Cape Town to Melbourne Wk 7: John Ridgway Save the Albatross Voyage 2003-4
Created | Updated May 18, 2006
The Voyage Story by John Ridgway
Date: Saturday 6 December 2003Virtually becalmed, with an occasional light breeze from some distant cloud bearing a few spots of rain. Jogging Very Slowly across flat sea: the scent of the fleshpots is not getting any stronger in the nostrils.
First signs of oncoming privation:
Cocoa, Peanut butter, Biscuits exhausted, last 4 litre of paraffin into cooker fuel tank.
It's a big effort for the seabirds to fly in flat calm. Many seem content to sit it out, particularly White-chinned Petrels.
Everyone settles down to wait. Not a common component of modern life.
WHAT AM I DOING HERE?
Date: Sunday 7 December 2003
Flat calm. Wonderful sea and cloud-scapes, reflected on the oil-like sea. Silence.
Bird sightings at noon: Nil.
Alone at the wheel in flat glassy calm, literally not moving, leaves the mind free to wander. How do I come to be here, championing the Albatross, a bird beyond the pale? What draws me here to this lonely giant?
As an adopted child in those bleak years after WW11, I was lonely. Most of my time was spent fishing alone, rowing my small wooden boat up and down the Thames near Windsor. My eyes were sharpened, looking for wary Chub, shadow-like under bankside trees. I was alone with nature.
In 1956, aged 18 and in the Merchant Navy, after four years of Nautical College, I visited the Southern Seas and saw my first Albatross.
Ten years later I was rowing across the North Atlantic with Chay Blyth, during the twelve hours of night one would sleep while the other rowed. And one evening, while Chay slept, a Great Skua landed on my head – the sharp-taloned clutch of doom. That night a great storm blew up. Those 92 days changed both our lives. US Coastguards said it was 90% certain we would die. It turned out to be 50%: David Johnstone and John Hoare in the other boat, were both drowned.
In 1968 I was the first of nine men to sail that year, in a Race to become the first to sail alone around the world non-stop. One man, Robin Knox-Johnston, reached the finish. Two men committed suicide, one of them shortly after returning home. The rest of us fell out along the way – I wound up in Brazil.
Shortly after this I left the Parachute Regiment and with MC, went to live on a remote croft, on the NW coast of Scotland. Accessible by boat, Ardmore has been our home for 35 years, the first 18 were without electricity. We worked for a while in the Whitefish Industry, on Kinlochbervie Pier. I loaded lorries by night and worked at netting salmon by day, while MC was the first woman to work on Kinlochbervie Pier.
As well as running our School of Adventure for 35 years, we owned a Salmon Farm for 17 years. We witnessed the inevitable drift toward mass production and genetic modification to suit the market place. Also the huge investment, the diseases, the poisons used to halt the infestations of sea lice and the wasteful need to kill other fish to make food for Salmon.
We still own a mussel farm, where drifting wild spat clings to head ropes and grows into mussels, which filter food from the passing tide.
During these years, I found time to sail a couple of times around the world and to Polynesia, Greenland and Antarctica. And much time was spent alone at the wheel with the Albatross on my shoulder.
I understand the anarchy of the high seas and its association with flags of convenience, low wages, piracy. The sea covers 3/4 of our planet.
I understand how charities must battle for funds, often competing with each other for meagre funds from the same pool.
I have always had a fatal weakness for the underdog and I think I understand how the lonely Albatross is beyond the pale.
Date: Monday 8 December 2003
The 990 Low advances toward us. We held onto the Mizen Staysail until 1400, then dropped it together with the Mizen Sail itself.
This leaves us with the two Headsails: No 2 Yankee and Staysail. By adding just a scrap of Mainsail, only out as far as the damaged section of the leech, we have our familiar storm sail setting.
As the afternoon wore on, our world turned back from cheery blue to anxious grey. We thumped into a gathering NNE wind. Everyone on their toes for what we hope might just be our last gale before Melbourne. It looks as if the centre of this Low could pass right over us.
A couple of tiny Storm Petrels walk on the water around us. The bigger White Chinned Petrels, which are in fact all black, except for the merest touch of white on the chin, swoop about. A young Wandering Albatross quarters the vicinity like a cruising B52.
There is also another smaller Albatross, which we cannot place. Snow white, except for black wing tips and black frame to the underwing and black tail, it has a black beak maybe. It seems local to Australia. Pretty bumpy by midnight.
Date: Tuesday 9 December 2003
640 miles west of Tasmania. We’ve sailed 5,421 since Cape Town. The Low comes marching east; tracking just south of the 40th parallel. We are south of the 42nd, heading ESE. The barometer fell 17 points over the 24hrs and it looks as if it really is passing just to the north of us, depriving us of the longed for westerly air stream.
At 1845 the Mizen Staysail halyard block exploded at the top of the Mizen mast, bringing people on deck pretty sharpish.
We gathered the sail in and just gilled along during the night, wallowing in a sloppy calm. Nick is set to take a bigger block to the mizen masthead tomorrow, when we may get a bit of SSW wind off the back of the Depression. Then we could set the trusty Mizen Staysail again; it has proved such a good substitute for the damaged Mainsail.
A couple of Wandering Albatrosses still watch over us.
Date: Wednesday 10 December 2003
Shortly after midnight the wind picked up again and by mid-morning we had a full gale, first from the south West and then the West.
The old boat picked up her skirts and romped along, eager as her crew to reach Melbourne.
It's a really big bonus that we all get along so well. None of us is ever going to forget these endless nights and days of hand-steering in every sort of weather!
We are aiming to thread the eye of the needle. After six weeks of hand-steering our colours are fast running dry. But we must pass through on the north side of a fifty mile gap between Cape Otway and King Island. The Chart reads:
CAUTION - In approaching King Island, especially during thick weather, caution will be required on account of the variable strength of the current, which sets to the south east with a force varying from half to two and a half knots, according to the strength and duration of the westerly winds. Many fatal wrecks have occurred on this island apparently from errors in reckoning.
The Cape Otway side is known as the Shipwreck Coast. I wish we had the mainsail!
Date: Thursday 11 December 2003
Winds still favourable for Cape Otway, our landfall on Australia.
We’re very pleased to see Elliot Morley, UK Environment Minister, is to head a five-nation Task Force to tackle pirate fishing. Only sorry it will take 2 years to announce its plans. That will be too late for hundreds of thousands of albatrosses and petrels.
In Australia and NZ we will emphasise the seabird by-catch problem associated with pirate fishing.
Meanwhile, on the shippy, everyone is coping with short rations ok, we should land with oatmeal complexions - not far to go!
Date: Friday 12 December 2003
Still bumping and rolling downwind toward Melbourne. The problem with splitting the circumnavigation into Legs rather than sailing non-stop round the world is that sight of the overall voyage is lost in the rush to complete each Leg: catch the tide at Port Phillip, reach Melbourne before dark, catch the plane, reach the office on time. The result is inevitable over-pressing and damage to gear at the end of each Leg. Worse, some damage is cumulative. It was £10,000 in Cape Town, what will it be in Melbourne?
By closing with the great mainland of Australia we are losing our ocean companions: the wheeling albatross, the speedy black petrels and the tiny storm petrels walking on the water beside us. It's as if they prefer the vast great blue water ride round the planet. They don't wish to be blown onto the hostile hinterland of Australia. If you drink seawater, eat fish and sleep on the sea, the land is not much use to you. How I miss them.
Into the mist...John
PS We now urgently need a set of aluminium sail foils for the staysail, that is for our Profurl furling system, Model No. NI42, I imagine there is a Profurl Agent in Melbourne and the sailmaker will know him. Bit of a panic as the parts may need to come from France and we sail on 28 December.
Date: Saturday 13 December 2003
Day: 141 (This Leg Day 51)
Position relative to nearest land: 91 miles west of Cape Otway. The weather comes good for us, the wind holds and the sea smooths out.
MELBOURNE
Date: Sunday 14 December 2003
Day: 142 (52 this Leg)
Motoring up the coast from Cape Otway to Port Phillip Heads.
We came through the Rip around noon and it was still 30 miles across the Bay to Melbourne. The lovely Japanese welcome meant so much to us. We had arrived in the most liveable city in the world - what a contrast with the Southern Ocean. Tied up in Sandringham YC.
Into the mist...
John Ridgway
