We also used the radio for social purposes. We made a lunch date later in the week with Angus and Murlo Primrose and, since Ann was in France and would not return in time for our departure for the Azores, I spoke with a young lady whom I had met at another sailing event earlier in the season and invited her down to the south coast for a night later in the week. This young lady shall be known in this tale as The Bird.
By mid-afternoon on Tuesday the Needles were abeam and we entered the Solent to find it seething with yachting activity. Cowes Week was due to start on Friday, and the narrow body of water was full of boats practicing. Spinnakers, tallboys, bloopers, and every other sort of sail were everywhere, and it was a very pretty sight indeed. We sailed slowly in light winds past Cowes and past Norris Castle, where Bill’s wife, Anita, was staying with friends. Although I had sailed into the Solent before on delivery trips, never had I seen it so dressed with sail. It was very beautiful.
Late in the evening we berthed at Camper & Nicholsons Marina in Gosport. The next day would be Wednesday. The race started on Saturday, and there seemed to be at least two weeks’ work to do on the boat. Moreover, we were asking for Camper’s help at the worst possible time. The first race of Cowes Week was happening on Friday, and the yard was choked with yachts being readied for the world’s premier week of yacht racing. We wolfed down a takeaway Chinese meal and got the last solid sleep we would have for a week.
Early Wednesday morning I waylaid Camper’s repairs manager, John Gardner, as he drove through the gate. We went over Harp together, and within the hour she was high and dry, sharing Camper’s crowded apron with the likes of Morning Cloud, Golden Apple, the giant Rothschild yacht, and numberless other French yachts, their bottoms being diligently rubbed down by their crews and their skippers complaining loudly (the French are very good at this) to anyone who would listen. A foreman and crew were assigned to Harp, and by noon her keelbolts had been loosened to let her dry out in preparation for resealing the keel. Tarka had found a leak in the forward bulkhead and the trouble was quickly located. Every time the yacht hit a wave, water was forced through a gap in the glass-fiber seal and into a dead air space under the anchor well, from which it ran through a leak in the “watertight” bulkhead into the forepeak.
In the afternoon Bill and Tarka left for business in London, to return Friday, and Shirley Clifford rang to say that she would arrive the next day. Robert Hughes from Gibb turned up and spent four hours tuning and refining the self-steering system and refused to accept a penny. Staggering with fatigue, I took him and his wife out for dinner. I slept on Harp, high on the apron, a most peculiar sensation.
I was up at the crack of dawn to let the workmen on the boat and spent most of a frantic day shopping for gear I hadn’t been able to find in Ireland. Shirley turned up in the afternoon, and I gave her a list of things to do. The Bird was not far behind. I had not been able to find a decent place to stay in Gosport, and since I had to go to Lymington anyway to exchange a broken meter at Brookes & Gatehouse and collect the new Dynafurl from Jeremy Rogers, I booked us in at The Angel there. We made a mad dash for Lymington in her car in order to get there before closing time and just made it. Bill Green, Rogers’s man in charge of Dynafurls, broke the news that the replacement hadn’t arrived, then gave me tools and instructions on repairing the existing unit. I left instructions to send the replacement on to the Azores so that it would be there when we arrived.
On top of this, The Bird was unhappy. She was unhappy about the sleeping arrangements, unhappy about being in Lymington, and only moderately appeased by a good dinner at Limpets. Next morning she was unhappy about waiting at the post office to see if the replacement Dynafurl would arrive at the last minute, and she pitched a fit when I kept her waiting at a chandlery while I bought other last-minute gear. The drive back to Gosport was completed in stony silence, and our farewell was very abbreviated. That night I noted in my diary, “... sometimes I am a very bad judge of women.”
Angus Primrose joined us for lunch at the local pub (Bill and Tarka had returned from London) and gave us a soothing account of his part in the Azores and Back Race. The wind, said Angus, had never blown more than twenty-five knots and he had been supremely comfortable throughout. He made a suggestion or two about gear arrangements, and then we were hard at work again. At closing time Camper put Harp back into the water. She looked in very good shape, but we still had ahead of us the job of restowing all her gear and the food. That evening Bill, Shirley, and I took the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight for the pre-race party in Bembridge. There were twenty-four hours before the start of the race, and it was the first time the three of us had been together.
Tarka and Anita met us at the party, and we relaxed for a bit and chatted with some of the other competitors. Mike Ellison, of the Amateur Yacht Research Society, was competing in a borrowed trimaran, and I met Bill Howell of Tahiti Bill, the Australian dentist, and Brian Cooke of Triple Arrow, the sailing bank manager. Both were OSTAR veterans, and I had been looking forward to talking with them about the race, but with time so short, that would have to wait until our arrival in Horta.
Bill returned to Norris Castle with Anita and Tarka, and Shirley and I got the last ferry off the island. When we arrived at the marina we found Richard Clifford asleep on Harp’s deck and invited him in. Ominously, Shirley was complaining of not feeling well, but I was too tired to take much notice.
Next morning, she was worse and running a temperature. We put her into a pilot berth and worked around her. Richard tackled a dozen jobs on deck while I emptied the boat of her stores and prepared to restow them. Shirley had pared down our Quinnsworth groceries to what we would need for the three of us, plus some for my trip back to Ireland. Bill and Anita arrived and Anita sat on the dock, resplendent in a large sun hat, and took notes for a stowage plan as I hustled grub onto the yacht. Bill pronounced himself uneasy about the whole thing. Richard kept looking at the shambles and shaking his head. “You’ll never make it,” he kept saying. Tension mounted. Then the committee types began coming round and muttering about Shirley’s illness. She was refusing to see a doctor, and they didn’t like it. I discussed it with Shirley and Bill and proposed a solution. Shirley had been looking forward to the race for weeks, and I was reluctant to disappoint her because of what might be only a twenty-four-hour bug.
“Look,” I said to the committee, “we’ll take her down the Channel with us. She’ll probably get better. If she gets worse, there are a dozen places we can quickly put her ashore. If she’s not better by Plymouth we’ll put her ashore there.” The committee didn’t like it. I pointed out that we weren’t violating any race rules. The skipper of a yacht is responsible for deciding who races with him. Bill pointed out that he was the skipper and he had agreed to this plan. The committee said we’d be disqualified if we arrived in Horta without the minimum specified crew of three. They offered us another girl as crew. I pointed out that we would be disqualified if we changed crews within twenty-four hours of the start, and the start was five hours away. They said they’d overlook that. I asked why then wouldn’t they overlook the three-crew rule? Harp was built as a single-handed boat; two could handle her easily enough. The rule was obviously aimed at some of the bigger multihulls. They hemmed and hawed. I was beginning to get annoyed. We had much to do and little time to do it. They were wasting what we had left. I finally told them, as politely as I could, that we had made a decision which did not violate the rules and that that was it, so to please go away and let us get on with it. They finally did.