LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
Pacific
survival
Author, artist and serial solo circumnavigator
Webb Chiles reached safety after a fortnight
adrift in a 5ft inflatable following a pitchpole
T
his extract is from A Single
Wave – a book by Webb
Chiles which includes his
1979 voyage on Chidiock
Tichborne, an 18ft open
Drascombe Lugger. He has
already sailed from San Diego to the
South Pacific. Fourteen days before the
narrative begins he was pitchpoled,
swamped and kept afloat only by the
boat’s air tanks. The rig was badly
damaged leaving him drifting. Unable to
clear the boat of water because of the
open centreboard case, he launched his
inflatable and settled down to drift with the
current towards the New Hebrides.In the last light, I searched for land.
There was none. I wrapped myself in
the tarp and tried to settle in for the long
night of broken sleep. How many more
long days and nights: four? Forty? A
hundred and four? And what was at the
end: an island? A ship? Death? I drifted on.The blackness that came in the night
was a cliff. I went to sit in the chest-deep
water, trying to steer the swamped
Chidiock Tichborne clear of an island
which, after promising life when I first
spotted it, had become just another face
of death.
Through rain-streaked glasses, I caught
a glimpse of the ghostly line of surf at the
base of the cliff, less than a quarter mile
away. If we drifted much closer, I would
have to abandon Chidiock and take my
chances in the inflatable. But I did not
know if I could row the dinghy in such
waves, now more than ten feet high and
growing steeper as the long swell from the
open ocean touched the rising seabed
below.
My body was filled with numbness and
pain. The tiller and all of Chidiock but the
mast were below the water. We were
‘sailing’ on the 20 square feet of chafing
patch on the mainsail. I only hoped that by
keeping the bow pointed in the direction ofa broad reach, we might clear this island.
From the waist down I had lost
sensation, except for agony when I
bumped the ulcers on my feet and ankles
against the fibreglass floor. My back and
neck were on fire. Always the fire
smouldered and at intervals it flared into a
spasm of white-hot pain. There was
nothing to do at such moments but hang
onto the tiller and wait for the pain to pass.
Don’t fail me, body. Don’t fail before the
sky begins to lighten.
A wave loomed high above me, the
highest wave I had seen from Chidiock, a
wall of water as high as the yawl was long.
Here we go, I thought. This one is going
to break. Chidiock started up the steep
rise. The wave lifted me from her. I clung
to the tiller, no longer steering, just
hanging on until the tiller pointed straight
up and I was floating at arm’s length
above the submerged hull. Within a few
yards the comber disappeared into the
darkness, but I heard its roar as it“