I spent the Christmas of 2005 in the Snowdonia region of Wales with Cyndi, staying at a the Betws Inn near Beddgelert. On Christmas Day we hiked to the top of Mount Snowden. At 1085m, it's the highest point in Wales. From there, looking to the west, we could get a narrow glimpse between the peaks of a patch of the Irish Sea.
How completely unaware I was that two and one half years later I would be sailing north through that very stretch of water, look back east onto this mountain range, being only hours away from finishing a circumnavigation of the globe.
Only a few days later, still in December of 2005, the sequence of events began that have led me to this moment now; sitting on my boat Uniquely Singapore where she gently rocks in her home port of Gosport's Royal Clarence Marina, finishing up the last details of my life towards and, eventually, on the sea.
Everyone's gone. The boat has been empty since Friday, the 11th, when we finished sailing it back here from the race finish in Liverpool. Repeatedly in these last few days I've been just short of being overcome with emotion at the sight of familiar sidewalks, familiar buildings, and familiar people behind the counters in restaurants, some of whom have become good friends.
I haven't been able to bring myself to turn one particular corner, however, one that would bring my old apartment's balcony into view. I so loved living there. I miss it like a friend.
I leave this boat and this town later today, flying out of nearby Southampton tomorrow for Nice, France, then on to Italy by train...and on to so many new adventures.
In that late December of 2005, once back in London after the weekend in Wales, I saw an ad in the Tube (London's subway) for the '07-'08 Clipper Ventures Race, a round the world yacht race for amateurs. Though it mentioned that further information would be available at the upcoming London Boat show just a week away, I think my fate was sealed in that moment alone.
I'd known of this concept: a circumnavigating race sailed by amateurs able to pay their own expenses. I'd heard of it through two sources. My brother had heard of it 16 years ago and half-jokingly suggested that he'd pay my way if I was interested. It was not the time, however. in 1992 I was a single father of a ten year old daughter.
I came across the concept again several years later in Pete Goss' book, "Against The Wind." He writes about his experiences in developing the training program for the BOC Challenge, the first amateur circumnavigating race founded by Chay Blyth (well known to any Brit but probably unheard of by any other nationality). Intrigued again, I thought that one day this would be something I'd want to do.
When I saw that ad in the London Tube for the Clipper Ventures race, the other amateur circumnavigating race (and now the only one, as Chay Blyth's company went bankrupt shortly after I signed up for the Clipper Ventures race), I knew that the time was right. I had the time, the means, and the desire.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
After our slow and peaceful departure out of Nova Scotia, we ran into our first storm half way across the Grand Bank.
This imposed many cold and wet headsail changes in heaving seas during each of our four hour long watches. The fickle winds also required numerous calls for trim checks, which required at least four of the watch to leave the security of the cockpit and scramble onto the heaving, heeling and slippery deck, one of whom who will become entirely soaked at the bow.
In times like these, all anyone thinks of doing off-watch is seeking the comfort of one’s bunk, but they’re rarely the refuge we’d like it to be in these kinds of seas. Those in the forward bunks (such as myself) are repeatedly launched a few inches into the air as the bows flips up a wave crest before we slam back down, accompanied by a resounding “WHAM!” of the hull doing the same (followed by the nerve-wracking “boing a woing a woing” of the rigging absorbing the torsion loads).
For most of this voyage as I’d lay in my bunk hearing those sounds during passages through rough seas, I’d marvel at the strength of these boat and their rigging. After the two dismastings on the way to
Sleep, as one would normally think of it, isn’t to be found at such times. We would just try to get as much rest as we can in a few short hours before returning back into the storm we’d been enduring.
One evening as I laid awake in my bunk while the storm continued to build, I felt the boat “hove to,” the nautical term for setting the head sails and mainsail in opposition to each other to bring the boat to a complete halt in the water, something we normally only do to deal with overwhelming circumstances on deck.
When I came on watch 30 minutes later, I learned that we’d hove to in order to drop our Yankee 3 headsail, our smallest headsail used for the strongest of winds. The foredeck crew found it too difficult to control. The off-going crew had been too exhausted to finish the headsail change and we'd been sailing 'bare headed,' without our primary headsail for the last 15 minutes. We, the on-coming watch, were informed it was now our task to hank on and hoist the storm jib, our last resort headsail, heavily built and laughably small in size.
I followed Koh, our watch leader, and Michelle onto the foredeck. Michelle took up the forward position of standing on the pulpit, facing back to toward the boat to receive the hanks on the leading edge of the sail from Koh, ahead of me, while I assisted him in lifting sections of the sail off the deck. We were positioned as in the picture below, taken during a much calmer headsail change.
At the bow in this pounding storm, it was difficult to get anything accomplished at all. It was quickly obvious why the preceding crew was well content that the watch change brought new energy into the headsail change. Every minute the bow would crest and be flipped up violently by an oncoming wave, tossing us into the air a small distance above the deck. The motion reminded me of how my dog would flip a treat I'd place on her nose into the air to catch and eat it in one quick motion.
Though levitated to only perhaps a hand's width off the deck, we and the bow when then fall and accelerate together a vast distance down to the bottom off the wave's trough, so that we'd slam down much harder at the bottom than our distance elevated of the deck would imply.
Though our time of being airborne each time was perhaps only just over a full second, it seem to give one all the time one needed to check where each appendage was floating in space and to ensure that nothing unfriendly was immediately below them. There are so many 'ankle biters' on the foredeck; folded sails, spinnaker poles, spinnaker pole storage brackets, etc., that I'm amazed we survived the entire circumnavigation without a single sprained or, worse, broken ankle.
All this airborne time is manageable unless waves are also breaking across the deck.
If you are airborne and hit by one, you're set into a backward motion which leaves you unsure of just where you'll land.
Such was the case that evening. Repeatedly I'd be tossed up and washed back the full length of my tether, jerked to a halt and snapped back down on the deck at the same time, then crawl back up to my position only to have it happen again.
This late in the circumnavigation and only trying to improve our position from Eighth to Seventh, enduring conditions this harsh to do a racing headsail change seemed a useless exercise. I didn't think it worth the risk of injury to anyone. I turned back to the helm and improvised a hand signal suggesting that I thought we should hove to, just as the previous watch had done when dropping the headsail.
Angie on the helm understood and conveyed my request below to Skipper Mark. I knelt facing her, clinging to the inner forestay, and watched her body language in the ensuing conversation she had with those down below. In a moment she looked up and back at me, shook her head, then shrugged and tilted her head to one side. I knew what that meant; Sorry. Nothing I can do for you. I knew what the skipper had said; Carry on. It's a race. Hanking a sail on in high winds isn't near as difficult as bringing one down.
I accepted this indifferently. I did not feel all that threatened but it was in conditions similar to these that our race's single Man Overboard had taken place. It had occurred in the absolutely worse scenario: at night and in the Southern Ocean.
Someone on the deck, while airborne in the usual way, had been hit by a wave from the side, not the front, and had been high enough in the air that he'd cleared the guardrail and had come down on the other side, hanging on the side of the bow attached only by his safety tether. Those on deck spent unbearably long seconds struggling to haul him back on board but the snap buckle of the crotch strap on his PFD apparently had been damaged and gave way, allowing him to slip out the bottom of his harness and into the rolling waves in the dark without any floation or even the light all our PFD's have to help in a night retrieval.
He kicked off his boots and took off his jacket, which were pulling him down, and tread water in 15C (59F) water wearing nothing more than what you might wear on a brisk fall day, watching the lights of his boat struggle to come to a halt.
He was recovered in nine minutes, thanks to excellent seamanship, teamwork and perhaps mostly to the good fortune that there was a small strip of reflective material on the back collar of his light jacket. This was picked up by someone's flashlight. His chief complaint, aftwards, was that upon recover he wasn't deemed to have been hypothermic. He was not, as he'd anticipated, stripped naked and put into a sleeping back with another naked humang being who he'd presumed would be one of the many beautiful women on his crew.
He recovered fully from the incident. His watch leader did not fare as well, I've been told. A bear of a man capable of immense feats of strength, he'd had a deathgrip on the man's jacket as everyone available had worked to pull the victim back onboard. When the snap buckle failed, his grasp failed as well. For months afterwards he was emotionally haunted merely by the devastating possibilities of what might have happen that night, unable to accept the happy ending as the final act. Had the man not been found, he would have felt responsible.
Life on the water isn't just about the water. It's about the people and how you feel about them.
Michelle, Koh, and I worked as hard as we could to hank on the storm jib that evening, though I'm not particularly sure I made much of a contribution. I seemed to spend more time being washed back and crawling forward than I did actually applying any force to the sail itself. Michelle, standing precariously on the pulpit and clinging to the forestay with one hand while the other worked the sail, fought bravely against the wind and the boat's motion. I felt a sense of admiration for her tenacity. Every time we were launched into the air, she'd drop the sail and apply both hands to the forestay, waiting to land again before resuming her efforts.
It took us 30 minutes to accomplish what otherwise would have been done in five.
My PFD had auto-inflated from all the sea that had poured over me so, once we were all back in the cockpit, I continued down below to replace my CO2 cylinder and to repack my PFD. While I worked below, Michelle came down, too, and moved past me with movements heavier than would have been dictated by the motions the storm imposed on our boat. I thought to tell her how impressed I'd been by her effort but felt it might have been not the thing to say, so I was silent.
After I'd worked on my PFD for yet several more minutes, I looked back into the sleeping quarters and was surprised to see Michelle sitting on her heels on a sail, slumped against a bulkhead with her head down and against the bulkhead as well, her arms falling loosely over her bent legs. I went back and placed a hand on her lightly, asking if she was okay. Almost inaudibly she answered, "I've injured my shoulder. Just give me a minute. I'll be okay."
"You were amazing up there," I said and left her to recover at her own pace.
For two days she was unable to take the helm, so severely had her efforts at the bow sprained both shoulders.
Two weeks later, as we cruised into Liverpool on the morning of July 5th as a fleet, Michelle was at the helm. It hadn't been a conscious choice the crew had made but, as with my being on the helm while crossing the final finish line the night before, simply the random order of turns.
I stood by her, basking in the moment of the end of our adventure. "I can't believe I'm bringing our boat in on this river," she told me. "This is my town. This is my river. I was raised here. I can't believe I'm bringing us in on this river."
The more she spoke aloud, the more emotional she became. "This is my river. This is my river." Congratulations and hugs were being passed around by all and a few of us noticed the emotional depth of the moment for Michelle. We stood back by her, enjoying her emotions as much as our own.
Her eyes grew visibly moist and she was on the verge of tears of happiness as I took her picture, chronicling her great moment as well as all of our own.
I, too, got misty-eyed just taking the picture. It was over.
