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<\/p>\n
ON THE CREST OF A DREAM<\/h2>\nBY JOHN PASSHORE<\/h3>\n
This June (1988), John Passmore sailed his Rival 32 ‘Largo’ in the Carlsberg Single-handed Transatlantic Race, from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island. He sent back regular reports on his long-range radio to his newspaper, the Evening Standard, to convey to his readers something of his experiences. The following article is made up from some of the newspaper articles:<\/p>\n
\nTUESDAY 31st MAY.<\/p>\n
The greatest moment of my life will arrive at 12 noon on Sunday 5th June. I’m very lucky. Not everyone has such a prompt appointment with ecstasy. That is when I will sail my boat over the starting line of the greatest single-handed race in the world and set course for America.<\/p>\n
Me and 100 others – each with our own reasons for wanting to sail alone across the notoriously violent Atlantic, where the only certainty is that we shall be wet and cold and uncomfortable. We will be permanently tired, often frightened and probably lonely as well. The last time someone came up to me and said “Why?” I told them: “It’s fun, you should try it sometime.” Which is a bit like describing the 1812 Overture as a rather jolly tune.<\/p>\n
For me this is not so much a race as an emotional experience. I’ve been living with it since I was 11. That was 1960 when my parents took me to the Frinton and Walton Yacht Club to hear a lecture by one Francis Chichester, who had just won the first race. I can’t remember much about it except that he showed a slide of half a dozen dolphins diving in formation out of a breaking wave and hoped the race would be organised on a regular basis. I hoped so too. I didn’t want them abandoning it before I had a chance. I took to reading the books in which successful competitors described how ghastly it was for much of the time but how they wouldn’t have missed it for the world and I made my plans: what kind of boat, which route to take, the best way to ride out a storm, that kind of stuff. It’s easy when it’s just a dream.<\/p>\n
The dream crept into reality so slowly that it was impossible to say exactly when it became a fact. All I know is that five years ago, when I sold my little boat and set out to look for one I could stand up in, I was also looking for a boat that would cross an ocean. I found a Rival 32 called ‘Margo’ and my superstition against changing boats’ names relented only to the extent of one letter: I re-christened her ‘Largo’. She might have continued to potter about the Channel if it had not been for an unexpected fortnight when I found myself without a crew. Five days after leaving Poole, I arrived at Santander – feeling as if I would burst with satisfaction.<\/p>\n
Excitement of that kind really ought to be shared. Going out for a solitary meal and hoping for a chatty waitress is not enough. That’s why races like this one are ideal for normal, gregarious people who just happen to like sailing on their own. We’re an assorted bunch because this race is like that. On the one hand, you have the gigantic lightweight catamarans and trimarans on huge sponsorship budgets, and then there are the amateurs like me – without a hope of winning – but who view the idea of getting to the other side as a victory in its own right.<\/p>\n
\nMONDAY 6th JUNE.<\/p>\n
The great moment escaped in the confusion. Somewhere in the frenetic melee at the start of the race yesterday, I sailed ‘Largo’ across the line and completely forgot to savour the beginning of an adventure. The full realisation that, after all the planning, the race was finally on, came later when the chaos resolved itself into one of those days so perfect you could splice it onto the end of a Hollywood weepie.<\/p>\n
But first there came the horror movie – the heart-stopping sight of the big yachts bearing down like brightly painted battering rams. The start is generally considered to be the most terrifying part of the race. With 100 boats jockeying for position, all you need is a hatful of wind to turn the regatta into a creditable reconstruction of the Battle of the Nile. To begin with we just drifted about in circles but when the wind did arrive, it merely turned three hours of aimless frustration into a combined competitive spirit not altogether desirable. At least half the skippers threw caution to what winds there were and aimed for the plum spot on the line. And yes, I was one of them.<\/p>\n
I have a vague recollection of not being able to see any water. On one side there was a Norwegian who had cut the front nine inches off his boat to get into a smaller class and on the other a Frenchman who carried a 561b bag of onions and threatened to melt any troublesome icebergs by breathing on them. Ahead there was an American flying an enormous flag and behind me, inevitably, was ‘UAP 1992’, the 60 ft satellite garden centre. The fleet parted before it. ‘Largo, of course, got left behind. This may have had something to do with her age, her comfortable design or even the fact that she was laden with enough duty free stores for both the outward and return voyages, but mostly it was because, ten minutes after King Constantine fired the starting cannon, ‘Largo’s skipper stopped worrying about the other boats and determined instead to enjoy the growing warm wind and sparkling sea as the boat romped past the Eddystone lighthouse towards the distant horizon.<\/p>\n
\nMONDAY 13th JUNE.<\/p>\n
Feeling a little jaded and not much like getting down to work, I threw a party last night. Before the Race Committee reach for the rule book and the bit about no physical contact with other boats at sea, I should explain that this was quite the most extraordinary party I have ever given: None of the guests actually met. It all started on the ‘sked’, the regular chat on the radio, on Saturday morning when James Hatfield silenced us all by remarking that he had been awarded the MBE in the Queen\u2019s Birthday Honours.<\/p>\n
James is a remarkable young man, and the news that he was celebrating his latest honour with a solitary bottle of champagne some 800 miles out in the Atlantic was clearly unacceptable, so when British Telecom’s maritime radio station at Portishead broadcast the weather forecast later that morning, they also announced the award and that a celebration would be held at 1945 GMT. So the evening found me sitting by Largo’s radio in a white silk dinner jacket, neat black tie and with a bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket of Atlantic Ocean at my feet.<\/p>\n
First arrival was Robin Knox-Johnston. He apologised for his oldest jeans, but he was sailing ‘Suhaili’, the boat which took him round the world in 1968 but leaks a bit. He’d spent the day trying to fix the engine. James arrived, saying he’d had terrible trouble getting a cab. Other guests checked in. Later, I drank a silent toast to the guests who couldn’t make it – the many in this race who do not carry a long range radio. For most, it is a matter of finance. Others, of course, really do enter these races for the solitude. As a Frenchman said in Plymouth when I explained about the radio and the Evening Standard: “Then you are not alone.”<\/p>\n
No, I suppose not, but neither am I going round the bend. I really do have a white silk dinner jacket on this boat.<\/p>\n
\nFRIDAY 17th JUNE.<\/p>\n
It was when the beansprouts hit the deck that the facade of civilisation finally cracked. Beansprouts are notorious. If it were only a matter of vitamins, then the Sanatogen tablets would be adequate – but Sanatogen tablets tossed in French dressing don’t really go with pate de canard aux champignons. So beansprouts it had to be and now they are everywhere – and this being a boat and somewhat damp, they are going to grow. By the time we get to America, I’ll have to eat my way out of the cabin.<\/p>\n
The boat’s lurching had caused the beansprouts’ centre of gravity to shift by six feet but this time it was not because we were romping steadily through the waves to Newport, it was because we were becalmed and rolling like a pig on wet clover. As another mariner, whose poetic sensibilities were presumably not interrupted by an airborne larder, once observed; the ocean never sleeps. So even though there are no actual waves, the swell remains, rolling the boat onto her ear and then two seconds later, onto her other ear.<\/p>\n
It’s been like that for two days now. The northerly wind which blew so steadily for a week to send us shooting out into the ocean at unheard of speeds, stayed just long enough to ensure M . Poupon got his record, and then it stopped completely. The red ensign hung like a rag at the stern and the rolling began. It’s best when this happens to pretend it hasn’t, to carry on with the jaunty air of one who knows his right and whose right includes a respectable breeze, and to mumble to oneself: “Ah, ’tis a fine wind, to be sure.”<\/p>\n
This does not, of course, make any difference, but it does stop an otherwise sentient being from degenerating into some lower form of life who stumbles about kicking the furniture. And usually it works. It works very well, in fact, until the beansprouts take to the air. So, when what will certainly prove to have been not the last beansprout was finally retrieved from the bilges, a pathetic admonishing finger emerged from the hatchway and an hysterical voice announced: “Not a hand on a rope. You hear me? Not one finger on a rope until there is wind.”<\/p>\n
And with that the hatch slammed shut.<\/p>\n
\nTUESDAY 21st JUNE.<\/p>\n
Whatever it was that I was looking for in sailing the ocean alone, I believe I found it right here – 1200 miles from Land’s End at 1.30 am.<\/p>\n
It was after a dinner of chicken curry with a great handful of sultanas and a sunset that bled pink and violet across the sky. A sliver of moon was the finishing touch. This was the night to do what I had planned all along. I stood in the hatchway to watch the stars. I had a little book to show me which was which. One day I plan to take the sextant to them.<\/p>\n
All this too was perfect. I found Cassiopeia and Capella, Aldebaran and the Pleiades. And I looked about me at the long pale green carpet of phosphorescence that was the wake. It’s a sight which never palls. Tiny organisms in the water light up as they’re disturbed by the passing of the keel. Any movement in the water turns them on – the bow waves spreading out like green fire, waves in the distance flash like lighthouses on a distant shore.<\/p>\n
And two torpedoes came out of the south and headed straight for the boat.<\/p>\n
They came on at an astonishing speed, leaving long pencil-thin tails of light behind them. Just when it seemed they must hit and I found myself tensed for the explosion, the twin streaks turned and broke the surface with a soft “phot-phot”.<\/p>\n
The dolphins were back. They’d been around on and off all the way , playing about the boat but by night, covered in phosphorescence and to a lone sailor becoming very susceptible to changes in mood, they were unbearably wonderful. There were five of them. They switched and criss-crossed just a few feet below me , their hard supple bodies lit up like incandescent bullets as they passed effortlessly through the water, breathing with that characteristic exhalation.<\/p>\n
I was up in the bows for nearly an hour. The wind increased, sending flurries of spray over my legs, but I couldn’t be the first to go. When they finally left I was stiff and cold. I limped back along the sidedeck and stood for a moment holding onto the rigging and looking out into the night. I called out to them. I called “Goodbye”.<\/p>\n
Foolish, perhaps, but when I sat down, I found I had to wash my glasses. You have to do that when you get salt on them. Salt on the outside means spray, but salt on the inside – that’s emotion.<\/p>\n
\nTHURSDAY 23rd JUNE.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t so very long ago that people in this position suffered from a nasty creeping feeling that at any moment they were going to fall off the edge of the world. I can see their point. For the last fortnight, I’ve been watching the little crosses on the chart pick their way westwards, progressing in a somewhat haphazard fashion towards, not America but the Edge of the Chart.<\/p>\n
The Hydrographer of the Navy presumably drew the North Atlantic four and a half feet wide on the assumption that anyone interested in what was on the other side would be getting there in something big enough to spread it out. But I’ve been looking at the same bit of chart long enough now to believe that the edge represents the edge of the known world and that when I turned it over I’d find vague outlines of half-discovered continents and legends in copperplate script saying “Here be monsters”. Also, I had the uncomfortable feeling that the ocean itself would somehow be represented differently – full of icebergs and covered in fog, for example, which is the traditional recipe for the second half of the race. So this morning, with more trepidation than ceremony, I turned the chart.<\/p>\n
The most startling discovery was that it was clean. The eastern half had a coffee stain the size of Spain, situated just west of Ireland. Spain itself was obliterated with little calculations and the message: “Our galaxy will ultimately collide with the galaxy Andromeda which will cause a disturbance.” (This is something I heard on the World Service and intend to use some day when I need an understatement).<\/p>\n
Even the position fixes had about them an air of uncertainty. Instead of the precise crosses which the Hydrographer had intended, there was a series of dots and asterisks with lines and arrows running between them as if a spider with muddy feet was emigrating. So, if the chart is to be believed, we are now closer to the finish than the start. It’s all downhill from here; at least it is if you don’t inspect the keel too closely and make out the Labrador current, which brings down the icebergs, and the Gulf Stream that tries to push you back to Plymouth.<\/p>\n
Then there are the Newfoundland Grand Banks with their fog and looming trawlers and the notes about “hydrocarbon exploration areas (see caution)”. There’s even a Funk Island, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Come to think of it, the Hydrographer might just as well have written “Here be monsters!’ after all.<\/p>\n
\nTHURSDAY 30th JUNE.<\/p>\n
With only 600 miles to go, it may be a little late but I have at last started racing in earnest. Sitting here in the mess of dripping oilskins, towels that will never dry and an incongruous and discarded pair of carpet skippers, the discomfort is suddenly immaterial. The fact is that there is a gale shrieking out of the south and ‘Largo’ is romping towards the finishing line like a thoroughbred suddenly given her head.<\/p>\n
Purely because I did get up at three this morning, struggle into clammy foul-weather clothes and slithered about the fume-filled deck setting the absolute maximum amount of sail, we are now shooting straight up the sides of the huge Atlantic rollers to break through the crests in a welter of spray and then go crashing into the trough beyond with a thud that shakes the boat from masthead to keel.<\/p>\n
This is what they call \u201cdriving a boat\u201d and is the reason for so many of the entries in this race retiring before they get this far. It is the sort of thing cruising yachtsmen frown on as sheer folly and bad seamanship to boot. But I spent a month rebuilding and strengthening this boat for just this moment and now when she hurls her seven tons from the top of a 20 ft wall of water, it is with a solid satisfying sensation rather like a pantechnicon crushing motorway cones.<\/p>\n
Every time the motion eases, every time I look out of the window and find the sidedecks no longer running with water, I dive once more into those soggy oilies and cram on more sail like some demented clipper captain trying for the record. It hardly seems possible that this is the same pathetic figure who effectively withdrew from the race – not to mention the world at large – just because he was becalmed for two days. Where did this glory-hungry ocean tiger come from?<\/p>\n
The end is somehow tangible now. In fact, with the depth recorder I can touch 60 metres beneath the keel. It might not be what you call shallow water in the normal course of things but it is a singular improvement on figures like 4500 metres which we’ve had for the previous three weeks.<\/p>\n
\nMONDAY 4th JULY.<\/p>\n
As an hallucination, the stranger in the forecabin was hardly convincing, but in a race which is turning out to be not nearly as lonely as its name suggests we’re rather short on the paranormal.<\/p>\n
All the same, it can give you a nasty turn, after a month alone, to be confronted by an oilskin-clad figure standing swaying gently with the motion of the boat. It doesn’t last long, of course, just long enough to realise that this is your own suit of oilskins hanging up to dry.<\/p>\n
Personally, I found it a tremendous disappointment. I’ve been looking forward to a really impressive hallucination ever since I took up single-handed sailing. The combination of mild exhaustion and solitude provides a fragile environment for the wilder side of the imagination and at some stage in a voyage, I can usually expect to sense a creeping certainty that I am not alone. But this trip is different, because I have the long range radio. Officially it’s for sending back these despatches but I use it shamelessly not so much to bolster my sanity with a little human contact as to lead a social life so busy that I have to keep a diary of appointments and stick notes above the chart table. There’s the family to call and friends who have left messages of goodwill, but I do most of my talking with the people who share this experience – the other competitors.<\/p>\n
When things were grim, when the boat was being tossed about by a gale and I was tumbled around a cabin in which everything not tied down had hurled itself into a puddle on the floor, then it was comforting to hear that life on the other boats was just as awful. Eventually the sense of humour would surface and someone would say: “Don’t you have a maid to clear that up?”<\/p>\n
Also, it was cheering to know that if things should go wrong, help was within a hundred miles or so. In fact, when I was thrown across the cockpit and narrowly missed smashing in my front teeth on a winch, I need not have worried. Forty five miles away was a surgeon who specialised in rebuilding faces – not only did he have a full operating kit on board, but also, he said he would been prepared to make a house call.<\/p>\n
It’s a camaraderie unknown in other sports and you could almost say that we sail single-handed for the company.<\/p>\n
\nMONDAY 11th JULY.<\/p>\n
With 3,000 miles stretching out in the wake, it was the last four which became the most important. Like all the big moments in life, reaching the other side of the Atlantic came almost without warning.<\/p>\n
After snatches of sleep which added up to only four hours in the last 48, with a lighthouse flashing with the precision of a dying light bulb and remembering that in the last race one boat was wrecked just five miles from the finishing line, I might have missed it altogether.<\/p>\n
For the first time in a fortnight we were charging along with the rigging humming and the bow wave setting up an impossibly loud roar. I’d stopped thinking of my boat as a construction of rope, wire, Terylene and glass fibre. ‘Largo’ had come alive a long time ago and now she was up and running to the finish and trusting me to point her in the right direction.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t believe that on the last night I was going to turn out to be the weak link but the fact was I didn’t know where we were. I had known. I had navigated us down the coast of Nova Scotia, across the Nantucket Shoals, and brought us to within ten miles of Newport, Rhode Island and the finishing line – and, let’s not be shy about this, success.<\/p>\n
Now I’d lost us. The Brenton Reef Light Tower, the powerful beacon which has welcomed generations of single-handed sailors at the end of this race, was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a dim yellow light flashing in an entirely different and erratic sequence. I was aware of being overtired, knowing full well the kind of stupid mistakes I was likely to make in this condition, I began shaking my head over the chart, muttering unfinished sentences all of which included the word ‘impossible’ and all the while the feeble light flashed. It was quite some time before I thought to call the Coastguard. Sure, he would step out of his office and look.<\/p>\n
Sure, a few minutes later, he confirmed that the light was out of \u2018synch’ and yes, it was operating on reduced intensity. He announced the news with all the polite interest of one who views lighthouses as historical monuments which it’s nice to see still working in this day of computerised position finding. Evidently, it had did not occur to him that there are some of us who still need them just as much as the Clipper captains of old.<\/p>\n
Maybe they too, once they had established that they really were where they ought to be, relaxed and stood swaying easily with the motion as the ship headed like an arrow for the harbour mouth. They did not worry unduly about a photographer colleague who might be unhappy about recording the event in almost total darkness – and nor, I confess, did I. I had earned this moment and nobody was going to make me wait a second longer for it.<\/p>\n
So, as dawn came up on Friday, entry number 91 crossed the line exactly 32 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes and 30 seconds after leaving Plymouth.<\/p>\n
Even if it was 22 days and 12 hours behind the winner, you’d never have guessed, not by the smile all over the skipper’s face.<\/p>\n
__________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In my 30\u2019s I upgraded to a Rival 32, Largo, and competed twice in the single-handed section of the Azores and Back Race and also in the 1988 Single-handed Transatlantic race (Chichester\u2019s OSTAR). Some time ago, I discovered that the 1988 edition of the Rival Owners\u2019 Association newsletter \u201cRival Round-Up\u201d included my account of that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3943","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3943"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3950,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3943\/revisions\/3950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}