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The world's first wing powered transatlantic crossing
We began the voyage rather anticlimactically with a flat calm in the English Channel, and as Plymouth receded tantalizingly slowly into the distance it was hard to realize that we had at last set out on our 4000 mile journey. The wind picked up a little on the second day, and by the third day we were well across the Bay of Biscay with a brisk but not particularly helpful breeze pushing us more southwards than out to the west. At last the angle improved, and we felt that the 1200 mile leg to the Azores was being reeled in comparatively well.However, the first thing you realize about ocean sailing is that any given set of wind conditions is always on its way to something different. The favourable westerly breeze duly blew up into a full Force 8 gale gusting into Force 9 about 400 miles west of Cape Finisterre, and we prudently altered course to the south to ease the motion. Blue Nova seemed to take it all happily in her stride, although for the crew it was their first experience of heavy weather offshore. The awesome power of the wind and the sheer size of the waves, coupled with the powerful feelings of isolation produced by being just a speck on the broad ocean, were sobering indeed.
When the conditions improved we set course once more for the Azores, puzzled by a huge continuing cross swell at right angles to the waves produced by our gale. We later learned that these seas had originated from Hurricane Bob, fully 3000 miles to the west in the Caribbean. The next three in the alphabetical series were to be Claudette, Danny and Erica, and we were to get to know at least one them rather intimately in due course. However, for the moment the sun shone and the breeze was favourable, and soon the volcanic heights of Sao Miguel were rising majestically out of the haze, directly ahead. We had seen plenty of dolphins, whose attention span seemed to be directly proportional to our speed. If we were bowling along at 10-15 knots they would remain playing and plunging in the bow wave for up to half an hour, but if the wind fell light and we were only able to do 4 or 5 knots they would quickly get bored and disappear in search of better sport.
We berthed at Ponte Delgado, the capital of the Azores, a few hours later, seven days out of Plymouth and already feeling like quite seasoned mariners. Next day a classic flush decked yacht of around 40 feet in length came in, looking rather careworn. She anchored quite near us, and immediately half a dozen purse-lipped and rather withdrawn looking people, carrying their dunnage, were ferried to dry land by her skipper in his inflatable. On his return, alone, a few minutes later we invited him on board Blue Nova for a drink.
Harry explained that his business was giving experienced coastal sailors their first ocean experience, in this case by cruising down from the Solent to the Azores and back again, the idea being that his paying guests would take turns to sail his yacht. Comparing notes, it became clear that both his yacht and Blue Nova had been in the same storm, possibly even within a few miles of each other.
Anyway, after a fairly dreadful experience of it, his entire crew had just jumped ship, and even as we chatted were organizing their flights home.
“ I always make them pay in full in advance, and give no guarantee of good weather,” said our new friend philosophically.
As it turned out he had had to spend something like thirty six hours alone on deck, lashed to his steering console, muffled up the eyes in oilskins, running away from the weather, his steering position continuously being swept by huge waves coming over his stern. We explained that we had been inside in the warm aboard Blue Nova, and wordlessly he pulled up his tee shirt to reveal a great arc of bruises and contusions, right across his upper arms and chest, caused by his having been repeatedly smashed against his big steering wheel by the waves sweeping his decks from stern to bow.
We parted on the best of terms, and he set off, looking rather thoughtfully back at Blue Nova, to find someone to help him get his pride and joy back to the UK.
A few days rest and relaxation in the Azores gave us the opportunity to fix minor snags and cruise gently across to Horta, where I painted the traditional picture of Blue Nova on the sea wall, before we set out on the longest leg of the voyage, almost 2000 miles to Bermuda. The dolphins were still occasionally gracing us with their presence, and there was great excitement on the fourth day out from the Azores when we sighted two enormous humpback whales apparently asleep on the surface dead ahead of us. If we had not altered course we should have run right into them, and it was not until we were quite close, cameras clicking, that they noticed us and heaved their vast bulk into action and disappeared. We saw no more whales on our travels, the next excitement being a big turtle about 4 or 5 feet across, leisurely rowing himself along on the surface with his front flippers.
The days merged into a mixture of tedium and exasperation as one light contrary wind was succeeded by another just as irritating. Each left its own pattern of waves which persisted long after the wind had changed, so that we were usually sailing in today's winds but through yesterday's seas. I can now well understand why none of the pilot books recommend sailing from the Azores to Bermuda, even ignoring the risk of hurricanes. By now we were well into the Sargasso Sea, completely surrounded by the yellow seaweed which so amazed Christopher Columbus.
I had already decided, like the bold Christopher, that this was a most pernicious piece of ocean when, on our tenth day out, we were advised by radio that Hurricane Claudette was intensifying and was also heading for Bermuda, although from a position far to the south of us. We slowed down politely to allow the lady to pass ahead of us, and that strategy seemed to be working well until we heard about Hurricane Erica, which had sprung up just astern of us. Danny was also rumbling about in the southern quadrant, although as events unfolded he was no trouble to us. We were very conscious of Erica breathing down our necks however, and so I speeded up and headed directly towards Bermuda. It was the first really pleasant sailing day of the voyage, with warm sun, a pleasant Force 4 southerly to reach with, and for once the waves were going our way.
Jean commented on the perfect conditions but frowned and said: “Something still doesn't seem quite right?” The sky gave us no clues, but as usual she was right. At 4pm the wind began to veer sharply into the west and increase, and the sky blackened dramatically. By 6pm the wind was up to Force 9 and rising, and the barometer had fallen no less than 15mb. We were still on port tack but had been summarily and forcefully deflected northwards. As darkness fell we were rather quiet, each sensing that this was going to be a hard night. We were right. Claudette had in fact swung first easterly and then slightly south of east, straight for Blue Nova.
We were soon being enveloped by her, the barometer plummeting like a stone, and I quickly realized that our port tack course was taking us steeply in towards the eye of the storm. Northern hemisphere hurricanes are anticlockwise whirlpools of enormous intensity, and survival involves at least stabilizing yourself so that you are not going further down the plughole, and then preferably gradually sailing out. I had pulled the thrust lever right back almost to neutral, and Blue Nova was sailing safely and buoyantly along at about 5 knots, rising and falling on the huge seas in the blackest night imaginable. I then, very gently indeed, gybed her round on to starboard tack so that the waves were breaking on our starboard after corner. Gybing is of course no big deal in a wingsail vessel, because the boom passes silently and safely over the bow as the wind crosses her stern. Not that there was anything particularly silent about that gybe, because the screeching banshee wail of the hurricane was deafening, even in the saloon.
After a while we were able to breathe a sigh of relief as the barometer stabilized, and then painfully slowly it began to rise again. I found that I could just about take the wind and the waves at around 30 degrees abaft the beam. Less angle, and the punishment on boat and crew just seemed too awful, and more was quite comfortable but simply didn't do the job of getting us broad reaching safely out and away from the core. The worst thing of all was the atrocious and incessant noise, a howling and discordant cacophony ranging from piercing screams to a horrible deep growling roar. I stayed at the helm, and for solidarity and companionship Jean was resting on a sofa cushion on the floor between the two saloon sofas. The fact that, with the wind abaft the beam, Blue Nova was actually heeling to windward, was immensely comforting, because the windward hull hooked into the wave slope leaving the leeward hull unloaded, whereas a conventionally rigged yacht would have been pressed, possibly dangerously and certainly uncomfortably, downhill. (There is a useful diagram in the Leisure Craft section, link below.)
The wind had gone “off the clock” at 50 knots by midnight and stayed there for several hours as the noise of the wind continued to increase. We can only estimate that it reached perhaps 60-70 knots. Plenty, anyway. From later analysis of information from our GPS, log and the Hurricane Centre in Coral Gables, Florida, it seemed that we had passed around 60 miles from the core of Madame Claudette, and if we hadn't been able to gybe Blue Nova round we should have gone straight on into her centre.
Suddenly there was an absolutely ghastly noise from overhead, a brief fusillade of sharp reports followed by massive groaning vibration. Jean sat up with a start, her face pale in at the gloom. The wingsail?”. I shook my head slowly. I think one of our aerogenerators has shed most of its blades”. It had, and after the last couple of blades departed the vibration died away. Each crest by now was curling and breaking, the blackness outside briefly turning to white as the cabin lights reflected on the spume.
Then we got the big one. There was a distinct sense of soaring upwards on the slope of a huge wave, until with a deafening bang the crest broke all around us, and we simply went into freefall. The stereo system separated into its four component parts and hovered in midair, books floated lazily from the shelves, and Jean, mattress and all, levitated until she was, none too gently, deposited a couple of metres away, as we landed further down the slope. Throughout, Blue Nova felt completely safe and strong, and the old story of Brer Rabbit “thoroughly at home in the briar patch” came to mind, as time and again she looked after her honestly trembling humans. At last the wind speed indicator needle came reluctantly off the stop, and the crashing impacts of the wave crests gradually diminished in intensity.
The pale cold light of dawn showed us a literally awesome scene of huge grey and white flecked rollers marching inexorably onwards. The wind had fallen to a mere Force 8, and frankly it felt like a flat calm. At seven o'clock I stretched rather tiredly and got down from the controls, realizing with some surprise that I had been at the helm for more than eighteen hours, apart from one completely essential five minute break in the early hours. As we wearily began to tidy up the chaos our appetites suddenly returned, and we gratefully wolfed down cold rice pudding straight from the can, Jean wryly remarking that the level of cuisine had only declined temporarily, and that she hoped that normal standards would soon be restored. We laughed rather shakily, warm in the realisation that that particular peril had passed.
Blue Nova hissed imperturbably onwards, seeming perhaps just a little smug and self satisfied. A survey certainly revealed remarkably little loss or damage. One aerogenerator had indeed lost its blades, although the other was still spinning merrily. The Royal Western Yacht Club burgee, brand new on departure, was just a tattered fragment of its former self, and the outside barbecue gas bottle had leapt overboard from the after cockpit and been lost. However, everything else was fine, and when we put the stereo back together, it still worked! The contrary wind didn't let up for a moment, however, so we still had three days hard beating to reach Bermuda, but at least it was only Force 5 to 6, a mere breeze by Claudette's monstrous standards.
At last, as we carefully picked our way through her encircling shoals, Bermuda shimmered up out of the heat haze on the skyline, and after a few delightful days on that most hospitable of islands we set off at last on the shortest leg of our voyage, 700 miles to New York. The replacement aerogenerator blades had been ordered, and a new gas bottle fitted, but we were keen to get on with the voyage.
All went very favourably at first, and we turned in our best day's run of the voyage at just over 200 miles in quite a light south easterly. However, the wind gods had not yet finished with us. A powerful cold front had already given the eastern seaboard a hard time and, a thousand miles wide, was advancing leisurely towards us, as we slipped under its towering clouds. The sunlight was progressively blotted out, and rather perversely the wind gradually died. Then, with whiplash speed it howled up from zero to 45 knots, a full Force 9. In less than ten minutes we were scudding along in entirely the wrong direction wondering just how long this one was going to last.
Mercifully it was comparatively brief, and within an hour we were emerging into the chilly air on the other side, a nasty cold Force 6 to 7 forcing us well away to the west of track. We thought longingly of just keeping straight on and making our landfall in the Chesapeake Bay, but no, New York we had aimed for and New York it was going to be. Eventually, as night fell on the fourth day, the wind veered so that we could just hold the course, and after some mildly nerve wracking challenges as we picked our way through the buoys in the busy New York approaches we finally secured to a vacant mooring buoy at 4am and settled down to await the dawn. Those two hours sleep were deeply sweet, I can tell you.
Sailing Blue Nova up towards Manhattan Island past the Statue of Liberty was a great moment for us all, and TV film shot from a circling helicopter made it straight on to the evening news. A charming Customs man didn't even bother to look at our passports, let alone search the ship. He cheerfully made out our Cruising Permit and wished us a happy stay in the US.We spent ten fascinating and rewarding months in the USA, receiving a lot of wide and very favourable publicity. We exhibited Blue Nova at both Annapolis and Miami Boat Shows, to an enthusiastic reception which began as … “ Hey, what is that crazy thing?”… which became… “I've heard a lot about your boats and I'd like to buy one”. We secured eight cash deposits, two for big charter Planesails like Blue Nova and six for ZEFYR, our new 40 foot (eventually stretched to 45 feet) trimaran, in which I intended to incorporate similar accommodation to Blue Nova but which would, if I could work it out, be propelled by an elegant swept back monoplane wingsail, our first.
And so we set off to come home, warm in the knowledge that we had conclusively proven that the technology worked and the huge American market was anxious to buy it. We had an easy ride across the Gulf Stream from Miami to the Bahamas, and spent an enjoyable few days on Cat Cay and New Providence before heading north east for Bermuda. (The illustration at the top of the article shows Blue Nova at Cat Cay). The wind gradually swung round from the south east to east and then north of east, so that we spent the last couple of days hard on the wind beating into a stiff force 6. Bermuda is notorious for being lovely when you're there but hell to reach! Most of its delightful inhabitants' ancestors were shipwrecked there, apparently. I can well believe this, because Bermuda is so low that you reach the outer reefs long before the island is visible, and the only truly safe approach channel is extremely narrow.
We left Bermuda surprised by a completely unforecast gale which whipped up in a couple of hours and gave us two most uncomfortable nights before we sailed out of it and got on with the long leg, almost 2,000 miles to the Azores. I boldly predicted to Jean that we could expect the favourable westerlies at any time, but light and variable they stayed, with only one day out of twelve providing 20-25 knots winds abaft the beam, in which Blue Nova hissed happily along at 11-14 knots with plenty of sailing at 15 knots plus and an exhilarating high of 18 knots, riding like a queen on a long swell. Heavy as she has been ever since her transatlantic days began, this was good performance.
Finally the volcanic cone of Faial lifted above the horizon and we sailed, again hard on the wind, around the corner and into the excellent harbour of Horta. There was a huge number of transatlantic yachts in the marina, over 200 on that day and leaving and arriving at 10-20 per day. A few days there enabled us to relax and reprovision (and touch up my painting) and then were away on the last leg, just under 1,300 miles long, skirting the fierce Bay of Biscay and heading into the Western Approaches.
Three days out from the Azores I looked at the morning chart printed by the weatherfax with a certain degree of gloom. We were still more or less becalmed under the influence of the Azores High, but it was clear that when the approaching cold front passed over us there would be a massive area, perhaps 1,000 miles long by 500 miles wide, where the isobars were straight, parallel, almost due north/south and very close together. The dividers against the windspeed scale confirmed that we could shortly expect nasty cold 30-35 knot headwinds whistling down from the Arctic for several days.
The front was a textbook example, and as we passed through the invisible wall the temperature dropped markedly and the windspeed ramped up from 5 to 35 knots in less than a minute. That huge and homogeneous gale field meant that we just had to keep on going, whereas the small and vicious spiral system we encountered after leaving Bermuda could be dodged out of quite effectively. Here there was simply no place to go but onwards, and it was almost three days before conditions eased.
Fortunately I had held well to the west of our direct track, so we were able to bear away into the Bay of Biscay, keeping a careful eye on the sounder, and make good time not too far south of our desired north easterly track, although it was not a particularly easy ride. We comforted ourselves by comparing our conditions, warm and dry inside and under fingertip control, with our friends sailing traditional yachts. Harry would once again have been muffled up to his ears outside, swept by spray and wavecrests, peering up at his luffs and leeches, while trimming his canvas with rope, winch and cleat.
Throughout, Blue Nova's wingsail worked quite flawlessly, governing safely in strong winds and accurately self trimming to the slightest wind shift. We had met and chatted with a lot of serious ocean sailors on our voyage, and hearing about their experiences reinforced for us just how extraordinarily seamanlike our new technology was. This was acknowledged with heart warming respect by the real cruisers in the Azores, not one of whom had sailed less than 1000 miles to be there. No weekend sailors these.
So far as daily mileage is concerned, we had several runs close to 200 miles in 24 hours and one just over. As many of you will know only too well, a 24 hour spell of constant ideal conditions is rare indeed. We achieved 120 miles in one 12 hour spell, but then the wind swung round. Still, we weren't racing, and laden as she was Blue Nova is no racer. Her worst day's run ever was 130 miles, with which many an ocean voyager would be well pleased.
We returned as we had left, in a foggy and uncharacteristic Channel calm, but somehow quite ready to arrive slowly after such a long time away. Our first sight of England was the Eddystone light, its foghorn booming through the sunlit mist, and we did not actually see the mainland until we were less than a mile away, with well over 10,000 miles having passed under Blue Nova's keel. It felt very good to be home.
John Walker
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