Boats
Josa ll moored off Bosham just after launching.
Transatlantic prep – 1968 style Peter K Poland remembers the measures required 49 years ago to turn a 25ft Wind Elf Mark II into a practicable and wellprovisioned craft capable of conveying two sailors across the Atlantic Ocean
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t’s easy to take things for granted. As I recently interviewed a selection of intrepid 21st century ocean-hopping sailors, I realised just how much we now rely on clever gizmos, gear and electronic wizardry that didn’t even exist half a century ago. Today’s sailors are spoiled for choice – especially compared to foolhardy optimists like myself as I planned a 1968 transatlantic trip in a yacht that didn’t even have electricity, let alone all the modern machinery that lives off it. Of course, some sailors still like the idea of ‘basic’ cruising. This might be forced on them by limited budgets, or they could be purists who get an extra buzz out of scanning the horizon for a hoped-for landfall rather than watching a boat-shaped blob on a plotter screen homing in on a ‘dead cert’. In my case, a basic yacht with minimal gear was the only option. Anthony Brunner and I first dreamt of setting sail for tropical shores when we were at Oxford in the mid-’60s. We had both sailed on family boats since our teens and had done a bit of cross-Channel crewing. Then one cold winter evening – as we huddled over pints of beer in a snug pub – I said: ‘Why don’t we sail off to somewhere warm when we have finished at this place?’ ‘Good idea,’ said Brunner, a chap of few words.
have been alarmed by this risky waste of a good education. Anyone looking for a cheap and capable small cruiser these days will find it far easier than we did in the ’60s. Now there’s a host of GRP Folkboat derivations, chunky small Westerlies and early Dutch and Frenchbuilt cruisers, to name but a few. However, in 1968 GRP was in its infancy. Something like an early Invicta 26 or Contessa 26 – desirable though they were – fell way beyond our budget, so we trawled classified ads and pestered brokers. A Folkboat was high on our list, as were a Vertue and a Harrison Butler Z 4-Tonner, but we drew a succession of blanks: too expensive or too ropey. Then major Peter Bagley of brokers Bagley & Bowker sent us details of Josa ll; and a couple of weeks later we had a boat. She was a Wind Elf Mark ll, designed by Alan Buchanan and built in 1954 by Priors in Burnham-onCrouch. As an unexpected bonus, Peter Bagley handed me a nice cheque after the purchase had gone through. ‘What’s that for?’ I asked. ‘It’s the brokerage commission I made on the sale. I think you’ll need it more than I do,’ came the reply. Lovely man: nice agents do exist! Josa ll was a long-keel 25-footer and very much in the Folkboat idiom. Her more
Prior to departure: luminous gri d home-made spray dodgers and compass, paraffin tanks, useless vane self-steering
We told our respective parents, who probably thought we were mad. However, we soon realised we would need to find about £2,000 to buy, equip and provision a suitable boat, so the dream died and we both bought suits and went to work, which was easy in those days. Just dangle a decent university degree in front of any old company and a good job jumped onto the table – and the pay wasn’t bad. A couple of years later, we calculated that if we cashed in an embryo company pension, sold our cars and raided our piggy banks we could drag up about £1,800… which might just be enough to cover boat, gear, ABOUT THE AUTHOR grub, fags and booze. So Peter K Poland crossed the Atlantic in we set about looking for a 7.6m (25ft) Wind Elf in 1968 and something around 25ft long, later spent 30 years as co-owner costing about £1,300. And of Hunter Boats. He is now they all started saying ‘you’re a freelance journalist and mad’ again. Looking back on PR consultant. it now, our poor parents must
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Practical Boat Owner 609 February 2017 • www.pbo.co.uk
Transatlantic prep – 1968 style
Bottom stripped and repainted: ready
to go! Departure day, passing Hayling
A glimpse into our cosy cabin: the galley is to port unusual features were a stubby counter stern and a pronounced reverse sheer that created 6ft headroom and space galore down below without having to resort to an ugly, high and potentially vulnerable coachroof. Her unusual layout was perfect for a crew of two setting forth on a long voyage. The heads was in the forepeak, along with loads of stowage space. Trotter boxes extended the saloon settees, making secure and comfortable berths. And the galley was aft to port with a quarter berth opposite.
Equipped for adventure
Our next job was to equip her for adventure. We had already done extensive homework, reading every book we could find about ocean voyaging; invariably with Jussi Björling or Elvis Presley blasting in the background. Our favourite book was William Robinson’s tempting tale about his 32ft Svaap. Leaving New York in 1928, he girdled the globe in his 20s and visited many tropical islands, but the most useful was Eric Hiscock’s Voyaging Under Sail – a beautifully illustrated blue water manual covering everything we needed to know. He became our mentor in print. Stage 1, according to Eric, was to protect
the Spare water tanks and of egg box took up a lot space on the cabin sole our wooden hull from the dreaded teredo worms – evil little beasts that frequent tropical waters. He said they might bore into and then munch their way through our precious mahogany planking. In retrospect, this was probably over the top. Nevertheless, I spent a painful week burning off the paint on Josa’s bottom then re-covering the beautiful pinkish wood with metallic primer and fresh antifouling. I also slapped a coat of paint on her topsides. Then we set about modifying the interior to include some sort of chart table and stowage areas to accommodate all the gear we would need to pack in. I solved the former problem by making a simple, removable plywood ‘desk’ that would slot over the head of the quarterberth. The spare charts lived inside it while the
Island SC. Next stop Madeira! one in use was held in place on top of it by light shock cord. I also made a removable canvas ‘trough’ that was slung on bits of curtain rod and battened to the hull frames outboard. This held almanacs, plastic sextant, packets of fags and other essentials. Faced with the problem of providing stowage for all the gear and stores needed for crossing an ocean, we aimed to combine economy, simplicity and ease of dismantling at a later date. Eric was keen on netting pouches that took up little space, allowing fruit and vegetables to ‘breathe’ and accommodating a wide variety of other clobber. A London-based chandlery called Thomas Foulkes came up trumps, supplying us with terylene netting at 10s 6d a length. We cut the nets to size, roped the sides and bottom, threaded shock cord along the top and fixed them flush to the hull sides in the forepeak and behind the saloon settees. These pouches were a great success. They were easily accessible, looked good and took up no space when not in use. We stored anything at risk of getting wet in polythene
First night at sea. The
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adventure begins
Practical Boat Owner 609 February 2017 • www.pbo.co.uk 31
Boats Anthony Brunner mid-Atlantic as a large wave looms up behind him. We filled the cockpit with a lump of polystyrene to reduce the risk of being pooped – so we lounged rather than sat when steering.
and enjoying a large cup ic nt tla -A id m g in er ste The author of tea and a fag fertiliser bags lifted from a farm. In addition to these nets, Foulkes also sold us some war surplus parachute material that we chopped about and turned into a wind scoop to direct cool Caribbean breezes through the forehatch and into Josa’s cabin when she was at anchor. To our amazement, it worked a treat. To stow smaller items (spare shackles, screws, sandpaper, copper tingles, paint etc) we press-ganged three plastic milk crates. Smaller items went into jam jars or tobacco tins that slotted into two of the crates. We sawed the interior ‘partitioning’ out of the third, making room for bigger items. Then we stacked the crates on top of each other and secured them in the forepeak, where they took up very little space and held a prodigious amount of easily visible bits and pieces. We then had to work out what food and water to take and where to stow it. In those days, watermakers were not available (besides which, we had no electricity to run one) so we based our sums on Eric’s recommended ‘half a gallon a person a day’. Josa’s steel tank held just 10 gallons, so we needed to squeeze in 40 more. Once again, the farm came to the rescue and we scavenged a selection of plastic molasses containers. These were lashed to the settee fronts and sat on the cabin sole. Best of all, they cost nothing. We also had to find space for a lot of smelly paraffin: Josa lived off the stuff. It fuelled the wicks in her navigation lights, a primus-style cooker, a cabin light and a tilley lamp. We hoisted this in the rigging at night if feeling vulnerable (when there was shipping about) or when at anchor. Several gallons of paraffin were stored in metal cans inside a cockpit locker. Petrol, however, was not an issue. Our Stuart Turner engine gave up the ghost after an initial trial cruise from Emsworth 32
Many meals emerged from this trusty pressure cooker. We’d have gone hungry without it! to Yarmouth and back, so it sat and sulked, taking up valuable space forever after. Its smelly tank stayed empty. More practical people might have brought Stuart Turner back to life; but mechanical engineering was not our forte. Unless you have struggled with one of these recalcitrant petrol machines, you probably won’t realise how lucky you are with today’s reliable diesel donks.
A stroke of luck
Needless to say, we spent a lot of time fretting about what and how much food to take. Neither of us was prone to seasickness and we had the healthy appetites of 22-year-olds. We had read about ocean voyagers who lost weight or succumbed to serious malnutrition, but had no intention of following their example. So we thought of a sensible amount and doubled it, reasoning that tin cans in the bilge make good ballast, while re-stocking in foreign parts would be more expensive than in the UK – especially since at that time UK law only allowed people to take £50 per head per annum out of the country. Crazy... but true! We then had a stroke of luck. As we were working on the boat in Emsworth, our broker friend Peter Bagley drove up in a
car that was dragging its back end along the road. Somewhat embarrassedly, he said: ‘I’ve got something you chaps might find useful’ as he opened the boot. And there sat an enormous pile of tin cans. ‘They’re all dented. I picked them up cheap at a local food factory. Help yourselves.’ What a star! There were 48 cans of chicken supreme, 12 of shrimps, 12 of salmon, 12 of spag bol, 12 of ravioli plus assorted ham, steak & kidney, soups, fruit salad, pears etc. Some still had the labels attached, so we followed Eric’s advice and removed these, writing the contents on the tin with indelible marker pen. Those without labels became ‘lucky dips’. Then the whole lot went into lockers under the settees. Other stores included fruit juice, butter, jam, dried milk, assorted dried vegetables, a variety of cereals, three dozen cartons of Long Life milk, six bottles of Robinson’s delicious concentrated lemon squash, four dozen ¼lb bars of chocolate (not enough), six bottles of scotch, six of gin and 2,600 fags. The latter three were duty-free and dirt-cheap. A nice customs man locked them away ‘under seal’, saying the cupboard could only be broached when well offshore. We glugged our first Scotch crossing the Chichester harbour bar. Eric also warned that a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables could lead to scurvy, so we filled sandbags with 75lb of spuds, 25lb of onions, 10lb of carrots, 14lb of lemons, 10lb of oranges and 14lb of grapefruit, then the whole lot was stored in the nets in the forepeak. We later added an enormous stick of green bananas (bought in Funchal market in Madeira) that ripened – fortunately not all at once – as we rolled our way down the Trade Winds to Barbados. We never bothered with vitamin pills. Last but not least, Eric said fresh eggs were a good idea. So we bought many dozens and followed his advice of dipping them in boiling water for three seconds to seal their pores. They remained edible to the very last, stored in a big box we made from ICI purlboard. This later doubled up as an admirable insulated coolbox.
Practical Boat Owner 609 February 2017 • www.pbo.co.uk
Transatlantic prep – 1968 style
Safety gear
We also needed to equip our little yacht with some safety gear to help us (and our families) sleep at night. My mother and grandfather both presented us with liferafts. Since my mother’s came in a neat yellow GRP canister, we selected this one to be mounted on homemade wooden chocks screwed to the deck near the mast. My grandfather returned his valise version to the shop, giving me a Harrison deck watch (for accurate timekeeping needed when using the sextant) instead. Since we had no way of communicating by radio, we invested in an emergency beacon that could be fired up after we had jumped into our smart liferaft. Its instructions assured us that a passing ship or aircraft would hear it, note our location and then send someone to rescue us. Would this have worked in mid-Atlantic? Who knows? But the sight of the liferaft’s jolly yellow blob on our deck and the emergency beacon shock-corded beside the companionway always reassured us when the weather turned nasty. For day-to-day deck prancing, we bought safety harnesses. But I am afraid these were soon abandoned after successive abrupt stops when we rushed to the bow to change a sail.
Twin headsails set on long tack ’strops' with the mighty yellow blob (our liferaft) in the foreground
Get stuck in
Navigation was also a challenge in those pre-GPS days. We followed Eric’s instructions. Buy a sextant (a plastic Ebbco in our case), get an accurate timepiece, invest in a radio that can pick up time signals on short wave (a cheap little Ferguson transistor model did the job), study Mary Blewitt’s book Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen, buy the right almanac and tables... and get stuck in. Our initial effort off the Nab Tower in flat seas was not encouraging – it put us near Guildford. But we consoled ourselves with the fact that we never wanted to be closer than 60 miles to land as we made our way south then west, so this would do. And we hoped to improve with practice. Which we didn’t. Dead reckoning came courtesy of an ancient Walker log that we towed astern. This was the big variety that rotated on the end of a yellow rope, with internal
Our two-pole ‘lash-up’ worked spl headsail rig. Note paraffin naendidly with the twin v lights. PKP driving
log s the Walker s ow t g n ri st w wait A yello flying fish a ll a sm a e il h w n the frying pa dials (behind a sort of sliding door) recording the distance run; which meant it had to be pulled in before the miles could be read. Our meandering course was sailed with the help of a ‘war surplus’ bomber compass and a luminous Bosun grid model. However, we did go ‘high-tech’ by investing in a handheld battery-powered Seafix RDF. This would be our ‘last resort’ means of locating important places. I seem to recall it cost around £20... a lot of money in 1968. You waved it around – pointing it in roughly the right direction – and if there was anything within range the Seafix would beep at you through simple headphones. Powerful beacons – such as the one at Barbados airport – obligingly beeped when we were still over 100 miles out. We heard it at about the same time as we saw our first seabirds flying in the sky and first sugar canes floating in the sea, and – miracle of miracles – it agreed with our last sextant position.
The twin-headsa il ri along against a g pulling us blue sky Twin-headsail rig
Eric also told us that a twin-headsail rig was essential when running downwind in heavy seas and strong following winds – and this is one thing that time has not changed. Anyone setting sail on an ocean voyage today who cannot stow the mainsail and roll merrily downwind under twin poled-out jibs is missing a major trick. Luckily an uncle donated an old genoa to our cause. We then had to work out how to set this alongside Josa’s existing headsail. She came complete with a conventional spinnaker pole (and a clapped-out kite that we shredded off Madeira), and we picked up a second wooden pole that slotted and was lashed onto a vertical bolt temporarily
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Practical Boat Owner 609 February 2017 • www.pbo.co.uk 33
Boats Transatlantic prep – 1968 style
which, the little boat sailed faster and easier under headsails, twin genoas in moderate winds, working jib and genoa in heavier stuff, and working jib and trysail (set flying as a jib) around Force 6. We also found that the motion was steadier on a broad reach across rolling seas if we paired the mainsail with a genoa tacked near the base of the mast and set flying to windward on a pole. Unconventional perhaps, but this way it pulled like a train instead of continuously emptying then refilling with a bang.
, Anthony Brunner th ou m in g Fa . ra ei ad Approaching M s! emerges from the head fixed to the front of mast. Consequently, we could hank the windward jib to the forestay, set the leeward one flying and pole them out on either side. It worked a treat. On rare occasions we even succeeded in leading the sheets back on either side to stern-mounted blocks and thence to the tiller in such a way that the headsails steered the yacht... à la Eric Hiscock. This was doubly welcome, because our homemade self-steering vane system proved to be totally useless. So unless the jibs did some driving, we were forced to handsteer. All the time. Day and night. Which could be tiring. I still vividly recall some very special solo night watches as I sat in our small cockpit, surrounded by flashing white crests illuminated by a huge yellow moon, while kamikaze flying fish hurtled in from the dark, making aerial attacks on our brave little boat. We gave much thought to our rig, and how to get the best out of it to keep up good speeds. Brunner could not leave his job until May, which meant we could not set sail until June – and any experienced mariner will tell you that July and August are not the months to sail across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, because these months herald the beginning of the hurricane season.
Precarious trips
Eric suggested that if you have to risk sailing in this part of the world at this time of year, head south fast. And keep going right down to the Cape Verde Islands before turning right and heading west. This way you should be to the south of any hurricane’s path and be able to use its rotating winds to scoot even further south if it decides to head towards you. This advice seemed to work. We made one rapid precautionary change of course south as a scary, oily swell rolled in from a different direction and the northern horizon turned a hideous colour. Whatever it was, we escaped it. Our general rule of thumb was to sail at 34
A stiff drink
maximum speed and with minimum strain. Since our self-steering system did not work, almost all helming was by hand. In the end, we averaged 115NM a day between Madeira and Barbados, which is not bad for a well-laden 19ft-waterline boat. Of course, the headsails had hanks – as opposed to a nice modern furling system operated from the cockpit – while the mainsail was reefed with a primitive old Wykeham Martin roller device on the gooseneck. So, changing or shortening sail involved precarious trips to the mast or stemhead on a wet and rolling deck – which became even riskier in the dark. Nevertheless, we still maintained a rule that the off-watch crew would only be called if the yacht was sinking or it was time to eat – and we could always stop the boat by following Eric’s advice to heave to and take it easy rather than play the hero. Indeed, many modern cruising sailors might find that heaving to can occasionally make life easier when sailing short-handed or with a boatful of brats. Eric also said that we should do everything possible to avoid chafe and wear and tear, so we slipped plastic tubes over our galvanised rigging and greased then cocooned our galvanised rigging screws. In general, we avoided setting the mainsail when on a deep run to reduce the risk of damaging it against the shrouds and spreaders. Besides
Against all the odds, we drifted into Carlisle Bay in Bridgetown, Barbados as the sun rose on our 28th day out of Madeira. Despite our inexperience, we hadn’t broken anything on the boat. After dropping anchor and swooning at the sight of palm trees stretching along a sandy beach about 50 yards away, we dived below to have a late breakfast and a stiff drink. Then something banged on the side of the boat. We shot on deck and found a smiling, bearded Yank called Rick Heatherly sitting in a small rowing dinghy. ‘Where have you guys come from?’ he asked. ‘Emsworth in England,’ we replied, feeling rather pleased with ourselves. ‘You’re a bit late, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re about the 50th yacht to arrive this year and will probably be the last. Don’t you know the hurricane season’s coming? You’d better hop in the dinghy then I’ll drive you to my house. Have a shower, meet my girlfriend, eat some supper and drink rum. You can spend the night. Your little yacht will be quite safe here.’
Chore for a calm day mid-Atlantic… trimming the shoots off our stock of spuds
Journey’s end… visiting a frien d’s house in St James, Barbados Practical Boat Owner 609 February 2017 • www.pbo.co.uk