A Voyage For Madmen (17 page)

The boat's launch date, 31 August, came and went with the trimaran unfinished. A revised deadline of 12 September passed. Eastwoods was bogged down with the extra work specified by Crowhurst: strengthening of the basic Piver design to stand up to the long passage through the Southern Ocean and modifications made for his self-righting apparatus and other equipment. Because of the heavy weight of the inflatable buoyancy bag that was to be lashed to the top of the mainmast, the mast had to be shorter, and this meant a redesign of the entire rigging plan, which Crowhurst had promised – and failed – to supply to the builders. Eastwood and his partner, John Elliot, frequently needed Crowhurst's presence at the yard to help them determine the arrangement of these and many other changes, but the boatyard in Norfolk was on the far side of southern England, then a long day's drive from Bridgwater, and they didn't see enough of him. He was busy taking radio-telegraphy courses in Bristol, working out financial arrangements with Stanley Best and with Clare for his coming absence, arranging for a friend to take over the sale of his Navicators, looking for sponsors, and, perhaps, still tinkering with his ‘computer' and its much-vaunted systems.

On 21 September – two days before the next ‘without fail' launch date of 23 September – Crowhurst and the builders had an angry argument over the phone. Eastwoods told him they were not intending to cover the boat's plywood decks with fibreglass, as the plywood hulls (built by Cox Marine) had been. This fibreglass sheathing of the boat was part of the design's specifications, and essential for preserving the watertightness and structural integrity of the deck. Eastwoods claimed that the delay in determining the rigging plan (John Eastwood had finally drawn up the new plan
himself) had left them no time to glass the decks. They were planning simply to paint the bare plywood now, arguing that since the fibreglass was so thin, good polyurethane paint would do just as well (an incorrect claim and an unprofessional suggestion). Crowhurst was furious, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was too late in the day.

Over the years, Crowhurst's intelligence, and the force of his personality, had convinced Clare Crowhurst that he could pull off anything he set his mind to – he always had. The idea for his circumnavigation seemed to be going true to form: Donald had decided he was going to do it, and here it was happening, just as he had planned. But that night, after his phone call with Eastwoods, Crowhurst was so upset that Clare pleaded with him to refuse delivery of the boat, to abandon the project. To her surprise, he listened to her seriously. ‘I suppose you're right,' he said, ‘but the whole thing has become too important to me. I've got to go through with it, even if I have to build the boat myself on the way round.'

It was the only time Clare asked him to give up. Taking her husband at his word, she supported him and did all she could to help him. She did not try to dissuade him again.

On 15 September, the
Sunday Times
reported that Chay Blyth had put in to East London and was now out of the race. The article went on to say that the most recent competitor to start out, Commander Bill King, England's submarine ace sailing his race-designed yacht, was the first sailor to overtake one of his rivals, Loïck Fougeron. On the previous Wednesday, King had radioed that he was between the Cape Verde Islands and the west coast of Africa. On the same day, Fougeron had been sighted by a ship 350 miles southwest of the Canary Islands, or 500 miles astern of King. This seemed like an impressive overhaul by the Englishman in his purpose-built schooner after only three weeks at sea. But Fougeron's pace was sedate. King's average of 110 miles per day was still slower than Francis Chichester's
128 miles per day at the beginning of his voyage, the standard against which the Golden Globe racers were continually measured. Moitessier had not been seen since the beginning of September, and his 143 mile per day average was not yet known.

In the same article, the
Sunday Times
took its first serious look at Donald Crowhurst's preparations, reporting on the trimaran's onboard computer and Crowhurst's ‘patented' self-righting device.

The paper also reported that Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Tetley, taking unpaid leave from the Royal Navy, was about to sail from Plymouth in his trimaran.

Tetley sailed the next day, Monday 16 September.
Victress
carried a banner on her cabin side proclaiming the name of Tetley's sponsor, Music for Pleasure, which had sent him off with a boatload of cassette tapes. Brass band music blared from his wheelhouse speaker as he ran down Plymouth Sound. He was surrounded by the usual flotilla of press boats, which managed not to collide with him, perhaps due to his escort of navy launches, including a commander-in-chief's ‘barge' carrying a vice admiral. His wife Eve waved from a nearby boat. Tetley noticed that she was beating time to the music, and as the brass band started a soulful tune, he was overcome with sobs. Later, as he passed Eddystone Lighthouse, when the boats had all turned back, he bolstered his mood with the bagpipe music of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and ate smoked trout for lunch.

The northerly wind was aft and Tetley had set twin running headsails held out to catch the wind by poles mounted on the foredeck. This downwind rig had been popularised by British sailor and author Eric Hiscock, who with his wife Susan had by then circumnavigated twice (by way of the tropics and the Panama and Suez canals in a small 30-footer) using this twin-headsail arrangement to faciliate self-steering. As
Victress
moved offshore, the wind rose and Tetley decided to take the twins down, but as he was doing this, the wind caught a loose sail, flung it aback, and broke its wooden pole in two. The sail then collapsed into the water with the broken pole, which unhooked itself and floated away.

During the first night an upper-spreader on the mainmast broke loose and banged and whirled on the end of its wire in the rigging. The motion was too violent for Tetley to go up the mast to make a repair, so he tried to steer the boat on a gentler course further downwind, but found this difficult without the missing pole. Demoralised by these two early mishaps before he was even out of the English Channel, he consoled himself by eating a chicken Eve had roasted for him, while listening to Handel's
Water Music
. In the afternoon the wind moderated and Tetley got the trimaran heading downwind, climbed aloft on short rungs screwed to the wooden mast, and repaired the broken spreader.

The next day, his run of unlucky accidents continued: while clearing seaweed off the trailing log line, he accidentally dropped it overboard. He had one spare line, which he wisely left coiled in the log's box.

That night the wind was squally, at times reaching gale force and blowing from the southwest, so Tetley tacked northwest to keep clear of the rocky, tide-ripped French coast. On the third day the wind blew at gale force and the burdened trimaran slammed into the rising seas, until he hove to for the night.

From the start, Tetley conscientiously noted the music provided by his sponsor. He faithfully recorded in his logbook what he listened to and when. ‘Later, ominous black clouds appeared ahead, and clad in oilskins, I sat in the wheelhouse ready for the worst, listening to Schubert's
Unfinished Symphony.'

In addition to standards of the classical repertoire, Music for Pleasure had given him a mix of tapes that could be called eclectic: albums by the popular music pianist Russ Conway; the Mousehole Male Voice Choir (Mousehole, pronounced ‘Mowzle', is a village in Cornwall); George Formby, who sang bawdy
tunes in a flat, nasally northern accent while playing his ukulele; the Red Army Choir; music from the Greek islands; and meditations in Indian sitar music.

He also recorded much of what he ate, accompanied by his rations of music: lunch of cold chicken, tomatoes, fruit, and smoked cheese; dinner of Chinese-style chicken and beef, onions, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, and peppers, with half a bottle of Beaujolais; roast duck and a bottle of wine for another supper; scrambled eggs and cod roe for breakfast. These oddly resemble the meals writer Ian Fleming used to set before another naval commander – James Bond.

Tetley was also eating with a purpose:
Victress
was heavily laden when he departed and sluggish in the strong winds he encountered at the beginning of his voyage. He calculated that his consumption of food, water, wine, and fuel lightened the boat by about 10 pounds daily.

Teignmouth Electron
was launched into the river Yare at Brundall, Norfolk, on 23 September. Clare Crowhurst made a short speech and swung a champagne bottle against the hull. It failed to break. In the seaman's world of attenuated superstition, this was supposed to be unlucky, an ominous failure at the outset of a vessel's life. But John Eastwood told Clare that the same thing had happened to Sheila Chichester at the launch of
Gypsy Moth IV
.

The boat was far from finished. It was still without masts, rigging, sails, and literally hundreds of pieces of hardware inside and out that made it liveable in and sailable. Eastwoods' crew of boat-builders laboured another week of long days, while John Eastwood and Crowhurst, who was now in the yard full-time, argued constantly and bitterly, both giving conflicting instructions to the workmen.

They also argued about money. Eastwoods claimed that the extra work of Crowhurst's improvements, additions, and innovations had nearly doubled the cost of the boat, and they
demanded that he provide a £1,000 releasing fee before he took the boat away from the yard.

The still-unfinished trimaran was pronounced ready to sail – as far as Teignmouth anyway – on 2 October. Crowhurst set out expecting to make the trip in three days.

John Eastwood, his partner John Elliot, Crowhurst's friend Peter Beard from Bridgwater, and some boatbuilders from the yard were the boat's crew on the first leg. Setting off down the Yare, through the picturesque Norfolk Broads,
Teignmouth Electron
's maiden voyage commenced with ill fortune. As they approached a village, the local chain ferry set out across the river ahead of them. An ebb tide was sweeping them on. John Eastwood thought there was plenty of room and depth on either side of the ferry, but Crowhurst was worried that the hulls might snag on the underwater chain, and he ordered the yardmen on the bow to let go the anchor. As the anchor dug in, the tide swung the boat around and it crunched into pilings near the bank, making a hole in the starboard hull. They sailed on to Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast, where the yard's men patched the damage and then left with John Eastwood. At 2 a.m., in rain and wind, Crowhurst, Elliot, and Peter Beard sailed out into the black North Sea.

The seas were rough and all three men became seasick, but Crowhurst was the worst affected. He began vomiting repeatedly, but remained either at the helm or below at the chart table, navigating and steering through an evil night. He was in a terrible mood, angry at his own weakness, and short-tempered with the others, but John Elliot found him impressive. ‘Oddly enough it was watching him then that really convinced me he was a man to sail around the world. He revealed his incredible determination and stubbornness. Once he had decided to do something, neither disaster nor persuasion could deflect him.'