On Friday morning I thought I would try to pick up Nantucket Lightship, as we were getting close to being within radio direction finding range. I couldn’t hear Nantucket Lightship, but I was picking up another signal loud and clear. I checked the chart in Reed’s, showing all the New England radio beacons, and none of them matched the Morse code I was hearing. I began running through the lists of other east coast beacons, and in a moment my finger froze. I was hearing a radio beacon on the coast of North Carolina, and it had an effective range of a hundred miles. Had I, through some navigational blunder, approached the coast in the wrong place? Was I really off North Carolina? I began twirling dials furiously, weak with apprehension. I found another beacon and hurriedly looked it up. Cape Cod Light. I nearly fainted. Apparently, some freak atmospheric condition had allowed me to pick up the North Carolina beacon so clearly. For confirmation, I switched on the Zenith and started looking for commercial stations. The thunderstorms had caused so much interference that I had been unable to pick up anything except shortwave for several days. I found a station in Lynn, Massachusetts. I felt better.
Now my biggest concern was being becalmed. After the violence of the thunderstorms, we were down to about a Force two and it was coming from, of all places, the east. I got up a spinnaker, hoisting the heavier all-rounder, because if the wind rose I didn’t want to do another spinnaker change. We ran for most of the day in a light breeze, then, about sunset, the wind began to rise and go around. Soon we were close reaching at about seven knots and I was steering, because Fred couldn’t handle the helm under those conditions. I took the spinnaker down at dark and got up the number-two genoa, hoping that the dodgy forestay fitting and the two halyards still taken forward to the toe rail would keep the mast up. We managed an eighty-mile run that day, and I was pleased and relieved. That night, after dark, I thought I could detect a change of color in the water. The edge of the Gulf Stream is easier to find in the north than in the south. The water temperature and the color change very quickly at the edge. Next morning, the color was a dirty brown instead of the deep blue to which I had become accustomed.
We had the mast, we had a foresail, and we were out of the Gulf Stream. Newport lay ahead. We were finally in the home stretch.
27
The final dash
Sunday morning, the eighteenth, I picked up a Newport commercial radio station. I could not have been more excited if I had been contacted by a flying saucer. I could hear people talking, and they were in Newport, Rhode Island. What’s more, they were reporting race news. Five or six boats had finished during the last twenty-four hours, including Ziggy Puchalski and Richard Konklowski; another twenty-five boats still had not finished, so at least I wouldn’t be last.
I had a good lunch and stretched out on a settee berth for a nap. A few minutes later, as I was sleeping soundly, I was lifted right off the berth by the sound of a ship’s foghorn at what seemed a distance of about eighteen inches. I landed in the cockpit, ready to dive overboard and swim for it. There, about fifty yards off the port quarter, was a large merchant ship, Alchemist. I jumped below to get the loud-hailer, not wanting to use the tiny radio batteries unless absolutely necessary. I started to shout that I wanted to send a telegram, but she was already overtaking us. Someone on the bridge made a hand signal to indicate that they would circle. I tried to wave them off, remembering my close call with Olwen some weeks before, but they circled and came up again. I shouted out a telegram to Angela in Newport, giving an ETA of Tuesday, and asked for a position. But we were being overtaken again, and the big ship circled a second time. This time, the radio operator was standing on the foredeck, and as I shouted out my message, he sprinted toward the stern of his ship, writing furiously. Someone on the bridge had an old-fashioned hand megaphone and shouted a position to me. It struck me as funny that I, on my tiny boat, should have an excellent loud-hailer, while they, on their huge ship, should have a megaphone.
They sailed on, promising to dispatch my telegram immediately. My spirits soared now. My position had been reported, my navigation had proved to be perfect, and in two days I would be in Newport. I anticipated arriving between noon and three with the light winds we were experiencing. Then, only a few minutes after the disappearance of Alchemist, I looked off the port quarter and saw a yacht, the first I had seen since the English Channel. She was in the far distance, and even with the binoculars I could not recognize her, but I felt sure she was a competitor. She was there for the rest of the day, slowly overtaking us, and during the night she disappeared.
While I was watching her I saw something else in the water, a float of some kind, with a pole and a radar reflector. Then another, and another. This meant I would have to keep a lookout for fishing boats that night and the next, but also that they were using radar to find their floats, so would be likely to spot me, even though my reflector had slipped down to about six feet above the deck.
Darkness fell and I kept a close watch, sometimes lying down for ten minutes at a time to rest but not falling asleep. About two-thirty in the morning, as I was resting, I was suddenly overcome by a violent chill. Shaking uncontrollably, I got up to light the cabin heater but thought I would first have a look around. I stuck my head up through the hatch to find a large fishing boat two hundred yards dead ahead, bearing down on us at about ten knots. I grabbed a torch and signaled him, and he changed course to pass about twenty-five yards on our starboard side. The chill vanished. Had I developed another level of perception, like Bill King? Maybe.
Monday, July 19, our last day out. The wind backed and freshened, and we were tearing along at six knots under our reefing genoa and double-reefed main. My ETA began to change, and, for once, to earlier. We saw no shipping of any sort that day until sunset, when the first fishing boat appeared. At midnight, a huge, brightly lit ship, looking like an aircraft carrier, appeared on the horizon and tore across our wake several miles astern at very high speed.
We had now picked up Gay Head Light on Martha’s Vineyard to starboard, and Buzzard’s Bay Light was ahead, off the starboard bow. I kept a running check on our position with bearings from the two lights, combined with a check of our depth. At midnight I estimated we were fifteen miles from Brenton Reef Light and the finishing line, but I would not yet see it, even though it should have been visible at that distance. I hoped that one of the infamous local fogs was not enshrouding Newport — that was all I needed. I was taking great care to see that nothing went wrong this close to the finish. I kept thinking about Bill Howell in the last race, about to finish in fifth place, then colliding with a fishing boat. I didn’t want that sort of problem now. My ETA was now three a.m. I had not wanted to arrive at night in a strange port and I hoped I would be met at the finishing line, as had been mentioned at the pre-race briefing.
At twenty minutes past midnight I saw Brenton Reef Light flashing in the distance. I abandoned my compass course and began steering for the light, the first time in forty-five days I had had a mark to steer for. It was very satisfying. At 01.45, Judith Point Light appeared, and from bearings on the two lights I estimated my distance at seven miles. An hour later, I was almost on top of Brenton Reef Light and looking hard for the flashing red light on the buoy that marked the other end of the finishing line. I could see the lights of Newport arrayed behind the light.