Chapter 2

Even if you're not a sailor, you've probably heard of the Trade Winds. Trade winds blow during the winter; November to March in the Northern Hemisphere, April to October in the Southern. You've almost certainly also heard of hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones (no, not the aeroplanes, the winds the aeroplanes were named after). These are very powerful storms with high winds that occur during the opposite seasons to the trade winds. If you have the choice, you sail during the winter.

The Trade Winds are so called because, in the days of commercial sailing vessels, they were relied upon for a fast, safe passage across an ocean. The old ships were 'square rigged' – that is the sails were set upon 'yards', spars set at right-angles to the mast, so that a following wind was perfect for them. (The 'Cutty Sark' is a famous example.) The sails could be turned so the ship could sail into the wind, but not so close an angle as a modern 'fore and aft rigged' yacht.

In the North Atlantic, the Trade Winds are called the 'North East Trades' and blow from the Canary Islands (or that general area, anyway) in a curve from the north east to Barbados. If you want to get to Britain from America, you have to sail the corresponding winds blowing in an ellipse across the North Atlantic, which is much less pleasant.

So. Here I was, mid November, leaving Funchal harbour. (I'd been keeping the magazine updated with chatty and/or informative diary notes. The Biscay storm roused a fair interest.) A couple of days out, and I crossed thirty degrees north latitude, but it was another six days before I was sure of the trade winds, lowered the mainsail and set two large head-sails, poled out. I probably need to explain that sailing a fore-and-aft rigged boat, which means most modern yachts, with a following wind, is not comfortable, especially when the wind is from straight astern ... a 'dead run'. In the trades, with a reliable wind from almost dead astern, the best thing to do is drop the mainsail and make the rig as near to a square rig as possible. With a cutter like Farsight, there are two fore sails; a staysail and a jib and with aluminium or carbon-fibre poles, they can be set one each side, like wings.

On a sloop, with only one staysail, an alternative is a spinnaker, but single-handed that's rather a lot of work. (A spinnaker being a large, light sail a little like a parachute.)

With a following wind, the boat is not very fast, maybe four to five knots, and there's always a possibility of a calm. A crossing takes between two and four weeks and, really, there is not too much to do. With the autohelm, I soon fell into a very relaxed routine of eating, sleeping and occupying myself in various ways. In fact, it was very relaxing. Normally, I'm not much good at just relaxing, but there's something about sailing an ocean. The only evidence you're getting anywhere is progression of the pencil marks on the chart. Although I had the GPS, I still got out the sextant to calculate a fix. It was practice and it was something to do; it also occupied my mind. I got so there was rarely much difference between my calculated position and the GPS; it was most satisfying. I sent a daily position and any comments back to England. The comments were about anything; a shoal of jellyfish, with delicate pastel shades in their centres; dolphins, flying fish (which sometimes found their way on board and into a pan, just as in Arthur Ransome's book 'Peter Duck'). Apart from that I found I didn't much mind the peace and solitude. It was as much a spiritual experience as a physical one. It was almost a shock when the outside world intruded in the form of an email so I began to avoid checking my inbox. It was mostly junk, anyway. I did have to look every few days, though, to see if there was anything from any of my correspondents. Sometimes there'd be a message forwarded from a reader. Those could be interesting and I did my best to answer them, whether about 'what it felt like, alone in the middle of the ocean' or about how my boat was rigged.

I always flipped through the others; I could easily identify the ones that wanted me to sign up for online gambling ... I could scroll through, mark and delete them wholesale. Others, aiming to get me to sign up for online dating or chat sites, I glanced at before deleting. Most of them were computer generated; you could tell because the wordings were 'perm any two from five' or so; predictable, badly spelt, repetitive and unconvincing. Very occasionally, there was one that appeared to be from a real person and, ever hopeful, I sometimes replied, triggering an exchange of messages that ceased when I refused to send money or sign up for a web-site that would 'verify my identity'. I don't know how the senders got my email address in the first place.

I had a few days' calm when I furled the sails and took a swim, very carefully staying within a few yards of Farsight. That stopped when I saw a fin cutting the water a couple of hundred yards away. I had no desire to be a shark's dinner and put no trust in what I'd read about most sharks being 'non-aggressive' unless there was blood in the water. Still, it was an item for my daily position report.

It took me thirty days to get to Bridgetown, Barbados, where I spent time and money dealing with the formalities. It was only the second time I'd 'gone foreign', the first being Madeira, but Madeira is Portuguese, Portugal is part of the EU, and hence my UK passport was sufficient. Quite apart from that, I had a lot to think about.

Harbours – new countries – are all very well, but if you don't interact with the people, what's the point? Peter Duck, in one of Ransome's tales said something like 'Harbours are all the same and all dirt. No need of 'em if you've got a well-found ship and enough supplies.' Once I'd seen what was to be seen, there wasn't anything to keep me there. I had to decide whether to head south for the Horn - Drake's Passage or the Magellan Straits – which meant sailing the South Atlantic in the summer, hurricane season; and rounding the Horn against the prevailing wind. I didn't fancy that. On the other hand, a transit of the Panama Canal was going to cost me about a thousand pounds, and with assorted delays, take about a month. I'm not going into the details about why the forty mile canal costs so much and takes so long; the actual fee is about four hundred pounds, but there are many additional expenses most of which are unavoidable, and the delay is mainly to do with getting a transit slot. Against that, it was about six thousand five hundred miles to Cape Horn – eight weeks' sailing, not counting stops.

The time was not really the issue. In the end, what tipped the balance was an email ... and hope. She called herself 'Kelly' and said she lived in Manila. She was one of the girls who'd tried to touch me for money and to sign up for a web-site, but unusually didn't cut off when I said 'no'. Exchanging emails erratically we kept up a correspondence. I sent a picture of myself, tanned and bearded, at Farsight's wheel. She sent me one of a dark-haired, dark eyed, olive skinned, slim, attractive young woman, but while I was in Barbados admitted it was not of herself.

"I'm not pretty," she wrote, "and there are a lot of pretty Filipinas. I wanted you to keep writing to me, but then I wanted to be honest with you. Would you come to Philippines? I would like to meet you, though I suppose you find it easy to find pretty girls that you would rather be with."

23^rd December.

I left Bridgetown, Barbados, headed for Colon and the Panama Canal. It would take about two weeks. Plenty of time to think about what to say to 'Kelly'. It was easy sailing; I was lucky. After a few days of ship-board routine I replied.

"What you look like is less important than what you are like. Why don't you tell me about yourself; not the stuff you write to people on the dating and chat sites?"

Over the next month – fifteen days to Colon, then anchored there at 'The Flats' for three weeks waiting for a transit slot – we exchanged emails perhaps twice a week, much more frequently than before. I learned (if she was being honest) that she was twenty-five and worked wherever she could. She never kept a job long 'because I'm ugly, so they always take on someone prettier' and worked as a chat-site stringer 'because I'm not pretty enough for the camera'. It seemed to me that her parents had, for whatever reason, put her down all her life. For one thing, she was convinced she was stupid, when she spoke three languages with some fluency – Tagalog, Spanish and English. I had to wonder if she was as 'ugly' as she said.