Great Seamanship: Knocked down at Kerguélen

Alone in one of the most remote parts of the Southern Ocean, Peter Freeman fears both being overwhelmed by a great storm and driven ashore. Tom Cunliffe introuces this extract from Cape Horn Birthday

Originally from Noosa Heads in Queensland, Australia, Peter Freeman finally became a Canadian citizen in the 1990s, but not before he’d completed a non-stop circumnavigation in his 32ft sloop from Victoria on Canada’s West coast via the great Southern Ocean Capes. This remarkable voyage was made in the mid-1980s, in a different world from today’s high tech yachts.

Navigation was entirely by astro, self-steering by wind alone and his yacht Laivina was of modest length and moderate design, designed for real-world seafaring, not for show. The way she survived the knockdown described here makes you shudder to think what might have happened to a less seaworthy boat.

Freeman’s book, Cape Horn Birthday, is a grand read from beginning to end. Like many solo sailors, he is something of a philosopher, but by trade he is a computer programmer whose rigorous mental approach shines out.

We join him in a Southern Ocean storm that has risen rapidly. According to his most recent sights, which he has good reason to take with a pinch of salt, Laivina is too close for comfort to the remote island of Kerguélen, but his serious concern is the Île Solitaire, a pinnacle rock.

This lies between him and Kerguélen. Anyone who has navigated by astro alone in bad weather will understand his concerns. Today, we take it as read that we know our position to a boat’s length. Then, we could be 30 miles from our dead reckoning through no fault of our own.

Extract from Cape Horn Birthday

Monday 18 February, 1985: 50°S 68°E

By 0100 I was starting to feel the effects of the intense physical punishment. For two hours I had been stung and slapped by spray and water whipped off the tops of waves by the shrieking wind, and my cramped and aching body was bruised by Laivina’s violent jerking in the turbulent seas. The cold, cold water had numbed my face and frozen my lips so that I could only mumble the words of the South Australia sea shanty I was attempting to sing.

“And as we wallop around Cape Horn You’ll wish to God you’d never been born.”

Hypothermia caused me to forget verses and repeat lines. The combination of storm-force sub-zero wind, icy water, and the pounding of waves had nearly exhausted my strength.

“I will sing this song two more times,” I thought, “then I’ll go below, cook up a meal, and get warmed up.”

Suddenly, I heard a loud hissing sound, followed a second later by a huge explosion of noise and water. Time seemed to be frozen as I felt Laivina instantly punched sideways a good six metres. I held my breath as solid water enclosed me in its icy grip. Clipped and tied securely to the pushpit, I was unable to move as we began to fall down the face of a wall of water invisible in the darkness. Laivina surfed on her side down this monstrous wave, bouncing over smaller waves and rolling over as she fell.

“Oh no! Don’t go over! Don’t go over!” my mind screamed.

She rolled until her mast pierced the water like a spear and was now deep underwater. For what seemed ages, I held my breath. Time stood still. I wondered if I would be trapped forever, tied to the pushpit rails, unable to breath.

“I need air!” my lungs screamed.

As if in answer, Laivina stopped rolling, paused for a moment and then slowly rotated back until her mast broke the surface.

With a shrug, she shook off the confining ocean and swiftly righted herself. I forced the stale air out my mouth and sucked the icy wind into my raw lungs.

Except for the sound of the breaking wave expending its fury downwind, there was a brief moment of silence as Laivina descended into the deep trough behind the wave. I lay against the rails, stunned by what had happened. The hollow mast had taken in a lot of water, which was now pouring out of the exit blocks at its base. Water cascaded from the mast, dinghy and deck, and gurgled out the drains of the water-filled cockpit. The screaming wind soon returned, thrumming the halyards against the mast and heeling Laivina over again as if nothing had ever happened.

A knockdown. It was almost a complete rollover. I untied myself and crawled forward to the hatch. After judging the waves as best as I could in the dark, I quickly slid open the main hatch. I clambered below, unclipped and closed the hatch before a wave broke through the opening.

I felt the pitch-black cabin sole strewn with objects. I found a spare lighter in one of the lockers and surveyed the shambles by the tiny flickering light. Books everywhere! The force of the initial punch had stretched the securing line and burst them from the shelf. I stowed everything away again, lit the stove, and heated up the remnants of the evening meal. I pumped the bilge and found that only a half a bucket of water had squeezed past the tightly fitted storm board and sliding hatch while we were overturned.

After the food began to take effect and I felt my energy returning, I began to understand the seriousness of the situation. With such a strong wind, driving spray and heavy overcast conditions, I could just discern the sea and the sky. Although I would probably pass Île Solitaire safely, I couldn’t be sure, and I doubted I would survive if we hit the rock in such conditions. My morale was at a low ebb.

“Well, I can’t complain. I’ve had a good life so far, but what a pity that it should end now,” I thought.

I sat in the cabin, feeling cold, exhausted, and frightened, while outside the slightly muted shriek of the wind competed against the heavy thumping of waves against the hull and deck. Eventually I managed to reassert myself and, although I was still afraid, I knew in my heart that I would make it.

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“I’m going to survive this one, mate!” I said to myself. “There is no way this is going to beat me! Come on, Laivina! I know you won’t let me down.”

It will not beat me

With my resolution fortified, I spent the rest of the night up on deck among fierce winds and crashing waves while the halyards continued their machine-gun drumming against the mast. This time, I secured myself against the pushpit rails with my harness so that I could still free myself should we capsize again. Amid this confusion, minute after minute passed ever so slowly as I peered hopelessly into the gloom for the sign of spray being kicked skyward by a semi-submerged islet.

The hours crept by, and slowly the dawn enabled me to see 5m, 20m, 100m, and finally the whole ocean. I was exhausted from my night of keeping watch and was pleased that morning had finally come.

Although the increasing visibility assuaged my fear of blindly running into Île Solitaire, it was replaced by horror at the sight that dawn had brought. To windward, when I managed to see against the slashing spray, watery mountains were approaching us. Up, up, up we went, and at the top I looked down into a valley of white froth. Except for the thin, grey clouds racing overhead, everywhere I looked was white. White water, white spray and white foam. I stared in disbelief at the gigantic heaps of water rushing towards me at speeds closely approaching the scudding clouds.

Occasionally, the top 5m of a wave would break with a long, drawn-out roar that lasted for 15 seconds. Sometimes Laivina was struck by the edge of one of these breaking waves and spun around like a doll in a dog’s mouth. I never knew when or where the next breaking wave would strike.

After watching this amazing world of violence, I began to grow accustomed to it, and my fears subsided a little. I wondered how large the seas were, and I decided to measure them as accurately as possible. During gales I had experienced previously, I climbed the mast until I was at a position where I could just see the horizon over the top of the next largest wave. My height above the water was the height of the seas. Dare I climb the mast in these terrible conditions?

After putting on a sit harness and a chest harness, I groped my way carefully forward until I reached the mast. I clipped onto a mast step and started to climb slowly, keeping at least one harness clipped to a step at all times. I managed to get a third of the way up before I rested back on my sit harness and wrapped the line from the chest harness around the mast to stop my body’s violent swinging.

Another step and yet another until I had reached the spreaders. After a rest, I waited for a brief quieting of the whipping mast and hoisted myself up and onto the spreaders until I was sitting astride the mast with one leg over each spreader.

I was now at a spot where the motion of the mast was at its worst. I was high enough to feel the extra distance the middle of the mast was swinging through, but not high enough so that my body weight would dampen the whiplash as the mast swung back to the upright position. My muscles ached, and I wondered whether I would make it down again, let alone get to the top. The fingers of both my hands had lost their ability to work, and I had to hold on with my bent arms through the mast step and the inside of the elbow joint against the cold stainless steel.

Atop the mountain

Up or down? I stared at the top of the mast now only 4m away and then looked at the deck awash with water below me. At least I wasn’t getting as wet now, as only the occasional spray reached this high. I stared at the bent wind indicator on the top of the mast, held my breath, moved up into a standing position, and started to climb again. It was getting easier to move now, but my arms were being drained of their strength, and I found myself resting more frequently. Three steps to go, two, and at last I hauled myself up until my head was level with the masthead fittings.

Clipped on securely, I looked around me. At one moment I was atop a tower on a white moving hill, and the next I was in a seething chasm of madly churning foam. Where was the horizon? From my lookout 12m above the water, I stared at the approaching swells still towering above me a similar distance. How could I measure the waves with a measuring stick that was only half the size? I shuddered, partly from cold and cramp and partly from fear, as I grasped the predicament I was in. What if we were to capsize while I was tied to the top of the mast?

“Get down, you fool!” I called to myself, but I knew then that this is what the old Cape Horners had endured and what they had seen when high aloft taking in a topsail.

Plotting a position

At 0900 the wind blew its strongest, the barometer started to rise, and the sun burst out through racing clouds. Overjoyed with this chance to fix my position, as rough as it would likely be, I brought the sextant up on deck and crawled to the backstay, cradling the instrument to protect it from spray and water. Unfortunately, as I brought the telescope up to my eye, the rushing wind whistled between the eyepiece and my eye, and tears flooded across my vision. I could not see a thing.

I tried holding the sextant away from my eye, but I could not see the sun. Finally I used one hand to shield my eye from the wind, and ever so slowly and painstakingly I managed to get the sun down to the horizon. What horizon? Surely that bouncing, buckled line couldn’t be the horizon?

I took sight after sight, never really knowing whether or not I had the sun resting on the horizon, and then in the shelter of a kicking and bucking cabin, I prodded my flagging brain into action. By noon I had plotted our rough position and found that we were 10 miles past Île Solitaire. My plot showed that we had passed within three miles of it.

I collapsed onto my bunk. In spite of the deafening sounds and violent motion, I fell asleep almost instantly and slept, oblivious to all noises for three hours. I awoke feeling much better and found the wind had died down enough to set a storm jib.

Up on deck, I checked the gear for damage and discovered a link arm on the self-steering had broken. Beside the bent wind indicator at the top of the mast, this was the only damage Laivina had sustained. Soon it was fixed, and I was elated to be sailing again.

Down below, I looked around the tiny cabin at the charts, books, and objects that had decorated my little home for the last four months and smiled. Before I fell into a deep sleep, I had one last thought.

“Laivina, you and I are going to see this voyage through!”

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