ATLANTIC CROSSING
seafarers donated anything they could: books, charts,
fish, tins of meat and cartons of eggs. People constantly
glared at the two boys on the bijou boat, staring and
calling for their mates as we pulled up in a harbour,
dwarfed by comparison with the smallest of yachts.
As we crossed the border to Portugal, we stumbled
upon more and more eccentric singlehanders. People
who had embraced the cruising lifestyle to such an extent
that they simply wouldn’t exist on land. We would hang
out with them in the evenings, and they would impart to
us nuggets of wisdom; mostly about sailing, but also
philosophy, women, culture and life. They all shared the
mutual belief that the permanently land-bound could
never be completely sane, and it wasn’t long before we
started to think the same way.
I had made it to the Algarve by autumn. Harry was
gone, taken away to the Alps by a girl in a van, and I
had decided it was time for some more serious cruising. I
needed some time to remodel my boat; I had to turn my
weekend cruiser into a capable, ocean-going yacht. It
seemed logical to tackle the hardest problem first –
self-steering. Along with my step-dad, we produced a
collection of sketchy plans for a stainless vane based on
the pioneering Hasler design.HOMEMADE SELF-STEERING
At the back of a boatyard in Vilamoura, I found Sergio,
a stainless fabricator who knew a few words of English.
We used odd bits of stainless steel and a few sprayhood
fittings – and in half a day we had made, I hoped, a light,
simple and robust self-steering mechanism. It was
straightforward. The horizontal wind vane is connected
to a trim-tab on the back of the rudder via an adjustable
linkage. Changes in the apparent wind are detected by
the wind vane, which pressures the trim tab and causes
the rudder to swing in the opposite direction, bringing
the boat back on course.
Keith Buchanan, an old friend from the Scillies, heard
about my plans and offered to knock up a combined
sprayhood and hatch garage. I bent a frame out of
stainless and sent the measurements to Keith, who sent
back something that loosely resembled a small,
submarine conning tower. It was unique, and I liked it –
suddenly being at sea in a small boat became
considerably more comfortable.
Over the week-long passage to the Canaries, I
managed to test the vane in a handful of different
conditions – I concluded that it was fantastic, by far our
greatest creation. It even worked running before light
winds. My heart sank slightly when the moderate
northerly died into sheet glass, and a light wind filled in
from the south. With only 18 feet of waterline, Flying
Cloud wasn’t really the ideal boat for windward work.
Nevertheless, the wind didn’t exceed Force 3, and the sea
remained flat. These were my favourite sailing
conditions, a steady boat at a constant heel – hugely
better than wallowing downwind like a pig in mud.
The deep-red sun set into the horizon in front of me
as I sailed between the towering, uninhabited orange
islands around the north of the Canaries. I poled out the
jib and goose-swung along the north coast of La
Graciosa. The sheer beauty of the situation was
overwhelming, and the rewarding feeling of reaching“All I really wanted in life was to go
sailing, and now I had the chance”S
unlight penetrated through the gaps in the
planking, each seam projecting golden bows
of light over the dark mahogany interior.
Brittle flakes of paint, warped and cracked
by time, curled into waves revealing the
pale, dehydrated skin of the wooden
surfaces. Outside, I sat on a wooden block and
inspected my latest purchase. A pretty little carvel
bermudan sloop – characteristic of her time – with a
mahogany coachroof, coamings, and some rather
distinctive Perspex caravan windows.
She had a long keel and a shallow draught – with a
full midship section, fine ends and a raked transom.
Five years on legs had nudged one of the topside
planks out of line – and cracks in the oak deadwood
opened up like deep river valleys. There was no rot and
the hull was sound: after five years laid up she had dried
out like a raisin. Fortunately for me, I had access to an
indispensable resource – Dave Cockwell, in my eyes the
best all-round boatbuilder in the country, is my step-dad- and I had an entire boatyard at my disposal. All I really
wanted in life was to go sailing, and now I had the
chance. For a few months, I hid away in a small tent at
the back of the yard to re-establish Flying Cloud as the
capable cruising yacht that I knew she could be.
The satisfaction I felt from seeing her rigged and
painted for the first time, standing on her legs at the top
of the slipway, was like nothing I had ever known. The
rising tide crept up the slipway, slowly engulfing her keel
and garboards. Inside the cabin, beads of water ran
down the planking as she began to take up. Even though
she was leaking like a lobster pot, it was so rewarding to
see her floating for the first time.
After a few weeks of sailing around Falmouth, a
period of northwesterlies provoked a passage to Brittany.
Both my best friend Harry and I had just finished
university, and the sense of freedom was irrepressible. A
fortnight before my 21st birthday – with no real plan or
objective – we loaded up Flying Cloud and sailed south.
We missed the festival at Brest but made it just in time
for the party at Douarnenez, which was shortly followed
by a few more parties at Hoedic, Ile de Ré, and La
Rochelle. Every day seemed to encompass rich sunshine
and gentle northerlies – enticing us further south – and it
wasn’t long before we arrived in Spain.
INTO A ROUTINE
Within weeks, our dream-like summer holiday turned
into a daily routine. We drank strong coffee for
breakfast, surfed in the mornings and in the afternoon
we cast our lines and cruised to the next harbour, river
or anchorage down the coastline. In the evenings we
mingled with new friends, sharing meals, stories and red
wine. We walked, rowed, cycled, hitchhiked – constantly
scouring charts, maps, and pilots for remote waves and
uncrowded anchorages. Other cruisers, fishermen, and