up yacht racing for me – expensive, attractive and often with nothing but a belch at the end.

By August 1975 time was running out and so were funds: with berthing fees of £10 a week, only £300 remained in the kitty.
Solitaire
was still uninsured and the risk of damaging another yacht due to my lack of experience was worrying. Soon it would be autumn with a bleak English winter not far behind, making sailing difficult. Although I had a reasonable amount of food on board, I had no accurate timepiece, liferaft, flares or transmitter. Charts, too, were in short supply, along with navigational books.