The Adventure Begins

My first glimpse of the bark Endeavour - August, 2001

July 2001 was when the adventure began for me but this book is about my second passage on Endeavour, starting in February, 2002.

No time, on the web, to put up a complete account of my whole journey - that belongs in the printed version, so let's jump ahead to when the ship was (nearly) at Cape Horn:



31/3 - Sunday - Easter Sunday


I have kept the tiny Easter card, which, with a few miniature chocolate eggs, Fleur and Camilla presented me with when I was going on watch today. It meant a lot at the time – it was like a sort of affirmation, almost a permanent or lasting hug or gentle kiss, and I got one of those as well.

Affection is something I crave out here, though there is a lot of friendship.

I wrote another draft e-mail for my family and friends, to send whenever I can:


Sunday 31st. March


Endeavour was at 55 degrees 43 minutes South, 115 degrees 19 minutes West at noon yesterday. We have sailed 3023 miles since we left Bluff, in New Zealand, and we have about 1,500 to go to Cape Horn (and 11,000 to Whitby.)

The daily runs this week have been as little as 68.5 miles and as much as 169.5. Our progress is dominated and often interrupted by the erratic and changeable weather. Low pressure systems sweep up astern of us and usually give us high winds and big seas and push us forward. High pressure systems dominate when the lows pass but they give us calm or quiet conditions.

We are using our one remaining engine quite regularly when the ship’s speed through the water drops below about three knots. Between noon on 27/3 and noon on 28/3, we did not sail at all but covered 115 miles at an average of 4.7 knots under power alone.

We have seen no more icebergs or whales this week and it has not been vilely cold but cold in a normal, civilized way so that our teeth chatter only gently and most of our extremities remain detectable.

I am still not wearing my thermal underwear and socks, but I am thinking seriously about them.

Once I put them on, I have nothing left in reserve.

The wind was heavy on Thursday and the seas were huge – more than thirty feet and breaking close to us. The ship was heaving and pitching violently and it was so dangerous on deck that we mustered and spent our watch in the cramped area called ‘the Marines’, down below.

Only three members of the watch (two on the helm and one on bow watch, by the starboard cannon) were exposed outside to the elements at any one time. We were hove to and drifted Northwards for many hours, with an Easterly gusting at more than 70 knots in our teeth.

That storm was an impressive, awe-inspiring sight. I won’t forget it. But last night, sailing with almost all available sails set in winds from 19-40 knots, was even better.

The ship roared along, in roughly the right direction, with rather too much sail set, healing determinedly to port and pushing gallons of white water to each side, waves breaking under her bluff, aggressive bows, twenty foot surfing waves rolling past her hull as if they were playing with us.

The wind was on the starboard quarter and there was lots of it.

When the moon came out from behind the broken clouds, it lit up the water like a pathway to another universe.

“It just can’t get any fucking better,” said Nigel Longster, one of my watchmates, shaking his head at the moonshine. “You could read a book by this.”

A few of the stars showed themselves.

Alpha and Beta Centauri clearly pointed to the Southern Cross before we could see it, then the Cross itself glimmered through the clouds, a pointer in the sky.

“My favourite constellation,” said Nigel, looking up. “My favourite fucking constellation.”

One of the stay sails started flapping and the lead helmsman called for more starboard helm to bring the ship back up to the wind.

“Seven to starboard. Quickly!”

The helmsmen were panting as they heaved the wheel around.

“Seven to starboard. On!” said the helmsman’s mate and he relaxed.

“You think it’s good,” said Nigel with something like joy in his voice. “You think it’s so fucking good.”

He paused.

“And then it gets fucking better.”

Nigel Longster was one of the gang going all the way to Whitby.

He's a very likeable, much bearded New Zealander, who lives in Queensland, in Australia and rides a Harley Davidson and keeps bull terriers and works in a brewery and is covered all over with tattoos.

His father went to sea from Whitby and ended up in New Zealand and settled there. His grandfather and eight uncles, his father’s brothers, all went to sea as well. He expects quite a reception in Staithes, just North of Whitby, where many of his relatives still live.

Nigel looks gruff or even grumpy. His heavy beard hides his mouth and reaches up towards his eyes. But he laughs a lot. His smile is very kind. The young women on board seem to adore him.

If he is suggestive (and he is) it is always with a smile and laughter – backed by honest admiration. He hides a kind heart behind a very grumpy beard.


On board Endeavour, the space in your locker is all the space you own and entirely control. It is very precious.

Your locker is like a little island inside a cupboard where your personality hides and resides and where you can be yourself. It’s the one place where the routines and the rules of the ship can’t reach you.

If my locker were big enough, I would sleep inside it sometimes, just to get away from everyone.

This week, I have been having trouble with my locker, which is disastrous.

Seawater has been leaking in, because of the very rough weather.

My locker contains almost everything I brought with me – important and relatively valuable things like my sextant and my big camera; things of personal importance like my notebooks, good luck cards, memorabilia and money; books I want to read; all my clean clothes, underpants, dry socks and reserve sweaters.

Also, my precious pristine thermal underwear.

At the morning meeting on Friday, I drew the attention of the Chief Officer to the fact that my locker was leaking.

“All wooden ships leak,” he said, and passed on to other topics.

I am uncertain what to do next.

But I have wrapped everything possible in plastic bags.


1/4 - Monday


‘Mizzling’ as in mizzling rain – drizzle? An expression used by Captain Marryat in Mr. Midshipman Easy, a childhood book which I have just re-read with much enjoyment.

What a lovely adjective!


2/4 - Tuesday 0855


Miserable conditions, calm, heavy overcast, mizzling rain, barometer falling like a stone. Tetchy today. Middle Watch starting to bite again? Sleep deprivation kicking in again?

Endurance, that’s it. Endurance, survival, self-abnegation. Strength though denial.

My mother died ten years ago today – and I only remembered, three quarters of the way through the morning meeting. She would like to see me here and to know about it but I am glad she is no longer alone, without my father’s company and presence. She missed him terribly, her last three years.


3/4 - Wednesday


After the sad monotony of yesterday, two watches full of incident, excitement and beauty.

On middle watch, in near darkness, the mad arc of the mainmast curved down towards the sea through a sky brindled with dim moonlight above a sea spewing with violence.

A wave travelled the quarterdeck at head height, caught us all by surprise; my clothes are still wet from it 12 hrs. later (nothing will dry – our mess deck is awash as well as the lavatories).

Some gusts of wind were more than 45 knots. It snowed this morning, stinging the face and naked hands, streaming horizontally across the windswept decks.

This afternoon, the sun is bright and small rainbows form in the spray by the blustering bow. Alex and Craig whoop when a big wave hits. Even I smile or laugh when I see it.

The seascape is a meadow of beauty, the waves gallop through it like wild horses, tossing their white bright manes.

Snapshots in my head:

Rushing onto the deck in the great storm just as the bow of the boat pitched precipitously down the front of a great wave and into the chasm behind. The angle of pitch, fore and aft? 50 or 60 degrees? I could barely stay on my feet.

Another snapshot:

The crazy geometry of the furled mizzen topsail, crojack brace and mizzen course, silhouetted against the magic billows of the main course and main topsail as the two masts swing like mad fishing rods across the glimmer and glitter of the fierce sky and the torrential sea from starboard to port and the driving waves speed noisily beneath the hull.

A final snapshot:

Craig, when he spotted the killer whales bombing towards us, arms wide, knees bent, thumbs up, a great smile, dark glasses.

“Yes!”

Jubilance in every gesture.


4/4 - Thursday


Very cold on the eighteenth century deck this morning.

“This journey brought to you by the words ‘fucking’ and ‘cold’,” muttered Alex, shivering.

“Take me back to Queensland,” said Nigel, who stayed in his hammock till the last possible moment.

“I’ll be on the same bus,” said the Captain later at breakfast.

Chris Blake likes the hot weather too – don’t we all?

Barometric Pressure very very low at 972. Storm force winds expected.

Wind now from the South – up to 62-65 knots (apparent), more than 70 true. Running North with it behind us.

Turning up to reach across it (and make a better course) carries too much risk of broaching.


5/4 - Friday


Routine day yesterday – mizzling and cold in the afternoon, the same at midnight (we were down in the Marines again).

On the helm in the last hour of Middle Watch, the wind built steadily towards 40 and 45 and the ship howled along with everything set except the mizzen mast sails.

She continued to sail like that when we went down to sleep but all hands were called up during breakfast to hand or furl the topsails and get control again – the wind was over 60 knots and the seas were marvellous to watch – fascinating and startling, sparkling with light and life.

“Oh, que c’est apre, que c’est dur.”

Persephone? Stravinsky?

(How harsh it is, how hard)

Svetlana Beriosova read the narration in the recording that I remember.

I met her, once or twice, when Zoe Dominic and I were working on a book about Frederick Ashton. Zoe knew her well and she was a wonderful dancer, in her prime, particularly in Giselle.

Good to remember the warmth and luxury and the beauty of the Royal Opera House, where I once spent so much time.

Especially out here.


5/4 – Friday (continued) 1648


The whole day has seen us hurtling NE (not the direction we want) in great style (staysails and forecourse only) – I was on the helm and it was very invigorating but I have no idea what speed we were doing. The waves were about 20-25 feet, the wind up to 45 knots and more.

Rough and wild seas – treacherous underfoot.

Fell twice yesterday – once spectacularly on the quarterdeck, flat on my front over the tiller, sliding towards the scuppers, the second landing in the box of sea boots at the top of the stairs down to the galley. A few more bruises in unexpected places, a nasty twinge in my left knee, which I seem to have twisted.

I was lucky to get away with the first fall - it was by far the worst yet.

196 degrees true (wind) – the first time a storm has gone on for more than 24 hours.

The sun shone brightly for most of the day but I wouldn’t risk my sextant on deck to take a reading.


6/4 - Saturday 0845


Great middle watch 40-50 knots steering 110-120 on the wind.

Helming about 400 tons of ship at 7 or more knots (teamed up with Kate and Bernard) was an excellent experience.

What a privilege! What a WONDERFUL ship!

Verses for my new Cape Horn song:

It’s dark tonight, the Horn’s still not in sight
the waves are huge, the sea’s all white


6/4 - Saturday


Afternoon watch was spectacular. The ocean is very lively. Bernard and I had volunteered to relieve the galley crew and make lunch for everyone tomorrow but I think the Catering Officer and the Captain think it's a bit too rough for the two of us to gobble about in the galley all day Sunday so I will get my lay day rest (which I badly need.) I am quite relieved. I was going to make 'bigos', which is a hunter's stew from Poland. Mixed meats and mushrooms, loads of garlic and red wine. Very nice indeed - but in these conditions? Could have been testing. And I am tired again. Terribly tired.


7/4 - Sunday


Writing this on middle watch at about 0140 – I am in the nav. room watching the radar.

The seas build and build as the storm continues (three days now) – windspeed 30-50, all from the SE and the ship rolls horribly. It is difficult to sleep, even in a hammock.

Then, when you are very tired, it is difficult to do ordinary things, to make tea, to get dressed, to move about safely, to sling your hammock.

JP fell out of his hammock and hurt himself a lot (he had not tied it on properly but, as he pointed out, what does he know about knots? He is a computer whizz. He should have been shown how to do it at one of the introductory sessions but I wonder if he was - we left Fremantle in such a hurry, perhaps there were no introductory sessions).

Tig and Ally fell heavily as well and they are young and fit and professional and should be able to look after themselves.

I have been quite lucky so far, and careful. I haven't hurt myself badly.


8/4 - Monday

Famous last words?

I fell down the companion way into the twentieth century mess this morning – in front of 90% of the crew.

Only dignity suffered. My own fault, too. Those leather shoelaces on my boat shoes again. Must tie them properly, make sure they're shorter. Otherwise the ends get under your feet and you slither about on them, it's like being on roller skates.

Overcast today – no sights (again)

Storm passed, the Cape Horn song almost completed.

The albatrosses swoop and soar
The whales sneak past – wish we’d seen more

Lay day very welcome yesterday and Alex no longer the watchleader – glad about that. I didn’t like having to argue with him or ask anything of him.


8/4 - Monday (continued) around 2100


Routine day – now on morning watch, 0400-0800, 1600-2000.

With additional sail-handling, tonight, (we've just finished) that amounts to seventeen and a half hours without a proper break.

All the watches are bad, but I think morning watch is probably the most exhausting.

However, I skived off this afternoon – instead of helping with maintenance, I learned to operate Martin’s video camera.


Trivial Pursuit this evening.

It infuriates me.

If you can answer the questions, they’re banal, if you can’t they’re humiliating.

Mark you, it helps if you are winning (and we weren't). You don't feel so bad about it then!


In the army and in prison, the first thing to happen is that the conscript or inmate is allocated a number and loses control of most or all of his or her private possessions and timetable.

How curious – the same things happen on Endeavour. I am number four in foremast Watch. I identify myself in this way at least four times per day, at the beginning and end of each watch and sometimes in between. Does it de-personalise you? Do you lose a little bit of your identity each time you call the number instead of answering to your name?

In a curious sort of way, neither personality nor achievments matter much out here. As I wrote before, it is simply a question of whether you can cope. Can you look after yourself and your clothes on board, keep yourself clean and fed, get enough sleep, turn up punctually on watch, climb the masts or haul the halyards when you need to.

Can you hack it?

It should be the Endeavour's motto.

Interesting to reflect that a 19 year old like Kate may never normally take responsibility for her own wardrobe, schedule, routine etc. Kate's been on Endeavour before but she still manages to be late on watch occasionally and I lend her my torch sometimes, when we're kitting up, because she's always lost or mislaid some item of apparel or equipment.


Spoke to one of the officers the other day – claimed one bad day, on passage, would be pretty normal for me, one bad day on a long passage, when I really didn't think I wanted to be out there.

She thought that was a good average. (So do I).

On this trip, it would be more like one bad day in four.


Pete the Fish new watchleader – good!

They all do one week each - Kate's next, I think - and I have declined to do it.

I used to spend a lot of time managing people and taking responsibility for them. That is not what I am out here to do now, rather the opposite.


9/4 – Tues. 1205


Mizzling rain again – grey overcast – horrible!

No sights poss. Calmish. Magnetic course 080

Haven’t climbed for ages – climbed twice today (main course unreefed, mizzen topsail furled) – can’t say I liked it esp. in pouring rain (main) or pitch dark (mizzen top). However, I can do it.

Also got stuck on the helm (as ‘muscles’) for nearly three hours .... not happy with that – Pete the Fish seemed to have forgotten I was there!


10/4


Pete's first suggestion this morning was that I should go back on the helm as 'muscles'.

I declined, so he put me on as 'brains' instead – just as tiring but a bit more stimulating ....

44,000 containers per year fall overboard! Wow!

Obviously, most of them sink. But it would be possible, even in Endeavour, to get completely wiped out if you hit a floating container at speed.

In the middle of the Indian Ocean, Dan and I were gliding along in our tiny (steel) boat in smooth seas with a light breeze on our quarter when there was suddenly a distinct heavy thump at the bow and a grinding noise along our starboard side. We rushed on deck.

A large log - the bottom half of a big mango tree - was drifting out behind us.

We had hit it fair and square, despite the vast expanses of water which surrounded us. (We were more than a thousand miles from land in any direction.)

Fortunately, the sea was calm, the wind was slight. We hit it nice and slowly.

But if we had been tearing along in a big wind, surfing down the front of a wave at 12 or 13 knots, that log could have made a severe impression even on a metal hulled boat and might have holed and sunk a glass fibre yacht.

The tree stump was about 6 feet by 8 feet in section (48 square feet) and the area of our bow was about 3 feet by 7 feet (21 square feet).

How these two small surfaces managed to find each other and to make contact is still a mystery to me. The chances of it happening seem so very remote.

more verses of the song, particularly:

"it’s morning now, the sea is blue
the storm’s blown through and the world is new"

I wonder who can sing it for me? Lucy was so terrific last time, in 2001. I need to find someone like her.

Later I proposed to Tiffany that she should sing it – a resounding lack of enthusiasm ensued.


10/4 - Wednesday

Oh dear! Heading West! (and a little North) - quite the wrong direction!

We approached the Chilean coast, close enough to spot the loom of a lighthouse beam from one of the Evangelista Islands but the wind remained obstinately in the South with a little East in it as well – exactly the direction in which we have to go to get round the Horn.

Rather than be trapped on a lee shore, we wore ship and turned away (heading, the Captain told us in joke, directly for Tahiti).

We may spend days to-ing and fro-ing like this, but I hope not. Everyone has the Channels already, cabin fever – they have all been anticipating the landfalls, at the Horn and Port Stanley, since the day we left Bluff.

Also, food is running short. No fruit now for days and days – no more biscuits on night watch.

A poem, not a song:

The West wind strokes the seas and kisses skies
As I would like to stroke a woman’s thighs
Gently and often, lovingly and bold,
Inflamed, enraptured, passionate - and cold

(Another six lines written and in notebook – could make a sonnet? But I think the extra lines weaken it rather than add to it. Maybe I will look at it again sometime.)

This wind will stroke the sea and kiss the sky
When woman, thighs and I in earth will lie

(And not together more’s the pity!)


11/4 - Thursday


Overcast, barometric pressure rising, South wind – tried wearing at 0845 when the wind seemed to be veering – however, the best poss. course we could achieve afterwards was 070 M, to the North of East, ie No Bloody Good.

We wore back, promptly and are still heading West with no windshift likely.


12/4 - Friday - 1430


52 38 S – 76 45 W

Two days ago we were further South and West than this (53 20S 75 32 W) – we have made no progress at all and our current course is 89-93 True, which will take us into the Straits of Magellan but not round the Horn. It is still completely overcast and we are now less than 70 miles off Desolation Island in the Archipelago Reina Adelaida in about 400-1555 fathoms, with no hope of finding soundings before we hit the rocks.

We would be in grave danger with only Dead Reckoning and my sextant to guide us. (We haven't seen the sun for days and days). How would I play it, if I were the only navigator and there was no GPS on board?


13/4 - Saturday – 0635


Thick overcast – viz down to 1-1.5 miles.

Course about 150M, variation 16-18 East. So we are making South, as we want, at 6-7 knots over the ground with a Force 4-5 breeze on our starboard quarter.

Stood by at noon, with Gerald, to try for a noon sight – but the sun was completely concealed, there was no point in even bringing the sextant on deck.

By accident, just this morning, I came across an article by Skip Novak about navigating the second Whitbread Round the World Race, in 1977. What I saw was a print out of the Cape Horn Article from the web-site www.pelagic.co.uk.

In the article, he describes approaching Cape Horn from the West as we are doing, in overcast conditions. He sees a break in the clouds, grabs a sun-sight, comps it. Two hours later, another break in the clouds, another observation, another set of calculations.

He crosses the two position lines (which have only a 30 degree angle of cut) and deduces from this scanty evidence that his estimated latitude is spot on and that the vessel is (jubilantly) 40 miles further down their track (ie nearer the Horn) than his DR had implied. “We were ten miles north of our supposed track and a healthy forty miles ahead of schedule.”

If your actual position is ahead of your DR, you are in great danger if the skies are overcast and you are running down onto a lee shore. Also, two position lines with only two hours between them are not much by way of hard evidence.

You have to have a lot of balls to navigate that way – but, of course, at that time, there was no alternative. You either navigated on the edge like that or you stayed at home.


14/4 Sunday


On the bow by myself early this morning. Delightful. Thrilling. The ship is so beautiful. In detail as well as in outline, in close up as well as in long shot.

I looked at it and loved it, suddenly, with different eyes - observing things I had seen many times with fresh perception.

I wrote this in my notebook on deck. My fingers got very very cold very quickly. Otherwise, I would have written more:

"Everything on the deck around me is functional, hand-crafted, beautifully appropriate and much-handled, worn and scarred with constant use.

This is a living, working museum-piece, which we inhabit and use. I feel very content and fortunate – even the noise of the waves is muted and soothing."

How little I write about sounds and smells in these journals. Nothing about the food either.

Curious omissions?

Everyone else who writes about sailing mentions the noise of the wind in the rigging, especially in stormy conditions.

But I was not very conscious of it, either because I was deafened by all the garments I wore on my head to keep myself warm or (more likely?) that my nearly sixty year old hearing apparatus minimised the high frequency sounds, the whistling and howling sounds, that surround me.

I must ask a younger crew member, Craig, perhaps, about the sounds and how he remembers them.

As for smell - there must have been a variety of strong odours on the eighteenth century deck where we all slept and worked and lived.

The hatch to the deck had to be closed for most of our time crossing the Pacific. A stranger would undoubtedly have sniffed disbelievingly, if suddenly finding him or herself in our midst. Socks, feet, trainers, underwear, damp clothes, sleeping bags, intestinal emissions (farts) ...... not to speak of the smell of the sail cloth, the warps, the equipment and stores of tar and varnish with which we also shared the space.

And yet I do not remember the smells and I make no comments about them at all, in any of the notebooks.

I suppose I just got used to them.


0738

Wallowing in a light Southerly a few miles off Gilbert island, Stewart island and Londonderry island. About 40 miles off shore. We might see the nearest peak (8,000 feet) a little later. Cape Horn is within reach now – perhaps 150 miles away. It is bitterly cold and horribly calm. Barometric pressure (BP) is steady or rising.

We are going to make it.