I also chose the B&G Homer/Heron radio receiver and radio direction finding compass, and the shortwave converter for the radio, which would enable me to pick up radio time signals at sea.
To the Brookes & Gatehouse equipment I added the ubiquitous Seafarer depth sounder (at the suggestion of B&G, because I wanted to economize) and the Seavoice VHF, already mentioned, made by the same company. (I later exchanged the self-contained model for the ordinary model, because I was having difficulty finding room for the extra bulk of the first unit.)
Finally, I added, as a backup radio receiver, the American Zenith Trans-Oceanic Portable, probably the best of its kind, and a Philips car stereo radio/tape player, purely for entertainment. At home I am never without music playing, and I would have missed this terribly at sea.
That was a lot of electronic and electrical gear, but it all got used. I have always had a thing about being well equipped, and the boat would be evidence to this part of my character. In defense, I must say that I felt my lack of experience made electronic help all the more important. A lifelong sailor might guess at the wind speed or direction accurately, but I could not. I felt I needed all the help I could get. This feeling, it turned out, was entirely correct.
I had to choose an engine as well. The choice was between the Yanmar 12 and the Farymann 12 diesels, the Farymann having hydraulic drive. The Yanmar has a good reputation, and I was offered a nice discount on it, but I chose the Farymann because of its compact size and the versatility of installation of the Hydromarine Hydraulic Drive. This equipment is manufactured in Ireland, and Hydromarine offered me, at no extra cost, a heavy-duty unit more suitable for running for long periods without a load, as when charging batteries. They were later to give unstintingly of technical help and advice.
On March 27, Laurel Carlin Holland gave birth to a daughter, Kelly, much to the astonishment of everyone, since triplets, at a minimum, had been expected. Ron was completely bemused by the idea of being a father, and we had a celebratory dinner at Ballymaloe.
My social situation took a turn for the better when a letter came from Ann O’Donahue, a London friend, in response to an invitation issued in January. She would be arriving in early April for a visit. I was looking forward to that. The only people I knew in Cork were my designer, sailmaker, and boatbuilder, none of them very pretty.
Ann arrived on Monday afternoon and we renewed our acquaintance over dinner at Arbutus Lodge, Cork’s best restaurant and, many think, Ireland’s. Having Ann about the place made an enormous difference. We had the Hollands and Barry and Mary Burke over for dinner and, confirming conversations we had been having, Barry promised to mold my boat next, making it number seven instead of ten. She would be launched, said Barry, around June 1. This was an enormous relief to me. The red boat was only now being completed, and I had been increasingly worried about having the boat ready for the Azores race. Now I would have a month more to sail her than planned!
The red boat was finally launched on April 11. In the water she was very pretty, and we arranged to go sailing on her with Ron and John McWilliam on Sunday.
We were joined by Harold Cudmore, a dinghy sailor, now becoming a helmsman in offshore racing, and a nonstop talker about sailing, Cork, and anything Irish. The boat was a delight to sail. I was astonished at how quickly she tacked. We sailed about Cork Harbor, while Ron ceaselessly tuned the rigging and McWilliam admired his sails. Ron never seems to stop moving on a boat. He is everywhere, dressed in a pair of white painter’s overalls, or something equally awful, completely indifferent to what the fashionable yachtsman is supposed to be wearing, and always with tools in his hands. Sometimes he will deign to wear a battered pair of seaboots. Ron seems vaguely uncomfortable in anything new, or even pressed.
McWilliam, on the other hand, is extremely neat, though not given to fashion, as such. He always seems ironed and starched, even on a boat. I think his wife presses him before he leaves the house.
Cudmore, a rangy fellow with a lot of thick, red hair and a native capacity for Guinness, enjoys giving instructions in a manner which manages to be, at once, quick and easy. Both Ron and Harold are good teachers on a boat, each having a large fund of knowledge on every detail of the sailing of a yacht, and a willingness to share it. McWilliam, on the other hand, although possessed of at least as much information, seems to assume that anyone who is over the age of seven has a native understanding of everything that makes a yacht work, and an equal knowledge of things mechanical. Once, when I interrupted him, puzzled by a discourse on load factors or something, he said to me, “You know, it’s good training for me to talk to you about things like this; your mind is so... so...” “Unsullied by knowledge?” I volunteered. He grinned. “That’s it.”
Everything about this first sail in a Shamrock was an eye-opener for me. First of all, it was, at this point in my experience, the largest boat I had ever sailed on; second, it was my introduction to what my own boat would be like, and I was both a little awed by the height of the mast and the sail area, and relieved, in that the yacht didn’t seem unmanageable. Ann, who says of her ability on a boat, “I do what I’m told,” was enjoying herself, too. At least nobody was yelling at her. She tells of a sail down the Channel once with a male companion who became Captain Bligh on a boat. She abandoned ship in Weymouth and took a train back to London.
Sailing back to moorings in front of the yacht club, Cudmore gave me a real workout. Harold would rather sail anytime than use an engine (I saw him sail up to a mooring under spinnaker once, in a riverful of moored yachts), and he decided we would short tack up the river, against the tide. Ron and McWilliam quickly found something to do on the foredeck, and I had to man both winches, with Ann tailing the sheets. I was wiped out by the time we reached the mooring, and after three months on my exercise program. It occurred to me that had I tried that in January I would have collapsed after the first four or five tacks.
Back at the Royal Cork, we ran into Hugh Coveney in the bar and got into a discussion of boats’ names. Hugh’s Golden Apple name came from Yeats... “The golden apples of the sun and the silver apples of the moon...” The “Golden” handle had continued with Golden Shamrock, and I thought I’d like to keep it going, combined with something Irish but a bit more elegant than Shamrock. The harp is the Irish national symbol, and that of the Royal Cork Yacht Club as well. Golden Harp seemed a good possibility. Hugh liked that, and I think from that time on, though I thought about other names, the yacht, in my own mind, became Golden Harp.
Ann flew back to London that afternoon, and I was alone again. Still, my boat was about to begin building, and I was about to make my first passage of the season and my first to England. Golden Apple had been sold, and Hugh Coveney had invited me to sail on the delivery trip.