At the age of sixty-five, Francis Chichester decided that he would sail his ketch Gipsy Moth IV around the globe. He left Plymouth, England, on August 27, 1966, with the goal of being the first to circumnavigate the world solo from west to east via the great capes. He was also in a hurry, as he wanted to beat the times of the great clipper ships of the nineteenth century.
GIPSY MOTH CIRCLES THE WORLD
SIR FRANCIS CHICHESTER
The Roaring Forties
Working up my sights at noon on October 18 I found that I was well over half way to Australia—at noon that day I had sailed 7,300 miles, and had 6,570 miles to go to Sydney Heads. As if to celebrate this achievement the day changed like magic from grey with misty low clouds and overcast to a bright blue clear sky, with a darker, but still bright, blue sea. Sunshine, however, did not free me from work. I had trouble with the genoa hanks which were always coming unfastened, and the big sails had to come down so that I could refasten them. I had to leave this operation with the sail down, because just before the hanks unfastened themselves I had been making ready dough for baking, and I had to rush to get it into the baking oven before it fell flat. I left the bread safely baking and went back on deck. I changed the big genoa for the three-hundred-footer jib, and found that the yacht went better for the change. The wind was veering, and the mizzen staysail had to come down to sail nearer to the wind. Dropping that mizzen staysail I was nearly lifted off my feet—it is amazing how the strength of the wind can creep up without one’s noticing.
There were thousands of prions flying about. These are lovely birds, silvery white seen from below, and a soft whitish grey seen from above. They swoop fast over the waves, resembling swallows. I never saw one pick up anything, but there must be something in the sea for them to eat. They did not seem interested in Gipsy Moth—probably they thought her an incredibly slow and clumsy bird. A school of porpoises played around the bows while I was struggling with the sail, but I made rather a noise with the mizzen staysail as it came down, and in a flash they disappeared.
When all the sails were trimmed Gipsy Moth was on a close reach, and went beautifully. It was pleasant sailing through that sunny afternoon and evening, because the sails and blocks were asleep, and for what seemed the first time for many days my ears were not assailed by the cacophony of barking blocks and cracking sails. The ship sailed as if she were satisfied—to me this is like being on a good horse, riding fast, but within her strength.
I put away my South Atlantic charts, and got out the charts for the Indian Ocean. There were not many straight charts, but U.S. Hydrographic Office pilot charts, British Met Office current charts, a gnomonic chart, and plotting chart sheets. It was quite a thrill to shift from one ocean to another. It is not often that a yachtsman changes oceans in one voyage!
I was rounding the Cape of Good Hope, though well to the south of it, and the weather grew more boisterous. The Forties really were beginning to roar, with strong winds increasing suddenly to gale force. I was bothered still with cramp in my leg, and began to suffer from lack of rest. On the night of October 19–20 at 2:30 A.M. I fell into a sound sleep for what seemed the first time for ages, but just after 4:30 A.M. I had a rude awakening. A dollop of water from a wave coming on board landed on the head of my bunk, and it was followed quickly by a second and a third. It was my own fault, for leaving out the top washboard of the companionway into the cabin, but this did not make it any more pleasant. I got up at once, dressed, dropped the spitfire jib, and turned dead downwind, because I thought Gipsy Moth would run dead before the wind under bare poles. Conditions were rugged on deck, with a lot of wind and water, both sea and heavy rain. I had to make sure of a good grip handy all the time, because of the rolling, and the seas pitching into the hull. After dropping the sail I felt seasick, and went below again to lie down, and try to get some more sleep. It was no good. No sooner had I undressed from my deck clothes than Gipsy Moth broached to, and I had to scramble into all my deck gear again and get back on deck as quickly as I could. Gipsy Moth had been slewed round broadside on to the waves, and she refused to answer the helm to take up any other heading. I noticed that the self-steering vane had apparently slipped, and was no longer trying to turn the rudder. I decided to stream a drogue from the stern, in the hope of bringing the stern to the wind. This I did, after collecting a shackle, a swivel, some rope from the afterpeak and the drogue from the forepeak. It didn’t work; the yacht had not enough way on her to give the drogue the power to haul the stern round.
Gipsy Moth under bare poles in a gale would do nothing but lie ahull, broadside on to wind and waves. I was convinced by what had happened that she could not be made to run downwind under bare poles in a seaway. The rudder could not control her without a storm jib on the foremast stay. This was a serious setback; it meant that her slowest speed running downwind in a gale would be 8 knots. I had never even considered that such a thing could happen! Gipsy Moth III had steered easily downwind under bare poles, or even with the wind on the quarter, and the American-designed Figaro had steered lightly and easily when we brought her up the English Channel one night under bare poles in a strong gale.
It was damnably uncomfortable. The wind went up to 55 knots, and the yacht was thrown about in all directions. Water kept forcing its way under the cabin hatch whenever a wave hit the deck. My sextant, which I stowed for safety in a cabin berth—fortunately in its box—was thrown out on to the cabin floor. I had one wave come right over me when I was in the cockpit; the water felt oddly warm, and the wave did not seem to strike with much force, I suppose because we were not moving. The air was biting cold with hail.
The self-steering vane was damaged. It had sheared the bolt and pin holding it to its upright mast or shaft, and I thought it remarkable that it had not blown away altogether. I could make no attempt at repair then, because it was impossible to work on it in that high wind and very rough sea. All I could do was to lash it up temporarily.
The storm went on all day. From time to time the wind would seem to ease a little, and I would go on deck to see if I could do anything with the self-steering gear. In one such interval I managed to dismantle the self-steering oar and haul it inboard, because it was getting such a pounding from the waves. It seemed amazing that the vane had not taken off into the air. But always after these lulls the wind came back again, and I could make no start on repairs. The seabirds got very excited about the drogue churning up white water astern. Watching their flight against the strong wind took my mind off my own miseries. They seemed to creep up the sides of the waves uphill, very close to the water. At three o’clock in the afternoon the birds lost whatever entertainment they had had from my drogue, because the warp attached to it parted, and the drogue went.
A big breaking wave struck Gipsy Moth and turned her right round, so that she faced north-west. I could do nothing to get her back without setting a sail, and it was too rough for making sail. I felt that it did not matter much which way she was headed because although we were being flung about all over the place, it was hard to tell if Gipsy Moth was moving through the water at all.
By that time I had not had anything to eat for twenty-four hours, and still I did not feel hungry. I scribbled in my log: “It is the queasiness which kills appetite, I think. This is not my merriest day, but it might be worse. It is very cold out.”
By nightfall I managed to get the yacht going again. At last the wind lulled for long enough to enable me to raise the little spitfire jib, and I gybed round. I contrived a very temporary repair of the self-steering with cordage, but it was not doing a job—the self-steering oar was still on deck. I set the tiller to take advantage of the fact that Gipsy Moth liked to lie beam on to the wind, and I left things at that until next morning. It was still appallingly uncomfortable, but we were sailing. The seas were impressive. If I looked up while working on deck I felt that I had to hang on for dear life. It seemed impossible for the monster rolling down on top of us not to submerge boat and all. But always Gipsy Moth rode up again. Some waves I called “strikers”—they would slam into the yacht viciously. I think these were waves which started to break about 25 yards from the boat. They looked about 100 feet high, some of them, so I dare say they were about 40 feet. They treated the boat like a cork, slewing it round and rolling it on its side. I would trim the self-steering gear and go below, only to find the heading 40° off what it should have been, so back I would have to go to retrim the self-steering gear. I decided that the big waves, slewing the boat through an angle of 45–60°, must make things impossible for the self-steering gear.
Gipsy Moth’s third vice was taking effect; she could not keep to her heading at the top of a wave face, but whipped round and broached to, lying broadside on to the wind and the waves. Sometimes the self-steering gear could bring her back on to her right heading, but often when the wind vane was suddenly swung 60° across the gale force wind, the pressure on it was too great; if the safety clutch had not given way, the vane must have broken. Broaching-to was the danger that was most dreaded by the clippers. Slewing round, broadside on to a big Southern Ocean storm, they would roll their masts down, and, if the sails went into the water, they were likely to founder, as many did. Leaving the danger aside (which, anyway, I did not consider as great for Gipsy Moth as for the clippers because Gipsy Moth ought to survive a knockdown which would cause a clipper to founder), those broachings seriously threatened the self-steering gear. To cut down the broaching, I was forced to cut down the amount of sail that I would have carried in northern waters. This was a big setback to my plans, because I had reckoned on making long runs in the westerlies down south. I had hoped, before I started the voyage, that a long light boat, which Gipsy Moth was designed to be, would knock off runs of 250 miles, day after day. I am not a designer myself, and my opinion as to the cause of this trick of Gipsy Moth’s may not be of value, but I did have a long experience of the boat and, in my opinion, her tendency to flip round as easily as a whip is cracked was due to her having too short a forefoot, and no grip on the water there, combined with an unbalance of the hull which required an excessive load on the tiller to activate the rudder.
There were leak drips everywhere, and I made a list of them:
Leaks
Doghouse post over sink
Doghouse post over Primus
Doghouse join about Primus v. bad
Post above head of quarter berth
Cabin hatch lets water in freely, both sides (according to heel)
All bolts holding companion hatch cover leak
Foot of quarter berth under outboard edge of the cockpit seat
From deck beside head of portside berth in cabin
Starboard forward locker—everything wet through
Seacock in cloakroom
Both ventilators when closed
I had to force myself to eat something to keep up my strength, so I had a chew at some mint-cake. It was not a very successful meal, for in biting on a piece of the mint-cake a tooth broke in half. Luckily my tongue recognised the bit of broken tooth as not mint-cake, and I did not swallow it, but recovered it in the hope of later repairs. Nigel Forbes, my dentist, had given me a dental repair kit, and now had come the time to use it. But I could not tackle dentistry then and there, because it was still too rough. I cleaned and scraped the broken bit as per instructions and wrapped it up safely to await a session in Gipsy Moth’s do-it-yourself dental chair. I made myself a cup of tea and turned in.
I was up two or three times during the night to tend the tiller lines. I wanted to try to keep heading 90° off the wind, but I did not want a gybe. There seemed to be a devil of a lot of strong wind about, but I was able to snooze a bit, after a fashion. Around six o’clock in the morning Gipsy Moth did gybe, and began rolling madly. I found that she was headed WNW. It looked cold and unfriendly outside, but I had to get on with repairs to the self-steering—clearly I could not go on like this. It took me an hour to dress, make tea, collect my tools and generally screw myself up to make a start. The rolling was frightful, and I felt as feeble as a half-dead mouse. I turn to my log some two hours later:
0909. Well, there we are. The vane is repaired, the self-steering oar in the water and in charge of the ship, the mizzen and genoa staysail are set. Of course the wind has dropped now and more sail is needed to move, but I am on strike and intend to have some breakfast first. After a 40–50 knot gale the sea is monstrously lumpy, and it was no picnic repairing the vane sticking out beyond the end of the boat. But it might have been a lot worse. The coffee is made, here’s to it.
That day I had a successful radio transmission with Cape Town, and felt much the better for it. Throughout this part of the voyage I was harassed by poor radio conditions, and it was always an immense relief to get through a message to the newspapers that were helping to make my voyage possible. When I failed to make R/T contact I would worry about it, for I hated not being able to do what I had said I would do. In poor conditions even a successful R/T transmission could be a strain. It might take an hour and twenty minutes to get off a 250-word cable. That used to take the stuffing out of me.
With conditions a bit better I felt some return of appetite, and my log records a notable meal on Saturday, October 22:
Ai, but that was good, that breakfast! A mug of hot chocolate and sugar, dried bananas and wheat, onion pancake (aimed at omelette with dried eggs!) home-baked whole-wheat toast and lime marmalade, mug of coffee.
I got out my dentist’s repair kit, and spent an hour having a go at my tooth. I succeeded in cementing the broken piece on again, but in doing so I cemented in a fragment of cotton wool from a cotton wool pad I had put in my mouth to keep my tongue away from my tooth while I was working on it. I left the bit of cotton wool in the repair—I felt I dared not pull it for fear of pulling off the piece of tooth I had managed to stick on.
I found a handsome six-inch squid on deck. It had attractive, variegated colouring rather like tortoiseshell, not at all like the pallid ones I had met before. It seemed just the thing for a good bouillabaisse, but I couldn’t face eating it.
Birds continued to bring much interest to my life. The prions would cavort madly round the yacht. They seemed to like flying through the wind shadows of the sails—I suppose the turbulence must be unexpected and intriguing. I threw out some old wheat grains, but they did not appear interested. When emptying my gash-bucket of scraps I would bang it on the rail, and that would bring along the Cape Hens (white-chinned petrels). They would alight and pick over the scraps. I had a feeling of meanness every time this happened—compared with the waste from a liner, my vegetable scraps, perhaps no more than a dessertspoonful, because I harboured my stores carefully, must have disgusted them.
At this time, too, I began to meet real albatrosses; not that my earlier albatrosses, or the birds I called albatrosses, weren’t real, but they seemed tiny compared with the big fellows I met now. One beautiful bird soared by with a wing-span that must have been at least eight feet across.
Alas, my tooth-repair did not hold. I tried it out at supper time, and it was no good—the broken bit simply came off again as soon as I tried to bite. Perhaps the best dentists do not mix cotton wool with their cement. I had another shot at cementing, this time without cotton wool fragments, but the repair was no more successful. In the end I got a file and filed down the jagged edges of the piece of tooth still in my jaw, and left it at that.
What had I expected from the Roaring Forties? They are not seas that many yachtsmen frequent; indeed, few ships of any sort go there now, because with steam and the Suez Canal the modern route to Australia is quite different. From my reading of the clipper logs I had an impression of a steady, surging wind, strong, driving ships day after day on towards the east. Of course, life is never quite like the tidy pattern that imagination makes of it. The clippers had great passages, and it is these that stay in the memory, but they had days (and weeks) of exasperating frustration too. Then one can gain a quite misleading impression of the seas from the logs of big ships—compared with Gipsy Moth, Cutty Sark, Thermopylae and their peers were all enormous. A gale that forced me, singlehanded, to lie ahull, at the mercy of wind and sea, to them might have been a good sailing breeze. I knew enough of singlehanded sailing in small boats to have assessed these things rationally, but rational assessment, and emotional preparation for the reality of something in life, are by no means the same. From my reading, and study of the clipper passages, I had expected the Forties above all else to be steady. That is just what they were not—it seemed luff and puff, luff and puff all the time. But it was luff and puff with a difference, nothing gentle about it; the difference, one might say, between the playful games of a kitten and the gambolling of a tiger cub. The squalls with which the weather, as it were, changed gear, were not a nice gentle change from, say, 20 mph in a car to 25–30 mph. They were like a fierce racing changing from 20 to 90–110 mph. Another thing which I find hard to describe, even to put into words at all, was the spiritual loneliness of this empty quarter of the world. I had been used to the North Atlantic, fierce and sometimes awesome, yes, but the North Atlantic seems to have a spiritual atmosphere as if teeming with the spirits of the men who sailed and died there. Down here in the Southern Ocean it was a great void. I seemed planetary distances away from the rest of mankind.
Just as I was getting ready for breakfast on Sunday, October 23, I had a bad shaking. In England before I left, Sheila Scott had given me a toy Koala bear, and it lived on a perch beside my Marconi set. It was always falling off its perch and that morning, as so many times before, I went to pick it up. I was holding the bear with one hand and making my way across the cabin from handgrip to handgrip with the other, when a violent lurch caught me between handgrips and threw me hard against the table. When I picked myself up, a place in my ribs under my right arm felt very sore. I thought some ribs must be broken though I could find nothing wrong. The same old lesson was driven home to me forcibly again—never to move about below without one handgrip, or at least an eye on the next one, so that it can be grabbed instantly if the boat lurches. Those lurches, as a beam wave caught her, made Gipsy Moth move like a whip cracking. I consoled myself for my sore rib with the reflection that I might have been much more seriously hurt, and that the accident would have done good if it made me remember the lesson about holding on.
When I had recovered from my shaking and had some breakfast I went on deck to replace the trysail with the main. The wind seemed lessening, and I felt that Gipsy Moth needed the main. I did not like that main, it was my least-favourite sail. For one thing, it required too much brute force to handle, for it was always pressing against a shroud or binding on a sheet; for another, I had to trot to and fro from mast to cockpit about six times during the hoisting. First I had to slack away the vangs as the sail began to rise; then to alter the self-steering trim to head more into the wind so that the head of the sail would not foul the lower aft shroud; then several times to slack away the sheet as the sail went up. After that the lower shroud runner had to be released, and the shroud tied forward to another shroud. Why, then, did I use the mainsail? Well, it was double the area of the trysail and had much more drive, and when I did get it up and trimmed, it set better. Furthermore, it was my collecting-sail for rain, and I needed more rainwater in my tanks. But man is adaptable, and before the end of the voyage I had devised a method of raising the mainsail in a Force 6 when going downwind with no trouble at all!
That evening I was involved in a silly accident to the rigging. I had the starboard levered shroud, which was slacked off, tied forward to another shroud with the lever released, so that the wire should not chafe the mainsail. Gradually the tie worked its way up the two shrouds, until it nearly reached the lower crosstree. As a result, I could not tauten the shroud with the lever when I needed to. I tried for half an hour to get down the tie with a boathook, but I could not shift it. Then it got dark, and I decided to leave it until daylight, when I intended to go up the mast to free it. During the night I worried about the safety of the mast with an un-tautened shroud, and at 1:30 in the morning I got up and shone a torch on the mast. It looked quite unmoved, but I dared not come up closer to the wind, which I wanted to do. At 5:30 I went on deck to tackle the shroud and determined to have one more try at freeing it before climbing the mast. I got my long burgee stick (5 feet 6 inches) and taped a foot-long carving knife to it. The knife had a sharp, narrow blade—I had carried it on board various boats for at least ten years, and this was the first time I had ever used it. By standing on the main boom, I could make the knife just reach the nylon tie binding the two shrouds together. I sawed and stabbed at it with the knife, and after a somewhat lengthy process I contrived to cut it through.
While I worked at the shroud, Gipsy Moth galloped along on a grey-green sea. There was too much heel for comfort, but I left the mainsail up, because I expected the wind to veer and free the boat, and I went below to try for a little more sleep. Alas, I was wrong, for instead of veering the wind backed, and soon Gipsy Moth was hard on the wind coming from the south-east. I sweated up the main to get it setting better, and felt most unfairly treated, because according to the U.S. Pilot Charts a south-east wind should have been pretty rare in that area of sea. I wrote in the log: “What an indignity to have to cope with an east wind in the Roaring Forties.”
For the next twenty-four hours the wind went on backing, with intervals of light, flucky airs, or all-but calm. I was up and down at the sails, constantly fiddling at the trim to get the best out of the yacht, and became drowsy and doped with fatigue. At last, during the morning of October 25, the wind began to return to the west, and as it did so, it increased in strength. Suddenly, there was a major crisis. I suppose I should not have let myself get caught, but due to fatigue I was not at my best for dealing with emergencies. As I was trying to eat some breakfast, a particularly fierce squall struck. I grabbed my padded coat and rushed into the cockpit—still in my “indoor” slip-on sheepskin boots—to turn downwind and run before it. With so much sail set I could not move the tiller, even with the help of cords after I had disengaged the wind vane. Later, I realised my mistake; I had released the self-steering vane, but I ought to have released the self-steering tiller lines to the rudder quadrant as well. I was pushing the tiller against the immense power of the self-steering oar locked to one side. I redoubled my efforts with the cords, and suddenly the tiller responded. Before I could check the turn, Gipsy Moth had gybed.
The boom came over with an almighty “wham,” the vang tearing a stanchion out of the deck. As it came across, the mainsheet slide shot across the track rail, and tore out the permanent stop screwed to the end of the rail. The slide holding two parts of the mainsheet came off the rail of horse.
I gybed back again, because of the headsails being on the other gybe. I did not notice that when the boom crashed over to starboard the first time the topping lift from masthead to boom end had hooked up behind the upper crosstree. It was amazing, and a great tribute to the rigging and spars, that the crosstree did not carry away when I gybed back. All this time I was still in my “house” boots, bareheaded, and without a safety harness. Fortunately I had stowed away a spare harness in the cubby hole at the side of the cockpit. I struggled into this, took off my boots, and dropped them into the cabin, thinking that I might as well keep them dry. I could not leave the cockpit in those boots, because without non-slip soles they would have been dangerous.
As soon as I had the tiller lashed so that it should give me sufficient time before gybing or tacking, I went forward along the deck in bare feet. I dropped the mainsail, letting most of it (the bunt) fall into the water—the boom was way out abeam. Then I dropped the genoa staysail, and the jib, in each case securing the halliard after removing it from the head of the sail—I did not want halliards winding round the crosstrees! I let the sails lie, partly in the water. As I left the cockpit I had freed the mizzen halliard, hoping that the sail would drop of itself. This it did not do, and was damaged. I told myself: “Never mind. It might have been much worse.”
When I turned to the main boom I noticed the topping lift hooked up to the weather crosstree. First I furled and tied the sail in three places to reduce windage—it was blowing a stiff 45 knots—and then I brought the boom inboard by hauling on the weather vang. As soon as I could reach the end of the boom I freed the topping lift from it, and dropped the boom on deck, lashing it there. After that I hoisted the spitfire jib, and engaged the self-steering as soon as Gipsy Moth started moving again. I hurried over this for fear that the self-steering gear would be damaged while Gipsy Moth lay ahull. Waves knocking the gear from side to side shook the whole boat with shuddering bangs.
One’s thoughts at these moments of crisis are sometimes curiously detached. My chief personal worry during the gybe and the troubles that followed it was that, without a cap to protect them, my spectacles would blow away. I had intended to have a washing bout that morning, and I reflected that at least my feet were getting their wash in advance.
Overcoming Disaster
I began to understand why these lonely seas are called “The Roaring Forties.” It is the noise of the wind in the rigging. I would not call it a roar exactly, but I know of no other way of describing it—a hard, compelling noise that seems unique to those latitudes. In the days of the clippers, with their forests of masts and rigging, the noise must have been awe-inspiring.
My sense of spiritual loneliness continued. This Southern Indian Ocean was like no sea I had met before. It is difficult to paint the picture with words of what it was like down in the Southern Ocean in those spring months. I have sailed across the North Atlantic six times, three times alone, and experienced winds up to 100 miles per hour (87 knots) there, but looking back it seemed so safe compared with this Southern Ocean stuff. This Southern Ocean was totally different; the seas were fierce, vicious and frightening. The boat was under big accelerations from the powerful, monumental waves. It was hard to say what the speed was. From the deck it seemed slow, but the foam on the water and the whole water surface were moving fast themselves, which made it difficult to judge.
The squally weather was beginning to form a pattern. Phrases such as this kept on recurring in the log:
A 45 knotter threatened to flatten Gipsy Moth. I did not know if it was the start of another gale or what.
There is a big sea running, and a big one coming under the boat slews her stern round now and then.
It was so still below after dropping the genoa that I went up into the cockpit to see if we had stopped. It was still blowing 30 knots of wind, and we were sliding along at about 6 ½ knots.
Rolling and strong sideways accelerations.
Pretty rough going with strong winds.
The moon shines bright between clouds as if to stress how ordinary all this is for her.
Banging and slamming and throwing about all over the place—probably due to two or three different seas overriding each other.
The incessant squalls had one unexpected quality—often the sun would continue to shine brightly while the wind whipped the sea to fury. Somehow this didn’t seem right. An Atlantic squall usually comes from a grey sky over a grey sea. The bright sunshine was good, but it seemed odd, and out of place. Why should the sun be out there enjoying himself, when conditions were so rugged for the rest of us?
The near-calms were the most exhausting ordeals for me. Time after time the ship would go about, with all the sails aback. I would have to wear round, and retrim the mainsail and mizzen. These near-calms seemed to last seven or eight hours, and usually occurred at night. I would be up and down to the cockpit time after time for retrimming, and I would be lucky to get more than a couple of hours’ sleep during the night. Each swell passing under the boat brought its own little wind during a near-calm. First, the swell pushed the ship so that the sails were all aback as the crest passed under, then it made a wind from the opposite direction after the crest or summit had passed.
Aback, aback, aback—this is the constantly recurring entry in the log. Each time involved wearing the ship round and retrimming at least the mainsail and the mizzen, then half an hour to an hour coaxing the self-steering gear to take charge again. I attributed this trouble to the unbalance of the sails or hull, or both. A slight change of wind force would completely alter the balance, the boat would head off in a new direction, and the rudder was so hard to move that the self-steering gear could not cope with it. On October 29 the log reads:
It is heartbreaking to have a lovely sailing breeze and fine sunny weather, to be sailing well off the wind and able only to do under 5 knots. The sea surface is pretty smooth really, yet Gipsy Moth splashes down, sending out great sheets of spray at the bows, and slows down for 3 rocks on 3 little waves. It is like a charging elephant being stopped by a fly whisk.
The seabirds continued to fascinate me. The albatrosses’ legs and feet shook and shuddered each time they flew into the turbulent wind shadow downwind of the sails. In a storm, the birds seemed to climb very slowly up the face of a wave, as if walking up it. I wondered if they could get up only by using their feet or if they had to use their wings as well. Whenever I could, I tried to feed the albatrosses. I liked watching them alight. They would put down their feet to act first as an airbrake, and then to stop them on the water.
Twice I entered the Forties, and was driven out by a gale. A 50-knot squall going through was like the infernal regions, with great white monsters bearing down out of a black void, picking up the boat and dashing it about. I hated the feeling of being out of control. Once a wave broke in the cockpit, not seriously, but the immense power it showed was frightening. I wrote: “It requires a Dr. Johnson to describe this life. I should add that the cabin floor is all running wet, and my clothes are beginning to get pretty wet too. Vive le yachting!”
On November 2 I could not understand why Gipsy Moth nearly gybed time after time. Several times I reached the companion just in time to push the tiller over (leaning out from the cabin) at the gybing point. If she had gybed in that wind with the boom right out, there would have been chaos and damage. Then the boat would come up to wind until the wind was abeam. I began to fear that something had broken in the self-steering gear, so put on a coat and went to investigate. I found that the self-steering gear was not connected to the rudder at all; the link arm between the wind vane and the steering oar had pulled out of its socket after shaking out the safety pin somehow. I was thankful it was no worse. That day my speedometer packed up. At first I was surprised how much I missed it, but as things turned out it did not matter much, for I found that my dead reckoning was as accurate as it had been when the speedometer was working. As a matter of fact, it was more accurate, because the speedometer had been under-registering at low speeds. Perhaps this was because the little propeller of the speedometer’s underwater unit was getting foul with marine growth. After I had got over the feeling of loss when the speedometer failed, it was quite a relief not to have it. There was certainly more peace in not eyeing the speed all the time, wondering if it could be improved.
On November 3 I had been three days without a sun sight, three days of “blind going” as the clipper navigators called it. This was just what I hoped would not occur when I was approaching Bass Strait, with no position fix since Madeira. With strong currents during the gales, no wonder so many clippers were wrecked there. In the afternoon of the 3rd I got a sun sight for longitude. This gave a day’s run of 227 miles, but again this depended on the dead reckoning being correct for the two previous days when the runs had been 155 and 138.
I wondered how much more speed I should have made if I had not got the high-powered radio telephone on board, and had not had to use it. My log is full of entries such as this: “Long R/T contact with Cape Town. I feel absolutely flattened out.” Apart from the effort of transmitting and writing out reports, there was the matter of the great weight which had to be carried to operate the telephone. There was the weight of the radio telephone itself, which was four feet or so above the waterline, and therefore badly placed for the stability of the boat. Then there were the heavy batteries, the alternator for charging the batteries at high amperage, fuel for the charging motor, earthing plates down to the keel of the boat, two backstays rigged with big insulators top and bottom for transmitting aerials. On top of all this was the negative effect of transmitting; time after time I would delay sail setting because a radio telephone schedule was coming up during the next hour. Altogether the effect on the performance of the boat was considerable.
November 3 brought the first real fog of the passage, with visibility down to about one hundred yards. I had both flames of my Aladdin stove lit and full on, trying to dry out the inside of the boat which was oozing water everywhere. My rain-collecting system went on sending down water collected from the fog—no smoke particles there! It rained a good deal when it wasn’t foggy, and by November 4 I had collected 27 gallons of fresh water in my tank. That made me secure as far as water for drinking and cooking was concerned, but did not give me enough for washing clothes. I could sit for hours watching the rainwater trickling through the transparent pipe leading to the tank. It gave me great pleasure and satisfaction. I can’t explain why; I think some primeval instinct must have been involved.
I was fagged out, and I grew worried by fits of intense depression. Often I could not stand up without hanging on to some support, and I wondered if I had something wrong with my balancing nerves. I felt weak, thin and somehow wasted, and I had a sense of immense space empty of any spiritual—what? I didn’t know. I knew only that it made for intense loneliness, and a feeling of hopelessness, as if faced with imminent doom. On November 5 I held a serious conference with myself about my weakness. When I got up that morning I found that I could not stand on my legs without support, just as if I had emerged from hospital after three months in bed. I was exhausted after a long struggle with the radio on the previous evening, and a long-drawn battle with the mainsail during the night finished me off. Then I thought, “Husky young men on fully-crewed yachts during an ocean race of a few days have been known to collapse from sheer exhaustion. I have been doing this singlehanded for more than two months. Is it any wonder that I feel exhausted?” That cheered me up a bit, and I made two resolutions: firstly, to try to relax and take some time off during each day; secondly, to eat more nourishing food. Because I was so tired I was not eating enough. I logged: “I must go more for things like honey, nuts, dried fruits. I ought to bake some more wholemeal bread.”
My oven was a camping one which fitted over the Primus, and it baked very well. But I had rather got out of the habit of baking, which was a mistake, because I enjoyed my bread, and always felt that it did me good. But conditions were usually so rough and I felt such lassitude that often I did not have the energy to prepare the dough and bake. After my resolution I did bake more regularly.
Breakfast was my best meal, partly, perhaps, because I felt more like eating after getting some sleep, but partly, too, because breakfast always seemed important as a ritual after coming through the night safely—candy for the kid. So deliberately I took more time over my breakfasts. I was often up at dawn, and at it all day until dark without a let-up, followed probably by three or four dressings-up in deck clothes during the night. So I sat for as long as I could over breakfast, and sometimes went back to my bunk for a snooze after it. My bunk was the most comfortable place on the yacht, but I had to give up the quarter berth which I liked best because of leaks. My sleeping bag and everything else got so sopping that I was driven out to another berth in the cabin.
Those first weeks of November were hard going. There was constant rough work on deck in huge seas, and I was constantly afraid of another accidental gybe, which might have brought grave damage. I was fortunate that my earlier gybe had not done more damage than it did—I felt I had been lucky. Apart from the deck-fittings, which I contrived to repair or replace from my bosun’s stores, the only real damage had been to the mizzen staysail. That, too, was mendable, and although sewing was difficult in the rough conditions, I managed to restore the sail.
I think that the patent hanks on my headsails caused me more cursing than any other item of equipment on the boat. Almost every time a sail was hoisted, some of them came undone. On November 8 I logged that it was quite a job getting the big genoa down because the wind was piping up, and all the hanks except four were unfastened, so that the sail began flogging as soon as I started to lower it. There was one hank left at the head of the sail, but with the strain on it that tore free of the sail. I would have given a lot to have the good old-fashioned hanks on my sails.
On the evening of November 9 I was transmitting to Cape Town for The Guardian and got half my message through when the lead came off the aerial. I was still able to hear the operator and he could hear a few words from me, which I think was amazing with no aerial at all, and a 2,500-mile transmission! Part of the message which they got wrong was that I liked having birds around me, but that they made me realise how completely I was alone. The message went through, “because they make me realise how I am completely alone!”
In 10,000 miles of sailing I had not seen a single fish in the water, only flying fish in the air, and on the deck. A few squid landed on the deck at night. The prions were my favourite birds then—most beautiful dove-grey birds with pointed wings, flying like big crazy swallows. They would play above the top of the mizzen mast, flying up to it and hovering there in the updraught, before turning and streaking downwind. I think it must have been a prion that I saw one midnight, flying silently round the yacht like a white ghost. The Cape Hens were the quickest to settle on the water, to examine the scraps I threw to them.
Sheila, on her way to meet me in Sydney in the P and O Oriana, sailed from Aden on November 10, and I looked forward to being able to talk to her on the radio telephone. I tried two or three times to call up Oriana but without success. I was bothered about this, because I knew they were expecting me to call them and feared they would worry if they could not pick me up. But making unanswered radio calls was an exhausting strain, and Oriana became a sort of nightmare. I felt that I ought to tune in to try to contact her twice a day, but I also felt that it was nonsense to be trying to reach a ship still some 3,000 miles away. I decided to wait and not to try again until Oriana was nearing Fremantle in Australia. After my last futile call on the night of November 11 I wrote:
No luck with Oriana. I don’t think I shall try till they are near Fremantle. It wears one down with uncertainty. I’m sure Sheila would understand that. I think she is the most understanding, sensitive woman I know.
On November 11 I got all my dispatch for the Sunday Times through to Philip Stohr in Cape Town, but it took me 1 hour 20 minutes. This made an inroad into my charging fuel, which was already running short.
Next day I pumped the bilge and found that it took 257 pumps to clear the water. I had last pumped on November 9, when it needed only 57 pumps. I wondered where all the water came from—257 pumps represents a lot of water. It had been heavy weather all the time, and I decided that the total of all deck leaks could probably be enough to account for the water; a lot of water always seemed to get in through the doors of the dinghy well. Still, 257 pumps was a lot of water. I added to my tasks the job of keeping a more frequent eye on the bilge, in case there was a leak below the waterline. In spite of my resolution I had another go at trying to call Oriana but not a squeak could I hear.
It grew steadily colder. My fingers used to get frozen with any work on deck, and on November 14 a squall brought hail instead of rain. The hailstones rattled on the skylight like piles of white peas. I had a good contact, however, with Perth radio, and got through a 412-word telegram to The Guardian quite easily. I asked them to tell Oriana that I had tried to get her, and to say that I would call again on November 16 and 17 at 14:00 hours.
Thursday, November 15, brought disaster. I woke to a 40-knot wind—a heavy weight of wind, but no worse than the rough weather over most of the past weeks. The burgee halliard parted, but that was small beer. At 12:15 I went aft to make what I thought would be a minor repair to the self-steering gear, and found that the steel frame holding the top of the steering blade had broken in half. There were two steel plates, one on each side of the top of the blade, to hold the blade and to connect it to the wind vane. Both had fractured. The oar blade was attached to the ship only by a rod used to alter its rake. It was wobbling about in the wake like a dead fish held by a line. I expected it to break away at any moment, and rushed back to the cockpit. I let all the sails drop with a run as fast as I could let the halliards go, so as to stop the ship and take as much strain off the gear as possible. Then I unshipped the blade, and got it aboard as quickly as I could, before the fitting which held the rod broke off and I lost the oar. The sight of the self-steering gear broken beyond repair acted like a catalyst. At first I turned cold inside and my feelings, my spirit, seemed to freeze and sink inside me. I had a strange feeling that my personality was split and that I was watching myself drop the sails efficiently and lift out the broken gear coolly. My project was killed. Not only was my plan to race one hundred days to Sydney shattered, but to make a non-stop passage there was impossible, too. Then I found out that I was not really crestfallen; it was a relief. I realised that I had been waiting for this to happen for a long time. I went below and stood myself a brandy, hot. Now my thoughts began whirling round in tight circles, as I thought about what had happened, and searched for the best course of action. I went back to the stern and studied the breakage. Two steel plates, 27 inches long, 6 inches wide and 1/2inch thick connected the wooden steering oar to the rest of the gear. These had both broken clean across, where a strengthening girder had been welded on to the plates. I considered all the pieces of sheet metal on the boat that I could think of, wondering if I could make a repair. The best bet seemed to be the swinging frame of the Primus stove, but it was not nearly as strong as the original metal that had broken and, besides that, I had no suitable nuts and bolts for bolting it to the broken pieces. The self-steering gear could not be repaired on board—I was well and truly in trouble. If I had had a normal boat I could have trimmed her up to sail herself, but experience so far had convinced me that Gipsy Moth IV could never be balanced to sail herself for more than a few minutes. The bald fact was that she could only be sailed from now on while I was at the helm, otherwise she must be hove to while I slept, cooked, ate, navigated or did any of the other many jobs about the ship. I should do well if I could average 10 hours a day at the helm; that would give me 60 miles a day at 6 knots. Taking calms and headwinds into consideration, I should do well to make good, on an average, 50 miles per day. I thought I was 2,758 miles from Sydney which was a long way, only 200 miles less, for example, than the Great Circle distance from Plymouth to New York. It would take an age to reach it, 55 days at 50 miles per day, perhaps 3 months. On top of the 80 days I had spent on the passage so far, it seemed out of the question. The only course open to me was to head for the nearest place where I could get a repair. The nearest suitable place was Fremantle. Even that was 1,160 miles away which would mean a very long time at the helm. I worked out a course for Fremantle.
I started work. I hoisted a small sail and after rigging a line from the tiller to the side of the cockpit I played with the adjustment of this until I got the boat reluctantly to keep roughly to a heading. It was not the best heading, but it could have been worse. I logged: “How I shall get her to steer on any heading that is not nearly abeam I can’t think at present. I’ll have some lunch and try again with more sail, etc. Of course this 37-knot wind is pretty strong.” Later I wrote:
Life is going to be pretty good hell I imagine for the next fortnight or so. I have been out to the tiller several times in the past two hours, once to prevent a gybe when the wind dropped, another time because the wind had increased, making the boat gripe up to windward. Tomorrow I must try to lead tiller lines into the cabin so that I can steer from there. Otherwise I shall go barmy if I have to dress up each time I have to adjust the tiller. At the moment the wind direction is the best possible, because beam to wind is the boat’s natural lie. What I shall do to make her go downwind I can’t think at present. I am going to turn in for a sleep while I can.
It was a stinking night, and I was called out several times to find the boat headed west instead of east, with all the sails aback. On one of these occasions I lay drowsy in my berth reluctant to get up again, and I noticed that although the sails were aback, the boat was forging ahead slowly and—a most important fact—she kept a much steadier course than when she was sailing in the right direction with the sails all drawing. At the time I took these facts in without really being aware of them. They imprinted themselves, as it were, on my subconscious self.
At 6 A.M. I started the job of trying to make the boat sail itself in some way or other, so that I should be able to eat and sleep without having her stop dead. It looked desperate by breakfast time, when I had been trying for an hour to balance the sail pressure, etc., against the pull on the tiller. However, I had a good breakfast, even though I absentmindedly dipped into the coffee jar instead of the marmalade pot. Some time during breakfast I recalled that Gipsy Moth had held a steady heading when she had been turned round facing west with the sails aback. This was a strange fact; surely I might be able to make use of it? During breakfast, when I was trying hard to squeeze something out of my brain, I had an idea. I devised something and by 10:20 I had the boat sailing herself, on course, and downwind. She was not going very fast, but by then there was only an 8-knot wind (thank Heaven). An albatross gravely insulted my efforts by swimming or paddling along a few yards astern, to keep up with Gipsy Moth.
All that day I was experimenting. I unshackled both the storm sails and changed them over, so that the smaller sail was on the staysail stay; then I hove the clew of this small storm staysail to windward, so that the sail was as she would be if the ship had turned right round and the sail was aback; then I linked the clew of this sail to the tiller by means of blocks on each side. After a lot of trial and error, the result was as follows:
When the yacht was on course, the sail was aback, and wind pressing on it pulled the tiller sufficiently to windward to counteract the tendency of the boat to turn up into wind.
If the boat did begin turning off course into wind, the pressure on the sail increased, with the result that the pull on the tiller increased, making the boat turn off the wind again.
If, on the other hand, the boat started turning downwind, this steering sail would presently gybe, as it were, and the wind would press on it from the other side, thereby exerting a pull on the tiller in the other direction to leeward, with the result that the boat turned towards the wind again.
Luckily the wind had fallen light that morning, and all day I was working in a gentle breeze of between 7 ½ and 10 knots. By noon I had sailed 91 miles on course for Fremantle since the self-steering gear broke. At 17:30 I logged: “Nearly becalmed. At least Gipsy Moth has steered herself all day which I regard as an achievement starting from scratch, even if it isn’t right for other conditions.”
My chief anxiety now was not to embarrass Sheila. Her ship was due in at Fremantle next day, and I had to get a message to her before then, so that she would not continue on to Sydney while I put into Fremantle. That evening I had a bad contact with Oriana. Her operator seemed to hear me better than I could hear him. I kept on repeating: “I am on my way to Fremantle, I am putting into Fremantle.” The contact was too bad to explain why. I logged: “Poor Sheila, she will wonder what is happening.”
That night was dark and it was raining. I saw a strange thing, bright blobs of phosphorescence up in the air passing the boat. As my eyes got used to the dark I realised that these bright patches were actually in the water, and the high waves had made them appear to be up in the air!
By noon of the 17th I was another 81 miles on the way to Fremantle. But I was getting increasing fits of depression and sense of failure; I had set out to sail non-stop to Sydney. The prospect of putting in at Fremantle stuck in my gullet, and finally I decided that I could not stomach it. At 3:45 that afternoon I altered course back for Sydney.
All day I worked on my self-steering system, watching the effect on my steering arrangement and the tiller of any change in the heading or in the wind strength or direction. By the end of the day the heading required was dead downwind to a 33-knot wind, but my system was coping with it, though with a loud clatter of ropes and sails flapping.
I was now anxious to get another message through to Sheila, so that she would not get off at Fremantle while I sailed on to Sydney. I tried calling up Oriana again that night, but had a rotten contact. Altogether I tried five times on the 16th and 17th to contact Oriana. I thought they were hearing me, even if I could not hear them, and I repeatedly said that I was headed for Sydney again, and was not going to Fremantle. I asked for Sheila to speak to me on Perth Radio when she landed there.
My system took a minor squall pretty well, and I was pleased with it. The day’s run to the 18th was up to 111 miles. I felt happier than I had been at any time previously during the voyage. I had been waiting for the self-steering gear to fail, and apprehensive all the time that I should be helplessly stuck with a badly balanced boat. That I had been able to rig up gear to make her sail herself was deeply satisfying. I hate turning back; I hate giving up; and I hate being diverted from my course; it was a seaman’s job to get over difficulties. I think this compensated for my chagrin at failure of the one-hundred-day project, which did seem impossible now for two reasons—firstly, because the steering sail was depriving me of one of my best driving sails when on the wind, and secondly, because part of the steering sail was actually acting against the forward movement of the boat, pulling against the other sails. I knew I had set a very high target with 100 days, but I believed that I stood a fair chance of achieving it if the self-steering gear had not bust. At the time that happened I had 2,758 miles to go and 20 days left of the 100. In the previous 20 days I had sailed 2,920 miles.
On the night of the 18th I had a long radio session with Perth, and explained the whole situation during eighty minutes. Just before midnight I was called out by a minor shemozzle, to find all the sails aback, including the mizzen staysail. “And that,” I logged, “is something to have aback.” I had set too high a standard for my steering system, asking it to control the boat with the mizzen staysail set in a light wind which was something the self-steering gear itself had often failed to accomplish.
The fourth day’s run with my system produced 138 miles and I began to warm up my hopes: could I possibly do it in one hundred days after all? Of course there were a lot of miles lost in the first three days which I should have to make up, and that would be a big handicap. Again I kept at it all day, fiddling with the system and ironing out minor troubles.
The petrels and one or two albatrosses stayed with me, and they would come from quite far when I banged my scrap tin before emptying it—to call them to dinner. Then they kept on flying round close, for more scraps. I loved watching them. To make things better still, that evening I made contact on the radio with Oriana, and had a long talk with Sheila. It was a joy to hear her, and to be able to talk directly to her. This cheered me up immensely, and I wrote in the log:
I have been leaning over the garden gate, in this case the washboards of the companionway, looking out at the hazy moon and the water sliding by; I am more at peace than at any time before on this passage. I think that the damned self-steering gear was a constant worry to me, waiting for it to bust. Now we seem to be really sailing and I feel happy.
On the 20th I had got the day’s run up to 168 miles. My system could keep the boat pretty steady on a heading downwind, or across wind, but for a wind half way between them the going was very tricky.
Next day I could only jog along in a 40-knot gale. There had been a quiet roar in the rigging all day and I had trouble getting the steering sail to control the boat when there was only one sail drawing. I logged: “My experience of these gales is that you can’t set sail again seriously until the noise in the rigging, a mild roar, one might call it, eases.” I was feeling very feeble physically again; it seemed as if the gale had taken the stuffing out of me. I meditated why, wondering whether my feebleness was due to the incessant effort of holding on and straining to keep a position without being thrown, or to damp, not enough food, or the nervous strain tensing up for the next time the hull was hit, thrown down or over. The day’s run dropped to 82 miles.
I could not hoist the trysail right the way up, because the loose end of the broken burgee halliard was twisted round the trysail halliard and everything else aloft. I was afraid to use the winch, and there was too much wind to wiggle things free. I do not get on well with burgee halliards, and logged: “It could easily happen that that burgee halliard stops everything from moving up there! Curse it, this has always happened on every ocean crossing I have done. I should get rid of the damned thing before I start.”
My great interest every day of the voyage was to get an accurate sun fix, so that I could know what the ship had sailed during the past day, and ponder on my tactics for the coming days. On November 22 I recorded:
I got four shots at the sun with some difficulty, and then a surfing wave took charge of the boat. The crest coamed into the cockpit giving the sextant a real sea bath. However, I rinsed it in warm fresh water with some detergent in it. Just after I finished, a 45-knot squall hit the boat. I was sheltered in the cabin helping out the tiller in overpowering gusts. The hatch was only open an inch to allow passage of the cords to the tiller, but the rain was so heavy that it was driving 7 feet into the cabin through that small crack. I put on a raincoat and a hat standing in the cabin.
That afternoon I dropped the jib, and stopped the ship. All the battens had been torn out of the working jib, and the sails were taking a beating. It was hard to stand on the deck. Waves were coming into the cockpit, and hail sounded like rifle fire. It was also very cold, and my hands were half numb. The seas, squirting through the closed hatch, had swollen the woodwork in the galley so that I could not open two of the drawers there. That was irritating, because there were several things I wanted in those drawers.
In the evening I got Gipsy Moth sailing again, but I had to come to the rescue of the steering system several times next day, both to prevent a turn downwind from becoming a gybe, and a turn up into the wind from stopping the boat. Undoubtedly the system had its disadvantages. I could not use the mainsail, because the boom would have fouled the steering lines from the sail to the tiller. And the cockpit was so full of lines that it was dangerous to set the mizzen staysail. The boat was like a birdcage. It was difficult to make way along the deck, and when I came out of the cabin it was easier to crawl under the tiller than to move over it.
But I was improving all the time, and on November 24 I logged:
Still driving hard through grey-green seas, and grey sky of low overcast. The rig seems to be spoiling me, keeping course at 7 to 7 ½ knots all through the night, except for periodic roarings in the rigging and bashings of waves over the deck when a wave throws the boat’s head off to the northeast or even further to the north; but each time so far, after rough going for a few minutes, the steering sail has brought her back on course. It is 9 ½ hours since I touched tiller or rope. Long may it continue; it smacks of the marvellous to me!
I got quite a thrill when I found suddenly that I was well past the western end of Australia, which I might not have noticed if I had not run off the end of the chart of the Indian Ocean. Perhaps I should add that I was then five hundred miles south of the land, so that there was no likelihood of charging into it because of not noticing that I was passing it. It was exciting to dig out the chart of Australia. I was now only about 1,200 miles from Bass Strait which was a daunting (if exhilarating) prospect after no sight of land since Madeira.
I still had no log or speedometer, but I found my dead reckoning much better than expected. One gets used to judging speed. For instance, the previous day’s run was 158 miles by sun fixes, and my dead reckoning run, based on judging the speed at intervals, was only 3 ½ miles short of this.
An extraordinary thing happened after I had finished my radio telephone dispatch on November 25. As the light over my chart table had failed temporarily, I connected an inspection lamp at the end of a lead to give me light to work the telephone. I hung this lamp on the wire lead to the speedometer. Suddenly the speedometer began to work again. I found that the wire leading to the speedometer had snapped (probably it had been damaged when the radio telephone was being fitted), and the weight of the inspection lamp somehow managed to connect the two ends again inside the insulating cover! I had tried that particular connection between the wire and the speedometer about eight times, but never thought of the wire itself being snapped. Now I had a speedometer again (though I didn’t actually repair the lead until the next day). I was glad to have it, for I should need it among the islands of Bass Strait, but I reflected ruefully that my peace of mind would probably be less.
I fitted up a tackle with two blocks from the tiller to the windward side of the cockpit, and the running part of this tackle led into the cabin. On the lee side of the tiller I had at first a plain line leading from the tiller to the side of the cockpit, and from there into the cabin, but later I found that this was insufficient, and rigged a second tackle with two blocks on that side too. These two tackles were invaluable; they enabled me to control the tiller and help out the steering sail from the cabin, without having to dress up in deck clothes and go on deck. For example, on November 25 two smashing waves broke right on to the boat, picked it up and swung it round through a change of heading of no less than 140°. The steering sail might have brought the heading back again in time, but not without a lot of sail flogging. (It’s a wonder any sail can survive flogging in a 45-knot gale!) By hauling on the weather tackle, I brought the heading back on course quickly without going up into the cockpit.
That evening a big swell began running in suddenly from the west; big, I would say fifty feet. There were a number of Mother Carey’s Chickens about, which nearly always forecasts a storm, whatever meteorologists may say to the contrary. I could see them picking things out of the water while on the wing, but not what the things were. An hour before midnight a wave gybed Gipsy Moth, and put her aback, headed south. The steering sail could not move the tiller with the sails aback; nor could I with the tackle and the tiller line into the cabin. So I had to dress up in hard weather rig, and still I could not move the tiller by hand. I had to sit down on the lee side of the cockpit and, with my back to the side of the cockpit, and both feet on the tiller, I was able to move the rudder slowly and turn Gipsy Moth downwind, and gybe back on to course. It was really rather a splendid night. There was a bright moon, with some silvery clouds, and there were white manes to the waves. Gipsy Moth tore through the water at a good 7 ½ knots. Shortly after midnight I was woken up again with the ship aback, in a very unpleasant squall. I had to stick this one out in the cockpit, nursing the tiller to keep Gipsy Moth near downwind until the squall blew out. It was wild rocketing downwind, and I was very cold with only pyjamas under a quilted coat and trousers. As soon as I got a chance I put on a sweater and safety harness, and dropped the working jib. I hated losing the good speed, but a ship out of control is hell. At 5:30 in the morning I was woken again by the ship aback. I logged: “My steering sail, let’s face it, will not control the boat in winds of Force 8 (35 knots) or more. It has not the power to work the tiller to bring the heading off the wind after a wave slew. That helm needs the strength of an elephant, anyway.”
That was not my lucky day. Besides being turned out so often to rescue the helm, my drawer full of electrical spares, fuses, valves, etc., shot out, and on to the cabin floor. Next, all my rolls of chart fell from their nest close under the cabin ceiling on to the cabin floor; then I delved in the clothes locker under my cabin bunk, and found everything there running water, except what I had put in plastic bags. At noon I was in the middle of some sun shots when a big breaking sea surfed Gipsy Moth along with it until Gipsy Moth broached to on the starboard gybe, sails aback again. I felt that I needed a tent pitched in the cabin to keep things dry.
Two and a half hours later I logged: “Well! That was a near go.” I was standing facing the companionway, and looking at the speedometer repeater dial above my quarter berth, to see if it was working properly. Suddenly the needle shot up hard against the stop at the limit, 10 knots, and stayed there. For a second or two I thought that the speedometer had bust again. Then the boat went over on to its side and, looking out, I saw that Gipsy Moth was on the crest of a big breaking wave. This breaker slewed the boat round broadside to it, knocking her down forwards, so that the masts were horizontal, pointing in the direction in which the wave was going. From where I stood on the side of the bunk I could see the mizzen mast lying flat along the surface of the boiling, seething surf. I would say that the boat was travelling sideways at a speed of 30 knots. There was nothing I could do. I was not frightened; I watched interested. Would the masts dip in? If they dipped a few more degrees below the horizontal they must dive into the water, and inevitably the boat must then roll over. They didn’t; the surf passed leaving Gipsy Moth broached to. She righted herself, and presently the steering sail brought her back through 90° on to her previous heading.
On November 27 I was 710 miles from Cape Otway, and I decided that I must adjust the lead of the steering sail lines so that I could hoist the mainsail again. I had to have it, because I could not now pole out either of the big running sails. I had robbed the main boom of its topping lift tackle for one of my tiller lines, and had to rig up another. There was a pale greeny blue sky like I have known before a terrific wind in Europe. There were also some strongly developed mares’ tails in a straggly line across the sky. But these indications misled me, for the big wind did not arrive.
An albatross flying overhead dropped a personal bomb, which hit the mizzen sail fair and square, decorating it with a string of red blobs. Lucky shot! I rove a new tiller line to the steering sail and took the strain on it so that I could adjust the present one, then I did the same with the leeward line. The lengths of the steering lines, and the amount of play or movement of parts of this steering system were most critical, and fine adjustment made all the difference to its effectiveness.
Next day the wind returned to roaring in the rigging, and I dropped all sail except the storm jib and steering sail, content to jog along on course at 4 knots only. Some Mother Carey’s Chickens were only six feet away from me when I was working at the stem; I had never seen them so close before. I watched them bouncing off the wave surfaces with their chests, and sometimes hitting the water lightly with first one wing tip and then the other as if they were flicking bits of fluff off a hot plate with their wings.
On November 29 I had sailed for fourteen days since the self-steering bust, and had made good 1,808 miles, an average of 120 miles per day. This was good going because, quite apart from my self-steering difficulties, I was missing one of my best driving sails. Alas, it was not good enough to reach Sydney in the 100 days. I still had 1,057 miles to go and only 6 days of the 100 left. I was depressed because I had had a bad night, unable to sleep through being thoroughly rattled by the radio telephone, and the pressure being exerted on me through it for news, etc. After three months of solitude I felt that it was all too much; that I could not stand it, and could easily go mad with it. All this is weak nonsense, I know, but that is how I felt when I was twisting about in my bunk trying to clear my brain of all the thoughts and images attacking it. I told myself that I must try to be tolerant with the demands being made for air photography, telephone talks, etc., etc.
An hour after midnight on November 30 I was forced out of my bunk by a bad cramp. I always got a cramp if I stretched my legs on waking, but I couldn’t stop myself from doing it when still half-asleep. Fortunately, standing upright freed the bound muscles, which were as hard as wood, and very painful. I was always frightened that a muscle would break under the strain. A small drink of sea water usually prevented another attack—maybe I needed salt after losing so much during hard deck work.
That afternoon I sewed up the seam of the mizzen staysail which had given way. It was a delightful sunny day for a change, and warm enough for me to sew in the cockpit. When I set the sail, the steering sail could not control the boat with it up, so I had to haul it down again. Then I set the big 600-foot genoa instead of the 300-foot jib. Gipsy Moth was doing 9 knots easily at times, but when the wind piped up the steering sail could not control the boat with that sail set either, and reluctantly I had to drop it again. What was so frustrating was that the wind dropped to near-calm almost to the second as I dropped the sail, and I could have carried it thereafter! If the wind had acted purely out of spite it could not have been more successful. I think there might have been a chance of controlling the boat if the trysail had been dropped, but it was getting dark, and I had a damned radio telephone appointment coming up. So I left the big sail down and rehoisted the 300-footer.
When on the foredeck in the dusk, after I had bagged the big sail, I was startled by what seemed a human scream close to the boat. I swung round to see whatever it could be. It came from an albatross! There were two of them, sitting on the water about ten feet from the boat. They were courting, I think, facing each other, and one had its wings raised in a V with curved sides. It was too poor a light to see more.*1
At 6:40 in the morning of December 1, the wind backed to the south-east and Gipsy Moth came hard on the wind for the first time for about a month. “I expect,” I logged, “that it is going to give me a headache before I reach Sydney.” How right I was!
Postscript: Francis Chichester completed his voyage on May 28, 1967—nine months and one day after he departed. During that time he had stopped only once, in Sydney. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1967 for his achievement.