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

  On Thursday morning Nick and I motored up the river to the boatyard. Hauled out and perched on a cradle, Harp had that stranded look that all pretty yachts have when they are out of their element.

  There was a crack in the epoxy resin which bound the keel to the hull, and daylight could be seen between hull and keel. I left George with a list of jobs to do, told him I had to have the boat back on Saturday, and left.

  The day got brighter when the book contract and a check arrived from my publishers, and Joe McMenamin, who had just bought the Lipton’s supermarket chain, promised me some free groceries if an earlier request to the Quinnsworth chain was not favorably received. And a letter had arrived from Quinnsworth saying that they were interested not just in groceries but in sponsorship! Sponsorship was a constant thorn in my side, what with the recession cutting everybody’s advertising and publicity budgets, and this interest helped me to forget for a while the condition of the boat. I rang their offices in Dublin and made an appointment for Monday afternoon to meet with their board of directors to tell them about the project. My mood was further improved by a visit to the yard on Friday, when I found a full crew working away on Harp.

  I should have known all this was too good to last. On Saturday morning I arrived at the yard to collect the boat. I had brought my checkbook, as I knew there was another four or five hundred pounds outstanding, and I hoped that, after much pressing, the yard would have the bill ready for me. They had. John Harrington, the office manager, presented me with a bill for something more than £2,100 and told me that he had instructions that the boat should not be put into the water until it was paid in full. I asked if he expected me simply to write a check for that amount without checking over the bill carefully, which would take a day or two, at least. He said that those were his instructions. Barry Burke and his associate Pat Hickey were “unavailable” for discussion of the matter. Steam coming from both ears, I wrote a check for the full amount and dated it for the following Wednesday, so that I would have time to make some arrangements with my bank manager. I collected a bill of sale, the boat was put into the water, and we departed. On the trip back down the river I looked quickly over the bill and saw at least three hundred pounds in overcharges and a great many items about which I had questions to ask, but I would have to go over it with a fine-toothed comb later. At Drake’s Pool Lieutenant Bernard Tofts of the Irish Naval Service was waiting to swing my compasses, a job that took the afternoon.

  Sunday we went sailing, and the boat leaked. I went to George’s home in Crosshaven that evening and told him the boat was still taking water. He said there was still something they could do about it with the boat in the water, and he would send somebody to do it early in the week. I told him that if the boat still leaked on the passage to England that I would have it repaired at Camper & Nicholsons and expect Southcoast Boatyard to pay the bill. We were sailing on Friday and had no more time.

  Monday morning, on the train to Dublin, I went carefully through the bill. It was, quite simply, full of holes. At one point, when I had been pressing him for a final estimate on the boat, Barry Burke had said to me, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to charge you twelve thousand pounds for the boat.” The cost, in fact, exceeded the estimate Barry had given me when I was considering a custom cockpit, a custom interior, and raising the freeboard of the boat, all of which I had decided against on grounds of cost. I would have a number of questions to ask about the bill.

  At Quinnsworth I met Don Tidy, managing director; Jim Blanchard, financial director; and Des O’Meara, head of their advertising agency. We sat down around a conference table and exchanged pleasantries, then I talked for half an hour without taking a breath. I told them about the history of the race and about my boat and my plans. I told them everything I could think of. When I had finished they all asked questions, then Don Tidy excused himself for a few minutes. When he returned he said that, in association with a sister company, Penney’s, he thought they would like to sponsor my entry to the tune of £10,000. First, though, he would like me to meet separately with the two advertising agencies involved, explore the opportunities for publicity, and have them report back with their opinions. I canceled my return train reservation and booked a late-night flight back to Cork, then went to Des O’Meara’s offices with him. We were unable to reach the Penney’s ad man, as he was out of his office at a conference, but Des and I went through the whole project with his public-relations manager, and they pronounced themselves satisfied that the opportunity was a good one for Quinnsworth. They would meet with Penney’s man and describe the project to him. I had to get back to Cork, as we were sailing in four days and there was a lot to be done. I left the offices of Des O’Meara Advertising in a trance of elation.

  I telephoned a young lady of my acquaintance, Noelle Fitzgerald, and told her I would trade her a good dinner in return for a lift to the airport. Noelle, who knows a good offer when she hears it, accepted, and soon we were ensconced at The Bailey, dining on Dublin Bay prawns and Puligny Montrachet ’66. At the airport I was in far too good a mood to leave Noelle in Dublin, so I took her with me. We abandoned her car in the Dublin Airport carpark, I got her a ticket, and we were off, she without so much as a toothbrush.

  In Cork the next morning I first went to see a solicitor, Frank O’Flynn, recommended by my bank manager. He advised me to write to Barry Burke, stating my questions and objections on the boatyard’s bill, then stop payment on the check. I asked what that could lead to if we could not reach an amicable settlement. Frank said I could then deposit the full amount jointly with him and the yard’s solicitor, and the matter could be put to arbitration later, under the terms of my contract with the yard. I saw my bank manager again, John Rafferty of the Bank of Ireland in Douglas, an immensely helpful man, and made arrangements for funds in the event I should need them. I then wrote a polite letter to Barry, itemizing the points which I wished clarified on the bill and asking him not to deposit my check until we had met to discuss them. I then stopped payment on the check, following Frank O’Flynn’s advice. I took the letter to Southcoast Boatyard, knocked on Barry’s office door, placed the letter in his hand, and asked him to telephone me when he had had a chance to read it. He said he would do so.

  That afternoon, Noelle and I plundered the Quinnsworth supermarket at the Douglas Shopping Center. Don Tidy had rung the manager and told him to give me £200 worth of anything I needed. I had intended to buy our food in England, where it is cheaper, to Shirley Clifford’s meal plan, which she had already prepared. Now, in the absence of a meal plan and in the presence of a license to shoplift, I tooled down aisle after aisle of the splendid store, grabbing whatever looked interesting for Shirley (not I) to cook, while Noelle trotted along in my wake with a stenographer’s pad and a pocket calculator. A couple of hours later I was checking nine shopping baskets past a bemused cashier, the whole thing coming to £199.74. At one point I heard a little girl say to her mother, “Mummy, that man must have lots of children.”

  Back at Drake’s Pool I worked with Nick until nine on the boat, while Noelle cooked dinner for us. We all slept well that night.

  Next morning, Noelle, bless her heart, boiled ten dozen eggs for five seconds each to seal them, then went through the medical kit to see that everything was in order. Then I dropped her off at the airport and picked up Bill and Tarka King at the bus station. We spent the rest of the day working on the boat, cleaning her out and fixing as much as we could. By nightfall she was ready to be loaded. We had dinner and went to bed early.

  The following morning, while Bill and Tarka began loading food and gear, I visited the boatyard to talk with Barry Burke about the bill. He had not telephoned me. When I arrived I was told that Barry was home with a bad back, but a moment later he rang, and I was able to speak with him. I explained that I was there to discuss the bill, and in his absence I suggested that I go over it with John Harrington, pay him for whatever we were in agreement on, and defer any other discussion and payment unt
il my return from the Azores, when we would have time to sit down together and talk about it. He said that would be quite all right. We chatted for a few minutes about the coming race and his plans for Cowes Week, then said goodbye.

  I sat down with John Harrington and went carefully over the bill. We found £390 in overcharges, which John agreed to. I gave him a check for £760, leaving a balance of about £1,100 to be settled on my return from the Azores. I left the yard in good spirits, vastly relieved that we had reached at least a partial settlement without a fight, and hopeful that we would be able to thrash out the rest amicably when I returned.

  Ron came sailing with us in the afternoon for an hour, and in the Force six and seven winds blowing in the harbor we all managed to glean new information from him. We set Fred, as I had begun to call the Hasler, self-steering, and he pointed us unerringly at a perch across the harbor, sailing right up to it. Ron pronounced himself impressed.

  We spent the remainder of the day packing food into plastic shopping bags and stowing it on the boat. Things were moving well for our planned departure mid-afternoon the next day, Friday. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had left on time, whether things would have turned out differently. Maybe so, probably not. When enough small coincidences pile up and affect circumstances, it is called Fate.

  As it was, we finished our loading on Friday in time to sail, but we were tired. We had planned to stop and rest for a day in the Scilly Isles, but we hadn’t been able to get a large-scale chart of the islands in time, and Bill was worried about going in without it, so we stayed in Drake’s Pool for another night, and were invited to Coolmore House for a drink before dinner by Worth and Pasha Newenham.

  Pasha and Bill King had known each other since Pasha was a Wren and Bill a submarine commander, both stationed in Ceylon, during World War II. We sat in the handsome drawing room of Coolmore, bathed and shaved, sipping sherry and listening to Bill and Pasha reminisce. The boat was ready. I felt a lovely sense of completion and contentment and expectation.

  I was just beginning to daydream about what the Azores would be like when Mark Newenham, Worth’s elder son, came in and said that Nick wanted to see me outside. I thought that, for some reason, he wouldn’t be able to come to dinner, and I was already feeling disappointed as I walked out the door. But Nick’s face was grave. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” he said (oh my God, I thought, the boat’s aground again, or sinking!), “but John Harrington is down at Drake’s Pool on a boat with a solicitor, a court official, and a policeman, and they plan to tow your boat away.” They had been trying to slip the mooring, when Nick had rowed out and asked them to wait until I could be summoned.

  Thanking heaven that I had prepared for something like this, I rang Frank O’Flynn, and he promised to come straightaway. I had another glass of sherry, then went down to the cottage. The two boats were tied together, and they were all sitting out there, chatting with Nick. They declined to come ashore when invited; I declined to go out to the boat until Frank O’Flynn arrived. I sat down on the riverbank with Bill and Tarka, and presently Frank appeared.

  We rowed out to the boats, and an extremely calm and civilized discussion took place. It was agreed that I would give Frank my check for the full amount of the yard’s bill, and he would pay the money into the court for safekeeping. When I returned from the Azores, the matter would be settled. I was happy with the arrangement, as long as it kept the money out of the yard’s hands. As we were preparing to go ashore, I took John Harrington aside and asked him what the hell was going on. Hadn’t we discussed and settled all this? Hadn’t Barry agreed to the arrangements? If he was unhappy, he had had a day and a half to contact me and discuss it. Why hadn’t he done so?

  John was acutely embarrassed. He had simply been instructed by Barry that he was putting it into the hands of a solicitor; he was given no details. Now Golden Harp was under arrest, a court order taped to her mast. At least they hadn’t nailed it to the aluminum.

  Frank told us to go ahead with our dinner plans, while he and Donegan, the yard’s solicitor, adjourned to Rosie’s, the local pub, to discuss the details of the transaction. We trooped into town to start our belated farewell dinner, and an hour or so later Frank stopped by to say that all was well, we could sail the next morning. We phoned John Rafferty to stop payment on my earlier checks to the yard and to ascertain that funds were available. All was well there, too.

  Next morning, after final stowage and the taking of many photographs, we motored down to the yacht club, had lunch and took on ice, then fueled and were off. (On the way out of Drake’s Pool we had scraped our keel across a mudbank, nearly losing Bill over the pulpit, at the exact moment somebody, probably Theo, had fired a parachute flare from the woods in farewell salute.)

  As we motored down the river out of Crosshaven, a single Mirror dinghy followed for a time in our wake. The sight brought back a rush of memories. Roche’s Point was soon abeam and, after a lot of sail trimming and adjusting, Harp sailed herself for all of the night, as we began to become accustomed to her.

  Tuning up.

  Fourteen

  On to Portsmouth

  We spent a fine day sailing, fiddling with Fred (who was reluctant to steer on a beam reach), bailing water (which seemed to be coming from forward somewhere, maybe from the long hull fitting), and continuing to build the boat. Tarka finally divulged that he had spent a year as an apprentice with Hickey Boats in Galway when a lad (he had been fired when the foreman found him making a model airplane during his tea break), and he took on the bulk of what had to be done. Bill navigated and I bailed, using the Jabsco electric bilge pump, which had been fitted for just such an occasion. The shape of the hull precluded any more than about two inches of bilges, so two gallons of water could make the interior a miserable place.

  We were at Land’s End in time to see a beautiful moonrise above Cornwall. By midnight Wolf Rock was abeam, and we altered course for the Lizard, the southernmost tip of Cornwall. As we approached it the tide turned against us, and although we were registering several knots on the speedometer clock, we seemed to be standing virtually still. I spent long periods of my midnight-to-three watch sitting on a cushion on the pulpit, my safety harness clipped to the forestay, watching the moon and the water and the night while Fred steered. It was one of the most beautiful nights I have ever spent on a boat.

  By midday Monday we were motoring in a flat calm, and I was using the VHF radio constantly. The Dynafurl had revealed a maddening tendency to separate into two equal halves, and although it could be repaired easily, it was causing us worry; water was entering the boat in increasing quantities, and we were now bailing hourly; and every other fault which had been built into the boat was now surfacing, my own mistakes surfacing, too. During the afternoon a puddle of hydraulic oil collected in the bilges. The trouble was found to be a leaky inspection meter which I should have removed. I sent a telegram to Jeremy Rogers’s Boatyard, the English agents for Steam, who made the Dynafurl, asking for a replacement to be ordered from the States immediately by telephone. Then I rang Camper & Nicholsons and asked for a haulout and repair of whatever was leaking when we arrived in Gosport. The radio hummed all afternoon with such messages. Bill had flatly refused to sail for the Azores unless we could get the leaking stopped in Gosport. I was in full agreement with him. We motored on.

  We also used the radio for social purposes. We made a lunch date later in the week with Angus and Murlo Primrose and, since Ann was in France and would not return in time for our departure for the Azores, I spoke with a young lady whom I had met at another sailing event earlier in the season and invited her down to the south coast for a night later in the week. This young lady shall be known in this tale as The Bird.

  By mid-afternoon on Tuesday the Needles were abeam and we entered the Solent to find it seething with yachting activity. Cowes Week was due to start on Friday, and the narrow body of water was full of boats practicing. Spinnakers, tallboys, bloopers, and e
very other sort of sail were everywhere, and it was a very pretty sight indeed. We sailed slowly in light winds past Cowes and past Norris Castle, where Bill’s wife, Anita, was staying with friends. Although I had sailed into the Solent before on delivery trips, never had I seen it so dressed with sail. It was very beautiful.

  Late in the evening we berthed at Camper & Nicholsons Marina in Gosport. The next day would be Wednesday. The race started on Saturday, and there seemed to be at least two weeks’ work to do on the boat. Moreover, we were asking for Camper’s help at the worst possible time. The first race of Cowes Week was happening on Friday, and the yard was choked with yachts being readied for the world’s premier week of yacht racing. We wolfed down a takeaway Chinese meal and got the last solid sleep we would have for a week.

  Early Wednesday morning I waylaid Camper’s repairs manager, John Gardner, as he drove through the gate. We went over Harp together, and within the hour she was high and dry, sharing Camper’s crowded apron with the likes of Morning Cloud, Golden Apple, the giant Rothschild yacht, and numberless other French yachts, their bottoms being diligently rubbed down by their crews and their skippers complaining loudly (the French are very good at this) to anyone who would listen. A foreman and crew were assigned to Harp, and by noon her keelbolts had been loosened to let her dry out in preparation for resealing the keel. Tarka had found a leak in the forward bulkhead and the trouble was quickly located. Every time the yacht hit a wave, water was forced through a gap in the glass-fiber seal and into a dead air space under the anchor well, from which it ran through a leak in the “watertight” bulkhead into the forepeak.

  In the afternoon Bill and Tarka left for business in London, to return Friday, and Shirley Clifford rang to say that she would arrive the next day. Robert Hughes from Gibb turned up and spent four hours tuning and refining the self-steering system and refused to accept a penny. Staggering with fatigue, I took him and his wife out for dinner. I slept on Harp, high on the apron, a most peculiar sensation.