The Lonely Sea and the Sky (43 page)

  Our first race was for the Britannia Cup, and I felt really tense. If we lost, the Americans could blame their British navigator; if we won, the British team could accuse me of being a renegade. Either way I was due to get the stick, and as a result I was, perhaps, over-keen to win. My first suggestion in tactics put us in the lead of the fleet. I was thrilled. Unfortunately my next stroke of genius turned out a flop, and cost us the race which we had had in our pocket.

  In our next race, for the New York Yacht Club Cup, an unusual bit of navigation for a big yacht played an important part. In light airs we tacked into the mainland coast of the Solent, bucking a foul tide stream. Our depth steadily decreased as we neared the shore, till it looked as if we were about to ground and Bill called out, 'Tack!' I said, 'Hold on, hold on!' I had bathed from this beach, and remembered a long mud-bank with a shallow channel inshore of it. We hauled up the centre board, and kept on inshore. I held my breath as the depths decreased. Then they began to increase again and I sighed with relief. We had crossed the mud-bank. Now we worked our way up close inshore, where the current against us was least. At one time we were becalmed, and dropped the kedge anchor. I took the opportunity of dropping overboard myself for a swim. I think my American friends were horrified at my treating a race so flippantly, but at that time were too polite to say anything. Presently we were leading the fleet and won the race.

  I had high hopes of
Figaro's
winning the Fastnet, which is the finest of all races from the navigator's viewpoint. Nearly every mile of the 600-mile long course requires careful navigation, and the conditions are changing all the way along the route. This Fastnet was considered a rough weather race, and only twelve out of the forty-five starters finished the course. Afterwards I was surprised to read about the stormy weather.
Figaro
seemed so steady and comfortable after my 8-ton
Gipsy
Moth II
, that I had not noticed anything out of the ordinary about the weather.

  It is easy to be wise after the event, but here are some of the things which slowed us down. Firstly, I believe that Bill and his crew had been celebrating the winning of the New York Yacht Club Cup on their last night in Cowes. We were late over the starting line and when, on leaving the Needles, I asked for the starboard tack to take us out into the Channel, Bill said, 'Can't we sail the other tack (towards Swanage) which looks less rough?' The navigating instinct is a very tenuous affair, and I could not give a good reason why the Swanage tack should not have been equally good. So we took it, but as it turned out it cost us many hours of racing time.

  American yachts favour 'points' reefing, which undoubtedly sets the sail better than roller reefing.
Figaro
, however, had a big pram hood over the companion way, and it was difficult to get at the main sail boom to reach the sail; the hood was not substantial enough to stand on. As a result, we were reluctant to reef, reefed too late, and later, when the wind abated, we were equally reluctant to unreef, and unreefed too late. Another drawback was that the yacht was stuffed with experts. Everyone tended to exercise his own special expertise. Bobby wanted to demonstrate his latest methods of jibbing, which cost us time unsnarling the spinnaker and repairing the damage. Ed liked to harden in the foresails, unconsciously demonstrating how strong they were. He had five men hardening in the jib sheet, using two big winches. They were marvellous sails, but often hardened in too flat for the best speed. Of course, this is only my opinion; no doubt I was doing the same sort of thing with the navigation. I do not want to give a wrong impression; on the whole, that yacht was sailed really well. We only lost one sail, a spinnaker was blown out when we were running down from the Fastnet Rock to Land's End – only a few ribbons of it were left. Bill was eating his breakfast at the time, when someone poked his head in the hatchway and said, 'Spinnaker's gone.' Bill went on eating, unmoved, and said, 'Tell Ed that's his bad luck; I haven't paid for it yet.'

  It was a great race, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. We ended up third in Class II. John Illingworth was first in that class, and
Figaro's
sister ship
White Mist
second. After the race, Bill asked me to navigate
Figaro
from Plymouth to the Port of London for shipping back to the United States. I said, 'Yes, if Sheila can sail with us.' I wanted her to experience a good yacht. The crew consisted of young Buckie and Teddy Robins who was an American University student of nineteen. Two better deckhands could not be found. We had a fast run up from Plymouth to the Isle of Wight, where I wanted to dodge into the Solent and anchor for the night. The boys did not like this idea, so I agreed to press on. As we passed St. Catherine's Point it began to blow up. I gave a course to steer and retired for a sleep, because I could see we were in for a dirty night. The boys asked Sheila if she thought I knew where we were. Soon after dark, Buckie called me out to take the helm while they hauled down the mainsail. As they hauled up the trysail, I could see that we did not need any sail at all, but Buckie was determined to have it. We were now running dead before a gale, and the trysail periodically jibbed with a report like a gun's being fired. It was a mistake for all of us to stay on watch getting tired, and as soon as Buckie turned in, I told Teddy to haul down the trysail. It was a thrilling ride. All night we averaged 5½ knots, running dead up Channel under bare poles. It would have been most uncomfortable if the wind had been even 5 degrees different in direction, but as long as
Figaro
was pointing dead downwind, the cockpit was comparatively sheltered. If I let the head swing only 5 degrees either way, the din of the wind made it hard to hear anything else. The Met. reported gusts of 90mph at Brighton, which we passed in the night, but I reckoned we were not in more than 75mph. Usually I would be worried about a wind of this strength on a dark night in the Channel, with the shore close alongside; but in this case I reckoned that if the gale blew up into a storm, and it became impossible to enter Dover Harbour, or turn the Goodwins, we could safely run straight through the Dover Straits into the North Sea. My only uneasiness was due to our being bang in the middle of the shipping lane, where a thousand ships pass to and fro during a day. At one time there seemed to be ships' lights round us in every quarter, and it was hard to keep track of them, because they disappeared every time we were in the trough of a wave. Sheila had turned in happily, because the bunks were fitted out with a luxurious comfort which she had never experienced in
Gipsy Moth II.
As the sky lightened for daybreak, she heard me say that we ought to be sighting Beachy Head soon. She popped out her head and said, 'I never knew the cliffs at Beachy Head were green.' The fact was that the sea looked pale green in the faint dawn light. Sheila can always be relied on to say something which will stop me from taking life too seriously.

  Once round Dungeness, we got into sheltered water, and as we ran up to Dover the storm abated. We hoisted some sail, and entered Dover Harbour to anchor in the submarine pen.

  Early in the year, Sheila had said, 'It's time you had a new boat,' just as she might have said, 'It's time you had a new suit.' She said, 'If you can win prizes with your old boat, you ought to do well with a new one.' 'We haven't got the money to pay for it.'

  'I'm sure something will turn up if you order it. Have faith, and go ahead.' I sketched on the back of an envelope the hull that I should like to have. This was passed to Robert Clark, who designed
Gipsy Moth III
for us. Jack Tyrrell's boatyard in Arklow, Ireland, started building it. Throughout the year, worried about my business, I alternated between bouts of despair at the liability of the new boat, and waves of enthusiasm for it.

  After the last sail in
Figaro
, I had a desperate attack of worry. I was struggling hard to make my map business pay. It was not big enough to pay for the new talent it needed in both the sales and the production departments, but it was too big for me to provide all the new ideas as well as the sales drive needed. Now I had this ghastly load of a new boat added, with all the extra work of planning it, and visiting it in Ireland. I had a nightmare fear of not being able to sell
Gipsy Moth II
, and of being landed with two yachts. It was all too much to bear. The trouble was that by the end of the Fastnet I was tired out. If only I had laid off everything for a week, I should have regained the strength to cope with things.

  Every weekend I went down to the Beaulieu River, and worked on
Gipsy Moth II
, trying to tidy up the mess after the season's racing. I worked feverishly by myself, feeling that I could not afford to pay a boatyard to do the work. Sheila said this was nonsense. Bitterly, I accused her of failing to help me, and came down by myself. I worked furiously while the yacht swung to her mooring in the grey swirls of autumn mist on the glassy water. There always seemed so little time for work on the yacht, after I had cooked my meals and done the boat's housekeeping.

  One of my jobs was to remove some old paint on the forecastle sole (floor). To do this, I used a strong chemical paint-remover, to dissolve the old paint. I worked on my knees, doubled up over the stuff on the floor, and the forehatch was closed above my head, because of the cold. I believe that the fumes burnt my lungs, and that my lung trouble started then. I was in bad condition, run down, and flooding my body with poisons distilled from negative feelings – despair, resentment, bitterness, fear, worry, exhaustion. I began to cough. I retired to bed in my little room at the top of No. 9 (St. James's Place) with a 'cold on the chest'. I got better, and went to Ireland with Robert Clark to see the frame of
Gipsy Moth
III
, and to discuss the building. When I got home, I went to bed with pleurisy. I got better again, and my nature-cure doctor said that I should have as much fresh air as I could get. I went out in a cold wind, and retired to bed with pneumonia, it was said. Again I improved, again did the same silly thing of going out in cold air, and again was back in bed, this time with an abscess in my lung. Three or four months after I first got ill I improved, and went down to Brighton for a weekend. Here we ran into an ocean racing skipper acquaintance; he was a doctor and implored us to have my lungs X-rayed.

  My own doctor wanted this too, so I turned up at a famous London hospital, where I waited on a bench for six hours while X-rays were taken and discussed. The radiologist asked me a curious question, 'Had I ever breathed in a feather into my lungs?' The surgeons wanted to discuss the X-ray pictures, and I had to go back some days later. I began to feel much worse, due (I thought) to the travelling to and from the hospital, to the waiting about, and making efforts. I was interviewed by the chief surgeon, one of the leading lung and heart men in Britain. To my surprise a door opened, and in filed a dozen young student surgeons, and the big chief proceeded to use me for a demonstration. He said, 'This is a typical case of an advanced carcinoma. Now breathe out. No, not into my face. Here are all the usual symptoms.' He discussed my breathing, prodded the base of my neck with his finger, and picked up my fingers to show something in the fingernails, but flung them aside.

  I came away feeling degraded, defiled and deeply depressed. I did not know, however, that carcinoma was cancer; I thought it was a lump, or something like a mastoid.

  When I got home, I found Tom Killefer there from America, with his young wife Isabel. I was very fond of Tom; I suppose everybody must be. As a lieutenant of the United States Navy Air Force he had done a course at the Empire Central Flying School, while I was Navigation Officer there. I did my best to entertain Tom and Isabel and took them to Wiltons for dinner, but I felt ghastly. I could not suppress my coughing bouts, and the party was not a great success. I had been told to go back to the hospital some days later, so that a bronchoscopy could be carried out. This was a simple operation; a surgeon pushed a lighted periscope down my throat to examine my lungs. Foolishly, I declined to have a general anaesthetic, because of the old, unpleasant recollection of being chloroformed after my snake bite. It was a rough and most unpleasant performance, during which a piece was broken off one of my back teeth. I seemed to be sinking steadily deeper into physical and spiritual degradation.

  Before I left the hospital the next day I cornered the surgeon who had done the bronchoscope deed. At first he refused to tell me the result. But he was an Australian; I understand Australians, and finally persuaded him to talk.

  'Cancer,' he said.

  'You can't be sure can you?'

  'We are making these examinations all the time, and cannot possibly be mistaken.'

  'I don't believe it; how can you tell?'

  'I not only saw it, but cut off a piece and sent it off to the laboratory to be examined.'

  'What can be done?'

  'I think it's already too late to operate.' I took this to mean that the cancer was straddling both lungs. 'Your only possible hope is to remove one lung immediately.'

  Half a year had passed since I was first ill, and when I emerged from the hospital it was a fine spring morning in April. As I walked along, the sun shone in my face. I heard the gay spring-song of birds. Young pale-green leaves were beginning to tint the trees. Life had never seemed more wonderful – a priceless, desirable thing to lose. My body seemed empty, my bones full of water. It was like a nightmare where I was in a bottomless space of loneliness. I had read about this sort of thing happening to other people; somehow I had never imagined that it would happen to me. I walked along slowly, wondering how long I had got before I was snuffed out from this lovely fresh spring of life.

  By the time I got home, I had decided that it would only make things worse to be weak, but I felt desolately sad while I told Sheila. Only then did I realise that she had known everything that was going on for weeks past and had been discussing every step with our family doctor, and others, for a long time. She said, 'What are you going to do?' I said I had done what they told me to do – booked a room for the operation next week. 'How can you be so feeble as to agree? It's the wrong thing to do.'