wasn’t until I was securing the last halyard coil with four reefs
securely tucked in and a wind now nudging gale force that the boat
fell off a steep sea and caught me napping. Fortunately I was on the
‘uphill’ side when I was thrown off my feet. If I’d been to leeward
I’d have gone over the wall in the dark and that would have been
that. As it was, the wave tossed me against the mast like a rag doll,
right where the Norwegian builders had sensibly sited a massive
winch drum for heaving in the anchor. Even though we’d never
used this, I’d replaced it when shaping up the new spar because it
looked as though it ought to be there. Now I wished I hadn’t. The
iron barrel, all freshly painted with silverette, crunched into my
chest and I felt the ribs cave in.
My wife got me below, brewed up the ritual mug of ‘warm sweet
tea’, then dug out the First Aid book. The availability of piped
medical advice at the turn of a radio button lay in the distant future.
Besides, we had no SSB, so the written word was our only hope. It
offered two alternatives for suspected broken ribs. Either bind them
for support, or don’t bother. Great. We tried strapping up my chest
but the pricking felt worse. The manual also advised that there was
little to be done beyond keeping comfortable and resting, so we
binned the bandages, stayed hove-to for the night, took things easy
and handed the cure to Mother Nature.
With sunrise, the disturbance had blown away to wake up
Castro, leaving clear blue skies, flying fish and Force 5 over the
quarter once again. I was immediately fretting for more sail, but
my wife banned me from the deck except to appear twice daily to
shoot the sun and tell her which way to point the bowsprit.
She was delighted the boat was deep-reefed because we had fair
wind, favouring current and were making five knots as it was.
There were only 600 miles to go, so we would be there in less
than a week, and under such short canvas the boat could stand a
great deal of wind if it came our way.
The weather stayed fair and we crept into the outer harbour at
Charleston one morning. The flying fish had veered off back to the
tropics and frost sparkled on the decks at dawn, but I was mending
slowly and arriving would have been almost boring if we’d had an
engine to slide us into the town marina. I still wasn’t much use to
anyone, but, with so little canvas set, the tiller was super-light so I
could steer with my hips. We luffed up off an empty hammerhead,
my wife let go the jib traveller, got the sail in, then dumped the rest
of the canvas in a heap. As the last of our way came off, she slung
out the anchor and we were riding sweetly twenty yards off the
berth. She hove a line to a couple of likely loafers on the dock-end
and they hauled us in as she surged away the anchor cable.
The port doctor agreed with the First Aid book; a few weeks
later I was fit for light duties and we both found jobs. A chief
artificer who had served his working life maintaining the 16-inch
gun turrets on USS Missouri waved a wand over our drive unit – a
‘cracked wobble plate’, he said it was. So now we knew! He never
charged us a dime. Instead we shared a six-pack of Bud with him
then squared away up the Intracoastal Waterway in the spring
sunshine, bound for new adventures.
I see only two conclusions to this series of events: a sailor with
no engine on a boat cut to the basics will learn things his pal with
horse-power and a cheque book never discovers, and everyone
loves a young couple with an empty wallet and a strong will to
survive, especially if they are in America.H
aving no bank balance is not all bad for a young
sailor. It keeps him out of the pubs and it gives him a
sense of priorities. My first serious cruiser was
acquired in a state of dire poverty. She was a proper
Colin Archer gaff cutter. The real business. Whether she was built
near Oslo by the great man himself remains unproven, but her lines
were so sexy that it’s hard to imagine anyone else having a hand in
her design. With the exception of the mast (you may have read
about the replacement in December’s CB) and a big frame with an
annoying pocket of sapwood that needed a strict talking-to, her
structure was in good fettle. The mechanics were another story.
Her engine was installed by a previous owner who hadn’t
pinched his pennies and we both deserved better from the
manufacturers. The Volvo Penta was capable of delivering
occasional periods of reliability, but the gearbox was a complete
car-crash. The boat’s run was much too fine for a centre propeller,
so she’d been fitted with an early hydrostatic drive. Dear old
‘Ovlov’ turned a pump serving a drive-pod bolted outside the
planking. The mysteries lurking inside this spawn of the devil used
to lock up regularly and, once stalled, nothing could be done
without hauling the boat and hiring an expensive hydraulics expert.
Far from home, I had funds for neither, so my wife and I sailed
engineless for much of the time.
We soon found ocean cruising without the hassle of fixing
machinery positively liberating. Giving up on the gearbox freed my
mind to concentrate on hull, rig and the finer points of boat
handling which, I discovered, were the things that really mattered.
After a year or so I became quite adept.
This, then, was the scene when we two found ourselves in
St Croix preparing for a passage home to Blighty. The usual route
via Bermuda and the Azores didn’t appeal, partly because we had
no cash and Bermuda sounded pricey, but the main reason was that
we wanted to take a look at the United States. Charleston, South
Carolina, lay only 1,300 miles to the northwest and much of the
trip promised to be a reach in the trade winds. Previous experience
indicated that, in America, people willing to work can always turn
a few dollars by the sweat of their brows, even without green cards
to make it official. We fancied taking the Intracoastal Waterway
north, but without power this was a non-starter. With a pocket
refilled with fresh dollars the boat could be lifted out to see if some
passing genius might fix our unholy gearbox.
We sailed in April and were in good heart as the brave northeast
wind drove us on past Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and the Turks and
Caicos. We were enjoying a grand shove from the Antilles current
when a heavy squall clobbered us to windward of San Salvador
with Cuba far away on the beam. Squalls are everyday events in the
northeast trades, so we were used to this. Because reefing the
long-boomed cutter took ten minutes and involved heaving to, our
usual policy was simply to run her off and soften the apparent
wind until things quietened down, but this squall wasn’t for
subsiding any time soon. Darkness was falling and the shallow
water of the Bahamas lay close to leeward so we went for the
low-stress option of reefing right down and losing no ground.
The trades had been blowing at force 5-6 so we were already
under a small jib with two reefs in the main and the full staysail
when we backed the headsails and toddled forward to sort the gear.
Sometimes I feel that providence is looking after me, because it