A Voyage For Madmen (34 page)

On 4 March,
Victress
was lying ahull, beam-on to seas, in storm conditions, and Tetley was inside the cabin, when another rogue wave struck the starboard side. This time the 6-foot-wide Perspex saloon window shattered before the weight of the solid sea that poured into the boat. At the same moment, the canvas curtain shielding the starboard side of the wheelhouse was blown away like tissue paper before a giant sneeze, and more water flooded into the wheelhouse and down into the cabin through the cockpit doors. The interior was awash with icy seawater.

Reading this, in a chair or tucked safely in bed, one tries to conjure the scene, the awfulness of what it must have been like. But the hours following such a catastrophic smash-up inside a boat can scarcely be imagined. The sea that flooded the cabin, inundating everything, was perhaps 52°F. The air temperature outside
Victress
was around 48°F. The frigid water sloshed through the boat, drenching Tetley, mixing food, bedding, charts, books, clothes, his music tapes, kerosene, every large and tiny object into a swirling, lurching, icy stew. The gale that blew outside now blew into the former haven of the cabin through the cockpit doors and the 6-foot-wide smashed window. Tetley was as soaked through with seawater as if he'd jumped overboard. But there was no way to dry off, no dry clothes to change into, no way to get warm except by the frantic effort to save his life. Gone, utterly, was the thin membrane of shelter that permits the preposterous but precious and necessary illusion of security inside a boat, that sustains the warm life-force, bolstered by pictures of loved ones, books, music, the feasibility of making a hot meal, the unreasonable but persistent hope for one's chances, the barrier against despair and raw fear. All of that was swept away in an instant. At such a moment, the sailor fights for his life with all the desperation of a man in combat against a force he knows to be overwhelming. Still he struggles, and the struggle is what saves him. It gets him through the next few hours.

As so often happens in major swampings, the bilge pump was immediately clogged by the floating debris in the cabin. Tetley had to bail frantically with a bucket while hoping more waves didn't quickly pour in. As soon as he was able to, he found hammer and nails and boarded up the broken window opening with plywood. Then he tried to make some sense of the disorder below. Cleaning up from such a disaster appears at first impossible: everything is everywhere, only not where it belongs, so when you try to put something away, you first have to move what's in its place, and then find somewhere to put
that
. ‘A place for everything and everything in its place' is how it must be on a boat that contains a thousand discrete items, each crammed into its own special nook or cranny. Losing order can be like the nightmarish unravelling of an intricate puzzle.

Night came. Shivering uncontrollably with cold and shock, Tetley pulled his sodden sleeping bag around him and waited out the night, hoping every wave, which announced its approach with the hiss of its breaking crest, would not smash through his hasty repair and flood the cabin again.

In the morning he found
Victress
seriously damaged. The starboard hull had broken frames and a sprung deck, considerably weakening its structure, and the main cabin top had separated in places from the deck – the same thing that had happened to
Suhaili
during her first knockdown in the Southern Ocean west of Cape Town. The main hull was flexing and its longitudinal stringers were throwing off splinters as the wood wracked and twisted.

Tetley was amazed at
Victress
's recovery from both of these hard knocks. He concluded that she was a fine seaboat, just not strong enough for the Southern Ocean. He wanted out. He decided to sail north to Valparaiso, put the boat up for sale, and fly home.

But Valparaiso, or any port, was still a long way away. He would be around the Horn in two weeks, and beyond lay the Atlantic and better weather. The next day, when the wind and waves had subsided and some order had been restored to the
cabin, ‘sheer obstinacy' set in, and he headed east again. He pushed on hard, determined to get out of the Southern Ocean as fast as possible.

At 1400 on 18 March, the sky cleared and Cape Horn and its island group lay ahead. As the afternoon wore on, the wind dropped and by evening Tetley was becalmed south of the fearsome rock. It was a welcome relief. He wasn't worried it would last. He lowered sail, had a celebratory dinner with a bottle of wine, and went to bed. He had accomplished an impressive sailing first: the first multihull to round Cape Horn. The Aussies would be thrilled.

A little over a week later, making a scheduled call to Robert Lindley, his radio contact at the
Sunday Times
, Tetley was stunned to learn of Bernard Moitessier's decision to drop out of the race. But he didn't for a moment think Moitessier had lost his mind. He knew for himself the whole story that lay behind such a decision. Moitessier had always said that such a voyage should not be considered a race; that all those who survived would be winners. He was saddened by the loss of his favourite competitor, but he thought it ‘very like Bernard', in whom he had detected no sense of rivalry. It is touching, reading Tetley's and Moitessier's accounts of the race, how often and fondly these two thought of each other during their long months at sea. Moitessier was constantly anxious about Tetley's safety in a multihull, writing at one point that he didn't know how he could take it if he learned that he would not hear from Nigel again. And Tetley thought of the Frenchman with unenvious admiration and happiness at his seamanship and fast passages. They had found much they liked in each other as sailors and men and formed a strong bond in their weeks together at Plymouth.

Tetley was, however, buoyed by the realisation that with Moitessier out, he was now in the running for one or both prizes. Crowhurst was evidently making a very fast passage, but the last news from him was that he had sustained damage from a ferocious wave in the Indian Ocean. He could be out or pressing on at speed again. No one knew.

And there had been no word or sightings at all of Robin Knox-Johnston since he had sailed out of Otago Harbour, New Zealand, on 21 November, four months before. Suddenly it seemed very possible that Nigel Tetley could be the first Golden Globe sailor to return to England and glory.

On Sunday 23 March, the same day newspapers reported Moitessier's dramatic change of mind, thirty British, American, and Portuguese vessels began a massive mid-Atlantic search for Robin Knox-Johnston. The ships were part of a NATO fleet already on exercises in the area. Planes from the US Air Force base on the Azorean island of Terceira, which routinely made daily long-range patrols over Atlantic waters, also began looking for the small, battered ketch.

This followed weeks of mounting apprehension. ‘Fears Grow for Knox-Johnston' said many newspaper headlines. Even his sponsor, the
Sunday Mirror
, had sombrely speculated in print whether he would ever be seen again. The location of the mid-Atlantic search was based on the supposition that if all had gone well and he had continued sailing at his voyage average of about 99 miles per day, he might now be nearing the Azores. But no one knew if he had rounded the Horn, or whether, after he had last been seen in New Zealand, he had even made it across the vast Pacific in his damaged boat, which was held together in places with string. Many yachting experts, including Sir Francis Chichester, thought it would be miraculous if Knox-Johnston had been able to keep going without putting in to some South American port for repairs.

Robin Knox-Johnston had kept to his 99-mile-per-day average, but
Suhaili
was too far away, about 1,000 miles southwest of the Azores, for the NATO search to find her.

He had sailed a lonely ocean, seeing no ships at all between New Zealand and Cape Horn. He was deeply aware of the anxiety
his family would be suffering for him, and once round the Horn he planned to sail into Port Stanley to signal his position. But northeasterly winds blew him away as he approached the Falklands, and the spectre of the Frenchman close astern stopped him from taking several days to beat in against the weather. He headed north, hoping instead to find a ship. In the South Atlantic he spotted a single freighter too far away to be seen or attract its attention. Once across the equator, however, his route began to intersect shipping lanes, and Knox-Johnston grew confident that he would soon be able to send word of his whereabouts back to England. He was in for a shock.

At last, on the night of 10 March, a day after crossing the equator, he saw a ship coming towards him from the north. When it got close, he began signalling with his high-powered Aldis lamp, but there was no answer from the bridge. What the bloody hell was the officer on watch up to? Merchant Captain Knox-Johnston wondered. He lit a handheld flare and continued signalling. When there was still no response, he took the drastic measure of setting off a distress rocket flare. The whole sky around the ship was lit up in the sulphurous glow for three minutes as the flare drifted slowly down on to the sea in its small parachute. Knox-Johnston aimed the Aldis at the bridge again and finally there was a flickering answer. But as he started signalling his boat's name and identification numbers, the ship lost interest and steamed away. He set off another flare, and continued signalling until the ship disappeared over the horizon.

Knox-Johnston was outraged. He had given every proper indication of being a vessel in distress and had been ignored – worse, briefly acknowledged and then ignored. The nameless ship, too dark to identify, had also ignored a sacred tradition of the sea, backed by maritime law, that unless a vessel must put itself in danger to do so, it will
always
go to the assistance of another ship in distress.
*

Knox-Johnston also had real cause to be alarmed at being so ignored. He had a stomach ache. At first he thought it was indigestion, but when the pain persisted and then moved into the side of his abdomen he feared it was appendicitis. He had foolishly overlooked antibiotics when taking aboard his medical supplies and had no way of checking such an infection. The nearest port was Belem, 1,000 miles to the west – ten days' sailing – though if he really did have appendicitis, it could kill him before he reached land. His only hope at sea would be help from a passing ship. The failure of this one to stop, despite distress flares, appalled him.

He was then crossing a shipping lane and saw a number of ships in the next few days, several of which came within half a mile of
Suhaili
(which by now, even without trying to attract attention, presented a desperate sight). None of them answered his signals. He was either not seen or seen and ignored. To an officer well and thoroughly trained in the venerable rules of the sea, this behaviour was a ‘shattering revelation', Knox-Johnston wrote in his logbook. He came to the unhappy conclusion that the tradition of a fraternity of seamen watching out for one another on the high seas was no longer something that could be depended on, an unhappy thought for a single-hander.

He didn't have appendicitis.
*
The ‘bully beef' had started to go off. He left this out of his diet for a while and got better – except for a recurrence on 17 March, his thirtieth birthday, which he celebrated with a mixed grill.

On 6 April, in light winds, he crossed another shipping lane, a busy one. All afternoon, ships passed him and ignored his constant efforts to signal them and attract their attention. Finally, late in the day, the British tanker
Mobil Acme
took proper notice of him. Knox-Johnston and the officer on the bridge ‘spoke' to each other by Aldis lamp, with courtesy and efficient professionalism. Knox-Johnston gave
Suhaili
's name and an ETA in Falmouth of two weeks.
Mobil Acme
responded with a ‘will-do' and ‘good luck'. The ship radioed London immediately, and within two and a half hours of his sighting, Knox-Johnston's family received a phone call from Lloyds. It made the front page in every British Sunday paper.