Experiences

HEAVENLY TWINS 26
– Singlehanded Circumnavigation:

Date: 14 August 1986

A 53-year-old Canadian, Alan Butler, in his
26 foot Heavenly Twins catamaran Amon-Re,
has recently finished a complete
Circumnavigation of the world, singlehanded.
This makes the Heavenly Twins, according
to to D.H. (Nobby) Clarke, official yachting
compiler for the Guinness Book of Records,
the smallest catamaran ever to complete a
true circumnavigation.

Alan took delivery of his new Heavenly
Twins in 1979. and made his leisurely way
with family through the European canal
system down to the Mediterranean. They
cruised the Western Med. during 1980, a
mostly idyllic experience, but vividly
remember 42 hours spent lying hove to
in a force 10 Mistral en route to The
Balerics from Corsica. Alan comments
“We had already experienced a Force 8
gale in the English Channel, but after
this I knew that Amon-Re could go
anywhere”.

Bad moments? The worst was probably in the Indian Ocean whilst broad reaching relatively comfortably in Force 7 S.Easterlies. An absolute monster of a freak wave appeared suddenly, towering over the boat as a sheer wall of roaring water abeam. Any deep keeled boat would have been rolled without question by such a sea, with possibly disastrous consequences, but Amon-Re’s buoyant hulls and shallow draft allowed her to rise quickly to the sea, and surf sideways with the top, breaking section. This very top part did, however, manage to give her a hefty thump in passing. Damage? – “everything on the galley counter ended up on the floor, including a can of syrup. Of course the lid came off it and it was mixed with knives and forks and sugar and powdered milk. A really good mess to clean up. A few seconds later Amon-Re was going along nicely again (Autohelm 3000 steering) as if nothing had happened.”

Alan remembers that in Durban, South Africa, while preparing for the last 6,200 mile non-stop part of his voyage back to Barbados, some of the local sailing types “were flabbergasted when they heard I was going to take such a little catamaran of all things around the Cape. Little did they realize that she is a lot safer and much more comfortable than most monohulls.”

All in all this is a commendable achievement for boat and sailor alike – especially when the designer, Pat Patterson (another round the World catamariner), still refers to the boat modestly as a safe family cruiser – in spite of the fact that a few were already known to have reached Australia without mishap, even before this one.

But Pat says “I am a great believer in understating the case. Words alone do not often convince people. It is mostly through talking to existing owners, that the yachting public is slowly but certainly coming to relize that a well designed cruising catamaran can take them anywhere they want in the world in greater comfort and safety than a monohull of greater overall length. Certainly there are a lot of keelboat sailors out there who are suffering monohull limitations quite needlessly – I hope for their sakes, and for those of their crews, that they ultimatly get the message – their sailing will be the more enjoyable for it. The only complaint I hear after people make the change is that I should have convinced them earlier!!”

Beyond the pale:

When we found the only one we could afford sailed like a bucket, we went to the Southampton Boat Show in a state of despondency.And that was where we met our friendly devil’s advocate: “Why don’t you look at a catamaran? They don’t sink and there’s bags of room.” So over the winter we drove hundreds of miles looking at catamarans. We even drove to Lorient (the bootful of wine had nothing to do with it).

Worst of all, we devoured books on catamarans. Every one of them was written by an enthusiast, gripped with a fervour that would do justice to one of those people who come to the door with pamphlets on the Day of Judgement. In this case, the irrefutable tracts began with: ‘For thousands of years the multihull has been the vessel of choice for transporting people – and it still is.’

Then there was the photocopied magazine article by the man who went round the world single-handed in a Heavenly Twins and was hit by ‘an absolute monster of a freak wave.’ He came through unscathed, the little boat surfing sideways with the breaking crest. The treacle fell off the table, though.

Pretty soon, I found myself doodling with comparative lists of advantages and drawbacks. (Did being able to run before the trade at ten knots without rolling the gunwales under, outweigh the lesser windward ability in heavy weather? Was the problem of being wind-rode in a crowded anchorage really so great if you could choose to sit upright on the beach?

And there was the test sail: 13 knots reaching into Chichester Harbour. The most I ever got out of my Rival, Largo, was 9.7 and that was with everything straining in a gale and it lasted just long enough for the log to register the record before we went into the mother of all broaches.

But the little cat surfed on and on. I couldn’t believe it. Nor, come to that, could the broker – although, of course, he made a reasonable stab at taking it in his stride.

All this helped a bit, but there was still the problem of the pink slacks and the assumption that the real reason people buy catamarans is because they don’t like all that ‘keeling over’ and the china horses falling of the windowsill.

So we went to the Owner’s Association Anual Dinner and Dance. This was another eye-opener. I had rather hoped that our fellow members would be impressed with our ambitious cruising plans. Not a bit of it – they all had plans of their own which seemed to involve rather more mileage and certainly more sunshine.

And when the main prize was awarded to a couple who had circumnavigated, and accepted on their behalf by another couple who had just returned from three years in the Med, I became rather subdued. Every time we changed places (the men moved two to the left after each course), people asked: “And when were you converted?”

It seems that multihull sailors spend so much of their time justifying their boats to sceptical – not to say derisive – monohull owners that they develop something of a siege mentality. Not that I have, of course. Dogwatch is nothing if not a balanced view of the yachting scene.

But if you see a funny looking little cat doing 13 knots up the river, please be good enough to get out of the way.

Heavenly Twins – Force 12 off Shetland:

It goes without saying that if I had known I would meet these sorts of conditions, I would never have set out. If I had suspected I was about to be engulfed in Scotland’s own version of the 1987 ‘hurricane’, I would have sought shelter in the Shetland Islands.

But that is with hindsight. When I sailed out of the River Deben ten days earlier it was with “reasonable confidence” as I told the local television reporter.

As it happened, anyone who witnessed the start would probably not have put money on me getting out of the river at all. In the euphoria of waving to all my well-wishers, I put Lottie Warren aground on the Deben Bar. Like all the best boats she shrugged off the incompentence of her skipper and floated herself off as if to say: ‘Let me take care of this. You get on with the PR.’

For the next week she demonstrated to me why this Pat Patterson design has been such a enduring success. Without the weight of a family of four and all their belongings – without the hundred weight of Lego® and 200 books – she flew. With a north-westerly Force 4 to 5, we were doing a sustained 6.5 knots with bursts up to 8. And this is a 27ft boat designed for maximum accommodation.

The accommodation was amazing. I sat at the saloon table with my laptop computer in front of me, enthusing about the sensation of sitting on a pebble which some youthful giant has sent skimming across the surface of the water. Then, since all this was taking place on an even keel, I would leave the computer sitting flat on the table and connect it to the mobile phone with the aerial on the top of the mast and fire off reports by e-mail to the Daily Telegraph.

It was whilst I was doing this that, automatically, I received one from Mike Golding as he nursed a damaged Team Group 4 through a vicious, low depression in the Europe 1 New Man single handed Transactlantic Race. Conditions, said Mike, were atrocious – this from a man who had sailed three times round Cape Horn the wrong way.

The unusual low featured again on the long range forecast after the 0535 shipping bulletin on the Saturday morning. It would bring gales to north west Scotland on Monday or Tuesday.

On Monday or Tuesday, I planned to be off north-west Scotland. It was fortunate that I was not in a race. All I had to do was get back by the beginning of July for the church fete, the cat’s kittens and a weekend in Paris.

And so, when I reached the top of the Shetland Islands, I stopped. I sorted out my long warps, re-read Pat Patterson on the management of catamarans in gales and waited to see which quadrant of the west the unpleasantness would be coming from.

If there was to be any north in it, I would duck back down the East Coast. Anything else would see me running off towards Norway.

After 24 hours during which every fishing boat in the Shetlands fleet came to see whether I wanted to be salvaged, the Coastguard shipping forecast gave the definitive south-westerly Force 9. Ideal, I thought, I could get some westing in before it arrived.

It was while I was on the way that I heard my last Coastguard broadcast which had now become: “South-westerly Storm Force 10-soon.”

Suddenly time seemed to stop as the significance of that cheerful Scottish voice came crashing down on top of me. I had never been in a Force 10. What I did know was that I had no business to be in one. I knew that very soon I would be in a survival situation and everything depended on how well I managed my boat. If I had wanted to end my long-distance sailing career with a flourish, I was certainly getting the opportunity.

The storm arrived with unhurried deliberation. When porgress to windward started to put a strain on the boat, I hove to. This is stage one on the guru Patterson’s storm management manual.

Since I know that we would soon reach stage two, I went straight into it while the wind was only 25 knots and I could walk around the deck without being blown off.

I organised 100m of 14mm anchor warp in a bight from the starboard bow to starboard stern. In the middle of this bight there was attached 25 metres of 16mm plaited warp with a car tyre on the end. Then I handed all sail and trussed up the main like a mummy.

Lottie settled immediately broadside to the seas and began to bob up and down like a duck.

Now monohull sailors may be horrified at the idea of lying beam-on to breaking seas but they have deep keels which bite into the still water below the surface and ‘trip-up’ the boat as the moving crest presses on the hull. That is how monohulls get rolled.

A catamaran behaves like a raft and is simply swept sideways but stays upright.

And as the wind increased that is exactly what happened. We lay like this for 24 hours and it worked. Every 20 minutes or so I would go on deck to check for chafe and shipping.

I wore, next to the skin, a Montane Interact thermal suite and on top of that Helly Hansens Auckland gear. I cannot praise either high enough. Best of all, I had Dubarry’s Goretex boots which I had been wearing for 24 hours a day, for over ten days – only needing to change my socks once.

Gradually the windspeed crept up and up. Pat Patterson offers a third and final stage in the book. This is for conditions of Force 10 and above. The point at which to make the change when the impact of the waves from abeam comes what he calls ‘shocklike’.

Once or twice, I suspected we had received such impacts – a loud bang, small items being thrown across the cabin. Then in the space of five minute, it happened three times – culminating in the pot of spare light bulbs being shot across the 14ft of cabin as if fired from a catapult.

Very carefully, slithering about the deck on my belly to reduce windage, I transferred the bow line to the port stern.

Obediently Lottie swung to present her stern to the seas. I switched on the autopilot again and she set off north-north-east at six knots. It was of course, the wrong direction and something of a disappointment after the two knots drift I had logged while we lay beam-on. But what’s that matter compared with the sensation of calm now we were going with the storm instead of trying to resist it.

For half an hour I watched the seas and compass. The boat was sailing fast and straight under bare pole. I went below for a biscuit and a glass of pink grapefruit juice.

It would have been helpful at this point to have had another forecast. The barometer had stopped falling but I was appalled to see it reading 969 – I had never seen it that low before. If depression was tracking north-east, then presumably the wind must veer at some point.

But I was not getting forecasts. When I set out, I reasoned that I had four sources of information: Coastguard on VHF – now out of range, Navtext – the aerial connection had shaken loose and the motion was such that for attempts to re-make it had all ended in failure. I had a radio cassette player but in this kind of weather the Aerogen wind generators set up such an electronic howl that I could’nt hear a word.

Finally I had been presented with a Freeplay radio. I was thrilled with this. There was something wonderfully wholesome about earning your episode of The Archers by grinding a handle for 60 turns.

Yet what possesses anyone to manufacture an expensive radio with wonderful tone and AM and FM – not to mention two short-wave bands – then not include long wave?

I cannot say if things would have been different I had known the windshift was imminent. Certainly I imagined that when it came I would have half an hour before the difference in the pattern would be significant.

I set the kitchen timer for 20 minutes, backed it up with the loudest alarm clock out of the Casio catalogue and lay down to sleep.

Later the helicopter pilot was to tell me that windspeeds at this level, the wave pattern would change within five to ten minutes.

All I know of it was when I awoke to the insistent hiss of rushing water as Lottie – still steering her original wind direction – began her broach. I saw the bulkhead start a cartwheel. Small items began to cascade from cave lockers.

“Oh,” I said, “She’s going over.”

I was, at the time, extremely calm. I suspect this was because up until now everything had gone according to plan. Somehow I imagined this was just another development and I know what I had to do.

First the EPIRB: it was already flashing as I took it from it’s bracket in the cockpit and brought it into the starboard hull, tied the line to the toilet pump and pushed it out of the head window.

Next the liferaft. This was when I first began to get frightened. It was in a valise and stowed in the starboard aft cabin. I had thought about tying off the static line but worried that if it should shift and fall off the bunk, the thing would inflate. Also, in fog, I might want to keep it in the cockpit.

Now I did need it, I looked into the aft cabin and saw the hatch wide open. I only hoped the liferaft had not simply dropped out and gone spiralling down to the seabed complete with line. I dived under the water and began to search. I found the dinghy floating in it’s bag. I found my beloved sextant and the boards I had made for blocking up smashed windows and the brand new Autohelm which Raytheon had lent me in case I should need it.

But the liferaft? No. In the time I could hold my breath, I just could not find it; and besides, it seemed logical that it had indeed dropped out of the hatch.

This meant the best option was to stay inside the hull. Thinking of Tony Bullimore, I wedged myself clear of the water and tried to think of anything else I could do. I was surrounded by apples. I picked one and bit into it. It turned out to be an orange.

I have no idea how long I was in there because after a while sensations took a while to register. One of them was that I was now in the water not because I had move, but because the boat had begun to settle. Then I realised that I was breathing very fast. Of course, I was using up the oxygen in this confined space. I made plans to get out. Now which way should I turn when I got out of the hatch?

My befuddled brain just could’nt handle this one at all. In the end I knew I had to go for it while there was still enough good air around to make a deep breath worthwhile.

I think I even told myself “Go!” and I was out, losing my lovely boots instantly, dropping the flare canister straight away – but popping up next to the rudder. In no time at all I was standing on the bottom of the bridgedeck, holding onto the starboard keel.

And there I knew I had to stay.

When the first really big wave hit me, swept my feet from under me and left me in the middle of a breaking crest holding on by my fingertips, I knew I was in real trouble. In all the survival manuals i have ever read it tels you that the single most powerful tool in your possession is your mind. You must never, ever-even for the tiniest moment – remotely consider the smallest possibility of not coming through alive.

This was kind of difficult at the time – partly because during that last morning I had been taking photographs in the cockpit and kept wondering why the flash was going off. But is was not the camera flashing. It was the EPIRB. I had sat on it and set it off.

Reasoning that it had only been activated for a few seconds, I switched it off again and broadcast a ‘false alarm’ message on VHF. Now it was transmiiting in earnest, I wondered obliquely whether there was someone down in Falmouth saying: “Oh that’s just the false alarm, don’t worry about that one.”

But that, as I say, was not to be considered. Instead I concentrated, wave by wave, second by second on holding on, thinking of Tamsin and the children and shouting at the sky: “I am not going to die, I am coming home!”.

The estimate is that I was in the water – both in the hull and on top of it – for between two and three hours. When the Coastguard helicopter arrived, it took maybe another ten minutes to find a calm enough slot to come down below the 30m maximum wave height and get me off. That seemed like the longest time.

But once a magnificent and very brave man called Peter Mesney had swung down on his line and literally plucked me to safety, I was hardly able to speak and shaking uncontrallably. They flew me to the Murchison oil platform and treated me for hypothermia.

It seems unreal as I sit here writing this looking out over the garden to a tranquil River Deben. Litle Theo points to the Montane suit on the line and says: “Daddy was upside-down in that.”

Meanwhile, the telephone keeps ringing and the postscript continues to be updated. Premium Liferaft Services say the EPIRB was accurate to within 100 metres only because the Americans have now unscrambled the GPS signal. Also, they beleive the liferaft is still aboard. It was not designed to sink at all but to float so that it can be fitted to a hydrostatic release.

Maybe if i had taken a sea survival course, I would know things like this.

Shetland Coastguard ring to say an anchor handling vessel has located Lottie Warren but must remain on station, what do I want to do about this?

I call Pantaenius (I would suggest the only appropriate insurance company for the single-hander) and say I had been planning to sell the boat anyway and would be happy to agree a total loss.

But the oil companies do not want a wreck floating about their rigs – or, indeed, dragging around the seabed among their anchors. They will lift her onto the Thistle platform.

It means I may get back my prized 50th birthday watch from the chart table. Maybe I will be able to return the Automhelm after all.

It all seems like an amazing bonus. Because it is only 72 hours since there was only one thing I wanted off that boat – me.