Richard Clifford invited me for a Sunday morning sail in Shamaal, and I accepted with pleasure. We just went out of the river for a bit, then back to a mooring, but it was the first time I had ever sailed on a single-hander’s boat, and it was nice to see how expertly Richard handled her. We followed our sail with a lunch of fresh mackerel.
Richard, as I have mentioned, is a captain in the Royal Marines, and takes great pride in his fitness. He climbs the mast of Shamaal without benefit of bosun’s chair or steps, just right up it like a monkey. He also takes pride in sailing Shamaal without an engine of any kind, and handles her with great flair and confidence.
He gave me something to think about when he said that during the last OSTAR, he had been swept overboard by a wave, saved only by an arm which caught a guardrail. He said that, after struggling back on board, he sat down in the cockpit and wept. I thought, if this hard, tough, superbly fit Marine officer, trained to endure the worst of hardship, had been reduced to that state by exhaustion and terror, what the hell would happen to me under similar circumstances? I could only hope that I would never have to find out.
Back in Cork, the launch was set for June 28. I wrote out a launch invitation and a press release. I had them both printed, and I mailed about fifty invitations to friends and people who had contributed equipment or help on the boat, and I sent press releases to all the Irish newspapers, plus the television service, RTE, along with an invitation which also invited everybody to a post-launch celebration at the Royal Cork. I also gave invitations to half a dozen of the foremen and workmen in the yard who had been particularly helpful, and to the office staff, all of whom had been very nice. Then I placed an invitation in the hands of Pat Hickey, a director of the yard, and handed one to Barry Burke.
12
Launching
Normally I sleep like a stone, but for the rest of June prior to the launching, I slept badly. Nor could I read. Even absorbing books like Adlard Coles’s Heavy Weather Sailing couldn’t hold my attention. Every time I read of some heavy weather maneuver I began thinking about how Golden Harp would react under the circumstances.
But there were bright spots. Vincent Dolan of J. B. Roche, a Cork chandlery, donated a twenty-five-pound CQR anchor and eight fathoms of chain to the project. Alan Best of Croxon & Cobbs, a Dublin chandlery, gave me a trade discount on any gear I wished to purchase from him — they were particularly good on charts — and Western Marine, in Dalkey, gave me a generous discount on the four very expensive Beaufort life jackets I wanted for the boat. Cotter Electronics, a Cork instrument installation company, came and did a first-class job of fitting the Brookes & Gatehouse equipment and the other electrical gear, and gave me a very low price for a great deal of highly skilled work. And George Hayde and his people at Lucas came through on their promise of technical help, doing all the wiring on the batteries and alternators. They also contributed the splitting diodes and isolating switches for the batteries, a generous contribution, indeed, coupled with the expensive, marinized alternator.
There were disappointments, too. A Dublin sailmaker who had, three months before, agreed to send a man down to measure the boat for its very important spray hood now doubled his price in a transparent effort to get out of doing the job. He succeeded. Then a west coast sailmaker agreed to do the job and never showed up for the appointment, after keeping us waiting an entire afternoon. He didn’t even bother to phone to say he couldn’t make it. John McWilliam, from the heights of the international racing sailmaker, would not stoop to such mundane work, either, but at least he had made it clear months before that he wouldn’t touch the job with a fork, and he didn’t waste my time the way the others had. Before the summer was over, I would suffer from the lack of that spray hood.
I drove up to Tralee and spent an intensive two days with Len Breewood, studying celestial navigation and trying to cram two weekends into one. Len very kindly made me a gift of a light meon anchor which he had made himself. I had been unable to find one like it in Ireland.
Then I drove to Galway and spent an enlightening morning learning how to make a diesel engine behave itself. I had never seen one up close before, but even I understood and came away with a large donation of expensive engine spares. (A few days later, an extremely heavy parcel arrived in the post. Hydromarine had sent me a spare propeller, a very expensive chunk of brass!)
Back in Cork, visible progress was being made on the boat. The keel had been fitted, as had the stainless-steel brackets for the self-steering, and I watched as the deck was dropped onto the hull and fastened in place. At last, it looked like a boat!
Acceptances and regrets began to come in for the launching. Sadly, Ann would be working (she designs sets and costumes for films) and could not be in Cork. But other people were coming from all over the country.
At McWilliam Sailmakers, another last-minute flap. I had designed a “Betsy Ross” (the lady who designed and sewed the first American flag) spinnaker, in honor of the 1976 Bicentennial Celebrations in the States, and this called for a circle of thirteen stars on a field of blue. The problem was that John had, instead of making five-pointed American stars, made six-pointed Israeli stars. Wrong celebration. I had to spend an hour soothing him and telling him how easy it was to make five-pointed stars, and he still charged me three quid apiece for them.
Launch day dawned. Nick and I were at the yard early to find the boat now hauled out onto the quay. The gathering for the launching was scheduled for eight in the evening, and the boat would be open to visitors for an hour before launching at nine, on the high tide.
About eight-thirty, people began to arrive and, suddenly, it all came together. By a quarter-to-nine Golden Harp bore every resemblance to a finished boat, her loose wires tucked away and the floorboards and dining table suddenly in place. She was nothing if not a fine actress.
John Smullen, my insurance agent, arrived from Dublin with a lovely young lady and the gift from himself and Alec Hinson of a handsome visitors book, embossed with the yacht’s name. It was a psychic thing, for I had not been able to find one in Cork.
Rapidly, its pages began to fill. Ron Holland and John McWilliam were the first signators; George Kennefick, admiral, and Raymound Fielding and Harry Deane, vice-admiral and secretary, respectively, represented the Royal Cork Yacht Club, now Harp’s home club; Ferdia O’Riordan and Michael Healy turned up to represent the Galway club, while Harry McMahon, though we did not know it at the time, was at Dublin Airport, having come from a medical conference in Edinburgh, trying to persuade Hertz to hire him a car without a driver’s license, which he had forgotten; Worth and Pasha Newenham came, so did Len and Margaret Breewood; friends from all over were suddenly there, admiring my boat. Nick had miraculously got the tape player going, and the music added to the festivities. Tom Barker from the Cork Examiner was there, and although RTE had had to divert its one Cork camera to a fire, or something, Irish radio was represented in person of Donna O’Sullivan, a redhead of whom I would see more.