Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed by Les Powles Page B
Book: Solitaire Spirit: Three Times Around the World Single-Handed by Les Powles
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Authors: Les Powles
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Equator 365 miles astern and were 300 miles below the Galapagos Islands. A favourable current gave us an extra 10 to 15 miles a day in south-east winds around Force 4. In these ideal conditions
Solitaire
should have been romping along, covering at least 120 to 140 miles a day. All she produced was a limping 50 miles. Our trailing log clocked only 1,115 miles in 27 days, not a third of the way to Hiva Oa, with half our food and water already consumed.
On the self-steering rudder and under the stern I found pink stalks up to an inch-and-a-half in length with a white and grey bud on each top which I cleaned off with a paint scraper. Could these growths be the reason for
Solitaire
âs illness? I rejected the idea when I remembered antifouling her hull only five weeks earlier. Surely that could not be the cause.
During one of those cleaning sessions I found myself in one of those stupid situations that happen only to single-handers. I had pushed myself through the bars of the pushpit as far as I could, leaning well out and holding on with one hand while scraping with the other. I felt a pull on my hair and threw the scraper into the cockpit, grabbing at my head. My hair had become tangled in the trailing log line! It took me a good half hour to free myself. After that I had a dread of getting stuck up the mast, only to be discovered a year later as a swaying skeleton.
Afloat it is difficult to see all of
Solitaire
âs hull as it rounds sharply just below the waterline and falls away to the keel, so I decided to lean out as far as possible, using a lifeline and an extra rope for support. I had expected to find someoneâs old sail or a bunch of rope tangled on the keel. Instead I found a swaying pink and white garden completely covering the hull, keel and skeg. No wonder
Solitaire
had wept. Again I felt as I had when the bruuuph, bruuuph drill had come to light. I prepared to pounce then, deflated, realised it had us in thrall, that I had a plague of goose barnacles.
There were three reasons why getting rid of them would cause problems: Iâm a poor swimmer, there were sharks in the area,and Iâm a confirmed coward. I spent the morning making every conceivable excuse I could think of for not going over the side.
Solitaire
listened in silence except for a muttered slop slop, slurp slurp. I suppose she could have nagged that I had been the one to give her a cheap coat of antifouling and was thus responsible for her sickness but she didnât, which made the need to be forgiven the more dramatic. I badly needed to hear her whisper and laugh with me again.
In the afternoon I dropped her headsail and under the main brought her onto a reach, allowing her to roll in 3â4ft waves. The rubber dinghy was inflated and secured to leeward. With two lifelines and armed with a scraper, I dropped into it and then, holding onto the toe rail, reached down the hull as far as I could on each roll. I spent an hour or so on one side, clearing only a foot and a half of the barnacles, their rubbery feet still clinging below the waterline.
Hanging onto
Solitaire
, trying to keep a grip with my toes as the dinghy dropped away, made me want to give up and throw up. Oh well, tomorrow it would only be worse so I climbed back on board, turned
Solitaire
around and worked on her other side. Then we were back on course, broad-reaching, with our number two genoa filling with only a slight improvement in her performance. All the thanks I got for my trouble was slop slop, slurp slurp.
For the next few days I lost interest in everything but trying to ease the pain in my arms and stomach. We became a couple of tetchy invalids reluctantly settling for a desperately slow passage. To save water I stopped shaving and started my first intentional beard as we slurped across the Pacific in perfect slurping conditions. I would spend hours in the cockpit marvelling at this sailing paradise with cool trade winds and clear, blue skies broken only by
Solitaire
should have been romping along, covering at least 120 to 140 miles a day. All she produced was a limping 50 miles. Our trailing log clocked only 1,115 miles in 27 days, not a third of the way to Hiva Oa, with half our food and water already consumed.
On the self-steering rudder and under the stern I found pink stalks up to an inch-and-a-half in length with a white and grey bud on each top which I cleaned off with a paint scraper. Could these growths be the reason for
Solitaire
âs illness? I rejected the idea when I remembered antifouling her hull only five weeks earlier. Surely that could not be the cause.
During one of those cleaning sessions I found myself in one of those stupid situations that happen only to single-handers. I had pushed myself through the bars of the pushpit as far as I could, leaning well out and holding on with one hand while scraping with the other. I felt a pull on my hair and threw the scraper into the cockpit, grabbing at my head. My hair had become tangled in the trailing log line! It took me a good half hour to free myself. After that I had a dread of getting stuck up the mast, only to be discovered a year later as a swaying skeleton.
Afloat it is difficult to see all of
Solitaire
âs hull as it rounds sharply just below the waterline and falls away to the keel, so I decided to lean out as far as possible, using a lifeline and an extra rope for support. I had expected to find someoneâs old sail or a bunch of rope tangled on the keel. Instead I found a swaying pink and white garden completely covering the hull, keel and skeg. No wonder
Solitaire
had wept. Again I felt as I had when the bruuuph, bruuuph drill had come to light. I prepared to pounce then, deflated, realised it had us in thrall, that I had a plague of goose barnacles.
There were three reasons why getting rid of them would cause problems: Iâm a poor swimmer, there were sharks in the area,and Iâm a confirmed coward. I spent the morning making every conceivable excuse I could think of for not going over the side.
Solitaire
listened in silence except for a muttered slop slop, slurp slurp. I suppose she could have nagged that I had been the one to give her a cheap coat of antifouling and was thus responsible for her sickness but she didnât, which made the need to be forgiven the more dramatic. I badly needed to hear her whisper and laugh with me again.
In the afternoon I dropped her headsail and under the main brought her onto a reach, allowing her to roll in 3â4ft waves. The rubber dinghy was inflated and secured to leeward. With two lifelines and armed with a scraper, I dropped into it and then, holding onto the toe rail, reached down the hull as far as I could on each roll. I spent an hour or so on one side, clearing only a foot and a half of the barnacles, their rubbery feet still clinging below the waterline.
Hanging onto
Solitaire
, trying to keep a grip with my toes as the dinghy dropped away, made me want to give up and throw up. Oh well, tomorrow it would only be worse so I climbed back on board, turned
Solitaire
around and worked on her other side. Then we were back on course, broad-reaching, with our number two genoa filling with only a slight improvement in her performance. All the thanks I got for my trouble was slop slop, slurp slurp.
For the next few days I lost interest in everything but trying to ease the pain in my arms and stomach. We became a couple of tetchy invalids reluctantly settling for a desperately slow passage. To save water I stopped shaving and started my first intentional beard as we slurped across the Pacific in perfect slurping conditions. I would spend hours in the cockpit marvelling at this sailing paradise with cool trade winds and clear, blue skies broken only by
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