The Lonely Sea and the Sky (54 page)

  By 9 o'clock that night the gale had veered 45 degrees. The ship's heading had improved as a result, but she was taking a frightful bashing. I felt I should do something drastic before she was damaged. I tacked ship, leaving the sails aback. This slowed her up, but she was still being knocked over. Then I lowered the trysail, leaving only the tiny spitfire. I let this draw, and then tacked again, so that the spitfire would be aback on the southerly heading. This was an improvement below, except when green seas hit the deck. Once I was standing in the cabin facing forward when a big sea broke on top. A little cloud of fine spray shaped like a ball appeared in front of my eyes below the cabin roof. That cabin top is one solid piece of thick plywood, with no break in it anywhere, except where a ring bolt passes through. That was the only place where the spray could have been forced through, and showed the tremendous pressure which a big wave must exert.

  An hour after midnight on 20 June I logged that I had spent nearly an hour trying to get the anchor light to stay alight. It went out in the calm of the cabin before it even met the gale. Finally I decided that I must sail without a light, or use electricity and be damned. In this rough weather the light was most needed, so I rigged the electric light.

  At three in the morning I changed over to a leeward berth to avoid being thrown across the cabin. We were still going much too fast, although it was only 3 knots. I pondered how I could slow the ship up. I went on deck, and lashed the tiller hard alee. This headed the ship closer to the wind by 30 degrees, and slowed the speed down to 1½ knots. An occasional heavy wave came on board, and one put out the cabin light; I suppose the shock caused by the bang did it. I reckoned that the wind on deck was 60 knots.

  At dawn I found that the log had stopped again. This time I could not blame Pidge; the burgee halyard had parted, and one part of it, with the burgee stick, had been washed into the sea where the spinning log had twisted it hopelessly round the log line. I finished unravelling the log line – among other jobs – six hours later. By noon I had moved 59 miles southwards in the past twenty-four hours, but because of the Gulf Stream and the leeway caused by the gale, I had been driven back 25 miles towards Europe.

  By the evening, the wind had veered to north-west, and decreased to Force 7. The seas, though less rough, were still turbulent. I was getting very worried about Pidgy. He looked bare, wet and cold, and had whitish scabs round his eyes. I could not bear to see him looking so miserable. I made him a dovecote out of a cardboard box that had originally held a Thermos-jug, and had a circular hole in it. I secured this box to the cabin roof above the galley and placed Pidgy through the hole, after wrapping him in some old pyjamas. He pecked me when I picked him up. For a while he lay there, just looking, but later I saw that he had stood up. I feared that he was about to hand in his chips, but presently he started eating a Stalker oatcake in his eyrie. I felt that called for a celebration – a strong gin and lime.

  Having settled Pidgy as well as I could, I got to work on the trysail, and finished setting it. The halyard kept getting tangled up in the strong wind. When at last I got below I was surprised to find it calm. On looking out, I was even more surprised to find that it was still blowing Force 7.

  I worked up my dead reckoning for the past day, and found that the nearest iceberg was now 93 miles off to the west. I had to keep below west to avoid it. Then I started work on Miranda. Her gaff gooseneck, which had sheared off, I managed to replace with an old screw-eye, which I filed down to fit. This was an acrobatic effort, which involved hanging over the pulpit in the stern above the jumping Atlantic. I used shackles and lanyards to replace various bottlescrews and stays which had come apart or snapped. It was dreary, tedious, tricky, and depressing work, but before midnight
Gipsy Moth
had started sailing again in a modest sort of way. When I turned in at midnight Pidgy's tail was sticking out of the box above the galley and I think he was asleep.

  When I woke at daybreak, 7 o'clock by my time,
Gipsy Moth
was becalmed, after sailing only 12 miles in seven hours. There was a shower of rain, but it looked as if it would be a fine morning later. The nearest berg was 70 miles to the west. I set a bigger headsail, and
Gipsy Moth
began moving to a light breeze. The sea had gone down.

  I took Pidge (somewhat reluctantly on his part) from his dovecote, and put him on the cockpit seat, as I thought that he ought to have some fresh air and movement. I then cleaned out his dovecote, and lined it with paper. When I stepped into the cockpit Pidge had moved on to the counter and made as if to fly off: he often flew off, and circled the ship once or twice before alighting again. 'Yes, go on,' I said and waved him off. He took off astern, but stalled into the water a few feet away. At first he flapped the water to try to take off, then turned round and started flapping frantically to catch up the ship. It was heart-rending to see his panic as the stern moved steadily away. I sprang to the cockpit, grabbed the tiller and, over-riding Miranda, brought the yacht round.

  I aimed to arrive at the spot nearly dead into wind, so that the yacht would be moving slowly. I could not reduce sail, nor do anything which would make me take my eye off the pigeon. I knew from the experience with my lost dinghy that I should never see him again if I once lost sight of him – and one tiny grey pigeon in the middle of the Atlantic was infinitely smaller than a dinghy. I had to come up to him, so that he would be within a foot of the side of the ship; otherwise I should not be able to reach him. It was not easy, because from where I stood in the cockpit the pigeon would be out of sight, hidden by the bows, for the last 50 feet of my approach. When I thought that it was the right moment I left the tiller, sprang forward to where the freeboard was lowest – the only place along the deck where it was low enough for me to reach the water with my hand – threw myself on the deck, and thrust my arm and shoulder under the bottom lifeline. Pidgy was right there, and I clutched at him with my hand. But when I pushed my arm down suddenly, as I had to do in a hurry, he must have thought I was going to strike him, for he flapped madly away from me as I touched him, and I missed my hold. I felt terrible, that he should take me for an enemy. I ran back to the tiller and slowly, as it seemed, came round again. I had to stay by the tiller till the last moment, and then make a rush and a grab. Once I slipped, but I had no time to clip on my safety-harness. The next three passes I made at him he eluded me. I could see that I would not get him that way, and tried to squeeze an idea out of my head. Could I throw him anything that he could climb on? I looked round. I could not get below. The only thing I could see was a piece of old sail I had used for Pidgy's tent. I threw this out, but he thought I was throwing it at him and moved away. Then it sank. The big red gash bucket was at hand, and I hurriedly fastened it to the end of the boathook. I think I made fourteen circuits and passes at Pidge. I had him in the bucket about four times, but unfortunately as I lifted the bucket out of the water the overflow from it washed the pigeon out. The last time he was washed out he was swamped by the water and lay inert, with only a little of his back at the surface of the water. Next time I came round I picked him out easily with my hand as he lay inert.

  I felt cut up as I held his soaking body; I felt responsible for him, and somehow his mean crabbed nature and his dreadful habits made me feel worse. I squeezed his lungs and the water dribbled out of his beak. Then I went on squeezing regularly, trying to revive him by artificial respiration. I think I was doing it the right way, because I could see air bubbling through his nostrils. At one time I thought he made a sound. I kept at it for, I think, about twenty minutes; then I wrapped him in hot clothes warmed from water in the Thermos. I filled a hot water bottle, and wrapped him with it in paper. But it was no good; Pidgy's spirit had flown. It was pathetic to look at his poor, emaciated, sick-looking body, which seemed to have only a few feathers. He looked either very old or very sick. It was the breakdown in communication between a human being and an animal which was so distressing. If only he could have trusted me, could have understood that I was trying to help him, and not hurt him, he would have still been alive.

  I gave him a sea burial in my best biscuit tin with holes punched in it so that it would sink. I watched it till I could see it no longer as
Gipsy Moth
sailed away.

  I moped about that day. I had already been depressed, for the gale had cost me not only two and a half days but had set me back 20 miles. To say on 18 June that I had made good 560 miles during the past seven days was not bad; but to say three days later that I had made good only 560 miles during the past ten days was too bad. To achieve my ambition of a thirty-day crossing now entailed making good 1,400 miles in the next ten days, which was practically impossible.

  That day I put my house in order; I filled the petrol tank, the paraffin storage tins and bottles, also the stove, the meths priming cans, swept the carpet, cleaned and dusted and tidied. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon
Gipsy Moth
began to sail, at first ghosting in light airs alternating with calm. She seemed to gather herself together, and began moving fast and efficiently in the little wind there was. There was much calm and fog, but she knocked off 100½ miles that day. Then she began sailing across the Grand Banks and down the eastern seaboard for the last 1300 miles of the voyage as she had never sailed before. I had one or two minor adventures. The night of 23 June I was fast asleep, with
Gipsy Moth
sailing at 4 knots through fog on a dark night. I woke up and stepped into the cockpit, rubbing my eyes, to see a huge fishing steamer across the bows. It was vague in the fog. I grabbed the tiller, over-rode Miranda, and pushed the tiller hard down to bring
Gipsy Moth
up into the wind to avoid the steamer. I reckoned that we were going to collide so I brought the tiller hard up the other way to turn downwind and pass astern. Then I could see that I was going to hit her amidships. She was a blaze of lights there. The sleepy daze was clearing from my brain and I said to myself, 'I must be able to range alongside if I head up into wind,' and with that I pushed the tiller hard down again. Now I was close enough to see through the fog that the steamer was stationary. This was what had foxed me. I passed across her bows, and as I did so she sounded a foghorn.

  I trimmed the sails to get back on course before going below and mixing myself a stiff hot grog: my hands were so cold that it was difficult to hold a pen to the log.

  That day
Gipsy Moth
knocked off 131½ miles. I crossed the bows of another trawler 100 yards away; a third I heard, but did not see in the fog. There seemed to be fog all the time at this stage of the passage. Occasionally I could see the sun through the swirling mist overhead, but no horizon. I took a sun-shot with my bubble sextant, with its automatic averaging device, but I do not think that I could have succeeded but for the thousands of shots I had taken when we were developing the bubble sextant for flying in the war.

  During the night a bird kept circling the ship chittering and mewing and I wondered if it was the same one that I had heard on the Banks in 1960. On 24 June I wrote in my log, 'This is the sailing that sailors' dreams are made of, across the misty mysterious Grand Banks smooth as the Solent with water gliding along the hull gurgling and rumbling.' The magic of the voyage was in my blood. It was sheer joy to set or trim a sail to keep
Gipsy Moth
sailing at her best; it was sport getting over difficulties. I laughed at incidents like coming across that steamer on the Grand Banks. It began to seem as if life was a joke, and should be treated as one. I was bursting with fitness and joie de vivre that seemed to build up after a few weeks alone. Perhaps it had taken three weeks to shed the materialism of ordinary living. I had become twice as efficient as when with people; my sensations were all greater; excitement, fear, pleasure, achievement, all seemed sharper. My senses were much more acute, and everything was much more vivid – the shape and colour of sky and sea; feeling spray and wind, heat and cold; tasting food and drink; hearing the slightest change in the weather, the sea or the ship's gear. I have never enjoyed anything more than that marvellous last 1,000 miles sailing along the eastern seaboard of North America.

  On 27 June the day's run was 132¼ miles. At 9 p.m. I turned in early; the wind was backing and I expected to be called out soon. At 11 p.m. I woke and lay listening to
Gipsy Moth
riding madly through the night. It was rough going, but also it was intensely exhilarating, and I lay for some time pondering whether I should let her carry on. I thought that the mast, sails and gear could stand the strain, but Miranda was the weak link I feared for. Finally I dragged myself out of my blankets and climbed into the cockpit.
Gipsy Moth
was on a reach under yankee and full main, with a Force 6 wind on the beam. She was rushing into the dark with apparently acres of white water from the bow waves tearing past. I reckoned that we were doing 10 knots, faster than we had ever sailed before. Occasional combers rolled the boat over on to her beam, or slewed her stern or bows round. Regretfully, I lowered the big jib, and reefed two rolls of the mainsail. Still,
Gipsy Moth
was going faster than she had done before on the voyage. It was a rough night, but when I woke at 6.30 in the morning I found the sun streaming into the cabin out of a clear sky.

  At noon that day
Gipsy Moth
had sailed 159½ miles in the previous twenty-four hours. If only she could have had a fresh breeze all the time since the end of that gale! But day after day brought hours of calm, and hours of light airs. The daily distances sailed showed how well
Gipsy Moth
was going; one day she logged 132 miles, in spite of four hours calm and five hours of light airs. On three days after the gale she sailed more than 130 miles a day, and only on four days out of the thirteen sailed less than 100 miles. To have
Gipsy Moth
sailing well and under full control by Miranda in a zephyr gave me just as much pleasure as having her going well in a gale. Once in the middle of the night I woke up to find her becalmed. As I lay I pondered why the sails were asleep instead of flapping, and why the boom was not creaking as it swung to and fro. I went up into the cockpit and the first thing I noticed was a reflection of the planet Jupiter in the sea, something I have never seen before offshore. The sea could not have been calmer. To my surprise
Gipsy Moth
was ghosting along at 1½ knots in the right direction, with Miranda in control. It seemed hardly believable; I suspected that the log was reading wrongly, and out of curiosity I popped up again an hour later. I found that
Gipsy Moth
had sailed 2½ miles during the hour.