Now we sailed into Lyme Bay with a following wind of about Force three, on The Kid’s course for the inside of the Portland Race. Archie was already worried about going inside and gave Peter Walsh and me explicit instructions not to sail too far out of the bay and, thus, get us into Portland Race. “Don’t get too far in, either,” he had said. “Jibe if you have to, to maintain your course, but for God’s sake don’t get us out into that race. It’s one of the most dangerous places on the south coast of England.”
We sailed on peacefully for a while, and then the wind began to back, and we were having to sail ten degrees above our course to keep from sailing by the lee, that is, with the wind coming from a direction where the boat might accidentally jibe. Soon, we were twenty degrees above our course, and I suggested jibing to Peter. He was doubtful, Archie having given instructions not to sail too far in. Why didn’t we sail on the other jibe for half an hour, then jibe back and sail for another half hour, and so on? Peter finally agreed, though reluctantly. We jibed the boat in the gentle breeze, and Archie was on deck like a panther, in his underwear, roaring about “jibing for the sake of jibing...” I think that, under normal circumstances, he would not have reacted quite the same way, but he was clearly anxious about sailing inside the Portland Race, and he would not listen to any explanation of why we had jibed.
Dawn came and Portland Bill was before us. As the wind had backed it had increased sharply, and was now blowing a Force seven, gusting eight. The seas in the race were huge and close together, with waves breaking everywhere. In addition to the normal problems of negotiating the race, we had wind against tide, and a lot of both. Archie was at the helm, and we had to go within fifty yards of the rocks in order to stay out of the race. It was very exciting sailing, with the boat sometimes reaching ten knots when surfing down the big waves, and we made it safely through. Archie, a former international rugby player, admitted having been scared. “It’s like just before playing for Ireland against England,” he said. “It’s running down your legs.”
After the Portland Race, though, Archie would not let me take the helm again, as a kind of punishment, I think, for my sinful jibe of the night before.
The wind now veered, and as we approached the Lymington River, we faced the prospect of beating up the narrow channel against a falling tide and with the car ferry to the Isle of Wight threatening to leave at any moment. We hailed a couple of smaller yachts, asking for a tow, but nobody could hear us, so we started up the river under sail. This involved a lot of very short tacking, and with a group who had never tacked the boat at all.
In her crew cockpit, Mist has a grinding pedestal linked to the two huge winches, and Pat took charge of that. Peter and I each tailed a winch, and The Kid stood in the pulpit, yelling, “TACK!” whenever he thought we were getting too close to the edge of the channel. It would be very embarrassing to run the beautiful new yacht aground on a falling tide in one of the most densely boat-populated rivers in England. It went well, though, the boat tacking remarkably quickly and accelerating fast. At times she seemed to be pointing straight into the wind. Finally, approaching the marina, a large yacht gave us a tow for a hundred yards or so, and The Kid cast us off with what he thought was enough way on to drift into a berth. He had misjudged, though, and we began to drift backward with the tide, with no steerageway. Pat Donovan had the presence of mind to throw a line to somebody on a berthed boat, just as The Kid panicked and threw the anchor out.
We began to clean up the boat and stow the gear, but The Kid, it appeared, was not yet finished with my education. I came very near to throwing him overboard when he began to explain “... how we fold a sail.”
I thanked Archie for the best sail I had ever had. I had been very impressed with the way he had brought us around the Bill in such awful conditions and with his skill in tacking us up the river. I had learned a lot and, surprisingly, was not nearly as tired as after the Golden Apple delivery, although the passage in Mist had been much more arduous. Now I left Irish Mist II, and clambered onto the dock and into the arms of Ann, who, clever girl, had driven down from London.
We had a pleasant evening in Lymington, and next morning, after running a few local errands, we embarked on the car ferry to the Isle of Wight, which I had never visited. The purpose of the trip was to discuss the rigging of my boat with Ben Bradley of Spencer’s, the riggers, but we did some shopping in Cowes’s narrow High Street first. It was there I discovered one of the most comfortable of sailing garments, the Javlin Warm Suit, which is a sort of thermal underwear, retaining heat and preventing condensation under oilskins. This would prove to be a valuable purchase.
At Spencer’s, Ben Bradley and I agreed on the size and composition of my boat’s rigging — Ron had suggested wire rope rather than the standard solid rod rigging, which was fine for offshore racing but didn’t last as long. We also went a size up on the standard, for extra strength.
Next day, I rang Shirley Clifford in Poole, just to see how she was and to report on the progress of Golden Harp, and she reminded me of something I had forgotten. The Azores and Back single-handed race (AZAB), sponsored by the magazine Yachting Monthly, was starting on Saturday from the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club in Falmouth. She and Richard would be there, and so would Ewan Southby-Tailyour. Why didn’t I come down? Why not, indeed? I hired a car, and on Thursday afternoon took off for the West Country.
I arrived at the Royal Cornwall to find fifty yachts preparing for the next day’s start. Almost immediately I bumped into Robert Hughes, the Hasler self-steering expert from Gibb, who had at his disposal a very fast speedboat, with which he could go from yacht to yacht, offering advice and helping to solve problems. Having never so much as seen a single-hander’s boat this was a marvelous opportunity for me, and I made mental notes on layout, control lines, etc.
Richard and Shirley Clifford turned up with their children, and I met Frank Page, The Observer’s yachting correspondent, and his lovely wife, Sammie; Liz Balcon and Angela Green, also from the Observer staff; Angus Primrose, the yacht designer who was sailing one of his own designs, a Moody 33, in the race, and his wife and daughter, Murlo and Sally; Andrew Bray of Yachting Monthly, who was sailing his Pioneer 10 in the race; and briefly, Clare Francis, the girl who had already done a transatlantic crossing in a Nicholson 32, and now had an Olsen 38 at her disposal, courtesy of her sponsors, Robertson’s jams.
I had dinner with Richard and Shirley, and the following day, Murlo and Sally Primrose and I joined Robert Hughes and his brother, Brian, on whose fast boat we would watch the start of the race. The wind was very light, so there was little drama before the start, but shortly after the start we all became very annoyed with a French spectator boat which was sailing behind Clare Francis flying a spinnaker, thus taking Clare’s wind and making it difficult for her to get her own spinnaker to fill. We roared up to the French yacht and, after a few loud words, they bore away and left her alone. It had been a rotten thing to do.
The fleet slowly drifted toward open water, and after a final goodbye to Angus Primrose on Demon Demo, we roared across the bay to my favorite village in Cornwall, St. Mawes. Then, back to the Royal Cornwall, now strangely empty, and the drive to Fowey, farther up the coast, where I was meeting Richard Clifford and Ewan Southby-Tailyour at a Royal Cruising Club rally. I arrived in the pretty village and got a ferry out to Ewan’s yacht, Black Velvet, only to discover him drinking on another nearby boat. We passed a pleasant afternoon, and Richard arrived from Falmouth in Shamaal II, his Contessa 26, single-handed. There was then one of the nicest sights I have ever seen on the water. Three of the larger yachts at the rally were tied together in the river, and a very large and exuberant cocktail party took place in the lovely twilight. I added Fowey to my list of harbors to visit.