Blue Water, Green Skipper: A Memoir of Sailing Alone Across the Atlantic Read online

  All this yachting had quite turned my head. Thoughts of Fireballs vanished. Visions of cruisers now appeared. I just might be able to scrape together enough from my two-day-a-week income to buy something small.

  In the meantime there was more sailing with Dave. Next was a new event, the Round Aran Race, to start from Galway on a Friday evening and be sailed around all three of the Aran Islands and into Kilronan, a distance of about sixty miles, with a nice night passage thrown in.

  After that came the Galway Bay Sailing Club Regatta. Dave felt that an event of this stature required a pre-race conference on tactics, and this was duly held at Moran’s (also known as the Weir), a lovely little thatched pub on the Kilcolgan River, which empties into Galway Bay. We sailed Pegeen up the river, dried her out alongside the pier in front of the pub, and all concerned, plus a few others, gathered there. I will not place too much emphasis on the condition of the crew the following morning; suffice it to say that we ran aground three times on a falling tide en route to the starting line in Rinville Bay. At one point, half the crew were over the side in water up to their thighs, pushing Pegeen. Recovery was rapid enough for us to win the coveted Sonia Cup that afternoon, and we repaired once again to Moran’s for a suitable celebration.

  There remained but one weekend before the end of the season, that is to say, before Pegeen’s insurance coverage expired, and it was a memorable one. Racing was finished and, Philip having allowed his work to interfere with his sailing, Dave and I took a short cruise.

  We sailed down the river and into the bay in about a Force four breeze, with the full mainsail and the big genoa set. As we entered open water we looked across to the north of the bay and saw a line of heavy-looking squalls racing toward us. “Shall we shorten sail, Skipper?” I asked.

  “Ah, no,” replied Dave, laconically, at his most Irish. “She’ll be all right.”

  The wind freshened quickly and the first puff of the squall, a big one, struck. There was a loud crack like a rifle shot; Dave was at the helm and I was sitting near the coach roof bulkhead to keep out of the wind. I instinctively ducked under the main hatch just in time to see the mast go, like a felled tree, into the water. The wind was up to about Force seven now, and Pegeen wallowed in the troughs as we struggled to get the mast and rigging back aboard. Dave quickly warned me not to start the engine until we were sure the rigging was clear of the propeller. While Dave lashed the badly bent mast and the boom to the deck I got the sails below and bagged them. Pegeen was rolling a lot, with no way on, and by the time I got back into the cockpit I was turning a bit green. The engine, bless its heart, chose to start first go, and we motored back toward Galway, the squalls gone and the sun shining again, I trying not to let on that I was queasy. Before I could object Dave had thrust a glass of dry sherry into my hand and was fixing himself a much-deserved gin and tonic. I hadn’t wanted the drink, but to my astonishment, at the first sip, my queasiness instantly vanished. A couple of other people have told me that dry sherry works for them, too, and it’s a lot more fun than pills.

  With Pegeen having been safely berthed in the trawler layby, Dave treated me to an end-of-season dinner at the Great Southern Hotel, in the heart of Beautiful Downtown Galway. It had been quite a season for me; I had had the best of both worlds. I had raced the Mirror for a full season and still managed to get quite a lot of time in on Pegeen at the tail end. Meanwhile, three weeks before, another event had taken place that was to contribute to a radical redirection of my life. My grandfather, who was a major figure in my life and whom I loved very much, died. It was not a tragic death, for he was eighty-five and quite prepared to die. Well into his late seventies he was doing an hour’s calisthenics and running two miles every morning—he had been mowing his lawn when he was struck with his final illness and died only two weeks later. Still, I was sad; my memories of him were sharp and sweet from my earliest childhood, and I miss him even as I write this.

  But he was as kind and generous to me in death as he had been in life, and with a riveting suddenness, I realized that I could now afford to buy a small yacht. Then, on the Sunday morning following this realization, I went into the village for the papers and read in The Observer that entries were beginning to come in for the 1976 Royal Western/Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race.

  If I had been a comic-strip character, a lightbulb would suddenly have appeared above my head.

  book two

  Five

  On the Brink

  On the face of it, this was a ridiculous idea. In fact, it was entirely possible that it was a ridiculous idea right down to its very toes. My total sailing experience (not counting the week in Maine eight years before, when I was a passenger) consisted of not quite two seasons in a ten-foot ten-inch plywood dinghy and something less than half a season as third hand on a twenty-four-foot bilge keeler. Pegeen was the largest boat I had ever set foot on. My total navigation experience consisted of using a hand bearing compass maybe three times. I was thirty-six years old and, apart from a little tennis in London and sailing the Mirror, had not had any real exercise in fifteen years. It seemed a meager chronicle of assets.

  But I had others. I was reasonably bright; I had a little money; I had about nineteen months to find a boat, learn to sail it, learn to navigate it, and to get fit; and above all, I was, just about as much as any man can be, free. That was a very important consideration.

  When I was very young I wanted to get married very badly, but I got over it. I had a couple of close scrapes, mind you, but I managed to stay out of serious trouble. We are all taught that, generally, when between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, each of us will meet some Wonderful Person for whom he was destined, then marry, live in a nice house with two cars in the garage, have 2.5 children, and live happily ever after. During my twenties, by a process I can describe only as luck, I managed to become gradually disabused of this notion, and by the time I was about thirty it had occurred to me, first, that there was a possibility that I might, indeed, never get married; and second, that that might not be an unbearably unpleasant way to live. I try to keep an open mind about this, but nothing has yet happened to change it.

  So I was free, that is to say, single; neither did I have any burning professional ambition beyond finishing my novel, nor was I burdened with unmanageable debt. My mother being a good businesswoman who had just inherited the family business, I had no one to support but myself, and I had been doing that nicely in just two days a week for some time. I was a fortunate man.

  Perhaps I was also a slightly insane one. I thought a lot about what my problems would be. I could meet the physical demands, I thought; I could become fit. But what about the emotional demands? Could I spend several weeks alone at sea in a small boat without the top of my head coming off? Well, I had taken a rather cold plunge moving from Knightsbridge in London to Gort in the west of Ireland. It had taken some getting used to, but I now spent the greater part of my time alone, working on the novel or reading, mostly about sailing. The two days a week in Dublin kept me in touch with real life and the opposite sex, but basically it was a solitary existence.

  Most of all, it seemed to me, I faced two things: a problem of organization and an intensive learning experience. There was a lot to bring together in a short time, but I am a compulsive organizer, being a Capricorn; I find it intensely satisfying to bring order out of chaos, and I am good at it. Lately, the only outlet for this compulsion had been the Galway Bay Sailing Club, to the bemusement of its membership. But what about the learning? Quite apart from boat-handling technique, there was a considerable amount of academic knowledge to absorb, particularly celestial navigation, which involved mathematics, and I could not count to a hundred without stopping to think. I had been a slightly better-than-average student at Manchester High School and no better than average at the University of Georgia. Still, I had learned enough about several score of products and companies to be able to write advertising for them; in New York I had become a competent amateur ph
otographer; in London I had learned more than a little about wine. Neither was an uncomplicated subject. If I was enthusiastic about the subject, I could learn.

  I wrote to the Royal Western Yacht Club for the rules of the race, and I began to look for a boat. Finding nothing in the Irish newspapers, I decided to return from Dublin to Galway the long way and make a few stops. I drove south to Wicklow, stopping at Neil Watson’s boatyard. When a boat changes hands in Ireland, Neil Watson often has a hand in the deal. He is the country’s most enthusiastic yacht broker and a nice man as well. Neil showed me a variety of craft in his yard. There were a couple of Trappers (not enough interior space, not enough beam), a French Etap (too small), a pair of Irish-built fiberglass boats called Kerrys (interesting, but freeboard a bit low) and a Comfort 30, a half-ton cruiser-racer, also built in Ireland. This, I thought, was more like it, but it was too expensive, even secondhand. On top of the original cost of the boat there was a lot of extra equipment to be bought. I would have to make do with something smaller.

  I drove on to Cork, partly to stop at a favorite country hotel, Ballymaloe House, and partly to see what I could find out about a young New Zealander yacht designer, Ron Holland, about whom I had been reading in the yachting press. He had designed a successful one-tonner, Golden Apple, had followed her with a half-tonner, Golden Shamrock, and now a production version of Shamrock was to be built. Ron Holland was not listed as having a telephone, and I couldn’t remember the name of the boatyard which was building his design. It turned out to be Southcoast Boatyard, and I eventually found a small office building, a large shed, and the beginnings of some sort of construction behind the office.

  In the office I was directed to the foreman, George Bush, whom I found in the shed, deploying workers around the upside-down wooden hull of a boat in building. George, who wore glasses and a permanently astonished look, explained that Ron Holland was in the United States. He showed me the hull he was working on, which was to be the “plug” around which a mold would be constructed for the new glass-fiber boat, and gave me a look at Golden Apple, which was resting on a cradle near the river. He was very proud of Golden Apple, as well he should have been. We talked a bit more, and I left the yard with a clutch of Xeroxed typed pages about the new boat and a promise from George that he would tell Ron Holland of my interest in the boat when he returned from the States. But a production Golden Shamrock cost £9,700, and was out of my range.

  I continued to West Cork, to Skibbereen, to visit Fastnet Yachts, which turned out to be another tin shed, seemingly in the middle of a farm and nowhere near any water I could see. But there was an astonishing number of boats crammed into this shed, among them a Hurley 24, which interested me. It looked good, and it was within my budget. It was suggested that I have a look at another Hurley 24 in Monasterevin, near Dublin, which had been at the Dublin Boat Show. I did, a few days later, and was very interested.

  Not having any objective information about the Hurley, I telephoned Yachting World magazine in London and was connected with David Pelly, the assistant editor. He told me that Hurley was a reliable firm that, due to business difficulties not connected with the quality of its product, was in receivership. He spoke well of the 24, calling it a very seaworthy boat for its size and well designed. I telephoned Hurley’s in Plymouth and talked with the sales manager, learning that they had sent the Monasterevin boat to Ireland for the boat show, where it had not been sold, and in the meantime, the company had gone into receivership. The receiver was insisting that the boat be either sold soon or brought back to England. I began to smell a genuine, gold-plated bargain.

  Back in Galway I noticed in the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s magazine, Seahorse, that a Hurley 24 had been sailed in the Round Britain race by Captain Ewan Southby-Tailyour of the Royal Marines. Hurley’s gave me his telephone number, and I rang him, slightly uncomfortable because I was not quite sure how to pronounce any of his names. He turned out to be an enthusiast in general and, in particular, about his Hurley 24, Black Velvet. He was planning to do the OSTAR in her.

  I had in my hand a copy of the rules, which had just arrived in the post. I mentioned a rule that was worrying me. The committee, it said, was unlikely to accept anything under twenty-five feet overall on deck for the race. Ridiculous, said the captain, they had said the same thing about the Round Britain Race, but he had been accepted. I felt better about it now, and we talked of meeting in London at the boat show in January. Nevertheless, after I hung up I wrote to the committee, asking about the acceptability of the Hurley 24 and reminding them of Captain Southby-Tailyour’s performance. I received a courteous note back from the club secretary, saying that they knew Ewan Southby-Tailyour well, but he felt it was unlikely that the committee would accept the Hurley 24. I wrote back and asked for a ruling, remembering that the committee had, in past times, been known to reconsider an entry.

  In the meantime, the negotiations for the Monasterevin boat began to heat up, and I was made an offer which would be very difficult to refuse. I held off, though, waiting for the committee to meet and rule on the boat. While I was waiting, a letter came from Ron Holland. George Bush had told him that I was interested in a fast cruiser, he said, and he would be happy to talk with me about it.

  I had forgotten about Ron Holland’s boat in my enthusiasm for the Hurley, and anyway, the Shamrock was out of my price range, but I telephoned him and told him what I was thinking of doing and asked him whether he thought a Shamrock would be a suitable yacht for the OSTAR. He thought it would. It was an easy boat to sail, and with its wide beam and high freeboard would be very seaworthy. I asked what modifications, if any, he would make to better suit the boat for its purpose. He’d add a skeg, maybe, to make the boat a bit more directionally stable off the wind and to help the self-steering, which would have to be fitted for the race. I told him I’d think about it.

  I still had not made a definite decision to attempt the OSTAR project. I didn’t know exactly how much money was going to be available, and wouldn’t until I went home for the Christmas holidays, and I still hadn’t heard from the committee. Still, I knew I was going to buy some sort of cruising boat, and there were some steps I could take. I heard about a Leonard Breewood, who had started a school of navigation. I rang him up and learned that the full course for the Yachtmaster’s Offshore Certificate required three weekends of classroom instruction (forty-eight hours), plus considerable study in between. I signed up for the first weekend of the course.

  I drove down to Len Breewood’s place in Tralee, a new house on the south shore of Tralee Bay, which he and his wife had built as a combination guesthouse/sailing and navigation school. It was in a beautiful setting, and Len turned out to be a man of many parts. He had started as a shipwright’s apprentice in the Royal Navy and had later taken degrees in both marine engineering and naval architecture.

  He was lecturing in mechanical engineering at a college in Tralee, while building up his sailing-school business on the side. A small, wide-eyed man with a dapper beard, he was also an experienced yachtsman and, of course, navigator. My fellow pupil was a native Corkman who was home on leave from his job, which was, improbably, detective inspector in the Hong Kong police force. We spent all day Saturday and Sunday penetrating the mysteries of compass variation and deviation, chart symbols, tidal streams, the buoyage system, the rule of the road, flashing and occulting lights, passage planning, and two or three dozen other subjects, all brand-new to both of us. On Sunday afternoon we plotted a mythical weekend cruise off the south coast. I plotted my course straight through two islands, but apart from my supposed loss of the yacht and my probable fatality, all went well. Sunday night I phoned Ron Holland.

  Monday morning I drove to Cork and went to Southcoast Boatyard. I arrived a bit early and occupied my time by taking a ladder around to different boats in cradles on the quay, climbing up to deck level and peering inside. Shortly, I was approached by a rumpled, unshaven figure, wearing jeans and a beat-up sheepskin jacket. Uh, oh, I t
hought, one of the lads has been sent to tell me not to mess with the boats.

  “Hi,” he said, “I’m Ron Holland.”

  Six

  Things Begin to Get Out of Hand

  We sat in the sunny dining room of the Grand Hotel in Crosshaven, with a view of the river and, in the distance, the kelly-green hull of Golden Shamrock, the prototype, riding at her moorings. We had the place entirely to ourselves, business not being so hot in November, and our very own waiter hovered about. We had tried to get out to Shamrock to have a look at her but couldn’t get the club ferry started, so we had repaired to the hotel for some lunch.

  Now I was explaining to Ron Holland what I was thinking of doing. I was careful to explain just how little experience I had. It seemed very important not to give him any sort of inflated impression of my state of knowledge. I had, by now, read maybe a dozen books on single-handing, cruising, yacht design, etc., and it is all too easy to bandy about a few technical terms and give someone the impression that you know more than you do. This is done every day in yacht club bars.

  I poured out every thought I had about the race, the kind of boat I thought I needed, what I thought I had to do to get ready, what sort of equipment I would need. He was the first person I had told about this in any detail, and somewhat to my surprise, he seemed not to think I was mad and was actually agreeing with much of what I said. I suppose I had expected him to take a more skeptical view, perhaps even to try to discourage me, but this was not happening. Ron suggested we go to the boatyard and talk with the managing director.

  Driving down to Crosshaven before lunch, Ron had pointed out a large Georgian house on the other side of the river and said that he lived in a flat on one side of the house. Now, driving back toward the yard and past the house again, I mentioned that I had often thought that this area would be a nice place to live, what with so much good sailing, but I thought that I could never find as good a situation as I had at Lough Cutra Castle.