The following morning, while Bill and Tarka began loading food and gear, I visited the boatyard to talk with Barry Burke about the bill. He had not telephoned me. When I arrived I was told that Barry was home with a bad back, but a moment later he rang, and I was able to speak with him. I explained that I was there to discuss the bill, and in his absence I suggested that I go over it with John Harrington, pay him for whatever we were in agreement on, and defer any other discussion and payment until my return from the Azores, when we would have time to sit down together and talk about it. He said that would be quite all right. We chatted for a few minutes about the coming race and his plans for Cowes Week, then said goodbye.
I sat down with John Harrington and went carefully over the bill. We found £390 in overcharges, which John agreed to. I gave him a check for £760, leaving a balance of about £1,100 to be settled on my return from the Azores. I left the yard in good spirits, vastly relieved that we had reached at least a partial settlement without a fight, and hopeful that we would be able to thrash out the rest amicably when I returned.
Ron came sailing with us in the afternoon for an hour, and in the Force six and seven winds blowing in the harbor we all managed to glean new information from him. We set Fred, as I had begun to call the Hasler, self-steering, and he pointed us unerringly at a perch across the harbor, sailing right up to it. Ron pronounced himself impressed.
We spent the remainder of the day packing food into plastic shopping bags and stowing it on the boat. Things were moving well for our planned departure mid-afternoon the next day, Friday. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had left on time, whether things would have turned out differently. Maybe so, probably not. When enough small coincidences pile up and affect circumstances, it is called Fate.
As it was, we finished our loading on Friday in time to sail, but we were tired. We had planned to stop and rest for a day in the Scilly Isles, but we hadn’t been able to get a large-scale chart of the islands in time, and Bill was worried about going in without it, so we stayed in Drake’s Pool for another night, and were invited to Coolmore House for a drink before dinner by Worth and Pasha Newenham.
Pasha and Bill King had known each other since Pasha was a Wren and Bill a submarine commander, both stationed in Ceylon, during World War II. We sat in the handsome drawing room of Coolmore, bathed and shaved, sipping sherry and listening to Bill and Pasha reminisce. The boat was ready. I felt a lovely sense of completion and contentment and expectation.
I was just beginning to daydream about what the Azores would be like when Mark Newenham, Worth’s elder son, came in and said that Nick wanted to see me outside. I thought that, for some reason, he wouldn’t be able to come to dinner, and I was already feeling disappointed as I walked out the door. But Nick’s face was grave. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” he said (oh my God, I thought, the boat’s aground again, or sinking!), “but John Harrington is down at Drake’s Pool on a boat with a solicitor, a court official, and a policeman, and they plan to tow your boat away.” They had been trying to slip the mooring, when Nick had rowed out and asked them to wait until I could be summoned.
Thanking heaven that I had prepared for something like this, I rang Frank O’Flynn, and he promised to come straightaway. I had another glass of sherry, then went down to the cottage. The two boats were tied together, and they were all sitting out there, chatting with Nick. They declined to come ashore when invited; I declined to go out to the boat until Frank O’Flynn arrived. I sat down on the riverbank with Bill and Tarka, and presently Frank appeared.
We rowed out to the boats, and an extremely calm and civilized discussion took place. It was agreed that I would give Frank my check for the full amount of the yard’s bill, and he would pay the money into the court for safekeeping. When I returned from the Azores, the matter would be settled. I was happy with the arrangement, as long as it kept the money out of the yard’s hands. As we were preparing to go ashore, I took John Harrington aside and asked him what the hell was going on. Hadn’t we discussed and settled all this? Hadn’t Barry agreed to the arrangements? If he was unhappy, he had had a day and a half to contact me and discuss it. Why hadn’t he done so?
John was acutely embarrassed. He had simply been instructed by Barry that he was putting it into the hands of a solicitor; he was given no details. Now Golden Harp was under arrest, a court order taped to her mast. At least they hadn’t nailed it to the aluminum.
Frank told us to go ahead with our dinner plans, while he and Donegan, the yard’s solicitor, adjourned to Rosie’s, the local pub, to discuss the details of the transaction. We trooped into town to start our belated farewell dinner, and an hour or so later Frank stopped by to say that all was well, we could sail the next morning. We phoned John Rafferty to stop payment on my earlier checks to the yard and to ascertain that funds were available. All was well there, too.
Next morning, after final stowage and the taking of many photographs, we motored down to the yacht club, had lunch and took on ice, then fueled and were off. (On the way out of Drake’s Pool we had scraped our keel across a mudbank, nearly losing Bill over the pulpit, at the exact moment somebody, probably Theo, had fired a parachute flare from the woods in farewell salute.)
As we motored down the river out of Crosshaven, a single Mirror dinghy followed for a time in our wake. The sight brought back a rush of memories. Roche’s Point was soon abeam and, after a lot of sail trimming and adjusting, Harp sailed herself for all of the night, as we began to become accustomed to her.
14
On to Portsmouth
We spent a fine day sailing, fiddling with Fred (who was reluctant to steer on a beam reach), bailing water (which seemed to be coming from forward somewhere, maybe from the long hull fitting), and continuing to build the boat. Tarka finally divulged that he had spent a year as an apprentice with Hickey Boats in Galway when a lad (he had been fired when the foreman found him making a model airplane during his tea break), and he took on the bulk of what had to be done. Bill navigated and I bailed, using the Jabsco electric bilge pump, which had been fitted for just such an occasion. The shape of the hull precluded any more than about two inches of bilges, so two gallons of water could make the interior a miserable place.
We were at Land’s End in time to see a beautiful moonrise above Cornwall. By midnight Wolf Rock was abeam, and we altered course for the Lizard, the southernmost tip of Cornwall. As we approached it the tide turned against us, and although we were registering several knots on the speedometer clock, we seemed to be standing virtually still. I spent long periods of my midnight-to-three watch sitting on a cushion on the pulpit, my safety harness clipped to the forestay, watching the moon and the water and the night while Fred steered. It was one of the most beautiful nights I have ever spent on a boat.
By midday Monday we were motoring in a flat calm, and I was using the VHF radio constantly. The Dynafurl had revealed a maddening tendency to separate into two equal halves, and although it could be repaired easily, it was causing us worry; water was entering the boat in increasing quantities, and we were now bailing hourly; and every other fault which had been built into the boat was now surfacing, my own mistakes surfacing, too. During the afternoon a puddle of hydraulic oil collected in the bilges. The trouble was found to be a leaky inspection meter which I should have removed. I sent a telegram to Jeremy Rogers’s Boatyard, the English agents for Steam, who made the Dynafurl, asking for a replacement to be ordered from the States immediately by telephone. Then I rang Camper & Nicholsons and asked for a haulout and repair of whatever was leaking when we arrived in Gosport. The radio hummed all afternoon with such messages. Bill had flatly refused to sail for the Azores unless we could get the leaking stopped in Gosport. I was in full agreement with him. We motored on.