Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed by Les Powles

had heard of a wartime landing barge on the beach there, against which it was possible to tie alongside, wait for the tide to ebb and then antifoul the hull.
Altair
was done on one day, and
Solitaire
the next. Not too keen on the idea, my boat started acting like a spoilt child on bath night until I tied her up, when she settled. I made a better job of the wound in her side and then applied my cheap antifouling which went on like weak whitewash.
Solitaire
deserved better, but with only $60 left in the kitty I had little choice. At least we would be sharing discomforts, I thought, remembering my jellied corned beef and gritty tuna!
    Terrell and Leo sailed a week ahead of us, as there were a few jobs still to do on
Solitaire
. I was sorry to see them go, but we would catch up later. I felt like I was living in Germany, when a knock on the door could mean a call from your local friendly Gestapo, inviting you to sample the delights of a lovely prison camp. Only now, in Taboga, it would be the army or police searching your yacht for drugs.
    They paid a visit the day before I left, bringing a dinghy I was supposed to have left on the beach, one I knew belonged to a nearby yacht whose mast had been broken coming through the Panama. A young man with a large Dalmatian dog was lookingafter the parent boat while its owner was away. As I towed the dinghy over to tie it on the yacht’s stern, I could see the dog running on the beach. Later I heard the full story. The young man had taken it ashore for a walk, the army had tried to shoot it and the boy had put his arms round it for protection. He was now in hospital, half his hand blown away.
    I sailed for Hiva Oa on Thursday, February 26th, 1976, and for two days
Solitaire
made good time in light winds, gliding along effortlessly on her clean bottom. Conscious of my earlier mistakes I spent hours in
Solitaire
’s cockpit, listening to WWV for time checks while I took sights for longitude which, in the early days of the voyage, I could easily confirm. As the days passed I began to feel more at home at sea than on land.
Solitaire
’s constant movement and my spartan diet kept me slim and fit. As I am blessed with ginger hair and freckles, the sun enjoyed itself colouring my skin anything from brilliant red to deep purple. It was a surprise to find it browning me as well.
    No webbed feet or gills yet, but I was metamorphosing into marine life. For instance, storms and calms are treated differently by sea animals. To land life, a storm is a personal attack, knocking down a man’s chimneys, flattening his crops, whereas calms go unnoticed. Sea life, however, accepts storms that may sink ships but are not malicious, and realises that the patient ocean recognises no flags, is not vindictive and, far from finding pleasure in rolling you over, does not even notice you. But a calm is a personal attack and in early days could mean back-breaking weeks in a longboat, towing a square-rigger while searching for life-giving winds, half the crew dying of thirst or hunger.
    Solitaire
hit her first long calm east of the Galapagos Islands. After the early days at sea progress had slowed with runs of only 30 or 40 miles a day, periods without wind, the self-steering on a knife edge. Now she was about to spend four days in an ocean of thick blue oil below a sky whose solitary, unmoving cloud would retain its shape and position hour after hour, leering down on our discomfort. We carried no burgee at the mast top to indicatewind direction but on our backstays bore long, red tell-tales which became skirts covering the most beautiful legs in the world, legs that made Betty Grable’s look like matchsticks. They would lift slightly, showing trim ankles and then, seeing they had my interest, drop teasingly.
    Just over the horizon was a Giant bathing in this lake of oil, his movements causing a long swell that swayed
Solitaire
monotonously from side to side. I grew to hate him and the Leering Cloud