XV CONSOLIDATION
The appointment of an Admiral had been left in abeyance since the death of Sir
Alec in 1991, but the end of Mary’s reign in 1994 was a perfect opportunity to
elevate her to that rank. At the ceremony of installation she was presented with
a crystal rose bowl engraved with a depiction of Rose Rambler and the dates of
her office, most appropriately accompanied by cavorting dolphins. In turn Mary
presented the Club with a silver tankard to be awarded for the most ambitious
or arduous qualifying voyage by a new member. It soon became known
affectionately as ‘Mary’s Mug’.
One of her first and pleasant duties in 1994, not exactly as Admiral but with
her Vertue connection through Hum, was to review the fleet of boats of that
design that had gathered in the Solent. Mary took the salute as 12 Vertues sailed
past the Royal Lymington YC some 44 years after Hum had made them so
famous. That connection had surely contributed to their continued popularity,
as five new ones had been completed the previous year and five more were in
build. It was both pleasing and profitable to see a regular advertisement for
them in Flying Fish.
The change of Commodore coincided with the expiration of Howard’s term
as Vice, to be replaced by Peter Aitchison who had been so strong in his support
six years earlier. Anne Hammick had become one of the Rear Commodores the
year before, and she was now joined by Geoff Pack as second junior flag
officer. Thus it was a largely new team who had the daunting task of maintaining
the previous impetus; fortunately the Club had attained such momentum that it
would have been difficult to slow it down.
Subscriptions were raised in 1994 with a remarkably small drop in membership.
It was an early but prudent move, as expenditure was daily creeping up while
the country was experiencing relatively high inflation. This rise in subs kept the
Club firmly on the road to financial stability so that it began to enjoy an upward
spiral – so much more comfortable than the previous downward slope. For the
next four years new members joined at a rate of more than 100 each year and
less than half that number left. By 1995 membership was above 1200, a rise
which has continued steadily so that today it is around 1800. This flush of new,
mid-90s, members provided a most useful windfall of joining fees, and the
periodic Long Term Cruising Symposia had also added a substantial injection of
funds.
It would have been easy at that stage to relax the self-imposed financial
strictures, but the Committee maintained a rigid discipline until it had accumulated
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reserves equal to one year’s normal income. Non-recurrent income and that
derived from the extraordinary number of joining fees was a bonus. This ambition
was achieved by 1995 largely due to the Membership Secretaries’ tenacious
chasing of backsliders. By then they had achieved a collection rate of 98%, and
the numbers needing to be struck off were steadily decreasing. Nevertheless,
the Treasurer and Membership Secretaries continued to maintain a very strict
control, apprising the Committee of the detailed financial position at every meeting
so that trends were spotted in ample time to apply a correction.
If Mary had largely healed the old wounds, her successor – the current writer
(see photographs page 237) – was determined to bind the Club together. She
had travelled widely to functions abroad, as had Howard Gosling, her Vice
Commodore, so that the administration was no longer remote but now contained
recognisable personalities. However, there was still some lingering suspicion in
certain corners of the world. An early visit to Australia by Jill and myself found
a membership of less than half of that of the heyday of the ’80s, but with a very
The perennial Australians – Kathryn Delaney,
Sid Yaffe, Carol Hocking, David Hocking,
Michael Delaney, Virginia Parsons and Nick Lowes
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strong spirit and an almost proprietorial attitude towards ‘their OCC’ that was
thoroughly healthy. They had their own regalia and trophy, but the no-nonsense
Australians didn’t want any truck with club politics and had left in droves
during the troubles. Also, it must be admitted, their early numbers were rather
generously stated and included many non-payers who, over time, were weeded
out. However the hard core remained, with many well-known names such as
Wally Burke, Sid Yaffe, John Maddox, Charles Davis, David Hocking, Mike
Delaney, Pat Wall, David Beard and most of those who had made it such a
vibrant branch over the years.
The East Coast of the States was humming, but the concentration of members
had hitherto been north of New York. The 1994 Port Officers list shows 12
from New York and northwards, against only three to the south. One Rear
Commodore had looked after the whole of the eastern seaboard, and rallies had
always been on the North East coast. Sally Henderson (see photograph page
237), had ploughed a fairly lonely furrow at Gibson Island in north Chesapeake,
and our two representatives in Florida had to rely on passing traffic. However,
by the late ’80s things began to stir further south. Bill Caldwell had joined in
1988 and the following year he and his wife Alice organised a rally at their
lovely spot on the Piankatank River. With no authority other than enthusiasm
(he wasn’t even Port Officer), he went on to run an annual spring cruise-in-
company and an autumn party that became the venue for many local members
and itinerants who soon began to plan their movements around Bill’s dates. His
rallies gathered pace and began to rival northern activities, which until then had
been largely shore-bound. It was a neat reversal of roles as previously the New
Englanders had always shown the way. It soon became clear that a more formal
arrangement was necessary, so in 1995 a new post was created and Bill was
elected the first Rear Commodore USA South East. He came over to the AGM for
his installation, bringing along his proposer and seconder, and he and Alice went on
welcoming members to the Piankatank until he retired from office in 2002.
The 1984 census by nationality showed 75 Irish members, but this had halved
by the time of the next stock-take in 1993. In my annual address in 1995 I
analysed membership trends, and it came as no surprise that the highest rate of
recruitment was in those areas where the Club was represented by a flag officer
and, therefore, where things happened. There was always a healthy trickle of
applicants from the ranks of those who had at last achieved their ambition to
qualify, but the majority came from contact with existing members at Club
events. So by 1996, when the Irish fraternity had regained such strength that
they had become the fourth largest block of members after the UK, USA and
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Australia, it was logical that they should have their own flag officer. There was
a problem however – previously the Northern Irish members had been shown
under the United Kingdom umbrella and the southerners as a separate country.
Whilst strictly correct, sailors tend not to observe such political niceties and
they made it quite clear that any representative from Ireland should speak for
the whole island. In due course Dermod Ryan was proposed by John Gore-
Grimes from Southern Ireland and seconded by Sir Dennis Faulkner from the
North. In good Irish fashion Dermod immediately set in train OCC dinners at
Dublin’s magnificent Royal St George Yacht Club – yet another test of stamina
for the UK flag officers who could not resist the invitation to join them.
A further initiative to bind the Club into a global family was to make all overseas
flag officers members of the main committee so that they received agendas and
Plenty of stamina here – Flor Long and
Rear Commodore Ireland Peter Haden enjoy a game
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Assent finds safe haven in Greenland
Aratapu catches a williwaw in Patagonia
232
minutes and were thus kept abreast of the thinking and arguments behind
decisions. They were, of course, always free to attend committee meetings,
and some of them did, but by knowing in advance they were able to comment
on proposals before they were cast in stone. They were also to be consulted on
the appointments of Port Officers and Roving Rear Commodores on their patches,
and made members of the Awards sub-committee, moves which ensured that
they became much more a part of the active administration of the Club.
The Cruising Information Service (CIS) had had a chequered career, but a
determined effort by Anne Hammick in the late 1980s had put some order into
it, and when Pat Pocock took it on in 1996 and put it onto disc it became much
more accessible. However, it was always grossly underused for the effort
expended in its compilation, with only two enquires for information during the
whole of 1994. Pat therefore concentrated on those areas not served by pilot
books. In an attempt to expand its use the Royal Cruising Club was contacted
with a view to arranging reciprocity with their Foreign Port Information (FPI),
and an informal agreement was eventually made whereby cross-access would
be given on a strictly non-attributable basis.
Along with the new look CIS, the stock of charts housed at the Royal Thames
YC were at last brought to order by Donald McGilivray. These had been
obtained by Colin Fergusson when BP were updating charts for their tankers,
which apparently carry coverage of the whole world, and the Club was the
beneficiary. They were housed at the RTYC but were never much used as they
were difficult to access unless you were a Londoner. Donald produced
catalogues which at least made members aware of what was available, but the
uncorrected charts gradually became so dated that they were of little value
other than for broad planning.
One spin-off from the arrangement with the Royal Cruising Club, this time in
the guise of the RCC Pilotage Foundation, was the production of a joint
publication on the Pacific. The Pococks had just returned from a seven year
circumnavigation, almost half that time being spent in the Pacific, and had sent
much useful information for the CIS. Based to a large extent on this knowledge,
Mike produced a splendid tome entitled The Pacific Crossing Guide which was
published under the joint logos of the two clubs. Clive King, Rear Commodore
USA West, wrote a most evocative foreword which eloquently put that ocean
in perspective for those who hadn’t had the good fortune to sail it. Who could
resist the enticement of these words:
‘Hold the globe between your hands, placing Tahiti more or less
in the middle, and the full immensity of the Pacific is brought into
focus. Half the world faces you and most of it is water. For
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Mike Pocock, Commodore 1998–2002,
with Pat aboard Blackjack
234
Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians, this is home. They
colonised the myriad coral atolls and volcanic islands with small
sailing boats, humbling Western man with their navigation and
seamanship long before the era of European exploration.
Unlike the Atlantic, this is an ocean scattered with small island
nations, each spread over a vast area. Home is not bounded by
the seam of land and sea, but rather by a confection of water
and islands and reefs, and every Polynesian has family on the
next island, and the next. Mostly the people remain – by
temperament and by choice – immured from Western strivings,
choosing a more peaceful way to live. The lands and waters
have been kind to them, with tropical abundance, warm waters
and protective reefs providing for most needs.’
Not only was Clive Rear Commodore USA West from 1992 to 1997 and Port
Officer San Francisco from 1980 until leaving the States in 1999, but he also
spent much of his time cruising the Pacific. He built his 53ft Bruce Roberts
steel ketch Sonoma of the Isles in the early ’80s, and we were soon enjoying
yarns written in his lazy style through which you could almost hear the soughing
of the surf. For years he quartered the Pacific, changing crew and wives at
regular intervals and returning to the office in Sausalito when he needed to top
up the coffers. On one of his visits home he wandered down to the quay just in
time to take the lines of Mike and Pat Pocock who were entering the dock
entirely by coincidence. Not bad for such an itinerant PO. Clive clearly loves
the islands and writes so enthusiastically of them:
‘For the next three years, 1988 to 1991, Sonoma of the Isles
took me through Polynesia and Melanesia. Each year a new crew
and each year some months aboard and some in the office. Cook,
Stevenson, Gauguin, London, how they all wrote, painted and
told fine tales of the islands. And little has changed. So Tahiti
now has an air-conditioned shopping mall, Camembert-avion
arrives twice weekly fresh from Normandy, and the general French
silliness of rushing around pervades. But stevedores still put a
flower in their hair each morning, and that tells it all.’
Another year and another wife:
‘In 1993 Sonoma of the Isles was again restless, so we closed up
shop and sailed to Mexico and then back to French Polynesia.
Again we climbed the tropic hills of the Marquesas, wandered the
lagoons of the Tuamotus (home of the black pearls), dined and
danced with men of thunderous girth and swam in the shadow of
Moorea.’
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While Clive was visiting old haunts in the south Pacific, the Engwirdas from
Southport, Australia were ploughing a lonely furrow across the north of that
ocean. Margaret and Andy had taken 11 years to build Bolero, their beautiful
56ft John Alden wooden yawl, and they nearly always sailed with just the two
of them. An exception was the shakedown which Andy did singlehanded to
New Zealand and Norfolk Island, 2300 miles non-stop. There is an old cruising
adage that you should not be seduced into calling at attractive ports on the way
to your chosen cruising ground, which they observe to a ridiculous degree.
They had long fancied Alaska as a change from palm-fringed islands, so in
1993 they sailed there, direct from Southport, 7600 miles non-stop, passing
almost within hailing distance of Honolulu. After messing around in Alaska for
a season they sailed home to prepare for their really long trip.
In December1995 they left Australia to visit friends in Amsterdam, taking the
clipper route south of the Great Capes. The Southern Ocean was frustrating
with a preponderance of headwinds but they were rewarded with a relatively
easy passage around the Horn:
‘When we neared Cape Horn, one last violent 60 knotter with
Bolero makes her offing
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Tony Vasey, Commodore 1994–1998, finds
a draughty corner mid-Atlantic
Change of watch – Sally Henderson passes the baton to Erica Lowery,
congratulated by Commodore Tony Vasey
237
30ft seas and fierce squalls left Bolero shaking and trembling, as
were the skipper and his mate. By contrast the next day was
beautiful with a blue sky – grey had been the predominant colour
for weeks. On Days 51 and 52 we were totally becalmed between
latitudes 53°S and 54°S. An eerie feeling followed the storm,
and sitting in the screaming fifties with large swells and no wind
left a tight feeling in our tummies. Eventually 10–20 knots of
southwest wind came through, and we made the run for the Horn
with only 300 miles to go. On Day 55 Ramirez Island was sighted
and identified by a lighthouse, so our navigation was okay. The
Southern Ocean had been continually overcast and threatening,
yet here at the end the sky was crystal clear, the ocean an
incredible jewel colour and a spectacular sunset ended the day.
Swells from the southwest were whipped up by heavy squalls.
The tail of the great Andes mountain range slides into the ocean
on this tip of South America, making the sea quickly rise
thousands of metres to form a shallow bank. A wild place in
adverse wind and currents. In the early hours of Saturday 10
February, Day 56 of the voyage, Bolero rounded Cape Horn. We
didn’t see the ‘Old Ogre’ and decided not to wait around to take
a photograph. The swells and squalls continued and we began to
surf downhill at high speeds. Caution became the better part of
valour and we kept going. From South West Cape, New Zealand
to Cape Horn we had sailed 5568 miles in 42 days.’
On day 134 they arrived at Amsterdam, 17,100 miles without a stop. After a
four month refit they allowed themselves the luxury of day-sailing to Plymouth
so as to be able to pit themselves against the record of Francis Chichester, who
started his famous voyage from that historical port. Less than five months
from reaching Amsterdam they were off again for the non-stop passage home.
They reached the equator on day 26, exactly the same as Francis, and again
their times were the same when they rounded Good Hope on day 58. The
Indian Ocean produced mixed weather:
‘On day 75 we encountered the most serious storm of this leg, a
south-westerly of 40–60 knots. Horrifying. The swells looked at
least 40ft high, being conservative. The first front passed through
at a speed of 50–60 knots, the wind velocity increased even
further, gusting to 70 knots, and the waves mounted to 50ft and
were cresting. The storm had started with a strong gale two days
earlier, which gradually built up in strength and never abated, just
steadily worsened. Bolero has seen some bad weather over the
years but this would probably have to top everything. On several
occasions we were airborne and came crashing down into the
trough, and were repeatedly knocked sideways across the waves.
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The ever-welcoming Peter Azevedo outside his famous Café Sport
(see page 242)
Admiral Mary applauds the ever-helpful João Fraga
239
St Paul’s Rocks seemed to become a magnet, and despite all our
efforts we missed them by only 10 miles – too close for comfort,
and the nearest we had been to land since Plymouth.’
But it wasn’t all bad:
‘By contrast, after ‘our storm’ almost a week of lovely weather
followed. The sun shone and the wind lightened to a gentle 8–10
knots, usually from the northeast. The lightweight reaching sail
emerged out of the forecabin and could be raised once more.’
A reception committee had been arranged for their ETA, but strong southerlies
meant they were three days early so had the frustration of wasting time in
heavy seas so as not to cause embarrassment. The total voyage was 33,000
miles in 13 months. Discounting the potter in the English Channel, they had
made only one stop and deservedly took both the Australian Trophy and the
Barton Cup for this incredible endurance test.
The Club took some time to come to terms with the communications revolution
of the 1990s, perhaps because of the conservative nature of the then hierarchy,
but pressure from modernists such as Dick Guckel, Neil Wilkie and Andrew
Bray forced a move towards the new electronic era. In 1996 Dick started his
register of e-mail addresses, but even after a year the number listed was only
33. However it was a start, soon enhanced by the inclusion of other useful data
on member’s qualifications and expertise, allowing faster movement of
information between members. Brooke Davis of New York was well ahead of
the European thinking, preaching the merits of the internet with missionary
zeal. A questionnaire was therefore circulated, eliciting a good response and
showing that many members were keen and ready to embrace this advance in
communications. It is difficult now to cast one’s mind back to the era before e-
mail and websites, but there were a surprising number of luddites. Scotty Allen
replied, ‘We go to sea to get away from complications’, while Roger Fothergill
expressed his usual light-hearted view, ‘There are two computer buffs on this
island. Both are harmless but weird’.
A sub-committee under Neil culminated in 1997 with the Club piggy-backing
on the Conference of Cruising Yacht Clubs website and offering a page of Club
details for general consumption. One of the concerns in those early and innocent
days was the likely cost to the Club as so little was known about the functioning
of this new media. Coincidentally, Nickie Cooper, widow of recently deceased
member Robin, offered to fund a trophy in his memory. The Club already had
an embarrassment of awards but Nickie was sufficiently broad-minded to accept
the argument that the funds could be better applied to the creation and
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maintenance of a website. The wheel had gone full circle since 1955 when
Hum, with his aversion to competitive awards, had persuaded the first person
to offer a prize to apply the money to reward ideas and inventions instead. To
obviate any major design costs, Graham Johnson offered to set the design of a
Club website as a project for his university students, with them being paid in
the kind that most students enjoy – food and beer. Much of the resulting site is
still in use today, ably run by Mike Downing as web-master.
Members were surprisingly conservative in their desire for colour in Flying
Fish, at first regarding it as an unnecessary luxury, but one improvement which
they did applaud was the production of much improved track charts. So often
good articles were spoilt by the reader not knowing where the writer was when
detailing his or her movements, so when, in 1996, Andrew Bray suggested they
should be drawn by Yachting World’s professional cartographer the offer was
enthusiastically endorsed.
During the course of my travels as Commodore I had noticed that the flying
fish logo had developed many variants, from the slim-line, high-speed model
depicted on the cover of the magazine to the rather jolly smiling fellow on the
burgee. The Australian fish had mutated to a rather lethargic chap who seemed
to be having difficulty getting airborne, and individual members had coined
their own depending on their artistic abilities. So in 1996 Colin Mudie, who had
designed the original logo some 40 years earlier, was asked to redraw the
‘definitive fish’. The result was the much happier chap first seen cavorting on
the cover of Flying Fish on the second issue of 1997 and who has since been
adopted worldwide.
In 1997 a member of long-standing telephoned Flying Fish editor Anne
Hammick saying how much he enjoyed the magazine and that he wished to
help financially if the Club was in need of updating its production facilities.
The result was a complete new package of hardware and software which
enabled faster and more modern editing with an improvement in efficiency
and quality. It should be known that this same anonymous donor has also
largely paid for the production of this record of the Club, of which he is so
proud to be associated.
During the 1990s there was a rash of clubs asking for a form of affiliation with
the OCC. This may have been partly due to the higher profile which the Club
had attained, and certainly some clubs enjoyed the international contact and
hoped that association with such a thriving organisation would rub off on their
members. The OCC has little to offer in reciprocation and this was made clear,
but nevertheless an agreement was arranged whereby our members could enjoy
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the use of several other clubs’ premises, those clubs, in return, being allowed
to show the affiliation in their publications.
Fred Brown became well-known throughout the Club for his promptness in
responding to requests for regalia, usually posting the item within 24 hours, but
in 1996 he became ill and died still in harness. How the genial Fred managed
such efficiency will never be known, as he spent plenty of time on his boat and
hardly ever missed an Azores rally or Azores and Back Race (AZAB). Martin
Thomas stepped into the gap and his non-sailing secretary, Gladys, soon became
as familiar with the terminology of nautical accoutrements as she was with her
normal medical routine, but by 1998 she felt that the extra pressure was becoming
too much and Jill Vasey was persuaded to take it on. Jill particularly enjoyed the
wide contact within the Club, and after five years of exchanging chatty notes
to applicants felt that she had made hundreds of friends across the world. Her
most treasured request came from Erling Lagerholm, who had been one of
the Drumbeat recruits in the 1950s. He wrote on birch bark as follows: ‘This
stationery comes to you through the courtesy of some damn beaver who gnawed
down the last birch tree on our little island in the North Channel of Lake Huron.
Please send me an 18 inch nylon burgee’.
Perhaps it was a sign of the maturity of members’ cruising habits rather than of
boredom, but after nearly 20 years the Azores rally began to lose its attraction.
The first meet in 1977 had been a bit of a damp squib when only one boat
reached the islands, but the 1981 gathering was a resounding success and
every other year since then the Club had held its popular pursuit race. However
in 1996 it was difficult to raise enough entries to make it worthwhile, so with
regret it was suspended. The rallies had been made especially enjoyable by the
welcome and assistance given by Peter Azevedo and João Fraga (see photograph
page 239), and the citizens of Horta had taken the Club to their hearts, simply
referring to it as ‘The Club’, the definition of ‘Ocean Cruising’ being considered
superfluous.
It was in no way a substitute for the Azores, but in 1996 the Club held its first
Falmouth rally. It quickly gained popularity so that it is now established as the
annual end of season rally in the way the Beaulieu opens the sailing year for the
UK members. It was gratifying to welcome four yachts returning from North
America in 1997, and in 2000 it was the start of the most successful Millennium
Rally when boats left for the Atlantic-wide celebrations.
Our heroines seem to come in small packages. The brief but spectacular exploits
of the diminutive Clare Francis have already been described, and her prowess
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was later rivalled by another dynamic figure, Mary Falk. Mention has already
been made of her determination when wearing her lawyer’s hat, but she has
shown herself equally resolute when on the water. She is strictly a racer but
this does not lessen the contribution that she has made to the Club as a whole.
After two terms on the Committee she was promoted Rear Commodore and
we have long benefited from her advice on legal matters. Furthermore she
arranged for the Committee to use the boardroom at her solicitor’s firm, which
was a marked step up from some of the places previously used. Her first boat
was a UFO 34, Quixote, in which she cut her singlehanded racing teeth first
with an AZAB and then in OSTAR when she came fourth in class. This whetted
her appetite, so in 1990 Mike Pocock designed her a one-off with the express
purpose of campaigning the OSTAR, which she did with impressive success.
QII is a 35ft water-ballasted sloop, not particularly extreme to look at but
certainly extremely fast. There is a single wrap-around seat midships, facing
the control console, with a full seat harness with which Mary tethers the boat
to her person. She then drives it like the rally car for which the seat and harness
were designed. In her first OSTAR with QII she came second in class, but in
1996 she was the first woman to win a class in the history of the race. But that
was not all – she took more than a day off the class record, beat all the class
above her, all but one in the 45ft class and all but two monos in the 50ft class.
Unlike Clare Francis, Mary has continued racing hard with many more
successes to her name. Not surprisingly she became known as the fastest
single-hulled lady on the North Atlantic.
The Committee stuck to their principles and resisted awarding Mary a trophy,
even the short-handed Rose Medal, since all the awards cite meritorious cruises.
However, in 1992 they did find it in their hearts to recognise the great contribution
she had made to sailing generally and in raising the profile of the Club with the
presentation of the OCC Award.
While Mary was racing across the North Atlantic another of our female members,
Fran Flutter, was ploughing a solo furrow around the world in her 35ft Cartright
sloop Prodigal.
She left Falmouth in 1995 and reached New Zealand in 1996, for which she
was awarded the Rose Medal. The following year she continued via Australia,
where she sailed inside the Barrier Reef, before crossing the Indian Ocean to
Cape Town. The final leg took her home via the Azores with a stop at St Helena
– not an easy venue when singlehanded, but Fran found the usually boisterous
anchorage relatively tranquil. She remarks, reflectively, ‘St Helena is a fascinating
island – I’ve never met anyone who didn’t enjoy their visit. Historically, that
opinion might have found a few dissenters! Napoleon Buonaparte’s melancholic
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decline is well known, the fact that 6000 prisoners of the Boer War were detained
here much less so’.
On completing her circumnavigation Fran was awarded the Barton Cup.
In 1997 we read for the first time of a member visiting Japan and the Russian
Far East. Noël Marshall had worked his way to that unlikely spot after a leisurely
Pacific crossing aboard his Hallberg-Rassy 38 Sadko, having been joined by
Ann Fraser in Guam. Leisurely is perhaps putting it too kindly, since he took 64
days for a very frustrating 4400 miles from the Galapagos to Hawaii, having
been imprisoned by El Niño with a knot of current against them instead of the
charted favourable knot. Noël made no secret of the fact that his only reason
for visiting Japan was because it was the most convenient place to obtain a
Russian visa, but he then stayed for four months. However it was something of
a cultural shock, both on and off the water. When shopping he noted:
‘At first glance a Japanese supermarket looks very much like its
European equivalent, but when you examine the shelves they
contain rack after rack of strange-looking products, beautifully
wrapped in user-friendly portions – if only you knew how to use
them. There is much less tinned and packaged food.
Conspicuously, there are no long racks of biscuits and breakfast
foods.’
After getting visas in Osaka they sailed west through the inland sea:
‘Between Honshu and Awaji islands we passed below the
construction work on the longest suspension bridge in the world,
which will have a central span 2km long. Everywhere the density
of shipping, combined with fishing boats, was heavier than in the
Dover Straits on a bad day. Japanese captains have strong
nerves, and the yacht skipper will get used to sailing at closer
quarters than he would hope to meet in the English Channel.
Supertankers negotiating sensitive points, such as the huge
suspension bridges, are escorted by a pattern of ocean-going
tugs. Sadko was nearly barged from the water a long way
from the approaching tanker, by a tug proceeding to such
duties which evidently claimed absolute right of way
notwithstanding the Col Regs! It was easy to see why night
sailing was not recommended.’
Noël is a retired diplomat who speaks fluent Russian, an almost essential attribute
in overcoming Russian bureaucracy and its innate suspicion of foreigners. With
some trepidation, but with the appropriate bits of paper, they entered the
previously forbidden port of Vladivostok and were directed by port control to
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anchor off to await clearance. This clever ploy to put off a difficult decision
was neatly solved after a five hour wait by a passing motor boater who asked
what they were doing. Noël explained that they were awaiting clearance, to
which the local replied, loosely translated, ‘Oh, stuff that, you’ll be there all
night. Follow us to the yacht club’.
Ann had a contact in Siberia and had been invited to visit if they succeeded in
reaching Russia. They both flew to Lake Baikal, where the friend arranged for
them to charter a boat in which they cruised the lake for several days. Hardly
ocean cruising, but surely a first for the OCC if not for any Western sailors.
In that same year tragedy struck when Geoff Pack, UK Rear Commodore, died
at only 39 years after a short but valiant fight against cancer, leaving Loulou
with four children under eleven. Geoff was a great hairy bear of a man, always
full of humour and a mine of information on sailing matters. He had edited
Yachting Monthly for only four years but was so respected in the world of
yachting journalism that IPC Magazines, his bosses, created a scholarship for
embryo journalists in his name. They also funded an OCC trophy, the Geoff
Pack Memorial Award, which it was decided to award annually to the person
Loulou Pack presents Mike Richey
with the first Geoff Pack Memorial Award
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Sadko, a stranger in Japanese waters
246
who, by his or her writing, had done most to foster the ideals of the Club.
Although the award was to be open to all, the Committee had little difficulty
in deciding the name of the first winner – Mike Richey, who had written so
attractively for so long on sailing generally and on his many transatlantic passages
in Jester. There was no doubt that many armchair sailors had been inspired by
Mike’s low-key but evocative writing and the fact that he had recently spent his
80th birthday at sea, singlehanded. Geoff’s widow Loulou made the presentation
at the London Boat Show, IPC being represented by James Jermain who had
taken over from Geoff as editor of Yachting Monthly and who spoke movingly on
Geoff’s distinguished, but sadly curtailed, journalistic career. Andrew Bray, editor
of Yachting World, subsequently took Geoff’s place as one of the UK Rear
Commodores, thus maintaining the Club’s close link with the yachting press.
The British have made Shackleton their hero, but he was an Irishman and
Paddy Barry planned to resurrect memories of the best-remembered event of
his fellow countryman’s life of glorious failure. In 1997 Paddy built a replica of
Shackleton’s James Caird, naming her Tom Crean, and shipped her to Elephant
Island, the starting point of the explorer’s epic voyage 81 years earlier. To have
sailed at Easter, as did Shackleton, would have been to court unnecessary
disaster, so they left in January, the Antarctic summer. But to attempt a 700
mile passage in a 23ft whaler in the Southern Ocean at any time of the year had
to be hazardous in the extreme, and with five men in a boat of that size life was
very cramped. Paddy describes the normally simple operation of changing watch:
‘My back is stiff with the cold and damp. I took a couple of Bruefen,
which help. God, has it been cold, wet and miserable, even in the
good weather. The cabin is so confined. Watch change is a major
hassle getting out of oilies, putting them somewhere, getting off
gloves, hats and boots, putting them where you hope you will
find them – best under your head for a pillow – contorting feet
first into the bag inside its cover, all damp. I pull my socks (two
pairs) and gloves into the bag with me. Then at the end of your
off-watch, the opposite. Your feet would barely have warmed up
in the bag but it’s time to get out again – head first – onto your
knees, sideways, turn around, sitting in your dry gear on someone
else’s wet gear. We try and get oily trousers on inside the cabin
and then as quick as can in the cockpit get on jacket, gloves,
harness and hood up. Handling the boat is the easy bit.’
After five days of relatively good progress conditions deteriorated:
‘Wind and sea rose to a greater extent than the previous two
gales, and kept on rising and rising. By nightfall the wind was
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Paddy Barry’s Tom Crean –
a replica of Shackleton’s James Caird – on sea trials
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lifting water, not just off wave-tops, off the seas. These grew first
into regular big even crests of maybe 30ft, but then became
steep walls of water, the crests tumbling down, being wind carried
off in flying spume. We put the sea anchor out from the bow; it
seemed to make no difference. To look directly into the wind
wasn’t possible as the flying spume would cut into your face and
eyes.
The boat was lying beam-on, try as we did to keep her head to
windward. With all other sail down and the tiller lashed to lee, we
raised a triangular piece of mizzen which brought her head around
about 20°, thus bringing the seas ahead of the beam. But the
seas became irregular altogether and now were coming from all
directions. We were pointing upwind, downwind, lying, running,
we were tossed and battered about below like being inside a
washing machine; wedged in, waves belting the boat, first on
one side, then the other, then the deck.
About 0400 Saturday morning we were all below, battered,
cold, eating the odd Mars bar with water, when a great hissing
sound rose above the now familiar racket. I was in a sleeping
bag and sort of stiffened at this new sound. Then I felt us being
carried bodily sideways, swept, and then the silence. We were
upside down.
Slowly forever, for there was nothing we could do, she lay
upside down before rolling back, when we all scrambled to the
side of the cabin to help her. Amazingly, all the spars and sails
were in place, and no damage had been done except to burgees,
antenna and so on.
Twice in the next twelve hours we were again rolled, same
story. We radioed Pelagic (their mother ship) for any weather
information. They had been registering wind speeds of 50–60
knots sustained and Pelagic had been knocked on her beam by a
‘Shackleton wave’. Their wind was now southwest, 40–50 knots,
the sea completely white. Air temperature 4°C. Three cyclonic
depressions were on their way and if we did not get north of
them we would be hit by all of them. They called a US specialist
weather outfit and an hour later gave us the bad news – for the
next ten days a deepening low, going down to 965mbs, would
give northerlies all over the area, with another 60 knot session
in about three days time.’
Very reluctantly they called in the ‘mother ship’and scuttled Tom Crean. Pelagic
then took them on to South Georgia and put them ashore in King Haakon Bay
where Shackleton had landed, and from there they made the traverse to
Stromness, no mean feat in itself. Thus Paddy and his crew achieved another
magnificent failure in heroic Shackleton style, but a failure of such merit that it
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will go down in the annals of this Club as a memorable success. To use another
Paddy quote (borrowed from Addison): ‘tis not in mortals to command success,
but we’ll do more Sempronios, we’ll deserve it’.
Another outstanding exploit down in the Southern Ocean to be recognised by
the Club that year was the truly heroic rescue of Raphael Dinelli by Pete
Goss. It may be remembered that Raphael had capsized in the Around Alone
race while out of range of shore-based rescue, the only hope of saving his life
being Pete if he could get back to him. Against gale force winds he beat back
and found Dinelli at dusk clinging to his upturned boat. Pete was given the OCC
Award of Merit and the Club made a strong recommendation to the Prime
Minister that he should receive a national bravery award. In the event he was
given a sporting award that was certainly not adequate recognition of the heroism
of his actions.
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