Chapter 3: The Start

In actual practice, I met more than my share of easterly or south-easterly winds. I estimated that the voyage would take thirty days, and decided to carry full provisions, including luxuries, for that period, with a reserve of biscuit and bully beef for another thirty days.

The question of food needed very careful thought. ‘Ships are all right, it’s the men in them,’ says one of Conrad’s characters. In yachts it is usually the crew which give out before the ship. Exhaustion and loss of morale are a direct consequence of lack of food. Moreover, especially by oneself, meals must be reasonably appetising. I made out a daily menu to be repeated each week. Breakfast would consist of some combination of eggs, bacon, fried tomatoes, or sardines. Dinner would be a light meal of bully beef, hard-boiled eggs, tinned lobster or salmon. The afternoon would be broken by tea and toast, and for supper there would be some tinned meat ration or stew, ham or salt beef with tinned peas or beans, followed by fruit or asparagus and with raisins and nuts for dessert. Fresh bread and meat should last ten to fourteen days. The latter can be made into a stew, and will keep indefinitely if heated up each day.

When the bread was finished I should use sea biscuits. The modern type called cabin biscuit is very palatable, so that I gave up attempts to cook dough in the deep fry. Tinned soups are very useful as an emergency ration in bad weather or at night. I do not care much for alcohol, except for a bottle of beer with supper. I carry a bottle or two of rum or brandy, and take an occasional glass of neat spirit when cold or frightened. One bottle lasted for the whole of my first passage. At night coffee makes the best stimulant for those hours of the early morning between one and three when it may be necessary to stave off the craving for sleep.

Water is easily arranged for. Emanuel, not being built for ocean cruising, has only a small tank holding fourteen gallons. This is ordinarily augmented by two ‘gem’ tins holding another five and a half gallons. As a reserve three drums holding five gallons each were stowed beneath the cockpit. I knew from previous experience that without rationing oneself, but by exercising reasonable care, one would use half a gallon a day. One could probably manage on considerably less. Salt water can be used for washing, and for boiling potatoes or eggs.

The yacht herself needed little preparation. A new flax mainsail had previously been ordered, and as I had not the heart to throw the old one away, it was retained on board as a spare, though I rather grudged the stowage space required for it. I carried a trysail, three jibs, two staysails,topsail, spinnaker, and dinghy’s lugsail. The head-sails were old, but in fair condition. As Emanuel would be manageable under any one of them it seemed safe to assume that all five would not be likely to be blown away. At a pinch the topsail, which by some curious error had been made of the same heavy canvas as the mainsail, could be set forward. Sufficient spare rope to renew all the running rigging was carried.

At last all was ready. The previous day I had said goodbye to my daughter, who had been my constant sailing companion for eleven years. It seemed a particularly treacherous proceeding sailing off without her, but she hasher work. I am afraid she found it very hard to forgive me,though her last words were, ‘Oh, well, fair winds, Daddy.’

Half an hour after noon on 11th May I hoisted sail and slipped from my mooring at Lake, just above Poole. Mr. Knight, the foreman of the yard, knew where I was bound,but no one else. I did not know whether I was man enough to bring it off, and thought the less said the better. There was a light south-east air, and I tacked slowly down the harbour past the anchored yachts feeling very full of suppressed excitement.

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