146
I
t was very windy and
about to get much wind-
ier. In the early spring of
1986, aboard the 60-foot cata-
maran British Airways, we were
less than 48 hours into our
transatlantic record attempt
when the whole show started
going extremely sideways.
Skipper Robin Knox-Johnston
— already a legend, having
become the fi rst sailor to circle
the globe alone and nonstop
less than two decades earlier —
gathered the crew in the cat’s
rather cramped cockpit to out-
line the situation.
Robin explained that the
low-pressure system we’d
waited several days in New
Jersey to latch onto — the plan
had been to ride the low from
Ambrose Light, off New York
City, to Lizard Point, at the
mouth of the English Channel
— had morphed into a monster
storm that was about to over-
take us.
Had we been farther east, he
said, we could have turned and
run before the heavy souther-
lies, but because we were due
south of the Grand Banks,
that was no longer an option;
the fast cat would tear into the
relative shallows in hours. So
the idea was to reduce sail and
claw our way to weather, and if
that didn’t work, stream warps
off the bows and essentially
park and maintain our posi-
tion until the heavy weather
passed.
“Now,” he said, as he once
again reviewed where all the
safety and survival gear was
located, “if we capsize and I’m
swept away ...”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, man,”
I recall thinking. “Can you
please slow down and run that
past me again?”
This month, as we assem-
ble our annual issue devoted to
multihulls, I am reminded of
my very fi rst off shore trip on
a seagoing catamaran. These
days, of course, cats are every-
where, but that wasn’t the case
30 years ago. My voyage on
British Airways was memorable
for countless reasons.
There were some very
good sailors aboard, includ-
ing Robin’s fellow Brit Josh
Hall and a young Frenchman
named Bernard Gallay, both
of whom would go on to com-
pete in solo round-the-world
races. The record we were
chasing at the time was just
shy of eight days, set by a giant
French trimaran called Royale
2. Realistically, we didn’t
stand much chance of better-
ing it, as British Airways was
a much shorter, heavier boat,
designed by Rod Macalpine-
Downie. (A French sailing
writer derisively nicknamed
her “the truck of the seas.”)
But that didn’t matter to me;
I’d never been on a yacht that
could knock off double-digit
boat speeds for hours and
hours on end. As far as I was
concerned, B.A. did not refer
to the vessel’s initials; nope,
those letters meant Badass.
As it turned out, we got
slapped around pretty well in
the gale, but we kept the boat
moving and emerged whole
and unscathed. The real prob-
lem came in the aftermath,
when the blow had pretty
much sucked the breeze out of
the entire Atlantic Ocean. For
72 hours after the storm, our
engineless cat did little more
than rise and fall on the greasy
leftover swell. It was not a
pleasant ride.
That said, it was still an
adventure. We ate from one
simmering pot the entire way
across, a curry-based concoc-
tion Robin just kept throw-
ing stuff into whenever it got
low. The commode was basi-
cally a hole in the boat with
a toilet seat bolted over it.
Our Spartan sleeping quar-
ters consisted of little more
than a chilled crawlspace dec-
orated with a smiling portrait
of the queen, but at least they
were dry. And when the BBC
reported the news about Libya
being bombed to bejesus, our
captain, an ex-merchant mar-
iner whose politics veered far
to the right, was downright
giddy.
But then the wind picked
up, right on the beam, with
some punch to it. For the next
several days, we ripped off con-
sistent 24-hour runs of well
over 300 miles. In fact, we
knocked off the second half
of the Atlantic in about four
days. If we’d managed that the
whole way, we actually might
have set a new record. But no
matter — to this day it still
stands as some of the best sail-
ing of my life.
To punctuate the journey
once we were tied up in
England, Robin’s sponsor
graciously forked over a
ticket from London to New
York on the Concorde. Talk
about fl ying British Airways!
I thought 12 days across the
Atlantic was pretty darn quick
— until it took me three hours
to get home.
Herb McCormick is Cruising
World’s executive editor.
The 60-foot cat British Airways had few creature comforts,
but when the breeze was on, she could haul the mail.
june/july 2016
cruisingworld.com
A Cat TALE
Then the breeze picked up, right on the beam, with some punch to it. For the next several
days we ripped off consistent 24-hour runs of well over 300 miles.
BY HERB McCORMICK
Off Watch
PPL PHOTO AGENCY