Fatu Hiva – Lymington
May 1976 – April 1978
In a way Jeff’s delayed return turned Solitaire into a harvester of yachts. At sunset I would spend my time looking out to sea on the off chance that Jeff’s transmitter had broken down. If I saw navigation lights I would switch on Solitaire’s powerful 24 watt light at the top of the mast, a beacon in an otherwise dark bay. I caught two beauties this way, one a lovely 48ft Swan with two married couples aboard from the south coast of England, one husband a furniture restorer.
The owner of my second catch was also a furniture manufacturer – from France – and was accompanied by his wife and two paid crew. In the dark they anchored near Solitaire and later started swinging into us. Although the bay was still crowded, there was no real reason why I should not shift my berth so I explained my intentions and, despite their protests, moved away. The following morning they came over to thank me and invite me back for a drink, another couple I grew to like. During the war the owner had been a submarine commander in the Free French Navy, an occupation that could be seen in the design of his boat. Virtually you could close yourself below and sail it.
He made quite an occasion of introducing his wife. ‘Leslie, I have the pleasure of introducing my charming wife to you...’
I warmed to this old world courtesy, which showed the affection he held for his wife and made me feel important to meet her. They owned a private island and I was invited to call there but alas never did. Instead I decided to sail to Papeete in Tahiti and made plans to lift anchor on June 10th, 1976. Tahiti lay 750 miles to the south-west and again there would be no navigation problems. In fact the island at 7,339ft was twice as high as anything I had seen up to then and also possessed a powerful RDF station and full navigational aids. I expected the winds to be kindly at Force 3 to 4, mostly from the east to south-east.
The quick and the brave sailed a direct course calling at the Tuamotu Islands, which are well worth a visit as the locals are friendly, laying on feasts and dancing. However, the low-lying Tuamotus are surrounded by strong currents and at times a palm tree can be the tallest thing around. I have never taken star sights but, if I did, this would be the locality where I would use them constantly as it is vital to know your position to a tenth of a mile. Over the years their reefs have claimed many fine boats. Climbing high in the rigging is advantageous when passing through these reefs but as a single-hander I could not do that and steer Solitaire at the same time. I decided to take no risks and, in golfing terms, made a dog’s leg of it, sailing above the islands on a course more like WSW. That way, one arrived with a yacht and not on foot.
After leaving the Tuamotus Solitaire made 375 miles in the first three days then the winds fell light with the odd shower. There is a low-lying island 20 miles north of Tahiti called Teriaroa, owned then by the film star Marlon Brando. Although I kept a good look out all day, we must have passed it as I saw nothing and Solitaire arrived off Tahiti at nightfall. There is a reef to go through to enter Papeete Harbour, well marked and used by cruise liners, but as I was thinking of navigating it, the last of the sun’s rays fell into the sea and went out like a candle. Suddenly Tahiti was a blaze of lights, making jokes of channel markers. Solitaire groaned, ‘Please, please not again!’
So we turned away and I distinctly heard her give a sigh of relief. We entered harbour at dawn on June 19th, our log showing 755 miles. As Bastille Day was not far off, the harbour was packed with some 90 boats waiting for the festivities to start. The Bastille was a French prison demolished in the times of the Revolution but, so far as I am aware, the British were never blamed for this.
Solitaire circled the harbour a couple of times, nodding to many of the craft she had met before, the boats anchored stern to shore. I saw a space next to a bright yellow Ericson 36 with an American in his early thirties sitting on the foredeck.
‘Is there room for one more?’ I asked.
‘Are you single-handed?’ he replied and, on my reply, waved me in.
In fact I had told a lie because at that stage I was anything but single-handed. We had about six dinghies tied to us. How and where Solitaire berthed had been taken out of my hands. I heard the anchor go down, two lines were taken to the shore and she was slowly eased back to lie 20ft off. Remembering our arrival in Fatu Hiva, I could almost hear her saying ‘Now, this is more like a welcome.’
Many of our visitors I had met in Panama and they had been concerned by my slow passage to Hiva Oa. After any voyage I enjoyed making physical contact with friends, shaking hands with both of mine, and hugging the ladies. You can say a great deal with the strength of a hand or hug.
As this was a Saturday morning Customs would not re-open until Monday. Solitaire spent the rest of the day receiving visitors, which kept me busy making endless cups of tea for her guests. That evening I managed to sneak away to a party on another yacht, after which I found Dontcho and Juli’s lifeboat and left a message on its closed hatch.
The following morning my American neighbour came over and introduced himself as Webb Chiles. I have never met a more determined person. Twice he left his home port of San Diego for a single-handed voyage around the world via Cape Horn. On the first attempt he had been forced to turn back before reaching the Cape, leaking badly and with broken rigging. He called in at Tahiti, made repairs and tried again, only to be turned back once more to San Diego. Finally he made the voyage on what was virtually a sinking yacht. He had visited New Zealand and had recently arrived in Papeete where, at the time of our meeting, he was writing his book, Storm Passage.
I learned much from Webb, the first true single-hander I had ever met and remember talking to him on the sidewalk when a woman reporter asked if she could visit our boats and interview us. She wondered if we had a death wish, a daft question, particularly when put to someone who had just sailed around Cape Horn fighting for his life. I would have advised anyone with such an outlook not to step into a dinghy, let alone a seagoing yacht, and Webb said much the same thing only more trenchantly.
Although not yet halfway round on my first voyage, I had already committed myself to a second and these chats with Webb dictated the route for my next attempt – around Cape Horn. Always ready to joke about my early navigational mistakes and the Brazilian hospital, I was finding it increasingly difficult to live with my errors. My confidante would forget about it the next day; I would carry it in my mind for the rest of my life and wanted to square the account which made me believe a second voyage around Cape Horn might help.
Later the woman reporter visited Solitaire, by which time Webb had sailed for home – just as well, I thought, after reading the story she wrote. Under the headline ‘Yachtsman Lucky Les earns his nickname’ (I’ve never been called Lucky Les in my life), it started: ‘Les, while sailing here from England, was lost at sea, shipwrecked, hospitalised and suffered from hunger.’ As I said at the time, ‘I hope my luck never runs out or I’ll be in real trouble.’ In fact, the story helped in two ways. The paper was given away to all the boats in the harbour, and as a result I was invited aboard many of them. If I was not asked to any I thought looked interesting I would contemplate chipping a golf ball onto their decks to wake ’em up!
Through the same article I met Tim Beckett, fresh from England and who, for some reason, I always thought of as a college student with a delightfully dry sense of humour. With him was the co-owner of Huzar and they were waiting for Tim’s father to join them before continuing to New Zealand. When visiting him, he would send his ropey rubber inflatable across on a pulley arrangement. Once you were aboard, it would wrap itself around you like a starving octopus. If you survived you were greeted with a chamber-pot of tea. Tim later lost Huzar on Lady Elliot Island, 60 miles off the coast of Australia, saving only the engine and his address book.
The morning after my arrival in Tahiti, Dontcho and Juli made their appearance and I spent a week visiting places of interest and working on their boat, always with the movie camera churning away. Then they had to leave for Fiji because of the schedule laid down by their country. I made arrangements to sail for Australia the following day, a schedule dictated not by HM Government but by my pocket; I had less than $30 left. It seemed an age since I had established two rules to govern my life at sea: the first that I would always sail alone, the second that I would never accept payment for working on a friend’s boat.
Next to Dontcho’s lifeboat was a 45ft steel boat belonging to a French aircraft pilot, Peter, who had a beautiful wife and two lovely blonde children. On the day Juli and Dontcho left, Peter and his wife invited me to a local restaurant and asked if I would stay on for a few weeks to fit out his boat. Since he was working and making good money, he could well afford to pay me. After a long talk I agreed somewhat reluctantly to bend my second rule and accept owners in employment. In Peter’s case the pay would be low, the local Tahitian rate for unskilled workers being $4 an hour and, since I had to get used to my new rule, I would take no more than a dollar an hour. During the next few weeks I worked a 60-hour week and, by saving two-thirds of my earnings, pushed my $30 up to nearly $200. Then Peter told me Kodak Laboratories wanted some fibreglassing done and would pay $4 an hour, the outcome of which was that I started on one of the worst and most dangerous jobs in my life.
The Kodak building itself was a modern, single-storey factory with a slightly sloping roof of corrugated aluminium. The maximum space between the roof and the ceiling was 8ft, diminishing to a few inches. To prevent the heat discomforting their employees, rolls of fibreglass had been laid in the loft. Particles of this were now falling through cracks in the ceiling onto the film processing machines so they wanted the fibreglass rolled up and replaced on sheets of plastic. Entering the loft was like stepping into a cauldron and it was impossible to wear a mask to prevent glassfibre being sucked into the lungs. Joists, 4ft apart, were all I had to stand on up there. I would take a gallon of water with me and work through an 8-hour shift. Now and again they would call me down for a break, but I would explain that if I ever left their hellhole during the day I would never go back. Each night they promised me a local worker whom they reckoned would be more accustomed to the heat. Now and then a face would pop through the trap door, the whites of the eyes would start to look like two fried eggs and the face would drop out of sight. Why I carried on with the job, apart from wanting to finish something I had started, I shall never know. The only good thing to say about it was that it was great when you stopped.
The laboratory had some splendidly hot showers, the first I had used since leaving Panama. I would stand under them for ages to open up the pores and rid myself of the itchy dust and glass, and then return to Solitaire, knowing that I had more money to spend on her. For three weeks I worked a 45-hour week. Then they asked me to knock two rooms into one. After that, would I build some storage racks? When they suggested building some car ports, I decided I was getting too civilised and left to prepare Solitaire for our trip to Australia.
Just before leaving Tahiti a young French couple, who planned to start teaching on one of the nearby islands, came to see me. They had bought a 35ft wooden yacht to use as a home, which they considered a good buy until they discovered Toredo worm in the stern-hung rudder and then could find no one to build them a replacement, so I stayed on two more weeks to do the job. My one regret about sailing was that I had not started when I was a young man, fitter, stronger and able to give Solitaire more care. Tahiti strengthened my regrets. I wished I could have seen these islands and met the Polynesian people before ‘civilisation’ had spoiled them.
Only in smoke-filled night clubs could you watch their beautiful native dancing. If you saw a Polynesian thrusting his canoe through the water with muscle power it simply meant that his outboard had broken down and he was on his way back to the garage to get it fixed. Large white cruise liners would dock and release a flood of even whiter chattering mice, all wearing the same brightly-coloured shirts, hats, sunglasses and cameras. False teeth flashing even falser smiles, they would stream past the dancing girls swaying to Hawaiian guitars. The tide would flood the shops to devour everything in sight, prevented only by pavement vendors holding out armfuls of shell necklaces and beautiful woven straw hats. Cameras would click, click, then their Pied Piper would toot toot on the ship’s siren and the tide would reverse. The heavily-laden mice would be sucked back into a hole in the ship’s side. A puff of smoke on the horizon, and they were gone. The locals would count their profits and a street cleaner remove the last traces of their presence. Weeks later postcards would arrive in New York, Tokyo and Scunthorpe, ‘Having a wonderful time in Tahiti, wish you were here.’
When I recalled Hiva Oa in later years, I remembered the Chinese man who thought he was English. Tahiti, for me, meant a small American boy. The local paper printed my story on a Saturday and next day it was customary for children from the cruising ships to attend Sunday school with the locals. I was walking past the church when an avalanche of these terrors descended. Within seconds I had them climbing over me, one even trying to pull off my shorts, so small I had to get on my knees to hear what he was saying. ‘Mister, I’d sure be proud to shake your hand,’ he said. It was like holding a butterfly. For days after I would smile when I remembered his serious face. He made me feel good inside, wishing that he would always stay young and innocent and not change with the years like Tahiti.
Sunday was always the best day of the week. Now that I was earning good money I could afford to buy the excellent French wines, the crusty rolls and make crisp, fresh salads. The harbour front was Papeete’s main street and Solitaire was only a few yards from the sidewalk. Sunday was the day that the visits I had made in the week were returned, a day we all looked forward to.
My last hours on the island were spent scrubbing Solitaire’s antifouling, not a particularly pleasant chore as the waste from 90 yachts was dumped in the harbour. The sensible thing would have been to go over to the unspoilt Moorea but there had been too many delays and I had to push on.
Saturday, September 25th, was set for my departure and I had chosen Gladstone, about halfway up the east coast of Australia, as my destination. It was just below the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef, the ideal place from which to start the following stage of the voyage. Another consideration was that I would have to remain in port for five months during the hurricane season and, as Gladstone had a large aluminium plant and was building a power station, I thought it should be possible to find work there. I would have liked to have visited Auckland but New Zealand was further away and had few job prospects. I would make the final choice halfway through the voyage when the current started to swing south towards Auckland.
The first leg would take us just below Rarotonga, 700 miles to the WSW, 200 miles south of Tahiti, which had a strong RDF station to confirm our position. After that our course would be virtually due west, dropping only another 200 miles in the next 3,000. Provided we did not go further south than Gladstone’s latitude, we should have a good passage. The pilot charts showed much the same pattern as our previous voyage: winds over our stern from the east to south-east around Force 4, with only three per cent calms and a few gales close to Australia, but no worse than an English summer. In all, a voyage of 4,000 miles, no more than 40 days at sea if the pilot charts were correct.
The most upsetting thing about the trip was the places we would miss: magic islands whose names rolled off the tongue, Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora, Tahaa, Fiji. Each year that would change as more and more hotels and flats destroyed them. It seemed foolish to be wishing I could have been in the South Pacific 50 years before when they would change that much again in the next five. I was giving up seeing them just to sail around a piece of rock called Cape Horn.
As food in Australia would be cheaper than Tahiti’s, I kept my stores to a minimum although the cash situation was quite good: in fact I was richer than when I left England and now had $700 in hand. The tucker I would not be running short of was onions as an Australian yachtsman had asked me if I had plenty on board and was amazed when I told him I had never even considered carrying them. Onions last for months and are full of vitamins, he lectured me, and to make sure I got the message, he turned up with a sackful. He must have told the story to all the other cruising people because Solitaire was soon packed with them!
The one thing I did not take was a cockroach, although Tahiti breeds some of the world’s finest. After dark you could see whole families of them walking along the sidewalks, every now and then stopping to inspect a yacht before deciding whether or not to make it their new home. I believe every craft suffered from them, certainly all those I ate on. You would be eating dinner when they would walk across your plate, splashing through the gravy without so much as a by-your-leave. Because they were a topic of conversation and, cockroach-less, I could not join in, vicious rumours were spread. It was reported that they had been seen walking up Solitaire’s shore lines and that on reading her name on the stern there had been a panic to disembark again. It was also claimed that I spent half the night trying to entice the poor creatures on board with bits of cheese which was a lie since I discovered they did not particularly like it! When Solitaire sailed through the reef to start her voyage she had not a single cockroach on board and at the time I was concerned, remembering stories of rats deserting doomed ships.
We had arrived in Tahiti on June 19th and left on September 25th, after Solitaire had been rested for more than three months. The early stages of the voyage went well enough with a pleasant sail close to that island paradise, Moorea, but during the night things started to go wrong. We ran into fierce squalls and a batten pierced the mainsail, which meant that the batten pocket could not be used again that trip, and a 5-gallon water container burst – nothing to worry about at that stage since I still had another 25 gallons left.
I picked up Rarotonga’s RDF signal on the third day out, 400 miles away! A week from Tahiti and Rarotonga hove in sight 20 miles to our north. The pilot charts had been correct up to that point. From then on had I reversed the information it would have been near enough correct. Instead of stern winds from the east at Force 4, Solitaire was pushing into winds from the west dead on her nose, anything from Force 6 to complete calm. Under these conditions we could not sail close to the wind as short, choppy waves kept pushing her bow to one side. Solitaire, facing a fighter with a long, left jab, would shake her head to recover and try to move forward, only to be hit again. At the halfway mark, passing under the Tonga Islands, I nearly decided to give up and head for New Zealand, 1,000 miles to the south.
Had I changed course then we would have had a current of 10 to 15 miles a day in our favour and, had the winds stayed constant, we would have been sailing with them abeam. Solitaire, staggering like a punch-drunk fighter, refused to give up but carried on for Australia and Gladstone.
We had one particularly bad storm that led me to conclude that I should dispense with battened sails. Battens were forever fouling the shrouds, particularly when running, and if they broke they inevitably damaged the sail. Certainly they allowed a larger sail area with a roach but the increased speed was not worth the trouble as I was racing no one. In future I would have battenless mainsails with a straight leech and would also change my reefing system. Although roller reefing was fitted to the boom, I had never used it, preferring to slab reef since my halyards led back to the cockpit.
For the first time in this particular storm I decided to try the roller reefing. The job was nearly done when a squall strained the leech where it wrapped around the boom. The sail shredded in half, making its repair a lengthy project. For the rest of the trip to Australia I had to tie the main off at its last reefing point, cutting the sail area by more than half!
This was turning out to be another protracted voyage thanks to light winds and a small sail area. We were becalmed a few times and I went over the side in the dinghy to clean the waterline, which was largely unencrusted. Some 700 miles from Australia the split pin holding the self-steering rudder broke and I made the rest of the trip without its help. Normally I would have lost the rudder but since I had never liked this method of attachment, I had drilled it and connected a safety rope. Our landfall was Lady Elliot Island, 60 miles off the Australian mainland, which we passed on November 30th. That night we had an electrical storm and I sat watching the lightning under bare poles as if in daylight.
Next day we drifted by the Bunker reefs, sighting land with the dawn. I motored all that windless day to arrive at six o’clock local time in the broad creek on which Gladstone lies, after the longest time we had spent at sea so far, 69 days, beating our previous record by a day. We had logged 4,212 miles.
Australia is psychotic about the import of animals, plants, seeds or food. Normally when clearing Customs I have been asked if I had drugs, guns or drink but the Australian Customs man who boarded Solitaire could not care less if I was head of the Mafia or carrying an atom bomb.
‘Right, naaaaa, do you have any pets on board?’ is the first question.
‘No sir,’ I replied, ‘not even a cockroach!’
We went through the plant and seed bit.
‘Right, sport, I want all your food laid out on deck.’
So I went below and fetched my remaining bag of rice, which I placed in the middle of the deck, and then I stood looking at him with my tail wagging and my tongue out, like a cocker spaniel that’s just done its business in the dirt box.
‘Maaaaaate, maaaate, aaaaall of it!’
I turned out every locker and cubby hole trying to find something I could give the poor man. I kept inviting him to come below and search Solitaire.
‘Maaaaaate, I don’t want to search your flaming boat.’
At last I found two slices of dried meat in a sealed glass jar, which I think the Americans gave me in Panama. My maaaaaate smiled and locked it in his briefcase.
While this was going on, a tramp had been sitting on the side of the dock taking it all in and swigging from a pint of milk through his matted beard. By the time he had heard my story there were tears in his eyes and he offered me his bottle without a word. I drained it in one gulp and handed back the empty.
Mr Customs asked the question I’d been dreading: ‘How long do you plan to stay in Australia?’
During the past two weeks I had been picking up their radio broadcasts and, apart from learning of a shortage of work, it seemed that every disaster that occurred was due entirely to the English or, as he is better known, the Pom. Poms ran the unions and were responsible for the strikes, Poms ran the government and were responsible for the country going to the dogs, they controlled the weather, and that was the reason for all the bush fires. There was a disc jockey I’d been listening to whose pet saying was, ‘Punch a Pommie every day!’
By this stage I was thinking I might be allowed to take on water before being set adrift. With the hurricane season coming on, I really needed a visitor’s permit for six months and when I explained this, I was told to call at the Customs Office next day to pick up one for a year!
The officer told me about Gladstone and the best places to eat, several times asking if I was all right for Australian currency. In fact I bought myself some fish and chips and ate them in Solitaire’s cockpit, during which time I was invited to dinner the following night by one couple and to a barbecue that weekend with another. My mooring problems were solved when an Australian offered to share his berth free of charge. Sometimes I think that certain types of radio broadcasters and newspaper reporters would be better employed collecting garbage rather than dishing it out.
Over the next few days I tried unsuccessfully to find work. I could not be taken on as a skilled electrician because I had no Australian licence and unskilled work was carried out by apprentices, but my luck changed when I called on the local boatyard to buy a shackle. The manager, a Yorkshireman, asked if I needed work and then said I could cut the grass around the boats on hard standing. After that it was making racks to store wood, fibreglassing, painting. In the end I spent all my time working for the boatyard. Sometimes I would help tie up ocean-going cargo ships; my last job was putting the yard’s transport in shape and, as in Tahiti, I could have stayed on as the company wanted to build fibreglass dinghies and there were opportunities to work on charter boats. I liked the people who were always more than fair; even grass-cutting carried the same wage as everyone else’s in the yard.
I managed to stay in Gladstone for more than five months without getting into serious trouble, although I nearly managed to kill myself when working on a large charter boat that could carry 300 passengers. One lunch time, having just returned from buying some fish and chips, I had reached across and put my meal through a ship’s window and, stepping onto a catwalk to board, fell 10ft into the water twixt ship and dock. Luckily I managed to grab a rope and haul myself out before the gap closed.
My first thought was to eat my fish and chips before they grew cold but as I quickly ate, all this funny red stuff began running down my front, re-soaking my shorts and shirt. When my workmates returned I was rushed to hospital.
On the operating table, blood from a gash under my chin was flooding the place and half a dozen pretty nurses gathered round me.
‘I’m sorry for being a nuisance and making such a mess,’ I apologised.
‘We need the practice,’ a chippy one replied.
‘Lift me off the table and I’ll go break a leg,’ I offered.
‘You do, sport, and we’ll break the other one!’ Which started me laughing and the blood gushing. Even when they were stitching me up, I was still laughing.
There were few things I disliked about Australia. Food was reasonably priced and for a dollar I could fill my frying pan twice with chops or steak. Flies were a pest, particularly the little sandflies which looked like specks of dust but could bite like tigers.
Terrell Adkisson and I joined up in Gladstone for the first time since Panama. Altair was berthed 100 miles down the coast but he spent a week on Solitaire and we made arrangements to sail through the Barrier Reef together. While in Gladstone I met Brolga of Kiama with Rob and Lyn Brooks who were just about to start their voyage around the world. New arrivals in Gladstone creek were not normally greeted by fellow sailors, but I had always liked the Pacific Islands’ friendly customs so, although only a visitor myself, I would always row over to newcomers to see if I could help. Rob and Lyn have always made a point of the fact that in their own country it had been an Englishman who had first enquired.
While in Australia I managed to acquire some new sails from England. I had been well satisfied with my original Lucas sails so I had ordered from them again, including a battenless main with three sets of reefing points as I still had to round the Cape of Good Hope, where it can blow. The last reef would so reduce the main that it would double as a trysail. At the same time I stepped up the weight of cloth from 6 to 8oz, and a new storm jib.
The boatyard let me haul out Solitaire free of charge and I had another go at the crack in the hull, although it had not leaked since Panama. The antifouling had vanished so I applied a heavy barrier coat followed by two coats of top-quality finish. I also bolted the self-steering rudder to the drive shaft, thus making it a more permanent fixture. I still had $1,400 (then about £700) left, twice the amount I had left England with, and Solitaire in many ways was in better condition than when I had set out, even though she had looked after me for more than 16,000 miles. Now she was taking me home, about the same distance again. I had not yet told Solitaire about Cape Horn!
The next leg of our trip would be from Gladstone to Thursday Island in the Terres Straits, 1,000 miles away. We had crossed 8,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean on just two charts and a few sketches. Now I needed 30 charts for our next trip, and a couple of Australian friends, John and Penny Pugh, lent them to me. Often I would go to their house for dinner and a bath and they did most of the chasing around for my supplies. Apart from the food parcel they gave me, they made a going-away present of a heavy fishing line (a life-saver on my second voyage).
The Great Barrier Reef starts about 60 miles offshore at the bottom end, closing to a mile or two at the top. Most of the navigation would be by sight, or, as the Americans call it, eyeball, and for much of the time we would have the mainland and a few islands in sight. I still enjoyed single-handed sailing but if there was ever a time when I would have liked a female crew member aboard, this was it. The Great Barrier Reef must be one of the finest cruising areas in the world, anchoring behind your own private island after a day’s sail with plenty of fish in the sea and oysters ashore. The sea, protected by the reef, is shallow and flat.
Terrell came into Gladstone Creek to collect me but as my sails had not arrived, he went on ahead. Before I left, the boatyard threw a party for me where I tried to uphold the best British traditions by keeping up with some of the young bloods. After dinner the party continued at the Pughs’, of which I remember nothing. Dawn woke me with a thick head, a foul mouth and to a weird sound. I had been sleeping on somebody’s lawn and was covered by every dog in the neighbourhood, snoring their heads off.
Solitaire’s mooring lines were cast off on Wednesday, May 18th, 1977, and as I had not let her touch bottom since Grenada (antifouling apart), and my navigation had improved, we both felt more confident. A dozen cars followed us on the shore, blasting their horns as we set off, by far the best farewell we had had and one of the hardest to make.
I caught up with Terrell on Friday, June 3rd, two weeks out from Gladstone. We met in Cairns, about halfway up the Reef, where he had picked out a berth for me alongside the town quay. Cairns was another low-sprawling Australian town, so different from home, where everything seems condensed. Here there were modern supermarkets, a cinema and a heavenly laundry. We spent a few pleasant days there, talking to a good many English people who had settled in the area. Terrell’s nephew, Leo, had gone back to the USA and been replaced by an Australian crew member. Things improved once we joined up: with four eyes on the other yacht Terrell always took the path-finding position up front, which allowed me to nip below for the occasional cup of tea without worrying about the constant changing picture of mainland and islands.
Cooktown was quite unlike Cairns. You could walk through it in a few minutes but it was well worth the visit, if only to see the museum. The day we arrived they were to re-enact Captain Cook’s first landing and on the jetty a good crowd had turned up for the spectacle. Three men came ashore in a rowing boat and the people promptly started to drift away.
‘When’s Captain Cook arriving?’ I asked.
‘He just did, spoooort,’ came the reply.
Another advantage of being in company with a cruising yacht is that you can take it in turns to visit and cook dinner. We were having dinner on Terrell’s boat where, since it was my turn to play host the following night, I asked, ‘How do you fancy fish tomorrow night?’ Both seemed enthusiastic, so I asked their preference and was requested to catch a few mackerel.
Next day I took out the line John and Penny had given me. I put the 9in spinner, about the size of any fish I had ever caught, over the side and seconds later it pulled tight with a blooming great mackerel nearly as long as my arm on its end, enough for three people. To make sure, I thought I would catch its smaller sister, which turned out to be twice as fat as the first.
I was concerned about possible waste and as I thought Terrell, who was astern, might also be slaughtering fish, I decided to wait for him. I halted Solitaire by luffing into wind and when Terrell came within hailing distance, I stuck two fingers in the air and pointed over the side. The effect on Terrell was instantaneous: he belted off in the other direction and I failed to catch him until much later. When I asked Terrell what his problem had been and why the panic, an argument ensued. Two fingers in the air and pointing over the side means I’m over a reef two fathoms down, Terrell insisted, while I claimed any fool knows it means I’ve caught two mackerel. Although we stuffed ourselves with fish much was wasted which, coupled with the fact that I had not enjoyed watching a living thing die, made me put the line away, believing they would be the first and last fish I would ever catch at sea.
Thursday Island lies between the most northern part of Australia and New Guinea, where the current can reach 6–7 knots. We anchored 20 miles away, timing our arrival to take advantage of the flow. When we reached our anchorage it was to find marker buoys being pushed under by the force of churning brown waters, the last place to drag or break an anchor chain. Thursday Island, which we reached on June 23rd, after a month’s sail inside the Great Barrier, was a disappointment. In the days of sail it was known for its dusky beauties who, it was said, would outswim the fast-flowing current to ravish the poor unsuspecting seamen. After a quick walk through its shantytown of drinking houses, we decided to push on for Darwin. Any dusky maiden would have been repelled with a boat hook, after which I would have called a cop.
Darwin was 700 miles away but wind and current would be mostly with us. Gales were rare in the area but a bad sea could build up quickly in high winds. In company with Altair and two other yachts, we left on Monday, June 27th. Although we had our sails up, it would be wrong to say we sailed from the island; it was more like being fired from a cannon and we had to start and run engines flat out to keep control. We shot away like cars on a racetrack, trying to correct for drift, which was great fun while it lasted, and circling the course with three other boats made it that much better. Darwin was approximately halfway across the top of Australia so our course would be due west.
On Friday, July 1st, we ran into a storm off Melville Island with some of the worst waves I had seen, not so much in size as in shape. There was little Solitaire could do against them so we dropped sail and lay a-hull until Saturday morning, when the storm died. Until then we had been making good progress, covering 565 miles in just over four days with a best-ever day’s run of 149 miles. When I tried the engine I found it had seized and was impossible to turn, even with levers directed onto the flywheel, and this wasn’t the best place to have it happen. Melville Island and the 15-mile-wide Dundas Straits protect Darwin in much the same way that the Isle of Wight protects my home port of Lymington. I had in fact to sail between them, which turned out to be terrifyingly difficult, thanks to the speed of the tide.
Approaching from eastwards you pass through the Dundas Straits with its tidal current of 2–3 knots. The land then falls away to form a large bay which curves back to the island 60 miles on, where 12 miles separate mainland from island, those few miles filled with smaller islands and reefs. There is a marked channel on the land side, about one mile across. Once through it, Darwin lies only a few miles further on. As I had no tide tables and no engine, I decided to sail up to the reefs and then anchor for the night.
We passed through Dundas Straits on Saturday night and had a fast sail next morning. By Sunday afternoon we were in sight of the islands and their surrounding reefs, with Darwin’s voice, 30 miles away, coming through clearly on the RDF. Having negotiated the reefs we seemed to pick up speed but the land was falling away. Solitaire was being driven astern – onto the reefs! The tide had turned.
I let go the 15lb CQR anchor on 50ft of chain plus a good length of strong rope, which thankfully held in coral. The seas, an Amazon in flood, raced past us, the anchor rope vibrating like a bow string forcing me to keep a watch all night, checking the depth from time to time. By Monday morning the tide had slackened, then gathered strength in Darwin’s direction. I had missed my chance. Instead of heaving in the anchor during slack water I had to struggle manfully to haul it in against the tide – and failed. So, deciding to wait for the next slack, I slung back what I had retrieved. When the tide eased again I found that the anchor had fouled and would not haul in. We had been there 40 hours and there was only one solution. It broke my heart but I had to do it. I cut the rope and lost the anchor and 50ft of chain.
From then on it was a doddle.
There are two bays in Darwin: the first, big and shallow, houses the yacht club. Next to it is an area for ocean-going ships. You can anchor in either and catch the bus into Darwin. On Tuesday, July 5th, I anchored near the Club after a journey of 753 miles. Our stay in Darwin was marred by engine repairs and the sickly smell of diesel. The final diagnosis was that a sump plate fitted to prevent oil splashing about had broken loose, cracking the main bearing and jamming the reduction gear. Deciding to sail engineless and non-stop to Durban, I cabled Saab, requesting them to send on a new bearing and timing instructions.
Terrell and the other yachts arrived a couple of days after Solitaire, having run for shelter during the storm which shows, perhaps, the different thinking between a single-hander and a crewed yacht. In bad weather I would always run from the land, an attitude I was never to change.
When we arrived in Darwin they were sinking piles in front of the Club for members to tie up and antifoul. Terrell and I were among the first to use this facility which, at $5 a time, was much cheaper than being hauled out by a boatyard.
From Darwin I planned to sail to Durban, approximately 5,600 miles away, my longest voyage so far, broad reaching again in the south-east trades. We left Darwin on August 2nd. Solitaire was surrounded by other yachts and as there was not a breath of wind, Terrell shouted he would pull us clear. For the first time I accepted a tow. Up to then I had felt lonely only once, when the Canadian yacht left us in the Pacific, but as Terrell let go my lines I felt abandoned. I think it’s watching the other yacht pull away that’s the problem. During the first 24 hours light winds kept us out of trouble, but the next two days brought variable winds from the west and we found ourselves beating into choppy seas. That first week we covered 596 miles, thereafter we were into true trade wind sailing and logged 884 miles in the second week, followed by 912 in the third.
A thousand miles from South Africa, I started to pick up their radio broadcasts, which is always good for morale. The pilot charts for once had proved accurate and we made good time. I preferred the blue, lively Pacific to the grey, overcast Indian Ocean for things to watch. The seas above Australia had a few surprises: black and brown snakes, giant rays that leapt out of the water only to slam back again, and then, towards the end of the voyage, nightly visits from dolphins, which invariably cheer up life.
Thursday, September 22nd, was our 50th day at sea and, after sailing 5,555 miles, we had another 400 to go. I was trying to make our landfall well north of Durban to allow for the Agulhas Current sweeping us south.
On Monday morning we were nearly run down by a tanker, not in fact one of the super type although I thought it then the largest ship ever built. Because I could not keep my lights on all the time I had been standing in the hatch keeping watch in poor visibility when, hearing nothing, I saw a ghost-like bow loom out of the dawn mist. At first I thought she was cutting across Solitaire’s bows but she was already turning. Looking up I could see her two anchors ready to drop on us. A mass of rust and rivets, she swept down our side and back into fog. Never had I been so glad to see a ship disappear. There were many more after that but she was the closest.
We arrived off Durban before first light on Thursday morning and sat watching the traffic signals and flashing neons. Durban has a long finger of land that points north called The Bluff, with a breakwater beside it, the entrance into the outer harbour. It would have been possible to sail through but I could hardly keep my eyes open and the wind was fickle so, when I spotted a charter fishing boat preparing to enter, I beckoned them over and requested a tow. The people on board had a flight to catch but promised they would radio for a police launch to bring me in. After clearing Customs in only a few minutes, a powerboat arrived from the Club to take me in tow.
Solitaire arrived at the Point Yacht Club on Thursday, September 29th, 1977, nine years after her conception there on a Sunday morning in 1968, on the very jetty she was now moored to. Her log showed 5,952 miles, the longest journey so far. One day I would ask her to carry me non-stop nearly five times that distance!
The international jetty lies directly below the clubhouse with its showers, restaurant, lounges and bars. The cruising season had barely started when we arrived. Only four other boats were moored to the jetty, one an old junk owned by a German couple, another an American Choy Lee ketch, and two self-built ferro-cement yachts, one made and sailed by Susan and Graeme from Yarmouth in England, the other owned by a lovely Rhodesian couple with their three young children on board, together with a crew who knew as much about sailing as I had when Solitaire first left Lymington.
After a shower in the Club, I was taken to meet the secretary and given a visitor’s membership card. Durban must have had a dull week for news because when I returned to Solitaire, reporters were waiting to question me about my Brazilian adventures and the voyage from Australia. I was also asked to take part in a broadcast by a chap who ran a navigation school, to which I agreed, provided my talk was based on mistakes so that others could learn from them.
That first night I was too tired to sleep and walked the streets seeing how the other half lived, wandering around in sloppy flip flops, tattered shorts and open shirt, comforted by the knowledge that Solitaire was waiting to take me anywhere in the universe I wished to go. Our stay in Durban was a happy one. Solitaire had a safe berth, the lights from the surrounding flats sparkling at her as I went to the occasional party. On Sundays the yacht club and several large hotels would put on a self-service meal with a double-feature film show, all for £1. Food was as cheap as we had found anywhere and the local wines were first class and equally inexpensive, so much so that I threw a birthday party for Solitaire on October 24th, without considering the cost. We set a new record of 16 guests in the cabin, with Lord knows how many on deck.
These fine wines led me to a brief affair with an Australian lady. I had been invited by a couple of English lads to a party given to celebrate the launch of their 40ft yacht. When I arrived I found their boat had been rafted onto the end of nine others. With a bottle of grog in each hand, it was hard going clambering from one craft to the next. I had nearly reached my goal when I came across a boat turned the opposite way from the rest. Hitherto I had walked over the foredecks in approved social manner; now a cockpit faced me. I should have walked up the deck and crossed in the middle but instead I tripped on the lifelines and fell into the cockpit which is where I made a terrible mistake. It seems that a crowd of hob-nailed boots had already passed that way en route to the orgy. The woman who attacked me came out of the main hatchway like a bull terrier, a fat one. From Australia. Suddenly I was a flaming Pommy trying to kick holes in the side of her flaming boat. Where the flaming hell did I flaming think I was? Flaming Piccadilly Circus? I secured my retreat only by promising never to darken her cockpit again.
The wine flowed freely and things were slightly blurred when I left the party but I managed to remove my flip flops and cross the decks barefooted. When I came to the Australian boat, I remembered my promise and, going forward, fell through a hatchway onto spongy flesh. The sound was reminiscent of the air raid sirens in the last war, low pitched at first but reaching a teeth-shattering screech. Since the lady appeared not to appreciate my company, I decided to leave. ‘We have lift off,’ I’m sure I heard as I came back out of the hatch like a Polaris missile leaving a submarine.
Terrell turned up in Durban two weeks later. After letting go my lines at Darwin, he had sailed to the Cocos Islands where he had picked up the crew of a wrecked American boat, which was lucky for him. Halfway across the Indian Ocean, Altair was thrown on her side by a rogue wave and Terrell finished up in the sea. He could think of no reason why this wave had formed. The sea was flat and wind moderate and there seemed no reason to wear a life harness. As he lurched overboard he grabbed a yellow seat cushion, which was all the crew could see when later they came on deck. They homed in on it to rescue him.
I wanted to be in Cape Town for Christmas and the jetty, where Solitaire had lain snug for two months, was becoming crowded with visiting boats. It was time to move on and I planned to set out for Cape Town on Wednesday, November 23rd.
My biggest regret in Durban was that I had been unable to see Rome, although we kept in contact by mail. He had called his Nor-west 34 Adhara and had been given leave from the RAF to compete in the OSTAR single-handed transatlantic race. Having put up a good performance in that, he had been selected to navigate the service entry, Adventure, in the Whitbread Round-the-World Race. On completing the first leg to Cape Town, he had been asked to navigate to New Zealand and was now in Cape Town between stops. We tried to arrange a meeting but had to make do with a few phone calls.
Whether a voyage is easy or difficult depends on the yacht’s crew and the weather: strong winds from the south combat the Agulhas Current which rushes south at anything up to 5 knots. Gales from the east send waves sweeping across 4,000 miles of Indian Ocean to pile up on the ledge that runs close to the South African coast. With so many super-tankers in the area, a single-hander can never find the voyage hazardless, even in ideal conditions. The 1,000-mile voyage from Durban to Cape Town can be made in stages: East London after 240 miles and Port Elizabeth a further 140 miles, both readily accessible. Thereafter the harbours are more difficult to enter in bad weather. The best plan seemed to be to wait for a settled weather forecast, then sail close to the 100 fathom line, taking advantage of the current, closing ashore at the first signs of bad weather.
Solitaire’s motor was still very tight. The new main bearing sent on by Saab had been fitted and the instructions for re-timing carried out. Despite changing the oil a couple of times, small particles from the smashed sump plate were still finding their way into the gears and I could not rely on it to start in an emergency. Fortunately the engine started for our departure. Outside the harbour we found light south-westerlies but after two days we were within sight of East London, having logged 151 miles when our true run was 240 miles. The Agulhas Current had pushed us 45 miles a day. Although we had sailed in strong tidal currents before, this was the fiercest in a constant direction. The afternoon was spent becalmed outside East London. With the setting sun I decided to enter harbour, but it brought up a steady northerly so I ran south intending to go into Port Elizabeth. On reaching there, the winds swung to the south and increased to gale force so that for the first time we were beating into fast seas with three reefs in the mainsail and flying our brand new storm jib.
A week out of Durban and we still had 300 miles to fetch Cape Town but the constant presence of tankers prohibited sleep, even making relaxation difficult. Then the wind rose to storm force, the working jib blew out and I let Solitaire lie under bare poles close to shore in shallow water but well away from the steep ledge. I went below for a few minutes for a cup of tea and closed my eyes to rest them. I opened them again after a few minutes and discovered that six hours, with no control over whether I lived or died, had passed. I had been lucky.
My confidence in the ability of tankers to avoid yachts was shattered when I saw two of them wrecked on the beach east of Cape Town, one of which had broken its tow line. I’m not sure why the other was there, maybe because he thought the first was lonely, certainly not from trying to miss a yacht. Our last night at sea was spent becalmed, so we motored the last 35 miles into Cape Town, passing through a mass of lights on what, I think, were local fishing boats. Somehow I managed to lose the log’s trailing spinner, possibly taken by one of the fish the locals were trying to catch. It must have had sharp teeth for the line was cleanly cut. I had seen hundreds of seals in the water who liked to play around Solitaire but I’m sure they didn’t take it, unless they carried razor blades!
Cape Town, with Table Mountain in the background, often wearing her cap of white cloud, is one of the most beautiful and impressive harbours to enter. Solitaire passed through the breakwater on December 5th, 12 days after leaving Durban and all I wanted to do was sleep for the next 12. A pilot launch led us to the yacht club where the manager, Peter, took our lines. The Royal Cape Yacht Club I will ever remember for its kindness and hospitality. On my arrival I was taken as I was – barefooted, in shorts and tattered shirt – to meet the Commodore and a lady I had heard a good deal about: Joan Fry, the Club Secretary. My apologies were brushed aside and they asked what the weather had been like on the trip down. I said I had run into gusting conditions, which they seemed to find amusing. Gales apparently had been sweeping the coast; the Town Harbour had been closed and one ocean-going ship had been forced to enter with a damaged bridge.
Was there anything I needed? they asked.
‘Sleep,’ I said.
Other interests besides sailing?
‘Golf,’ I said.
I went back to tend to Solitaire’s needs and, when tidying up, I heard my name being called over the loud speaker to say I was wanted on the phone. Puzzled, because no one knew of my arrival, I picked it up.
‘My name’s Frank Minnitt, I understand you play golf, Les,’ came a strange voice. ‘Are you free tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at nine o’clock in the morning.’
No yacht club should be without a Joan Fry. Not only did she know all her members and their interests, she took the trouble to make a complete stranger a welcome guest. After arranging my golf game I felt far less tired. Rome had given me the name of a family friend, whom I phoned. Betty was a keen ballroom dancer so I promised to escort her to a Christmas dance. After that I had my first decent sleep in nearly a fortnight.
Frank Minnitt arrived next morning in a white Jaguar. Maybe a little older than I, very pro-British, he had fought with us in the Second World War and was the owner of a Contessa 32 which he had shipped from England. Apart from sailing he would take on anything that had been cast aside as useless and make it work again, his favourites being old British cars and motorbikes. His dog was an English cocker spaniel, which was blind in one eye and inevitably named Nelson. On one occasion when invited to his house for dinner and having had my one suit cleaned, I found myself in his garage helping him to take a car to bits. He had a son in the Navy and a charming wife called Solfrid.
I have often heard yachtsmen talking about the effects of long voyages, some claiming that the land appears to move. I can’t say that I had this experience, although my golf seemed to suffer! I would play more for the pleasure of watching other people swing a club correctly and to see beautiful greens set in rolling hills, feeling the lush grass under my feet. On the course I met Neil Nisbet, who became my partner in a four. Later I went back to have dinner with him, meeting his wife, Beverly, and their two teenaged daughters, and ended up spending most of Christmas with them.
Frank Minnitt gave a dinner at his Club on New Year’s Eve and I found myself sitting beside another lovely lady, Caryll Holbrow, who had three grown-up sons, one of whom, Andrew, was forever turning up with picnics to help work on Solitaire. Caryll’s home was in sight of Table Mountain and was as beautiful as its name, Moonrakers. It was not only the hospitality of these people that made Cape Town such a memorable stop. The yacht club was always active. Following the departure of the Whitbread Round-the-World Race they were running the Rothmans Week.
Terrell turned up just after Christmas with a new crew member. Again he had made all the stops from Durban. Rolling Stone rolled in with Graeme and Sue. Another ferro-cementer was in Cape Town when I arrived. Her owners, Glen and Norma Harvey, farmers turned sailors whom I had met in Durban, had completed their 45ft craft in nine months. Knowing nothing about sailing they had paid a skipper to bring them down to Cape Town. Their two children accompanied them along with two cats, one of which was blind and was led around by the other. The family were adventurous, hard-working and with a pioneering spirit, characteristics that were missing in some of the older established countries. Eilco Kasimier was a well-known and well-liked Dutch single-hander whose wishbone ketch, Bylgya, was alongside Solitaire. Eilco had sailed in the single-handed transatlantic race and from America had continued around the world the wrong way via Cape Horn. A Dutch hotelier and an experienced seaman, he taught me much.
I had to tear myself away from Cape Town, where there was always a reason to stay longer: to play another round of golf, go to a party, a concert... Solitaire was given her last coat of antifouling before setting off for home. Although the slipway had been heavily booked by the Rothmans racing boats, the club manager had fixed it for me to slip her for eight hours, thus ensuring our departure would be eased by the knowledge that the hull was clean and so speed our trip to St Helena, the next port of call 1,660 miles away.
Our course went north-west. The charts suggested lightish winds over Solitaire’s stern from the south-west but as we had a high-pressure area to pass through, there could be a few calm patches. For the first two or three days I could expect little sleep until we cleared the shipping lanes and the area of gales. Navigation would present no problems as St Helena is small but mountainous, and there could be no mistake in recognising it, the nearest neighbour being Ascension Island, 700 miles further on.
After clearing the harbour Solitaire found a gentle southerly as we headed north, a broad reach under main and genoa. Table Mountain dropped sadly below the horizon. On the second day out a disturbed sea brought problems in holding a course, with the odd bad broach as the winds did not match wave size. Two slewed us and a third knocked Solitaire flat, breaking three of her stanchions.
I dropped all sails – a mistake. I could have continued to run with them but perhaps my judgement was impaired by finding myself with no secure lifelines to starboard. Later, when the winds increased to match the seas, I hauled up the working jib and sailed comfortably. I made an entry in the ship’s log next morning and spotted the date, Friday, January 13th. ‘No wonder!’ I wrote.
On Monday, January 30th, the entry in the log read: ‘0300 GMT, St Helena sighted’. It always warms me to see land loom out of the dark, particularly when, as with St Helena, there is no lighthouse! I waited until morning before entering harbour, after logging 1,607 miles, which meant we must have had a strong helping current.
St Helena was where Napoleon found himself interred in 1815 after his defeat at Waterloo by the British, since when the island has changed little. Many of the battlements built to prevent any attempted rescue can be seen from the harbour. There is little industry for the 5,000 inhabitants, so many of the young men emigrate to find employment elsewhere, leaving a surplus of attractive ladies with time on their hands. As there is no airfield, the only outsiders who call regularly are yachtsmen.
When the Customs boat came over, I asked them what the main entertainment was or, at least, what the second was. I was told there was a cinema show three times a week. What they neglected to say was that they were the same three films, one of which just consisted of coming attractions that never came.
As soon as practical I rowed ashore, walked through the old town gates and up a sloping cobbled street where the islanders, a friendly lot, crossed the street to greet you. At the local tavern I asked the innkeeper to bring me a tankard of his finest ale and, as I got stuck into this, became aware of a toothless woman weighing close to 18 stone who was sizing me up. She told me that the town was holding a beach barbecue that night, for which I thanked her kindly and promised to attend but, tired from the voyage, I slept and failed to make it. Next day I was talking to some of the local girls and expressed sorrow at missing the big event, whereupon they started to laugh. It seems the only people on the beach that night would have been me and Toothless. She already had 12 children and was trying for a record 13. After that, my stay on St Helena was like having both my mother-in-laws with me. She would swim around Solitaire, a cross between a shark and a whale, and I had to keep explaining she could not come aboard because we would sink.
Local dances started at 7.30 but I was warned to stay away because of the danger of being attacked by man-hungry ladies. At seven o’clock I would be at the door trying to start a queue, only to find, once inside, the blight of my life. The night would be spent with her not so much sitting on my lap as flowing over it, every now and then uttering a war cry reminiscent of a Gordon Highlander. On one occasion, when I saw a crowd of yachties and girls leaving early, I asked the reason. They explained that although the beach was of pebble, there were cardboard boxes to lie on and did I want to reserve one? Not bloody likely!
Many of the South African boats came into St Helena while I was there, including Eilco Kasimier on Bylgya, later to continue to Holland for a hero’s welcome, and Glen and Norma Harvey on Chummy, which was to hit a wreck off Brazil and sink. Fortunately all aboard were saved although I’m not sure what happened to the cats. Six boats were lost at sea between leaving Tahiti and reaching England but luckily all my friends survived.
Another boat from South Africa, Sundance Kid, came in just before dark one night when I was able to help, an attention they repaid later in spades. Aboard were Doug and Mary Solomon, with two teenage boys and a crew member, John. They had run out of diesel and were coming in under sail. Although Doug was a first class seaman, the light was poor and as St Helena sometimes has a 30ft swell at that time of year, anchoring alone is not particularly healthy. It is far safer to have at least one rope onto a mooring buoy so I rowed out with a torch and directed them to lie alongside Solitaire.
Life on this island must be a paradise for any able-bodied seaman but after 10 days I felt as pure and as disappointed as a snowflake falling in summer. Next stop was Ascension Island, 700 miles away. We set sail on Saturday, February 11th, 1978, in company with Sundance Kid, only to watch them pull away under poled-out headsails.
The conditions were much the same as before, with following winds from the south-east. The trip passed without incident, apart from the sextant falling to bits, which I soon cured with a few elastic bands. After logging 671 miles we arrived on Saturday, February 18th, quite blasé about our navigation, despite a sick sextant. The island, emerging from the ocean like a dirty grey volcano, I spotted 30 miles away. I was thrown a curving ball in that the powerful RDF transmitter was off air. One would think that when you approach an island that is packed with satellite-tracking equipment, a BBC relaying station and a modern airfield, not to mention their own Russian spy ship, there would be little problem in keeping a simple transmitter serviceable. One would think. I had the confidence not to worry, although I did pray for the sun to come up every morning so that I could take sights. My prayers increased in tempo when I looked into the anchorage.
It is always difficult to judge a breaking wave from the back. Even taking a picture of a really terrifying one from this angle will show only a comparatively flat sea. I could see things were quite interesting by the bashing the sea wall was taking and the puzzling way everything kept disappearing – now you see it, now you don’t. One minute there would be landing barges and yachts, the next the anchorage would be empty. Obviously a monster swell was responsible for this illusion so I considered giving it a miss and pushing on to the Azores but, as there were two yachts at anchor and I wanted to post some letters, I decided to take a closer look.
In England I used to watch an American TV show called Hawaii Five-O, which always started with some nut on a surfboard inside a wave. During the next few minutes I was to become that nut. I began to enter the harbour under power with sails stowed and conditions looking not too bad. Then, as everything went dark, I looked up, expecting to see a black cloud across the sun: instead I saw water reaching for the top of the mast. We were inside a breaking wave, with no way out. If I tried to turn we would broach, capsize and finish as a wreck on the rock-strewn beach. To do nothing meant surfing in at Lord knows what speed to smash into the harbour wall.
The wave took the decision out of my hands. It fell on us.
Even as the cockpit started to empty I was turning Solitaire, bringing her around to face the threatening seas, clawing back out to sea. I could now see where the breakers started and finished so I made for a marker buoy and rounded it to make another attempt but, as we closed, the other craft still kept vanishing, clinging to their mooring buoys. The wind was offshore so that whenever the swell came in, the boats would rear mightily, surge forward, and then be driven back by the wind as the wave passed through. There were no free buoys but I would be unable to leave the tiller long enough to secure a line anyway. The nearest yacht was Sundance Kid. I decided my only chance was to get a line onto one of the landing barges and hang off its stern. I went round the nearest a few times but there was no one to take a rope.
I closed Doug’s boat intending to shout goodbye before continuing on to the Azores when John, the crew member, dived over the side and started swimming towards me, risking his life. I just could not see how anyone could survive in that sea. Had Lana Turner been alone on the other craft, begging me to step off Solitaire, I would not have gone, even after my disappointment in St Helena. In that situation I think I would have gone below and quietly cut my throat. No way would I have left Solitaire.
After getting a line to John, he managed to clamber on board. When we had chewed a piece out of the bow and twisted a pulpit, he succeeded in getting a line onto a bollard on the stern of a barge, whereupon I played out as much rope as I could without endangering the craft astern of us. Each time the swell bore in, the rear barge would lift like a bird of prey, come screeching down for the kill and then stop a few yards short of Solitaire. Next moment we would be shooting up in the lift, looking down on the craft ahead, before plunging for its decks. My stomach muscles relaxed when I became confident that this vessel would move forward before we struck. It is terrifying to realise you have so little control over the life of your craft and, for that matter, your own.
John told me Sundance Kid had arrived the day before. The people on the adjoining boat had gone ashore with Doug’s wife and the boys, whereafter the swell had started. Those ashore had been forced to spend the night there with no chance of returning until things eased. In fact it was 48 hours before we could land and the island newspaper reported it was the worst swell, rollers and resultant undertow for years. Concern was felt for the Giant Turtle eggs that were destroyed, Ascension Island being one of their few breeding places. Sundance Kid had been watching when I made my first approach and, as the first wave hit Solitaire, it seemed she had gone down like a stone. Later some of the Americans and British, who had been standing on the surrounding hills keeping an eye on us, confirmed that even the mast vanished. Having decided that we were lost and that they should start looking for survivors on the beach, Solitaire’s bow shot back from her grave to live again. Tongue in cheek they offered to take a collection for a repeat performance!
I told them bluntly what to do with their cameras.
Ascension, in many ways, is the opposite of St Helena, which is green and reasonably fertile with a surplus of girls and little to do, a tired island living in the past and totally isolated from the modern world. Landing on Ascension, in comparison, is like landing on the moon. Barren of greenery, the island is grey and dusty, growing only tracking and transmitting aerials charged with static electricity, a man’s island with few spare ladies. Although it is under British control, Ascension depends on the gigantic American airbase for its lifeblood. I have played golf in some unlikely places, in the deserts of South Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and on a beach in Brazil, but Ascension has a golf course which its members describe as the worst this side of hell and, after playing on it, I was forced to agree. It is more like playing on a pinball machine. Having hit your ball you can relax awhile, watching it leap from rock to rock. When it settles, the game turns into hide-and-seek. At this stage you realise that this is also a very expensive course to play since every time you hit a ball you are virtually kissing it goodbye.
Everything possible is done for the servicemen and contracted civilians working there. If you weary of the black and grey landscape or looking out to sea, there are always the latest films to be seen nightly at a variety of clubs. The Air Force base has a fine restaurant that looks as if it has been freshly shipped from Hollywood, the meals cheap, the food fresh. Spending most of my time in the clubs talking to BBC and service personnel, I never did get to see a film.
I cast off from the stern of the landing barge on Friday, February 24th, with England 5,000 miles away and Cape Horn a further 20,000. We left in a mood of uncertainty. If I sailed direct to England, spring would hardly have sprung. Should the weather prove too cold as we pushed north, it might be advisable to stop off in the Azores and wait for a warmer welcome home. There was enough food and water on board for a non-stop voyage. I would play it by ear. Solitaire had now sailed close to 30,000 miles since we took our first stumbling steps with Rome in the Solent. Considering the punishment and adventures we had shared, she was still in good health, although her motor gave concern. On top of that, the working jib that had seen us round the world was on its last legs, broken stanchions needed welding, and the sextant was held together by faith and elastic bands. The self-steering needed new nylon bushes but at least it still worked well.
On Tuesday, March 21st, Solitaire crossed her outward-bound track, tying the knot and completing her first voyage around the world. In the past I had run the motor every week or two, now I was exercising it every few days, but each time it became more difficult to start. I ran it for long periods to circulate the oil and charge the battery but every mile north the problem increased. As the Atlantic grew colder the seas sucked through the engine froze and thickened the oil, adding more problems to those with which we left Cape Town.
Wednesday, April 5th, found us close to Horta in the Azores after logging 3,330 miles from Ascension. Land’s End, England, was approximately only 1,200 miles away. I had heard many heart-warming incidents about the Azores and its people so the temptation to call in was great but, above all, now I wanted to see my family so we sailed on. The waves that broke over Solitaire’s decks were touched with ice and her cabin grew cold, damp and dreary. Slowly I increased my clothing, first long trousers and sweater, then heavy socks and sea boots, which I left on for longer periods until finally I slept in them.
The motor grew even harder to start and 900 miles from England it groaned for a few minutes, slowed down and coughed as though it had consumption, exhaled its last breath and died. I performed every operation I could think of to bring it back to life, bleeding its system, stripping it down, taking off its head. Its dismembered body was strewn over a heaving cabin floor and I did everything possible bar give it the kiss of life. I accepted the fact that we would have to sail up the English Channel without its backing, conserving the battery for navigation lights.
The last days of our voyage were insistently cold as we beat up the Channel into wind, rain and fog, tacking back and forth through heavy shipping. At last I heard a faint RDF signal from St Catherine’s Point on the Isle of Wight, which grew louder and louder as I turned towards it, the gloom and mist pushed aside. Here at last were England’s white cliffs and green fields to welcome home two weary travellers.
Then fate played its last dirty trick. Tacking past the Needles in company with other yachts, we looked into the peaceful Solent anchorage, at which point the wind dropped and the tide turned. The rest of the boats took down their sails and started their engines, leaving Solitaire to be swept back to sea. Enviously I watched them leave us for hot meals and baths, soft beds and warm arms. Rejected, we turned away and headed for Christchurch Bay, there to spend another watchful night at anchor.
Although lacking tide tables, I had noted the time the current had turned the night before and I knew that an early start would see us safely home, so we swept past the Needles that Sunday morning, April 30th, on a fast tide. Then the wind dropped again, although the current bore us past Hurst Castle. Lymington River came up to port and I tried to edge over into its mouth but still the tide carried us. After a frantic dash to drop an anchor, a long wait ensued until a zephyr came up in the afternoon, allowing us to start for home. Again it died and left us helpless, drifting towards the mud banks as a motor cruiser closed on us.
‘Could you give us a tow into the marina? The motor’s packed up.’
‘Sure,’ they said. ‘We’ll put down fenders and tie you alongside.’ Then: ‘You’re flying a yellow flag. Where have you come from? France?’
‘Ascension Island in the South Atlantic,’ I replied proudly. ‘I’ve just sailed around the world.’
The cameras came out. Wine, chicken, chocolates and cups of coffee showered on Solitaire. It was the Easter holiday and the marina was full, but we were allowed to tie alongside the wall, Solitaire still secured to the cruiser. The Customs launch that had followed us downriver soon cleared us. Standing on top of the wall was John the rigger, the first person to steer Solitaire three years before.
‘Nice to see you back, Les,’ he shouted. ‘What kept you?’