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

5 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 photographer; 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 thought, one of the lads has been sent to tell me not to mess with the boats.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Ron Holland.”

6 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.

“Let me show you a place we almost took when we came to Cork,” he said. “It didn’t have quite enough room for us, since we’re expecting a baby in the spring.”

We drove around to Coolmore, as the house was called, and stopped for a few minutes. Ron’s flat was four or five enormous rooms on the south side of the house, and his working space was on the large stair landing. We looked at the original drawings of Golden Shamrock and compared them to the production version. The new boat was to have a slightly higher and longer coach roof and a more comfortable interior, but the hull shape was to be identical to that of the prototype.

We met the owner of Coolmore, who looked very much the Master of the Hounds, which, it turned out, he was. He gave us the key to the place Ron wanted to show me, and we drove along a rutted, very muddy road beside the river until we came to a small clearing, where we parked the car. We walked a few yards and came to a lovely old stone cottage right on the banks of the river at a bend called Drake’s Pool, so named because Sir Francis Drake is supposed to have eluded the Spanish by hiding there. Because of the double bend in the river they thought it was petering out and went back to search for him in Cork Harbor. The Owenboy River has scoured out a deep pool there, and it is a perfect yacht anchorage. There was an empty mooring directly in front of the cottage. We looked inside: a large living room, a large bedroom, a small bedroom, a kitchen, and a bath. The place had been newly plumbed and wired for electricity. I felt a bit giddy; things had begun to move very fast. I looked again at the mooring as we left. It came with the cottage, Ron said.

At the boatyard we encountered the skepticism from its managing director, Barry Burke, that I had half expected from Ron. He wasn’t sure that the boat was suitable for a transatlantic passage. Ron said that he’d crossed the Tasman Sea in a similar-size boat. I pointed out that the OSTAR in ’72 had been done by David Blagden in a nineteen-foot Hunter and asked if he didn’t think his boat would be as strong as a Hunter 19. Ron said he’d give the boat more of a bashing in the 625-mile Fastnet Race than I’d give it in a transatlantic. We talked about making changes to the standard design. Burke was reluctant to slow his production line down with modifications to a standard boat. Pull it off the line, said Ron, and put a couple of men on it. Burke wasn’t sure. He asked when I would want the boat. Easter, I said. Impossible, he replied. He’d already sold nine boats. The earliest delivery date would be July 1. I did some quick mental calculations. The OSTAR rules required a five-hundred-mile qualifying single-handed cruise no later than three months before the race. I figured that if the boat were ready on July 1 I could just about get her and myself ready for a qualifying cruise before the end of the summer, if I sailed on as many other boats as I could in the spring and early summer. We made a list of the possible modifications to the boat, and Barry promised to let me have an estimate for them. I had hoped that he might agree to some discount, since the boat would undoubtedly receive a lot of attention if it were entered in the OSTAR, and I hoped to do a book about the experience; that would give it even more publicity. Barry didn’t seem inclined to give a discount. We left it at that, and I invited Ron to have dinner with me, where we continued our discussion of the yacht and the race. “What would you change about the boat if you were not building to the Rule?” I asked. (The International Offshore Rule, a rating system so complex that it is understood only by computers, which, in turn, explain it to yacht designers and yachting magazines, which publish incomprehensible articles about it.)

Ron looked thoughtful. “Maybe raise the freeboard a little,” he said. The freeboard is the amount of hull between the deck and the waterline, and, so my reading had told me, was a principal factor in seaworthiness.

“Suppose,” I said, “we put a two-inch slice of teak between the hull and the deck? That would raise the freeboard and also give me another two inches of headroom in the cabin.” We were talking about how to change the yacht slightly to make it a fast cruiser instead of a flat-out racing boat. We had already talked about sawing the racing-type cockpit out of the glass-fiber molded deck and building a more conventional cruising cockpit with seats and lockers.

“I think that’s a rather intelligent solution,” he replied. I glowed at the thought of having contributed an original idea. We talked about what might be squeezed into the interior. Southcoast had hired a Swedish designer to do the interior, and I was considering doing my own layout with Ron’s help, since my requirements were different from the man who might race the boat on weekends, then take an occasional family cruise. I wanted no bunks forward in the boat. I wanted a large, empty forepeak for sail stowage and nothing else. It seemed to me that all the other boats I had seen with bunks forward always had the forepeak filled with wet sails anyway, so why have bunks?

Our evening was drawing to a close, and over coffee we had returned to the subject of a novice attempting to learn enough in a short time to sail the race successfully. I outlined what I thought I had to do in the remaining time. Up until now everything had been a big maybe, but I had been encouraged by my practically daylong talk with Ron. Finally, I said, “I think I can do it.” Ron said, “I think you can do it, too. I think it’s an exciting project, and I’d like to be involved in it.”

I think at that moment the basic decision was made.

Back at Lough Cutra there was a letter waiting from the OSTAR race committee. They had decided to accept Ewan Southby-Tailyour’s Hurley 24 entry because of his performance in the Round Britain Race but would accept no other Hurley 24s. Had the boat been of that size but of a more experimental nature, they might have considered it more favorably. I didn’t understand that last part, but anyway, my mind was now galloping off on another tack and the Shamrock had replaced the Hurley in my thinking.

Now I began, with no credentials whatever, to become a yacht designer, at least on the inside of the yacht. I pored over the layouts of dozens of other yachts, picking the features I liked best. First of all, since I didn’t want berths in the forecabin, that could be smaller and the saloon and toilet areas correspondingly larger. Then I crammed into the space available every feature I had heard about, read about, or imagined, and, to my astonishment, it all seemed to fit. A letter arrived from Barry Burke, with an estimate for fitting a skeg, rebuilding the cockpit, raising the decks with my teak sandwich idea, and building a custom interior to my specifications. It came to £1,600 above the cost of the standard boat. This was daunting, but maybe it could be lowered a bit by negotiation.

I had a telephone conversation with John McWilliam, the Crosshaven sailmaker who had clothed Golden Apple and Golden Shamrock. He had been out of town during my visit to Cork, but he had since talked with Ron and was enthusiastic about the project. We talked about a possible sail plan, and he sent an estimate. Another £1,600 or so was added to the budget.

About this time I felt enough committed to the project to begin to let my friends in Galway know what I was thinking. A friend from Dublin came down to Lough Cutra for the weekend, and I invited Harry McMahon and his wife to join us for dinner. At some point during the evening I mentioned, as casually as possible, that I was thinking of buying a Ron Holland half-tonner. The last boat I had mentioned to Harry had been the Hurley, and I hadn’t mentioned any plans for it beyond some coastal cruising. “What would you do with a half-tonner in Galway?” he asked.

I took a deep breath. “I’m thinking of sailing it in the Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race,” I said. Harry looked stunned; his wife burst out laughing. That was to be fairly typical of the reactions of people who knew me as a Mirror helmsman in Galway. I would just have to get used to it.

In early December I went back to see Ron in Cork. He looked at my sketch of the interior and explained, as patiently as he could, that this would not fit, because the sides of the boat did not go straight down but curved inward. On a cruising boat with fuller “sections” it might be possible, but not on a hull designed for racing. Together we drew up a compromise of what might be possible. He did, however, agree with my idea of pushing the saloon bulkhead (wall) forward by making the forecabin smaller. Ron pulled out the drawings of a three-quarter-tonner he had designed for production in glass fiber, called the Quest 32. The company that was to manufacture it had gone under. We all agreed that it was a great pity that it would not now be built. Ron was at a stage of his career when he needed several boats in series production, just about the only way a yacht designer can make any real money.

Ron Holland was born and grew up in New Zealand, sailing from an early age. After secondary school he served an apprenticeship in boat building and, as a part of that, took some drafting and design courses. He then went to the United States and worked in California for a well-known designer, Gary Mull, and later, in Florida, for Charley Morgan of Morgan Yachts. He met the sailing-oriented family of Carlins there and married their daughter Laurel. In 1973, sailing his own boat, he won the world quarter-ton championships. The boat was called Eyghtene (after the Australian pronunciation of “eighteen”). After the world championships Ron was living aboard the little twenty-four-footer in the Hamble River in England when he was approached by a young Cork businessman about designing a one-tonner. Ron and Laurel came to Cork to talk about it, fell in love with Ireland, and stayed. Golden Apple performed brilliantly but erratically in the world one-ton championships in 1974, but she was obviously the fastest boat there and caught the attention of everybody, including the yachting press, and Ron’s reputation soared.

Back in Cork, Southcoast Boatyard, which had built Golden Apple, asked him to design a half-tonner to be built in time for the world half-ton championships at La Rochelle, in France. The boat, the original Golden Shamrock, was rushed to completion and arrived in La Rochelle barely in time for the first race. Because of a stretching of rigging which had occurred on the passage to France, and the lack of time to replace it, Shamrock was dismasted in the first race. Somehow, another mast was obtained immediately, and the crew stayed up all night rigging the boat. After that, she performed spectacularly, even in survival conditions, and the decision was made to put the design into series production in glass fiber. Now Ron had another one-off design, a two-tonner intended for the Irish Admiral’s Cup team, and the biggest boat he had yet designed. This, he hoped, would be as important a boat as Golden Apple, but he still wanted more designs in series production. The dying of the Quest 32 was a blow.

In Cork I also met John McWilliam, the sailmaker, and had another talk with Barry Burke at Southcoast. I also had a talk with Ron’s landlord, and told him I was very interested in the cottage. He seemed amenable to having me there.

A few days later, as my Aer Lingus flight took off from Shannon Airport, headed for New York, then Georgia and the Christmas holidays, a broad plan had come together for the project: move to Cork in February, study navigation all winter and sail during the spring on any boat whose skipper would have me; the boat would start building May 1 and be launched July 1; then sail her intensively, going out to southwest France and northwest Spain or perhaps even the Azores with friends, then sail back to Crosshaven, single-handed, for my qualifying cruise. (I wanted to sail more than the minimum five hundred miles, hoping that a longer qualifying cruise would count with the race committee against my inexperience.)

The cottage would have, within a five-mile radius, the boatyard, the designer, and the sailmaker. Both Ron and John McWilliam had promised me as much time as they could spare in tuning the boat and helping me to learn to sail her. The only big question mark was the money, and that would be resolved, one way or the other, when I arrived in the States.

It seemed a very neat program. I could only hope that, in my ignorance, I had not made it too neat, had not failed to take some hugely important factor into account which, when it emerged, would wreck the whole project. If my own funds wouldn’t cover the cost, then there was the possibility of commercial sponsorship. I felt that if I had to I could probably do a better job than most in attracting commercial attention, since I had spent all of my working life in advertising, dealing on a daily basis with the sort of people I would have to approach.

The novel would have to wait a couple of years, but then, a novel can always wait, as any novelist can tell you.

The project was all there, in outline; I could do nothing more until January, except think about it. And until January I would think about nothing else.

7 Things begin to gel

Manchester, Georgia, is a town of about six thousand people, located about seventy miles south of Atlanta, the state capital. It is, perhaps, two hundred fifty miles from the nearest body of salt water, and the populace is not made up of sailing enthusiasts. A boat is something you row or propel with an outboard motor and is used in the catching of largemouth bass and catfish. To my mother, who is not interested in fishing, boats mean even less.

Dot, which is short for Dorothy and is what I have called her ever since I learned to talk, did not quite seem to get it when I explained to her what I planned to do. I spread out the plans for the boat and explained it all again. Still, I don’t think the penny dropped until a few days later. We were sitting in her car in a supermarket parking lot, about to drive home with the groceries, when she asked suddenly, “Are you really going to do this?”

“Do what?” I asked. We had not discussed the subject since the day before.

“Sail that little boat across the Atlantic Ocean by yourself.”

“Yes.”

Gene Spain, our family life insurance man, happened to be strolling through the parking lot at that moment. Dot rolled down the car window. “Gene, I want you to come by the house,” she said. “I want to talk to you about some insurance.” Gene forgot about his grocery shopping.

A few minutes later the two of them had worked out the details of a fairly hefty policy on my life, over my strenuous protests. “What do I need with insurance?” They ignored me.

“Do you want double indemnity?” asked Gene. “There’s only a small additional premium.”

“How much is treble indemnity?” asked my mother.

After that she seemed resigned to the idea. She learned long ago that it is difficult to talk me out of something I’m excited about. We met with the family attorney to sort out my grandfather’s estate, and I discovered to my astonishment that my estimate of what he had left me was short by half. Now I could afford the Shamrock and all the necessary equipment.

I had to cut my stay short by a few days in order to get to London in time for the tail end of the London Boat Show. I stopped off in New York for a day and managed to see half a dozen old friends, then flew to Shannon. Harry McMahon met me the next day at Lough Cutra, and we drove to Cork to catch the ferry to England. But first I had two things to accomplish in Cork.

First, I went to Southcoast Boatyard and, after some discussion, worked out a deal with Barry Burke: I would buy the standard boat at the full price, then the boatyard would carry out any alterations I wanted and maintain the boat until the start of the race at cost for materials and at cost plus ten percent for labor. The boatyard would also obtain any extra gear I required at trade prices. We signed the contract; Barry gave me a letter outlining the alteration and maintenance and equipment agreement, and I gave him a £500 deposit. We agreed on half the remaining price being paid at the time of molding, May 1, and the remainder on launching, July 1. Harry witnessed the contract. I was delighted with the arrangement and felt it was a good one for both of us. Barry seemed to think so, too.

Next, I called at Coolmore, to finalize arrangements about the cottage. By noon the next day we were at the London Boat Show.

We were like Babes in Toyland. Galway had no well-equipped chandleries, and Dublin, at that time, was not much better. When we wanted a piece of equipment a complicated mail-order procedure was involved, and often a battle with the transport services and customs. Now, spread before us, were two huge floors packed with everything anyone could possibly want for a boat, from the smallest cleat to the tallest mast. There were only two and a half days left of the show, and I had to buy or at least research virtually every piece of equipment that would be needed for my yacht. I bought a sextant, instruments, a hand bearing compass, a VHF radio-telephone, clothing, a wet suit, books, and much else from a long list. I carefully researched life rafts and inflatable dinghies, emergency radio transmitters, self-steering, and electronics. Whenever possible I approached manufacturers about possible discounts on equipment.

On my return there were still one or two things to do before the move to Cork. I talked to some of the cruising people in the club, and we agreed to ask Len Breewood to come up to Galway for three weekends during the winter to teach the Yachtmaster’s Offshore navigation course. Len agreed to come for one weekend a month starting in February.

The other thing was to talk with Commander Bill King. Bill King is a retired Royal Navy submarine commander, in fact, the only submarine commander in any navy, he believes, who started World War II in command of a submarine and who was still alive at the end of it all. He had one hell of a war and has written about it in his own excellent book, Adventure in Depth. After the war, annoyed by the Royal Navy’s recalcitrance in adopting modern methods, he spent some years in ocean racing and sailing his own boat, then went to farm in County Galway and remained there in contentment with his wife, the writer Anita Leslie, until the late 1960s. Then he began planning a long-held dream to sail around the world, single-handed, nonstop. The Sunday Times, hearing about this, offered a £5,000 prize and a trophy, the Golden Globe, for the first man to complete the voyage. Bill’s boat, designed by Angus Primrose, partner of Bill’s wartime and postwar ocean-racing friend, the legendary John Illingworth, and by Colonel “Blondie” Hasler, who designed the Chinese Junk rig, was named Galway Blazer II. Bill set off alone, opposing Robin Knox-Johnston, Bernard Moitessier, and others, to race around the world, alone, without stopping.

About a thousand miles southwest of Capetown, South Africa, Blazer was rolled over in 120 knots of wind and dismasted. Bill sailed her to Capetown under a jury rig and shipped her back to England for repairs. Those completed, he set off again, and had to put into Gibraltar because of rigging problems. The yacht was once again returned to England, and he set off again. By this time, Robin Knox-Johnston was, beyond doubt, the winner of the race, Moitessier having continued to sail on to Tahiti after rounding Cape Horn, and the others having turned back or lost their boats. But Bill King was determined to complete his voyage for his own personal satisfaction.

On his third attempt, he was sailing two hundred miles off western Australia when the yacht was attacked by a great white shark and badly holed. In a magnificent act of seamanship and personal courage, Bill temporarily plugged the hole and sailed into port. Repairs completed, he finished his voyage without another stop, arriving back in Galway in early 1973, shortly after I had moved there. I had met him socially once or twice and had told him of my long-range plan of doing some deep-water sailing. He invited me to come and talk with him about it.

At the boat show I had been delighted to find that the Multihull Offshore Cruising and Racing Association (MOCRA) had organized a race to Horta, in the Azores, for August 1975, the very time I had been thinking of sailing there. I signed up immediately. Now I went to see Bill King and asked if he’d like to come. He had not sailed at all since returning from his circumnavigation, but two years had passed and he must have been getting itchy for the sea. He accepted immediately. He would sail out with me and one or two other people and would hitch a ride home on another yacht while I sailed back single-handed. He also offered to come to Cork when the yacht was building and share his enormous experience. I was delighted.

That accomplished, I packed my things into a furniture van and moved to Drake’s Pool Cottage, Coolmore, Carrigaline, County Cork.

8 Waiting for Spring

Driving back to the cottage from Carrigaline, about three miles away and the closest village, it occurred to me how isolated I would be at Drake’s Pool. The road to Coolmore wasn’t really on the way to anywhere, except Currabinny, and that just barely qualified as anywhere. I thought the isolation would be good for work on the novel but not so good for social life. Still musing on my remove from the rest of the world, I arrived at the cottage to find a Watchtower magazine on my doorstep. It seemed that, to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, nobody was isolated.

The following day I was sitting among my unpacked books, typing a letter, when two pretty girls appeared at the front door. Terrific! Not so isolated, after all! They turned out to be the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Still... I invited them in and we got into a hot religious discussion. I was annoyed by the ease with which they backed up their convictions with seemingly ambiguous quotes from the scriptures, so I dug a Bible from one of the tea chests and fenced with them for a bit. I scored no points in this debate. There was always a ready scriptural reference, there to be taken literally. Finally, I asked how they felt about sex — outside marriage, I meant. Oh, no. Against the rules, and a couple of suspect verses were quoted. I asked if they believed in a just God. Oh, yes, certainly. Well, I said, I didn’t think a just God would require me to remain celibate just because I had happened not to get married. They made an excuse and left.

Worth Newenham, my new landlord, and his wife turned up with a gift bag of turf for the fireplace and stayed for a drink. I asked where I might get a bookcase built in the neighborhood. Books follow me about relentlessly wherever I go, multiplying steadily. When I had left London for Ireland I had given most of my library away, but the few I had brought with me (only about four packing cases full) had done their multiplication trick. The cottage would not be livable until I got them out of the boxes and into a bookcase, a large bookcase. Worth suggested I talk with Nick Roe, who was living on an old trawler on a mooring in front of the cottage, rebuilding it. Nick Roe was to become a very important part of my project, before it was all done.

Nick stopped by later with his brother and girlfriend. They were all living on the boat, which was quite, quite large. Nick was very busy with his work, but he agreed to build the bookcase for me.

Gradually, things got unpacked, and I settled in. Ron dropped by now and then. I visited the boatyard, where the new factory for the series production was now complete and the first hull and deck was being molded. The factory looked good, and I felt more confident about the building of the boat. I had conversations about alterations to the boat with the production manager and with George Bush, who would be in charge of the extra work.

On the sponsorship front, I started with The Irish Times, perhaps the best of the Irish national newspapers. I had a meeting in Dublin with a member of their management and their advertising agency, and they expressed interest in sponsoring the project, perhaps in concert with another Irish company, yet to be found. I started looking. I tried Guinness first. They seemed a logical place to start, and through an acquaintance, they gave a logical reason for not sponsoring; they had cut back on all but existing sponsorship; they had just turned down a pub in Waterford for a trophy for their darts championship. They could hardly turn them down, then have the lads see on TV that they were sponsoring a yacht, could they?

To save time in explaining what I was doing, I wrote a description of the project and had copies run off. I began sending these to prominent Irish companies, since I intended being an Irish entry. A rule of the race stated that the nationality of the entry would be the nationality of the skipper. In December, when I had written to the committee formally reserving a place in the race, pending the qualifying cruise, I explained that although I was an American I had lived for some time in Ireland and had learned to sail there from Irish yachtsmen on Irish boats, and I requested that an exception be made and I be allowed to become an Irish entry. I had received a letter from the Royal Western Yacht Club saying that would be fine. Shortly after reserving my place I noticed an article in The Observer by yachting correspondent Frank Page, giving the number of entries by nationality. No Irish entry had been mentioned, and I dropped him a note saying that there would be an Irish entry, and since I was looking for Irish sponsorship, could he please say so sometime in his newspaper?

My race number of twenty-four was also confirmed. This number might pose something of a problem, since it had to be displayed on the sails, hull, and deck, and I was also entered for the MOCRA Azores race, which might assign me a different number. The problem was solved by asking MOCRA to make me entry number twenty-four in their race, and by asking the Irish Yachting Association for the sail number IR 24; both requests were granted.

The new two-tonner, which would be called Irish Mist II, was quickly taking shape at Southcoast. When introduced to Archie O’Leary, the owner, I offered to crew on any delivery trips he might be making when his own racing crew was not available. He promised to keep me in mind.

I found myself extremely busy, although my boat had not yet begun building. I was hustling about, ordering equipment and trying to ensure that it all arrived in time for the launching of the yacht; I was working hard on the sponsorship problem; I was writing to manufacturers, asking for discounts.

Also, I was negotiating with a publisher about a book describing the project. Ron was working on a book for Stanford Maritime, and he and his editor stopped by the cottage for a drink. After hearing about what I was doing, he expressed interest, and eventually we signed a contract. Finally, I still wanted to do some advertising work in Dublin.

I was trying to do all of this with no help whatsoever from the Irish Department of Posts and Telegraphs. In Galway it had taken me fourteen months to wrench a telephone from their grasp, and they had assured me that, as an existing subscriber, when I moved to Cork there would be no problem getting a telephone immediately. (The word “immediately” has no meaning in Ireland. It’s just a word.) However, when I arrived in Cork, although my application had preceded me by more than a month, nothing was happening. Finally, after weeks of telephone conversations (they never, never actually wrote any letters, although I would periodically receive a printed form telling me that my problem was being dealt with) they finally told me that nobody who lived more than a quarter of a mile from an existing telephone line could be provided with service, and that I lived 175 yards beyond that distance. Although I clawed my way through what seemed like the entire Irish Civil Service, the situation remained frozen for months.

Other communication systems were, however, working. One bright Sunday morning I awoke to find that, having left the reversing lamp on my car on all night, the battery was completely dead. Being some distance from a telephone, I had another idea. The VHF radio-telephone which I had bought at the London Boat Show was a self-contained one, having its own power supply. Technically, the radio was not supposed to be operated except on the yacht, and only after having been licensed. The boat did not even exist yet, and I had not even applied for a license, but I got out the list of Irish coastal stations and the instructions for transmission procedure. I studied them for a few minutes and then switched on the radio.

“Cobh Radio, Cobh Radio, Cobh Radio (the Cork Harbor station), this is Woodsmoke, Woodsmoke, Woodsmoke (a tentative name for the yacht). Do you read me?” Silence for two minutes, the instructions said. Then if no reply, try again. I tried again.

I jumped about a foot when a clear voice said, “Woodsmoke, Woodsmoke, Woodsmoke, this is Cobh Radio, Cobh Radio, Cobh Radio, what is your position? Over.”

“Cobh Radio, I’m at Drake’s Pool, uh, ashore, uh, and I have a problem with my car. I wonder if you could possibly telephone the AA for me? Over.”

Silence. He probably didn’t think he was hearing properly. Then he came back. “Woodsmoke, we don’t ordinarily do that sort of thing, but we’re not too busy right now, and I’ve been in that position myself. How will the AA find you? Over.”

“I’m at Drake’s Pool Cottage...”

“Cottage!” he interrupted. After all, this was supposed to be a ship-to-shore radio.

“Ah, yes, there’s this cottage, and my car is parked there.” I gave him the complicated directions for finding me and we signed off.

An hour later an AA man appeared, scratching his head and saying that he’d never had a call like this one before. I had half expected the police, but a minute or two later the car was started. I never used the VHF ashore again, though.

The Dublin Boat Show rolled around, and I used the trip to Dublin to check on what was happening with The Irish Times. Nothing, apparently. However, Exide had agreed to donate the batteries for the boat. It was the first equipment I had been given, and was a lift to the spirits. The Dublin show seemed small after the London one, but it was interesting, and I bought an outboard motor for the dinghy and a few small things.

Back at Southcoast, the first deck went onto the first hull of the new series. It was the first glimpse I had of anything like the complete boat, and I was impressed with what a pretty craft she was going to be. The first and third boats in the series were being sent out unfinished, in kit form, but the second boat, a bright red one which would be finished in the factory, was getting under way, and I was looking forward to seeing it take shape.

Then Fred vanished. He was grown now but still very much the puppy at heart, and he missed the dogs and children at Lough Cutra, especially the children. He had taken to walking the mile or so to the main gate of Coolmore, where a group of small kids gathered to play, and one night, he didn’t come home. To make matters worse, his collar and name tag had disappeared the day before, so nobody would know where he came from. As the days passed with no sign of him I took to driving around the countryside looking for him. He had been stolen twice as a puppy, but recovered, and I was increasingly worried about him. He was the only company I had in the cottage, and good company he was, always making me laugh, bringing me sticks to throw into the river for him to retrieve. He liked swimming better than walking, being a Labrador. I put notices up in the post offices in the surrounding villages. He was seen at Ringaskiddy, then Currabinny, then Douglas, eight miles away. There were apparently a lot of golden Labradors about. Since I didn’t have a phone, Ron was taking the calls, and they were coming in at the rate of two or three a day. I got one from Kanturk, twenty miles away, but it turned out to be a different Lab. Finally, I put an ad in the Cork Examiner, and someone in Douglas called. They had had a strange Labrador about for days. I went to Douglas. It was Fred. He had been gone for two weeks. The minute he was home he had a stick in his mouth, ready for his swim. He got a new collar and ID tag the same day.

9 Organize, organize, organize

In late March we had the second of our navigation classes in Galway, and I managed to get a lot into the weekend. I had dinner with Harry and Lorna McMahon, and although Bill King was away (skiing), his wife, Anita, joined us. What a delightful woman she is. We talked about her best-selling book, Jenny, based on the life of Winston Churchill’s mother. Anita’s grandmother was Jenny’s sister, and Anita had known Lady Randolph Churchill as a child. The television series based on the book was running at the time, and talk centered on that. She mentioned that Bill was looking forward eagerly to the Azores trip. I asked Harry to come as well, but he was doubtful whether he’d be able to manage the time. I had already invited Ewan Southby-Tailyour, but he wasn’t sure whether the Royal Marines would give him time to do the Azores race and the OSTAR in successive years.

Our navigation class went well, and we agreed to spend our final weekend, in April, cruising to the Aran Islands and back, putting our newfound knowledge into practice.

Back in Cork, it was time to place my order for sails, and John McWilliam and I sat down to discuss this. Getting John McWilliam to sit down is no small feat. He is the only person I met during the whole of my stay in Ireland who is visibly energetic about his work.

John McWilliam is a northerner, from the Six Counties, and after engineering school did a spell with the RAF, doing individual aerobatics with the famous Red Arrows stunt team at air shows. After that, he did an apprenticeship with the Australian sailmaker Rolly Tasker in his Hong Kong loft, then opened a Tasker branch in Ireland. By the time I arrived, he had gone out on his own, making his sails on the main floor of an old stone mill on the hill behind Crosshaven, and living in a handsome flat on the top floor.

Visiting the McWilliam Sailmakers loft is an experience. You can feel the glass vibrating before you even open the door, and inside, sound strikes with a physical force. There is a souped-up stereo system driving a series of huge speakers, and the noise which comes out is overpowering to all but the demented teenyboppers with whom John McWilliam shares his musical taste. Through two more sets of sliding doors and into the loft proper, one comes upon Mr. McWilliam, loping about the varnished floor, carpet slippers on his feet, foam rubber taped to his knees, with a grace of movement not seen since the actor known as Stepin Fetchit plied the silver screen. John moves much faster, though, and constantly.

John is also very bright, and a first-rate man on a racing yacht. He is probably the only one of the world’s top three or four sailmakers who still cuts every sail himself, assisted only by his right-hand man and a harem of local girls, who, even while bent over their sewing machines, giggle and blush constantly. John makes up for being in an out-of-the-way place by delivering his sails to customers all over the British Isles and Europe in a twin-engine Piper Apache, the flying of which gives him enormous pleasure. He probably gives his customers a more personal and more effective service than some sailmakers located in hotbeds of sailing activity, such as the south coast of England. He claims to charge less, too, and his sails are nearly as good as he says they are.

The sail plan we worked out for my boat was made up of a mainsail, a large genoa (foresail), a number-two genoa (slightly smaller than the large one), a medium-weight spinnaker for all-round use, a floater spinnaker for very light winds, and a smaller “starcut” spinnaker for reaching and for running in heavy winds. (Later we dropped the starcut, because I realized I wasn’t about to set a spinnaker, single-handed, in strong winds.) There would be no smaller headsail than the number-two genoa, because I intended to reef that sail rather than change down to a smaller one. This would be done by virtue of a device called a Dynafurl. It works this way: the sail, instead of being set on an ordinary wire forestay, is set on a grooved, solid rod forestay, called a Twinstay. In ordinary, crewed racing, a sail can be set on this stay while another one is still drawing, giving an advantage over conventional sail changing. The Dynafurl consists of two swivels, one at the top of the stay and one at the bottom. When reefing the sail, a rope is pulled and the sail wraps itself tightly around the forestay, displaying progressively smaller area. It can be reefed right down to storm jib size in this fashion.

My reason for choosing this system was twofold: (1) I reasoned that in a 3,000-mile race, an awful lot of time could be spent changing sails in changeable conditions, and the boat would be slowed during sail changes; (2) If the only sail change I had to make was from the number-one genoa to the number-two genoa, this would keep me off the foredeck in heavy weather, when it can be a very dangerous place. My only sail change would be made in less than fifteen knots of wind.

The mainsail, instead of having roller reefing, where the sail is rolled up around the boom, would have slab reefing, in which the sail is simply tied to the boom by a row of cringles (eyes) sewn across the sail. This would be faster single-handed, and the sail would set better as well.

Later, we would add two other sails to the wardrobe: one, a duplicate number-two genoa, so that twin headsails could be set when running in fresher winds, and so that I would have a spare for my principal working sail. Twin headsails are easier to control than a spinnaker and have self-steering properties, too, which would be a help in strong winds. The other addition would be a drifter, or very light large genoa, made of nylon. This would help considerably when beating or reaching in very light winds. Much later, the need for a storm jib would present itself, but I’ll get to that later.

With the sails ordered and a delivery date promised to coincide with the boat’s launching, I set about selecting other gear. I chose the well-known Hasler Windvane self-steering system. I must admit I chose it with a minimum of research. Mike Ellison, of the Amateur Yacht Research Society, which had done much research, recommended it, and so did Ron Holland. The difficult decision to make was whether to order the small or medium size of the unit. My boat fell in a gray area where the small unit might be big enough and might not. But the larger unit was twice as heavy and twice as expensive, so I took the chance and went for the smaller one. I would not know until the boat was launched whether I had made the right decision, and I was plagued by doubt.

I chose the Avon four-man life raft and the Avon Redcrest inflatable dinghy as my tender. Both were well proven, and I had been impressed by Avon quality at the London Boat Show. Life raft stowage was going to be a problem, because even a four-man raft is rather bulky, and no place had been designed into the Shamrock for it, a mistake, I felt, and one which I communicated to Ron on more than one occasion. I chose Brookes & Gatehouse electronic instruments, simply because, from everything I could gather from every source I could find, they were considered to be the finest in the world. I ordered their Hornet unit, which combines, in one control box, wind speed, wind direction, magnified wind direction (a fine display for beating to windward), water speed, and distance covered. To this I added the Hound water speed amplifier, which gives a finer display of small changes in speed and is invaluable for fine sail trimming.

I also, after much soul searching, ordered the B&G Horatio unit, which offers several functions. Once a course is set into an electronic compass on the deckhead, steering can be done by keeping a needle on a dial straight up, instead of steering a compass course, which demands more concentration and is more tiring. The unit also has an off-course alarm, which can be set for either twenty or forty degrees, important when the boat is under self-steering and will change direction automatically if the wind direction changes. Finally, there is a constant digital readout of the number of miles sailed to either port or starboard of a set course. This would be valuable when setting a course when about to go to sleep. On awaking, I would know how far off course I might have sailed. Horatio was an expensive piece of equipment, costing as much as the complete Hound, but I felt I might genuinely need it.

I also chose the B&G Homer/Heron radio receiver and radio direction finding compass, and the shortwave converter for the radio, which would enable me to pick up radio time signals at sea.

To the Brookes & Gatehouse equipment I added the ubiquitous Seafarer depth sounder (at the suggestion of B&G, because I wanted to economize) and the Seavoice VHF, already mentioned, made by the same company. (I later exchanged the self-contained model for the ordinary model, because I was having difficulty finding room for the extra bulk of the first unit.)

Finally, I added, as a backup radio receiver, the American Zenith Trans-Oceanic Portable, probably the best of its kind, and a Philips car stereo radio/tape player, purely for entertainment. At home I am never without music playing, and I would have missed this terribly at sea.

That was a lot of electronic and electrical gear, but it all got used. I have always had a thing about being well equipped, and the boat would be evidence to this part of my character. In defense, I must say that I felt my lack of experience made electronic help all the more important. A lifelong sailor might guess at the wind speed or direction accurately, but I could not. I felt I needed all the help I could get. This feeling, it turned out, was entirely correct.

I had to choose an engine as well. The choice was between the Yanmar 12 and the Farymann 12 diesels, the Farymann having hydraulic drive. The Yanmar has a good reputation, and I was offered a nice discount on it, but I chose the Farymann because of its compact size and the versatility of installation of the Hydromarine Hydraulic Drive. This equipment is manufactured in Ireland, and Hydromarine offered me, at no extra cost, a heavy-duty unit more suitable for running for long periods without a load, as when charging batteries. They were later to give unstintingly of technical help and advice.

On March 27, Laurel Carlin Holland gave birth to a daughter, Kelly, much to the astonishment of everyone, since triplets, at a minimum, had been expected. Ron was completely bemused by the idea of being a father, and we had a celebratory dinner at Ballymaloe.

My social situation took a turn for the better when a letter came from Ann O’Donahue, a London friend, in response to an invitation issued in January. She would be arriving in early April for a visit. I was looking forward to that. The only people I knew in Cork were my designer, sailmaker, and boatbuilder, none of them very pretty.

Ann arrived on Monday afternoon and we renewed our acquaintance over dinner at Arbutus Lodge, Cork’s best restaurant and, many think, Ireland’s. Having Ann about the place made an enormous difference. We had the Hollands and Barry and Mary Burke over for dinner and, confirming conversations we had been having, Barry promised to mold my boat next, making it number seven instead of ten. She would be launched, said Barry, around June 1. This was an enormous relief to me. The red boat was only now being completed, and I had been increasingly worried about having the boat ready for the Azores race. Now I would have a month more to sail her than planned!

The red boat was finally launched on April 11. In the water she was very pretty, and we arranged to go sailing on her with Ron and John McWilliam on Sunday.

We were joined by Harold Cudmore, a dinghy sailor, now becoming a helmsman in offshore racing, and a nonstop talker about sailing, Cork, and anything Irish. The boat was a delight to sail. I was astonished at how quickly she tacked. We sailed about Cork Harbor, while Ron ceaselessly tuned the rigging and McWilliam admired his sails. Ron never seems to stop moving on a boat. He is everywhere, dressed in a pair of white painter’s overalls, or something equally awful, completely indifferent to what the fashionable yachtsman is supposed to be wearing, and always with tools in his hands. Sometimes he will deign to wear a battered pair of seaboots. Ron seems vaguely uncomfortable in anything new, or even pressed.

McWilliam, on the other hand, is extremely neat, though not given to fashion, as such. He always seems ironed and starched, even on a boat. I think his wife presses him before he leaves the house.

Cudmore, a rangy fellow with a lot of thick, red hair and a native capacity for Guinness, enjoys giving instructions in a manner which manages to be, at once, quick and easy. Both Ron and Harold are good teachers on a boat, each having a large fund of knowledge on every detail of the sailing of a yacht, and a willingness to share it. McWilliam, on the other hand, although possessed of at least as much information, seems to assume that anyone who is over the age of seven has a native understanding of everything that makes a yacht work, and an equal knowledge of things mechanical. Once, when I interrupted him, puzzled by a discourse on load factors or something, he said to me, “You know, it’s good training for me to talk to you about things like this; your mind is so... so...” “Unsullied by knowledge?” I volunteered. He grinned. “That’s it.”

Everything about this first sail in a Shamrock was an eye-opener for me. First of all, it was, at this point in my experience, the largest boat I had ever sailed on; second, it was my introduction to what my own boat would be like, and I was both a little awed by the height of the mast and the sail area, and relieved, in that the yacht didn’t seem unmanageable. Ann, who says of her ability on a boat, “I do what I’m told,” was enjoying herself, too. At least nobody was yelling at her. She tells of a sail down the Channel once with a male companion who became Captain Bligh on a boat. She abandoned ship in Weymouth and took a train back to London.

Sailing back to moorings in front of the yacht club, Cudmore gave me a real workout. Harold would rather sail anytime than use an engine (I saw him sail up to a mooring under spinnaker once, in a riverful of moored yachts), and he decided we would short tack up the river, against the tide. Ron and McWilliam quickly found something to do on the foredeck, and I had to man both winches, with Ann tailing the sheets. I was wiped out by the time we reached the mooring, and after three months on my exercise program. It occurred to me that had I tried that in January I would have collapsed after the first four or five tacks.

Back at the Royal Cork, we ran into Hugh Coveney in the bar and got into a discussion of boats’ names. Hugh’s Golden Apple name came from Yeats... “The golden apples of the sun and the silver apples of the moon...” The “Golden” handle had continued with Golden Shamrock, and I thought I’d like to keep it going, combined with something Irish but a bit more elegant than Shamrock. The harp is the Irish national symbol, and that of the Royal Cork Yacht Club as well. Golden Harp seemed a good possibility. Hugh liked that, and I think from that time on, though I thought about other names, the yacht, in my own mind, became Golden Harp.

Ann flew back to London that afternoon, and I was alone again. Still, my boat was about to begin building, and I was about to make my first passage of the season and my first to England. Golden Apple had been sold, and Hugh Coveney had invited me to sail on the delivery trip.

10 My first golden cruise

The next two weeks were mostly occupied with final meetings about the molding of the boat. I think we had at least three final meetings. I was beginning to have doubts about some of the modifications planned for the boat. First, I abandoned the idea of replacing the whole cockpit and decided just to make the existing one deeper. Then I was talked out of that, because of doubts about the cockpit draining properly when heeled. Finally, George talked me out of raising the decks with the teak sandwich idea. He was concerned about the possibility of leaks around the hull/deck join. I gave in on the custom interior, too. I would accept the Swede’s standard interior and simply add extra stowage space.

A letter came from Mike Ellison of the Amateur Yacht Research Society, who was helping to organize the Azores race. When Harry McMahon and Ewan Southby-Tailyour had not been able to get enough free time to do the race, I had told Mike I’d consider taking a girl crew, which the committee had suggested entrants do. Now Mike had two candidates for me, and the following day I received a letter from one of them, Shirley Clifford. She sounded fine, but she was married to Richard Clifford, a Royal Marine officer who had done the last OSTAR, and I wrote her a frank letter explaining that I had not expected inquiries from a married lady, and that I didn’t want any angry Marines buzzing about. I didn’t, either.

Golden Apple departed about one o’clock on a Friday afternoon, Hugh Coveney having come down to provision and fuel us. The rest of the crew were Ian Hannay, skipper, an English airline pilot and, as it turned out, a former British Olympic helmsman in the Dragon class; Richard Edwards, an English medical student; and Killian Bush, George’s son. Killian worked at the yard and had crewed on Apple the year before. I’d had some sort of mild bug since the day before and was feeling rotten, so as soon as we set sail at Roche’s Point, at the mouth of Cork Harbor, I turned in until time for my watch. It annoyed me to feel poorly at the beginning of a trip to which I had so looked forward; it was my first sail out of sight of land.

I was awakened later by the sound of the engine starting. It was a sound I would grow to hate during the next three days. The wind had been light when we set sail, and now it had dropped to nothing. Motoring on a Ron Holland one-off racing yacht is not like motoring on anything else. Instead of the purr of an engine, muffled by soundproofing, we had a deafening chug, muffled only by a panel of sailcloth between the quarter berth and the engine. Soundproofing is too heavy to be used on a superfast Holland design. We motored on through the late afternoon and into the evening, picking up, at some point, an exhausted pigeon who perched on a spreader, hunkered his head down, and fell into an apparently dreamless sleep, stirring himself from time to time to shit on the deck below.

Dawn came slowly, and we found ourselves motoring onward in a haze that made it impossible to judge distance. The sun shone weakly through it. The effect was one of being anchored in one place with the engine running, there was so little sensation of movement in the haze. By late afternoon things had cleared enough to sight Land’s End, my first landfall in a yacht, and that was exciting. That lower-left-hand corner of England was abeam by 20.00 hours, and I turned in after my three-hour watch, looking forward to nine uninterrupted hours of sleep. Motoring was curiously tiring, and I still felt rotten. I was awakened by Hannay at 03.00 after only six hours of sleep and told that I was on watch. (Often on a yacht when racing, or when cruising in heavy weather, the skipper and/or the navigator does not take a watch, but saves himself and is awakened if there are problems.)

It was now clear and very cold (it was only April, remember) with a huge full moon lighting everything through the haze. As I took the helm, Richard gave me the course and said he hadn’t sighted the Lizard light and thought we had probably passed it in the fog, earlier. I settled down in my long underwear, jeans, two sweaters, offshore jacket, lined mittens, and my balaclava. The balaclava was the best idea I’d ever had, I thought, keeping me nice and warm inside my jacket’s hood.

Half an hour later I sighted two flashing lights slightly off the starboard bow. This was very peculiar, according to the ship’s light patterns I had studied in the yachtmaster’s course. A larger ship will have two mast lights, one high, aft, and one lower, forward. But they do not flash. The only thing that flashes is a lighthouse or a buoy, and besides, I couldn’t see the red and green port and starboard lights which a ship should be wearing. I switched on my pocket torch (always necessary on a night watch, I had discovered) and had a look at the chart. We were past the Lizard, we thought, and the lights were too high to be buoys. I turned to port to avoid the thing, which seemed to be moving.

The two lights continued to flash, and the whole thing made no sense, so I decided to call the skipper. I didn’t feel too bad about waking him up, anyway. I shouted “Ian!” half a dozen times, but got no reply. Finally, I lashed the helm, stuck my head down the companionway, and yelled, “SKIPPER!” This message did not reach Ian, but Richard stumbled, shivering, out of his sleeping bag. We regarded the flashing lights together, through the haze. Finally, Richard dug out Reed’s Nautical Almanac, consulted it briefly, and timed the lights.

“Well,” he said, finally, “one of ’em is the Lizard,” and went back to bed. I corrected my course quickly, having been steering toward a large and very solid part of Cornwall for the past five minutes. Sure enough, as we drew abeam of the thing, the lighthouse became visible. The second flashing light appeared to be caused by the light striking another, smaller tower of some sort behind the lighthouse. Later, what seemed to be Falmouth appeared and receded.

That afternoon came the highlight of this exciting voyage on the world’s fastest one-tonner. We put into Salcombe for more fuel. We had no dinghy and only one jerry can and the petrol stations were all closed, but the kindly harbormaster quickly arranged for us to buy ten gallons from the local ferry operator, and we were on our way again faster than if we had had a dinghy and more than one jerry can and if the stations had been open. Moreover, after crossing the bar at the mouth of the harbor, we found that rare thing, a breeze, and got a couple of hours of sailing in before it died and we had to go back to the engine.

I was on at midnight, then again at nine on Monday morning (the skipper was saving himself again). It was quite foggy, and we were approaching the Needles, the group of rocks at the western end of the Isle of Wight. Ian fiddled with the Radio Direction Finder, did some calculating, and said, “You’ll be hearing the Needles fog signal soon.” Soon, indeed, the mournful sound came out of the fog, and shortly afterward, the proper buoy appeared on the nose. I was impressed.

We were in the Lymington Yacht Marina by eleven, cleaned out the boat, cleared customs, rang Avis for a car, and by one I was in bed at the Angel Hotel, dead asleep. It had been the most boring and most exhausting three days I have ever spent on a boat, before or since. So much for exciting delivery trips in fast sailing boats.

The following evening I met for the first time, in person, both Ewan Southby-Tailyour and Shirley Clifford. Ewan (it is pronounced Uwan, I discovered, and Southby, as South) looked more distinguished than his years would suggest, and Shirley looked just like her photograph. Everybody was a bit restrained when we first met at my hotel, two-thirds of the group being British, but after our arrival at a Poole restaurant and the subsequent wine consumed, relaxation prevailed, and I may even have been forward with the lovely proprietress. The evening ended, I think, with an aura of goodwill, in the officer’s mess of the Poole Royal Marine base at three a.m. Shirley reassured me that it would be okay with her husband for her to sail with two strange men to a remote island in the North Atlantic. She was a victim, she said, of the “marry your crew and give her hell” syndrome and could not occupy the same floating object as her husband.

Next day, I visited some chandleries and called in at M. S. Gibb in Warsash and Kemp’s in Titchfield. Gibb makes the Hasler Windvane self-steering system, and I met Robert Hughes, their marketing manager and resident self-steering expert, who kindly showed me where and how the things were built. I left almost understanding how the gear worked.

At Kemp’s I went over the mast order, and Peter Cartwright and his people made a suggestion or two which seemed useful. Earlier in the day, James Kirkman, sales manager at Brookes & Gatehouse, had spent some time explaining the workings of the instruments I had bought, so my time on the south coast was well spent.

I dashed up to London and spent a day or two taking Ann to the theater and gaining weight, then flew back to Cork, anxious to see my newly molded hull and deck.

It hadn’t been molded. Somebody’s brother had died, or something, and they promised to have it done and out of the mold on the following Monday, a week later. I was extremely annoyed at the delay, especially since Bill King was coming down for a visit, hoping to see the boat under construction, but I gave the yard my next installment on the boat, £5,500. It was the largest check I had ever written. As long as I was writing big checks I thought I might as well give John McWilliam some money, and as something extra he threw in a free ride on Irish Mist II, which had just been launched.

I leapt at the chance, and soon was crouched on the tiny afterdeck behind the helmsman, getting my first look at what goes on on a big boat. Quite a lot went on, and it would not be long before I got considerably more experience on the big two-tonner.

Bill King arrived on schedule, chugging up to the cottage in a tiny Fiat, and we grilled steaks in the backyard, American style, while we talked about boats — his and mine. Bill is a firm believer in Blondie Hasler’s Chinese Junk rig, which does have its advantages. It can be reefed in seconds without the skipper’s bothering to come on deck, and it is quite possible to cross an ocean in such a boat without so much as donning oilskins.

The following day we went to the yard and Bill saw everything, from the molding to the joinery. He pronounced himself impressed with the design and spent a long time talking with the various foremen and with George Bush and Barry Burke. We had a good day, and I came away feeling that his trip had been worthwhile, even if we couldn’t see my boat. The following day, we went over my charts and made a list of what else was needed for the Azores race. It was startling, the number of charts and publications necessary for such a passage. I had only about half of what was needed.

A local diver came and had a look at my mooring that day, too, replacing some chain and a couple of shackles which had rusted beyond safe limits. I would be ready for the boat long before she would be ready for me.

I spent the weekend in Galway, where Galway Bay Sailing Club was holding its annual boat show. I had worked on the one the year before, and was interested to see how the new edition looked, and surprised to find my old Mirror, Fred, on display and for sale. The local doctor to whom I had sold her in the fall had never even sailed her.

By Tuesday, back in Cork, my boat was finally molded but not yet out of the mold. I had signed on for a week’s cruise on Creidne, the Irish Training Ship, the following week, and before I left, Ron and I went down and worked out the deck layout and gave the instructions to the fitting-out foreman. Basically, all the winches and controls were grouped as closely to the cockpit as possible, so that they could be reached and managed by one man. This differed from the standard deck layout, where halyard winches are operated by crew on deck rather than one man in the cockpit (see diagrams). We also had a long talk with the joinery foreman about changes to the interior layout, mostly the addition of extra stowage place wherever possible. That done, I drove to Dublin and joined Creidne in Dun Laoghaire.

11 A Mist opportunity

Aboard Creidne, which is a fifty-foot Bermudan cutter, purchased by the Irish government as a temporary training ship during the planning and building of a new eighty-foot brigantine sail trainer, I was delighted to find Ian Mitchell, an old friend from the Mirror racing circuit. Eric Healy, a toothy, tubby, chatty gentleman with vast experience in sailing vessels all over the world, is Creidne’s permanent skipper, and he assigned Ian and me as duty skippers for our planned voyage to Holyhead, across the Irish Sea, in Wales.

First, though, we did a few drills in Dun Laoghaire Harbor, picking up moorings under sail, man-overboard drills, and power handling. Then, up at an early hour for the passage to Holyhead. We had a pleasant and uneventful crossing in lightish winds, and Ian and I both learned the importance of judging tidal streams, for Holyhead turned up on the port instead of the starboard bow, where it should have been.

The trip back on the following evening was more exciting, with the wind blowing Force five and six. Several of our crew had tanked up on beer the night before and, in the short, steep seas we now encountered, they paid the price. Both our watches were shorthanded as a result, and we got little sleep. We underestimated the tide again, and had to put in a half-hour tack to clear the Kish light, just outside Dublin Bay, all the while dodging the Dublin — Liverpool car ferry, which seemed awesomely large from the deck of even a fifty-footer.

Back in Dun Laoghaire we changed crews for the second cruise of the week, only Ian Mitchell and I remaining from the first group. We sailed down to Wicklow, then Arklow, then back to Dun Laoghaire. The week had been especially valuable experience for me, doing everything from foredeck work to cooking to skippering, and giving me experience with the cutter rig, which has two foresails. At Dun Laoghaire, Captain Healy let me bring Creidne alongside under power, which happened without incident but perhaps a bit slowly. In his evaluation of my week, Captain Healy mentioned that I should be more patient with the crew when skippering, and that I needed more experience under power. I didn’t tell him I had never handled a boat under power before.

Archie O’Leary had asked me to come along on the delivery of Irish Mist to Lymington the following weekend, and I busied myself with the final details of rounding up equipment for my boat. Manufacturers can be remarkably slow sending equipment, even when it has been paid for in advance, and I was constantly having to chase orders to see that everything arrived in time for the launching.

Quotes for insurance came in, and I chose the one from Hinson & Company in Dublin, the official insurance agency for the Irish Yachting Association. Their quote was no lower than another company’s, but I had been impressed by the personal interest shown. I was paying £200 for coverage in British and Irish waters, single-handed, and another £150 for the Azores race and the single-handed return.

One piece of equipment required by the rules of the race was an emergency radio transmitter which would operate on two civil aviation frequencies, to be used in case of losing the boat and taking to the life raft. This signal would be picked up by a commercial airliner, then the rescue services would use the beacon to help locate the raft, which would be very difficult indeed if it had to be located visually. Blondie Hasler, one of the founders of the OSTAR, would probably not approve of this equipment, since he was against any competitor making any use of the rescue services. He has been quoted as saying, a competitor who got into trouble “... should have the decency to drown like a gentleman and not bother the rescue people.” I was perfectly happy to have the transmitter aboard.

I was becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of progress on the boat. Barry Burke, who is the second most charming man in Ireland (the most charming man in Ireland, and the nicest, is Dr. Eamonn Lydon, of Oranmore, County Galway), would, whenever I would come to him, perplexed about the boat’s progress, place a fatherly hand on my shoulder and say, “Now, Stuart, your boat is the most important boat being built in this yard, because of what she has to do, and you just can’t rush a boat like that.”

Everything else seemed to be moving along on time, however. One day a few weeks before, the area engineer for Lucas, the electrical equipment people, had turned up at the yard unexpectedly and said he had heard from Hydromarine, the engine people, that I needed a second, larger alternator. He said that Lucas would be happy to provide it and any technical advice I needed, and now the engine had arrived, the big alternator bolted into place.

Now came the passage to Lymington on Irish Mist II, and it proved to be all that the Golden Apple delivery had not. We slipped our moorings at Crosshaven in the early evening on Friday, May 31: Archie O’Leary, the owner; Pat Donovan, a Crosshaven publican and regular winch grinder and cook on Mist; Peter Walsh, a Cork gynecologist (just in case); and a student who was studying yacht design in Southampton, to whom I shall refer as The Kid.

We were soon close reaching in a steady Force six, gusting seven, as darkness closed. In these conditions, watches were being kept in pairs, and Archie put me with him, obviously anxious about my lack of experience.

I had made a point, from the beginning, of communicating to the people I sailed with that I was new to larger boats, because I did not want anybody to overestimate my skills, but lately, this was beginning to become a problem. By the time we sailed on Mist I had some twelve hundred miles of offshore experience and had taken an extensive course in coastal navigation, plus about ten days of practical instruction, a week of that on Creidne, a larger boat than Irish Mist. This was probably more than your average weekend yachtsman would do in two whole seasons, and I could now do, competently, just about anything that needed doing on a boat, barring mechanical and electrical repairs, for which I showed little talent. Certainly, there were things I didn’t know how to do on specific boats; I had never worked with slab reefing, for instance, which Mist had, but it was simply a matter of becoming familiar with a particular boat’s equipment.

I had also discovered two marked advantages which I possessed, both quite accidental and unlearned, but advantages nevertheless. I didn’t get seasick, apart from an occasional queasiness, and I was not frightened on boats.

I felt, and still feel, a kind of apprehension before beginning a passage — in the earliest days this had been partly a fear of being seasick, or, perhaps, a fear of being frightened, but I was not subject to the kind of demoralizing, even paralyzing fright that I had sometimes seen in others on a boat. Even now, while we were sailing to windward in the biggest winds and heaviest seas I had yet experienced, I felt nothing but excitement and exhilaration. If Archie hadn’t been on deck with me I think I would have been singing or shouting at the top of my lungs into the wind.

Mist bucked into the seas, sending the occasional wave racing down her flush decks to hit us full in the face like a bathtub of water. For some reason, this struck me as funny, and I laughed a lot. I think Archie thought I was hysterical. The two hours of our watch passed very quickly, broken only by the passing of a large, brightly lit ship, probably the Cork — Swansea car ferry, the Inisfallen, which flashed “K” (“I wish to communicate with you”) at us. We had our hands full in this weather, but after looking up what “K” meant, The Kid answered her, with what signal I’m not sure. I think she just wanted to know if we were all right in the heavy seas; it was nice of her to worry.

Below, Irish Mist was, at times, as wet as it was on deck. The main hatch leaked a lot when a wave raked the decks, pouring water into the lower, leeward bunk, rendering it unusable. There was a spacious galley but no handholds, these being judged by Ron Holland as weighing too much, and we had a tendency to ricochet about the main cabin when trying to move around. (When Ron Holland dies and goes to hell, his punishment should be to spend eternity inside one of his own designs with no handholds, sailing to windward in about a Force seven.) If you could stay wedged into a bunk long enough to get the leecloth tied, then you could sleep in reasonable comfort, though. The boat contained the forementioned galley, two lower and two upper berths in the main cabin, a single and a double berth in an after area, and a chart table right aft, where the navigator could, in theory, speak to the helmsman through a small hatch. The rules require certain comforts on a racing yacht, but still it was quite a spartan interior, which Ron thought to be a new high in luxury. (Ron was once quoted by a yachting magazine as saying that all he required for the interior of a racing yacht were facilities for lying down and boiling water. He denies this. I believe the magazine.)

I had a look at the course plotted by The Kid, who was navigating us, and wondered aloud if he were allowing for tidal stream, leeway, and surface drift. He saw no point in bothering with these, and as a result, we ended up twenty degrees below our proper course, had to put in an unnecessary tack, and sailed fifty miles farther than necessary to reach Hugh Town, St. Mary’s, in the Scilly Isles, our first stop.

I was greatly taken with Hugh Town. We were met by the customs/immigration official and advised about anchorages. At one point he asked Archie, “If you’re an Irish ship, why aren’t you flying the Irish ensign?” Archie had a ready and truthful answer.

“My designer thinks flagstaffs weigh too much.”

We visited the local pubs for a few pints and walked through the village, a very pretty one. I resolved to get back here again, maybe single-handed. That would be a good trial for Golden Harp. It was about a twenty-four-hour sail from Crosshaven (on the proper course) over open water, without too much shipping about, and it seemed a very pleasant port in which to spend a couple of days.

We had had a bit of excitement coming into the port, when the gearbox seemed not to be working. When we were ready to drop sails the engine started readily but seemed not to be going into gear. In Hugh Town we discovered that the propeller had fallen off, and Archie decided to sail directly on to Lymington without another stop, since getting in and out of ports would be awkward without the engine.

We weighed anchor early the next morning and began a fast passage, reaching and running down the Channel, sometimes flying a spinnaker. By midnight we were past Start Point and headed for Portland Bill and its infamous tidal race. The Kid, for reasons I never understood, had plotted our course inside the race, saying something about it being on the rhumb line to the Needles. I had long since given up talking with him about the navigation. The Kid was very good indeed on sailing the boat, nearly as good, I think, as he believed himself to be, but I had grown very weary of the patronizing advice he had been constantly giving, and he and I were not getting along very well.

Now we sailed into Lyme Bay with a following wind of about Force three, on The Kid’s course for the inside of the Portland Race. Archie was already worried about going inside and gave Peter Walsh and me explicit instructions not to sail too far out of the bay and, thus, get us into Portland Race. “Don’t get too far in, either,” he had said. “Jibe if you have to, to maintain your course, but for God’s sake don’t get us out into that race. It’s one of the most dangerous places on the south coast of England.”

We sailed on peacefully for a while, and then the wind began to back, and we were having to sail ten degrees above our course to keep from sailing by the lee, that is, with the wind coming from a direction where the boat might accidentally jibe. Soon, we were twenty degrees above our course, and I suggested jibing to Peter. He was doubtful, Archie having given instructions not to sail too far in. Why didn’t we sail on the other jibe for half an hour, then jibe back and sail for another half hour, and so on? Peter finally agreed, though reluctantly. We jibed the boat in the gentle breeze, and Archie was on deck like a panther, in his underwear, roaring about “jibing for the sake of jibing...” I think that, under normal circumstances, he would not have reacted quite the same way, but he was clearly anxious about sailing inside the Portland Race, and he would not listen to any explanation of why we had jibed.

Dawn came and Portland Bill was before us. As the wind had backed it had increased sharply, and was now blowing a Force seven, gusting eight. The seas in the race were huge and close together, with waves breaking everywhere. In addition to the normal problems of negotiating the race, we had wind against tide, and a lot of both. Archie was at the helm, and we had to go within fifty yards of the rocks in order to stay out of the race. It was very exciting sailing, with the boat sometimes reaching ten knots when surfing down the big waves, and we made it safely through. Archie, a former international rugby player, admitted having been scared. “It’s like just before playing for Ireland against England,” he said. “It’s running down your legs.”

After the Portland Race, though, Archie would not let me take the helm again, as a kind of punishment, I think, for my sinful jibe of the night before.

The wind now veered, and as we approached the Lymington River, we faced the prospect of beating up the narrow channel against a falling tide and with the car ferry to the Isle of Wight threatening to leave at any moment. We hailed a couple of smaller yachts, asking for a tow, but nobody could hear us, so we started up the river under sail. This involved a lot of very short tacking, and with a group who had never tacked the boat at all.

In her crew cockpit, Mist has a grinding pedestal linked to the two huge winches, and Pat took charge of that. Peter and I each tailed a winch, and The Kid stood in the pulpit, yelling, “TACK!” whenever he thought we were getting too close to the edge of the channel. It would be very embarrassing to run the beautiful new yacht aground on a falling tide in one of the most densely boat-populated rivers in England. It went well, though, the boat tacking remarkably quickly and accelerating fast. At times she seemed to be pointing straight into the wind. Finally, approaching the marina, a large yacht gave us a tow for a hundred yards or so, and The Kid cast us off with what he thought was enough way on to drift into a berth. He had misjudged, though, and we began to drift backward with the tide, with no steerageway. Pat Donovan had the presence of mind to throw a line to somebody on a berthed boat, just as The Kid panicked and threw the anchor out.

We began to clean up the boat and stow the gear, but The Kid, it appeared, was not yet finished with my education. I came very near to throwing him overboard when he began to explain “... how we fold a sail.”

I thanked Archie for the best sail I had ever had. I had been very impressed with the way he had brought us around the Bill in such awful conditions and with his skill in tacking us up the river. I had learned a lot and, surprisingly, was not nearly as tired as after the Golden Apple delivery, although the passage in Mist had been much more arduous. Now I left Irish Mist II, and clambered onto the dock and into the arms of Ann, who, clever girl, had driven down from London.

We had a pleasant evening in Lymington, and next morning, after running a few local errands, we embarked on the car ferry to the Isle of Wight, which I had never visited. The purpose of the trip was to discuss the rigging of my boat with Ben Bradley of Spencer’s, the riggers, but we did some shopping in Cowes’s narrow High Street first. It was there I discovered one of the most comfortable of sailing garments, the Javlin Warm Suit, which is a sort of thermal underwear, retaining heat and preventing condensation under oilskins. This would prove to be a valuable purchase.

At Spencer’s, Ben Bradley and I agreed on the size and composition of my boat’s rigging — Ron had suggested wire rope rather than the standard solid rod rigging, which was fine for offshore racing but didn’t last as long. We also went a size up on the standard, for extra strength.

Next day, I rang Shirley Clifford in Poole, just to see how she was and to report on the progress of Golden Harp, and she reminded me of something I had forgotten. The Azores and Back single-handed race (AZAB), sponsored by the magazine Yachting Monthly, was starting on Saturday from the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club in Falmouth. She and Richard would be there, and so would Ewan Southby-Tailyour. Why didn’t I come down? Why not, indeed? I hired a car, and on Thursday afternoon took off for the West Country.

I arrived at the Royal Cornwall to find fifty yachts preparing for the next day’s start. Almost immediately I bumped into Robert Hughes, the Hasler self-steering expert from Gibb, who had at his disposal a very fast speedboat, with which he could go from yacht to yacht, offering advice and helping to solve problems. Having never so much as seen a single-hander’s boat this was a marvelous opportunity for me, and I made mental notes on layout, control lines, etc.

Richard and Shirley Clifford turned up with their children, and I met Frank Page, The Observer’s yachting correspondent, and his lovely wife, Sammie; Liz Balcon and Angela Green, also from the Observer staff; Angus Primrose, the yacht designer who was sailing one of his own designs, a Moody 33, in the race, and his wife and daughter, Murlo and Sally; Andrew Bray of Yachting Monthly, who was sailing his Pioneer 10 in the race; and briefly, Clare Francis, the girl who had already done a transatlantic crossing in a Nicholson 32, and now had an Olsen 38 at her disposal, courtesy of her sponsors, Robertson’s jams.

I had dinner with Richard and Shirley, and the following day, Murlo and Sally Primrose and I joined Robert Hughes and his brother, Brian, on whose fast boat we would watch the start of the race. The wind was very light, so there was little drama before the start, but shortly after the start we all became very annoyed with a French spectator boat which was sailing behind Clare Francis flying a spinnaker, thus taking Clare’s wind and making it difficult for her to get her own spinnaker to fill. We roared up to the French yacht and, after a few loud words, they bore away and left her alone. It had been a rotten thing to do.

The fleet slowly drifted toward open water, and after a final goodbye to Angus Primrose on Demon Demo, we roared across the bay to my favorite village in Cornwall, St. Mawes. Then, back to the Royal Cornwall, now strangely empty, and the drive to Fowey, farther up the coast, where I was meeting Richard Clifford and Ewan Southby-Tailyour at a Royal Cruising Club rally. I arrived in the pretty village and got a ferry out to Ewan’s yacht, Black Velvet, only to discover him drinking on another nearby boat. We passed a pleasant afternoon, and Richard arrived from Falmouth in Shamaal II, his Contessa 26, single-handed. There was then one of the nicest sights I have ever seen on the water. Three of the larger yachts at the rally were tied together in the river, and a very large and exuberant cocktail party took place in the lovely twilight. I added Fowey to my list of harbors to visit.

Richard Clifford invited me for a Sunday morning sail in Shamaal, and I accepted with pleasure. We just went out of the river for a bit, then back to a mooring, but it was the first time I had ever sailed on a single-hander’s boat, and it was nice to see how expertly Richard handled her. We followed our sail with a lunch of fresh mackerel.

Richard, as I have mentioned, is a captain in the Royal Marines, and takes great pride in his fitness. He climbs the mast of Shamaal without benefit of bosun’s chair or steps, just right up it like a monkey. He also takes pride in sailing Shamaal without an engine of any kind, and handles her with great flair and confidence.

He gave me something to think about when he said that during the last OSTAR, he had been swept overboard by a wave, saved only by an arm which caught a guardrail. He said that, after struggling back on board, he sat down in the cockpit and wept. I thought, if this hard, tough, superbly fit Marine officer, trained to endure the worst of hardship, had been reduced to that state by exhaustion and terror, what the hell would happen to me under similar circumstances? I could only hope that I would never have to find out.

Back in Cork, the launch was set for June 28. I wrote out a launch invitation and a press release. I had them both printed, and I mailed about fifty invitations to friends and people who had contributed equipment or help on the boat, and I sent press releases to all the Irish newspapers, plus the television service, RTE, along with an invitation which also invited everybody to a post-launch celebration at the Royal Cork. I also gave invitations to half a dozen of the foremen and workmen in the yard who had been particularly helpful, and to the office staff, all of whom had been very nice. Then I placed an invitation in the hands of Pat Hickey, a director of the yard, and handed one to Barry Burke.

12 Launching

Normally I sleep like a stone, but for the rest of June prior to the launching, I slept badly. Nor could I read. Even absorbing books like Adlard Coles’s Heavy Weather Sailing couldn’t hold my attention. Every time I read of some heavy weather maneuver I began thinking about how Golden Harp would react under the circumstances.

But there were bright spots. Vincent Dolan of J. B. Roche, a Cork chandlery, donated a twenty-five-pound CQR anchor and eight fathoms of chain to the project. Alan Best of Croxon & Cobbs, a Dublin chandlery, gave me a trade discount on any gear I wished to purchase from him — they were particularly good on charts — and Western Marine, in Dalkey, gave me a generous discount on the four very expensive Beaufort life jackets I wanted for the boat. Cotter Electronics, a Cork instrument installation company, came and did a first-class job of fitting the Brookes & Gatehouse equipment and the other electrical gear, and gave me a very low price for a great deal of highly skilled work. And George Hayde and his people at Lucas came through on their promise of technical help, doing all the wiring on the batteries and alternators. They also contributed the splitting diodes and isolating switches for the batteries, a generous contribution, indeed, coupled with the expensive, marinized alternator.

There were disappointments, too. A Dublin sailmaker who had, three months before, agreed to send a man down to measure the boat for its very important spray hood now doubled his price in a transparent effort to get out of doing the job. He succeeded. Then a west coast sailmaker agreed to do the job and never showed up for the appointment, after keeping us waiting an entire afternoon. He didn’t even bother to phone to say he couldn’t make it. John McWilliam, from the heights of the international racing sailmaker, would not stoop to such mundane work, either, but at least he had made it clear months before that he wouldn’t touch the job with a fork, and he didn’t waste my time the way the others had. Before the summer was over, I would suffer from the lack of that spray hood.

I drove up to Tralee and spent an intensive two days with Len Breewood, studying celestial navigation and trying to cram two weekends into one. Len very kindly made me a gift of a light meon anchor which he had made himself. I had been unable to find one like it in Ireland.

Then I drove to Galway and spent an enlightening morning learning how to make a diesel engine behave itself. I had never seen one up close before, but even I understood and came away with a large donation of expensive engine spares. (A few days later, an extremely heavy parcel arrived in the post. Hydromarine had sent me a spare propeller, a very expensive chunk of brass!)

Back in Cork, visible progress was being made on the boat. The keel had been fitted, as had the stainless-steel brackets for the self-steering, and I watched as the deck was dropped onto the hull and fastened in place. At last, it looked like a boat!

Acceptances and regrets began to come in for the launching. Sadly, Ann would be working (she designs sets and costumes for films) and could not be in Cork. But other people were coming from all over the country.

At McWilliam Sailmakers, another last-minute flap. I had designed a “Betsy Ross” (the lady who designed and sewed the first American flag) spinnaker, in honor of the 1976 Bicentennial Celebrations in the States, and this called for a circle of thirteen stars on a field of blue. The problem was that John had, instead of making five-pointed American stars, made six-pointed Israeli stars. Wrong celebration. I had to spend an hour soothing him and telling him how easy it was to make five-pointed stars, and he still charged me three quid apiece for them.

Launch day dawned. Nick and I were at the yard early to find the boat now hauled out onto the quay. The gathering for the launching was scheduled for eight in the evening, and the boat would be open to visitors for an hour before launching at nine, on the high tide.

About eight-thirty, people began to arrive and, suddenly, it all came together. By a quarter-to-nine Golden Harp bore every resemblance to a finished boat, her loose wires tucked away and the floorboards and dining table suddenly in place. She was nothing if not a fine actress.

John Smullen, my insurance agent, arrived from Dublin with a lovely young lady and the gift from himself and Alec Hinson of a handsome visitors book, embossed with the yacht’s name. It was a psychic thing, for I had not been able to find one in Cork.

Rapidly, its pages began to fill. Ron Holland and John McWilliam were the first signators; George Kennefick, admiral, and Raymound Fielding and Harry Deane, vice-admiral and secretary, respectively, represented the Royal Cork Yacht Club, now Harp’s home club; Ferdia O’Riordan and Michael Healy turned up to represent the Galway club, while Harry McMahon, though we did not know it at the time, was at Dublin Airport, having come from a medical conference in Edinburgh, trying to persuade Hertz to hire him a car without a driver’s license, which he had forgotten; Worth and Pasha Newenham came, so did Len and Margaret Breewood; friends from all over were suddenly there, admiring my boat. Nick had miraculously got the tape player going, and the music added to the festivities. Tom Barker from the Cork Examiner was there, and although RTE had had to divert its one Cork camera to a fire, or something, Irish radio was represented in person of Donna O’Sullivan, a redhead of whom I would see more.

Now all my anger and frustration vanished under a wave of euphoria. It was just as though the boat was actually finished. This moment, which I had dreamed about, but of which I had begun to despair, had finally come. It was all exactly like a real boat launching.

Finally, George mounted the crane, swung the yacht over the quayside, where she paused, her decks level with the stone. Barry Burke, who was not able to be present for the launching, had provided a bottle of champagne, cleverly scored several times so that it would break at the first blow. It is supposed to be terribly bad luck if the bottle doesn’t break the first time. Laurel Holland, terribly conscious of her responsibility, said, “I christen this ship Golden Harp. God bless her and all who sail in her!” and swung mightily at the bow, missing the boat completely. She hadn’t actually touched the boat, though, so no harm done. On her next swing the bottle smashed just the way champagne bottles are supposed to at yacht launchings, and Golden Harp dropped into the Douglas River with a fat splash.

It was all so perfect: the water of the river turned to shimmering gold by a huge setting sun, the crowd gathered to wish the boat well, the lovely weather. I made a short speech, thanking Ron and other people who had contributed to the effort thus far, and we adjourned to the upper deck of the Royal Cork for a bit of champagne.

Toward the end of the evening George Kennefick made a few kind remarks, and in my response I was able to thank George Bush, whom I had stupidly forgotten to thank at the launching. George had been in charge of the most difficult of all the work, the modifications, and his work would prove to have been done well.

I hit the bed that night like a felled tree. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better evening.

The following morning, Nick and I drove to the yard with as much equipment as we could manage, and we began to load the boat. George persuaded me to wait for the afternoon tide, to give him time to do a few more things, and I agreed.

As we were preparing to cast off and the last workman was hastily gathering his tools to avoid a trip down Cork Harbor, I glanced into the shallow bilges and noticed water there. “Where did that come from?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’ve mopped her out every morning since she was launched, and there’s still water coming in.”

Golden Harp, four days after her launching, was leaking.

13 The race before the Race

The next three weeks were a whirling potpourri of rage, outrage, relief, elation, depression, and exhaustion.

Ron came down to Drake’s Pool and shouted from shore that he was leaving for Norway the following morning to compete in the World Three-quarter-ton Championships in his design, the Nicholson 33, Golden Delicious. The delays in finishing the boat had robbed me of one of the most important elements of my plan, the presence and advice of Ron, helping me to learn to understand and sail the yacht. Before we sailed for Portsmouth and the MOCRA Azores Race, he would be able to spend only three hours on the boat.

That evening Ron, John McWilliam, Nick, and I took Harp out into Cork Harbor. Ron did some tuning on the rigging, and John flung up the spinnakers for the people in the clubhouse to see. It was immensely satisfying and a bit unreal finally to see the boat under sail, even if the only headsail we could set was the light genoa, because the headsail reefing system had not yet been rigged. I would not see much of John on the boat, either. His earlier enthusiasm for the project had now been overtaken by a busy sailing season and a full order book for sails.

Harp returned to her mooring in Drake’s Pool, where she would spend most of her time until the Azores trip. Killian, George Bush’s son, turned up to work on the boat as a freelancer, and things began to pick up. He and Nick began working their way through a list of a hundred jobs. In the rare moments when she was not being worked on, I tried to sail Harp. Finally, on a Sunday afternoon, we left Cork Harbor for the first time, even if only for Oysterhaven, a few miles down the coast. I tried my first single-handed maneuvers, jibing and tacking. On the way back up the river we stuck on the mud once and had to swing the boom out and heel the boat to get off. The passage to Drake’s Pool was a bit dicey at low water. There was a lot of water in the bilges when we got home.

Nick was ill for two or three days, but Killian made progress. He had made up with the yard now, and occasionally George dropped by with a forgotten bit of gear or to do some small job. He investigated the leaking and said the boat would have to go back to the yard for a haulout to be repaired. He also casually mentioned that the nuts on the keelbolts were not the specified stainless-steel ones; the yard had been out of those when Harp’s keel was fitted. It was depressing to contemplate delivering the boat into the hands of the yard again, but there seemed no other way.

Two weeks to go. Bill King and Harry McMahon came down on Saturday night for a day’s sail on Sunday. We had dinner at the Royal Cork and met a Dutchman, Eilco Kasemien, who was about to set off for Iceland on his wishbone ketch for his OSTAR qualifying cruise.

The day of Bill’s and Harry’s arrival had not been without incident. Killian didn’t turn up to work on the boat, as it was raining. It was spring tide and there was a southeasterly wind blowing, which pushed Harp’s stern in toward shore. As the tide receded, her rudder grounded on the last bit of a shelf, which was usually underwater. Nick and I rowed out and got as much weight forward as we could to see if she could be floated off. She was stuck fast. We sat in the pulpit with the life raft and the anchor for three hours waiting for the tide to turn. The rudder moved freely when she floated, and we breathed a sigh of relief that no apparent damage had been done.

Sunday morning dawned chill and foggy. Bill, Harry, and I motored down as far as the yacht club and picked up a mooring to wait for the weather to clear. Later in the afternoon we poked a nose into the harbor to find three hundred yards of visibility and foghorns everywhere. We repaired again to Drake’s Pool, having never set a sail. Bill felt, though, that he had at least had a good look at the boat and would not feel quite so much a stranger when we left for England. He and his son, Tarka, a Guards officer in London, would arrive on the twenty-third to help prepare the boat for sailing on the twenty-fifth.

On Monday George came by and we arranged that I would take Harp to the yard on the morning tide on Thursday (it is possible to get over a bar to the quay at the yard only two hours before or after high water). Killian did more work one day and didn’t show on another. A man came and examined me for my radio-telephone license and very helpfully searched out some additional information on billing for telephone calls and telegrams via shore stations. On Wednesday a brief letter arrived from Eve Palmer. She and her husband, Alan, had been among my closest friends in London. Alan and I had worked together as co-creative directors at an advertising agency, and had remained close after we had both left the agency. The letter said, “Dear Stuart, my dear Alan died of a heart attack on Monday, the 7th. Love, Eve.” Alan was a year older than I. I sat in the car in front of the post office and reread the letter for half an hour. Its meaning would not change. I would have difficulty thinking about anything else for days.

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 until 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.

14 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 every 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.

I was up at the crack of dawn to let the workmen on the boat and spent most of a frantic day shopping for gear I hadn’t been able to find in Ireland. Shirley turned up in the afternoon, and I gave her a list of things to do. The Bird was not far behind. I had not been able to find a decent place to stay in Gosport, and since I had to go to Lymington anyway to exchange a broken meter at Brookes & Gatehouse and collect the new Dynafurl from Jeremy Rogers, I booked us in at The Angel there. We made a mad dash for Lymington in her car in order to get there before closing time and just made it. Bill Green, Rogers’s man in charge of Dynafurls, broke the news that the replacement hadn’t arrived, then gave me tools and instructions on repairing the existing unit. I left instructions to send the replacement on to the Azores so that it would be there when we arrived.

On top of this, The Bird was unhappy. She was unhappy about the sleeping arrangements, unhappy about being in Lymington, and only moderately appeased by a good dinner at Limpets. Next morning she was unhappy about waiting at the post office to see if the replacement Dynafurl would arrive at the last minute, and she pitched a fit when I kept her waiting at a chandlery while I bought other last-minute gear. The drive back to Gosport was completed in stony silence, and our farewell was very abbreviated. That night I noted in my diary, “... sometimes I am a very bad judge of women.”

Angus Primrose joined us for lunch at the local pub (Bill and Tarka had returned from London) and gave us a soothing account of his part in the Azores and Back Race. The wind, said Angus, had never blown more than twenty-five knots and he had been supremely comfortable throughout. He made a suggestion or two about gear arrangements, and then we were hard at work again. At closing time Camper put Harp back into the water. She looked in very good shape, but we still had ahead of us the job of restowing all her gear and the food. That evening Bill, Shirley, and I took the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight for the pre-race party in Bembridge. There were twenty-four hours before the start of the race, and it was the first time the three of us had been together.

Tarka and Anita met us at the party, and we relaxed for a bit and chatted with some of the other competitors. Mike Ellison, of the Amateur Yacht Research Society, was competing in a borrowed trimaran, and I met Bill Howell of Tahiti Bill, the Australian dentist, and Brian Cooke of Triple Arrow, the sailing bank manager. Both were OSTAR veterans, and I had been looking forward to talking with them about the race, but with time so short, that would have to wait until our arrival in Horta.

Bill returned to Norris Castle with Anita and Tarka, and Shirley and I got the last ferry off the island. When we arrived at the marina we found Richard Clifford asleep on Harp’s deck and invited him in. Ominously, Shirley was complaining of not feeling well, but I was too tired to take much notice.

Next morning, she was worse and running a temperature. We put her into a pilot berth and worked around her. Richard tackled a dozen jobs on deck while I emptied the boat of her stores and prepared to restow them. Shirley had pared down our Quinnsworth groceries to what we would need for the three of us, plus some for my trip back to Ireland. Bill and Anita arrived and Anita sat on the dock, resplendent in a large sun hat, and took notes for a stowage plan as I hustled grub onto the yacht. Bill pronounced himself uneasy about the whole thing. Richard kept looking at the shambles and shaking his head. “You’ll never make it,” he kept saying. Tension mounted. Then the committee types began coming round and muttering about Shirley’s illness. She was refusing to see a doctor, and they didn’t like it. I discussed it with Shirley and Bill and proposed a solution. Shirley had been looking forward to the race for weeks, and I was reluctant to disappoint her because of what might be only a twenty-four-hour bug.

“Look,” I said to the committee, “we’ll take her down the Channel with us. She’ll probably get better. If she gets worse, there are a dozen places we can quickly put her ashore. If she’s not better by Plymouth we’ll put her ashore there.” The committee didn’t like it. I pointed out that we weren’t violating any race rules. The skipper of a yacht is responsible for deciding who races with him. Bill pointed out that he was the skipper and he had agreed to this plan. The committee said we’d be disqualified if we arrived in Horta without the minimum specified crew of three. They offered us another girl as crew. I pointed out that we would be disqualified if we changed crews within twenty-four hours of the start, and the start was five hours away. They said they’d overlook that. I asked why then wouldn’t they overlook the three-crew rule? Harp was built as a single-handed boat; two could handle her easily enough. The rule was obviously aimed at some of the bigger multihulls. They hemmed and hawed. I was beginning to get annoyed. We had much to do and little time to do it. They were wasting what we had left. I finally told them, as politely as I could, that we had made a decision which did not violate the rules and that that was it, so to please go away and let us get on with it. They finally did.

Bill and Richard were still expressing doubts about our being ready for the start, and finally I exploded. “Look,” I said, “we have five hours to finish what has to be done. If we don’t make it, we won’t start, but let’s stop wasting time and get on with it. Don’t anybody say to me again we won’t make it, okay?” Everybody went back to work.

The race was to start at seven o’clock in the evening. Incredibly, by five-thirty we were finished. Everything was stowed and Richard had accomplished a lot of absolutely essential work on deck. We had just time to dash for a shower. That finished, we pulled up at the fuel dock just in time to catch the attendant before he left for the day. We took on diesel, then left Richard on the fuel dock. We would not have made it on time without him. We motored out to the line with the main up and immediately found a fouled genoa halyard. I had to go up the mast to clear it but, fortunately, the sheltered waters were flat and motion at the top of the mast was minimal. I took a moment for a look at the view. There were fourteen yachts on the line, only two of them monohulls, Harp and Gypsy Moth V, being sailed by Giles Chichester, Sir Francis’s son. There were a number of large multihulls, in the fifty-foot range, and a number of smaller cruising types. It was a very pretty sight in the late-afternoon sun.

We started badly. The seaward end of the starting line was to be an anchored trimaran, the committee boat. However, there was also another trimaran anchored nearby, a spectator boat, and we mistook that for the committee boat. We started third from last. But we had started.