GREAT SEAMANSHIP
INTRODUCED BY
TOM CUNLIFFEBlown Away
by Herb Payson
$16.95. Order
online from
paracay.comWritten in the stars
NEARING LANDFALL AT A PACIFIC ATOLL IN THE DAYS BEFORE GPS, AMERICAN SKIPPER HERB PAYSON
BEGINS TO HAVE SERIOUS DOUBTS ABOUT HIS SEXTANT NAVIGATION SKILLSF
or years, Herb and Nancy Payson delighted
readers of Sail magazine in America with
their practical column ‘Things that work’.
All I knew about Herb and Nancy was that
they were numbered among those highly
competent US sailors of apparently infi nite resource who
seem able to fi x anything. I gathered little about their
character until I discovered two books by Herb describing
their cruising in the South Pacifi c: Blown Away and Yo u
Can’t Blow Home Again are eye-openers.
Herb, it turns out, was a piano man in California bars for
the fi rst part of his life. It was doing this that he met
Nancy, a cocktail waitress. Their love of life and each other
outgrew the smoky dens of their occupation and they
bought what seemed a likely boat and sailed away.
Reading these grand books you soon realise that Herb,
who is no longer with us, is a man you would have enjoyed
drinking with and that he and Nancy weren’t about to
quit, no matter how badly things turned out. Back in the
1970s their voyaging was guided entirely by sun and stars.
Those of us who have been there understand how the
attendant uncertainty can sometimes test the inner man.
In this account of a passage to the atoll of Tarawa from
points north entitled ‘Honor thy sextant’, Herb reveals all.
Read on and be thankful for GPS...
At dawn the wind dropped, and we started the
engine. A line of position from my morning
sun shot was convenient, as it was virtually
congruent with our desired course. All we had to do was
power south-south-east past Butaritari, but at 1130 the
engine stopped. Three hours later, I’d gotten it running
again. No more need be said, but I’d broken my resolution
not to drink a cocktail before sundown.
I wasn’t nervous. Clear skies guaranteed a star fi x. I was
confi dent I could pinpoint our position at sundown and
set a safe course to pass the atoll at night. I prepared for
the sights carefully, worked out the stars’ probable
positions and altitudes so that I could identify each one,
and took my sights quickly. It went like clockwork until I
plotted the lines. The result was a total screw-up. All I
could de pend on was that we were somewhere in a circle
whose diameter was 15 miles. We were between 2 and 17
miles northwest of the island. For a veteran, this was
shameful. My disorientation had begun.
We passed Butaritari in pitch darkness somewhere
around 9pm. It was unmistakable. In olden times, local
navigators sailed these islands successfully for decades by
properly interpreting wave patterns. The navigator,
always an older man, often lay in the bottom of the canoe
so as not to be distracted by anything other than the
waves, and would direct the helmsman from there. Now
the lee of Butaritari was so evident that we must have
passed the atoll at a distance of between fi ve and eight
miles: no less than fi ve, because even with a full moon we
never saw it; no more than eight because the lee was so
pro nounced and lasted approximately the length of the
island. It was so obvious, I considered putting away my
sextant and spending the rest of the passage lying on the
cabin fl oor.A feeling of apprehension
Before we reached the lee, however, I suffered a couple of
hours of apprehension. If I could be that far off, there was
really no telling where we were. We were now in the area of
the strongest and most capricious currents. We could
only rely on my sights and they, in my opinion, had
become unpredictable.
We sailed close-hauled, roughly due south, and I did not
expect to sight Abaiang, as with leeway and probable
current we would be pushed too far to the west. My 7pm
star sight was far from excellent, but it was passable and I
was heartened. We were 15 miles west and a little south of
Abaiang, approximately where my dead reckoning put us.
I decided that we should continue south to the same
latitude as Betio, the south-westernmost mote on Tarawa,
after which we’d tack and head east-north-east. Tarawa is
16 miles long in a north-south direction, and with such a
target I fi gure we’d be bound to hit some part of it. At 3am
we tacked and were able to maintain a course only 10
degrees north of true east. If things went according to ›Colourful
character: Herb
Payson at the
helm of Sea Foam