Beaky's Blather

Freed from the daily rigor of running a medium sized consultancy, firm Dad and his wife re-directed their energies into completing and making use of their yacht, Wahine.  Above the deck line it was incomplete. They decided to motor the yacht to Viginia, avoiding the deep sea by following the American inland waterway from Lake Ontario, through the canal to the Hudson River and then New York. I say ‘motor’ the boat to Virginia because, at this point, Wahine had no masts or rigging. Frugal as ever, Dad had purchased a pair of masts, second-hand, from a supplier in Richmond Virginia. The main mast he bought was too short for Wahine, however, undaunted he found and engaged someone to splice in an extra section of mast and so achieve the desired length. His plan was to drive the boat two thousand miles south and marry her up with the lengthened masts. Transporting a spar of the required length by road for two thousand miles was, he considered, a problem. 

So, at 12 mph they set about motoring their yacht the length of America’s following the inland water way system from somewhere two hundred miles south of New York all the way to Florida. It provides a continuous, sheltered passage all the way to the boatyards around Chesapeake Bay, where Wahine had originally been conceived, i.e. designed. He had found an expert willing to lengthen the mast, (literally cut it in half on the diagonal and glue a section in), step and then rig everything. This would finally finish his seagoing yacht, a vessel that he believed capable of sailing anywhere. 

They continued south from Viginia to Florida where Wahine was moored for a considerable period. For nearly a year she was leased to a charter company because, Dad had a plan. 

They flew to the Indian Ocean where he bought a 41-acre estate; it comprised the southern end of Praline, the second largest Island in the Seychelles archipelago. With the Estate came nineteen houses, most occupied by people who anticipated that they would continue to live where they were. 

Dad and his wife fell in love with the Islands. They were, in the late 60s as he described them to me, a little known, unspoiled paradise. He decided that they would renovate the large house that historically had been the residence of the Estate owner, up sticks from Canada and come to live here in the Seychelles where he imagined he might relax and live the simple life. That little – in fact I doubt more than five seconds – of his entire life up until this point had ever been dedicated to any form of relaxation, well recognisable as such to me or anyone else that I’m aware he met. Nonetheless, they sold their house in Collins Bay, Ontario, packed their trunks into storage for onward transit and readied to leave for the Indian Ocean.

Nothing he did, as you will have gathered by now, was ever done as one might expect. To get to the Seychelles, dad decided that he and his wife would sail their yacht, Wahine; a journey that would eventually involve him circumnavigating the world in his home-made boat. Not just to the Seychelles, but right around the world. What puzzled me at the time and does still today for that matter is that, ever since I had been aware of his activities, I had only ever seen him sail a 14-foot dinghy.  Obviously, his father must have sailed, he was a boat and yacht  builder, and it is likely that he involved his son on occasions but I hardly think that a sufficient apprenticeship to justify much confidence in his ability, aged 55, to sail a 65 foot (waterline length 45 foot yacht) across the Pacific and then the Indian, Oceans, and later, continue and complete a circumnavigation of the World, back to Florida. 

The plan they devised was that they would find an itinerate sail bum (they are commonplace in Florida marinas) to assist them on the leg from Florida to the entry of the Panama Canal and then, alone, motor through the Canal before meeting and welcoming on board a Seychellois sailor and setting off across the Pacific Ocean and then Indian Ocean until they arrived in Praline in the Seychelles some months later. Which is exactly what he did. 

He persuaded a local Seychellois native, a professional sailor who had lived and sailed his whole life around the Seychelles on board the local-around-Islands-trader, a sailing ship. He was to join them in Panama and serve as expert crew on the long legs across the Oceans. 

The year that they set sail west from the Panama Canal was the one that amongst deep sea round-the-World sailors became became notorious. It was one of two years when a number of yachts crossing the Pacific Ocean were rammed, damaged or sunk by a pod of killer whales. One family whose yacht was thus destroyed, survived for 68 days in a tiny dinghy. Wahine was unlikely to suffer a similar fate. She had been welded together in the garden back in Canada from 29 tons of steel. 

“Yachts have been sunk by whales in the Pacific Ocean in several different years, including 1972 when the Robertson family’s Lucette was sunk by orcas, and 1973 when Maurice and Maralyn Bailey’s yacht Auralyn was struck and sunk by a whale”

Wikipedia

They made it. Somehow, I have no idea where or when Dad had learned how to navigate and sail a large yacht under every condition of the weather imaginable, virtually tying himself to the mast on occasion to outlast a storm and remain on board in heavy weather, as deep ocean, mast-high waves burst over Wahine. 

My father relied very little on complex electrical systems. He believed simplicity brought reliability; he used a sextant and paper maps. Nothing on board was complex; it might let you down. Everything that could be, was hand operated and mechanical. Laborious and hard work, it made life aboard Wahine, but she was reliable.  Eventually, Wahine was anchored off the southerly point of Praline, in deep water. There is no safe harbour there. 

Dad set about establishing himself in the Seychelles. He organised the renovation of the house, the improvement of the roads and the refurbishment of the nineteen small houses that belonged with the estate. Locally, he began to be spoken well of (or so the told me). He began improving things that the local people had assumed would never be invested in. Nobody else had improved anything on the estate for a long time.  

Mahe, is the main Island and location of the seat of government In the Seychelles. Dad integrated with the Islands’ main men. (it was only men). It was they who provided most of what passed for government in the Islands. The prime minister, elected in a rather suspect election I understand, became a familiar; closest possibly to friend as I had ever seen dad approach. Jimmi Manson, Prime Minister, visited Dad and stayed overnight on at least one occasion whilst they lived on Praline. 

Then came disaster, well it was for Dad and his wife. There was a coup, Prime Minister Jimi Manson was chucked out of office, and he left the islands almost with no more than the clothes he stood up in. Local people ran amok for a period. Even those who lived on dad’s estate and who had appeared grateful for the house and road improvements that he had introduced.  Terrified that they might become victims of a Mau Mau style rampage and wholesale slaughter, dad’s wife insisted that they leave immediately and so, virtually overnight, they boarded Wahine and set sail West.

They journeyed back to the US, which is where they decided to go; they were in reality homeless, having sold up in Canada and now fleeing from the Seychelles. There was nowhere they thought of as home. They sailed up the Red Sea, a tricky route in any sail-driven craft, because the winds are seldom favourable. One day, they recognised that the two small powerboats overtaking them from astern were pirates; something they had been warned about. Dad’s solution, he got out his shotgun from the aft cabin and shot toward the leading boat. A rib, with inflatable sides, he succeeded with his first volley in puncturing the nearside air tube of one pursuing boat and it was obliged to pull back as it began to ship water over the bow. The second rib shadowed Wahine from about two hundred metres astern and dad remained in the cockpit of his yacht with his shotgun at hand for two days and a night, prepared to fire again should the pirates venture any closer. The hapless pair were saved eventually by the most fortunate arrival from ahead of an Egyptian Naval vessel. It called them up on the radio and then came towards them. Subsequently it continued south in pursued of the pirates who turned away and fled.

In Egypt they regrouped and, after some protracted discussions between them, polarised so dad described to me later, between Dad, who advocated returning to the Seychelles’ and his wife who announced the equivalent of, ‘if you do, you can go alone. I’m not going there. Sell up”. Which, eventually he did, at a tremendous loss. I occasionally wonder what today that property might now be worth if he had only done anything but sell up.  41 acres of the second biggest Island on the Seychelles.  Wow! 

They sailed across the Atlantic. Dad barely mentioned it. Perhaps it seemed to him just an ordinary thing to do. They did have one further trauma to re-tell from this final leg of what had become a circumnavigation of the world.  About 900 miles out from the Virgin Islands, they encountered a gigantic wave. Perhaps warned about it by radio, I don’t know but apparently he barely had time to go about, i.e. turn the Wahine around and sail with the oncoming wave when it approached and swept past. 

He described to me what happened. The abnormal wave approached from astern and, as it arrived, lifted the stern of their yacht. Then he discovered, it seemed to stop, with Wahine, halfway up its approaching slope. Puzzled, he had walked to the stern rail and looked down at the water. Then he realised. Rather than stop, as he had at first thought, his yacht had begun to slide down the slope of the advancing wave. Their 65-foot Ketch with full sail was in effect surfing down the wave.  

For some moments he was at a loss as to what he should do, when the decision was taken out of his hands. Wahine’s twelve-foot-long bow sprit buried itself in the water ahead which stalled the yacht. Pushed from behind, the stern was abruptly raised steeply plunging the bow in until the whole yacht pitchpoled, twisted,and then rolled over diagonally. There was chaos on board. The skylight below the main-mast boom was smashed and gallons of water had cascaded in. 

Securely tied on, Dad was rolled upright within the boat and spluttering, he took stock. The helmsman was missing.  He jumped up on the cabin roof and scoured the sea around, but he was unsure where from and how far they had travelled since the poor man had been swept away. He could be anywhere. It’s a big ocean. Then he heard a yell from above. The helmsman was up there hanging by his crooked elbow through the crosstrees, halfway up the mast. Foolishly, the man had disconnected his safety strap when the yacht had begun to surf and then, when she pitchpoled – capsized bow to stern – he had been washed overboard, saved only because, as the yacht righted itself, his left arm had been swept over the cross trees, halfway up the mast. He had then been yanked up into the air and was now dangling by his elbow crooked around the strut. 

‘How the fuck,’ I recall dad explaining to me years later, was I to get someone down safely from 30 or 40 feet above the deck. Well, he never explained to me how he did get him down, but I imagine it wasn’t easy. However, was anything that he ever did easy?

Where could he go in life after this complete disruption of their plans? Well, I’ll explain in Part Five, but it involved a Real Estate business, catching a fervent form of Christianity, going to Togoland in Africa to preach, build schools and dig wells. 

Enough for any ordinary man I think.