Did anyone else experience that single defining moment when they knew what they wanted to do? The moment when that brilliant vision blossomed in their minds, that vision of the graceful sailboat swooping over impossibly blue seas, porpoises keeping company, the tranquillity, solitude perhaps, of being one's own master on that vast ocean?
You see her bursting through Persil white foam with exhilarating speed. The sun always shines, it is always warm. You see her sleeping at anchor off a palm-fringed beach, and when you get too hot you can just roll off the deck to cool off.
Then there is the reality, which is not quite the same - not for sailors in northern Europe anyway where we more often have to wrap ourselves in specially developed, specially priced clothing and a boat heater is definitely an asset.
My defining moment occurred many years ago, when I was a young sailor in the Royal Navy. One night during the middle watch a colleague told me of his ambition to sail round the world in his own boat. This was in the days when that sort of thing was practically unheard of. It was before Sir Alec Rose and Sir Francis Chichester.
Only a handful of sailors had done it, including the Frenchmen Bardiaux and Gerbault. Not all circumnavigators wrote about their exploits, but two others that did were the Americans Harry Pigeon and William Albert Robinson. It was Robinson's book Deep Water and Shoal that had fired my friend's imagination. He lent me the book and I shared his obsession. I bought myself a copy which I still have today.
Weston Martyr's wonderful introduction states: “It is the fate of the majority of British readers to have to catch the 9.15 300 times each year, and I think this book will make every season ticket holder very restless and discontented with his life.”
Robinson was 25 when he set out from New York in June 1928. He had worked and saved enough to buy his little boat and equip it with stores to last a few months, but after that? He would do the best he could, but he was determined to carry on.
His boat Svaap -Sanskrit for dream - was a John Alden of Boston design, ten metres long, ketch rigged with a large aft cockpit, which he converted in Tahiti installing a small aft cabin for stores and crew.
He sailed not single handed but with another person as crew. From Tahiti on it was a Polynesian named Etera, a sailor of the old school: he got drunk when ashore, with a wife, nay several, in every port. But he was invaluable for his ability to produce hot meals under very trying conditions with limited materials
After transiting the Panama Canal they made their first landfall on the Galapagos Islands, then sparsely populated. Here they had adventures galore, the first being how to get ashore, and mistaking a giant ray for rocks dead ahead until it suddenly leapt out of the water, several tons and 20 feet across!
Robinson spent three weeks here among the peons and cutthroats, descendants of the convicts sent there by the Ecuadorean government to work for the original settlers. There is the mysterious Karin, among the last of a group of Norwegian pioneers who arrived in 1926 to form a colony on San Cristobal. Nothing is said but it seem that these two were drawn together.
Robinson and Etera in their tried, tested and trusted Svaap then wandered across the South Pacific to the Marquesas, through the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Cook Islands, New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands to Singapore. They made many stops and enjoyed everything immensely. Robinson was an excellent observer full of curiosity and gives the impression that everything fully lived up to his expectations.
He was quite critical of the missionary societies in the Western Pacific, particularly in New Guinea, where they exploited the native population in the gathering and processing of copra, from which they were making huge sums.
After leaving Mangalore and striking across the top bit of the Indian Ocean they began to run out of provisions and had to run for Makalla in Arabia for stores. Robinson didn't realise that the Moslem population were celebrating the breaking of Ramadan, and a state of religious fanaticism was abroad. There were no Europeans in Makalla, and certainly no Christians!
Finding himself in the centre of a mob and confronted by a huge sword-twirling giant, Robinson thought his voyage would end right there. He was rescued by another big man in magnificent white robes, also carrying a sword, and with the help of his own revolver, he made it back to his yacht.
He approached the Red Sea with some trepidation as he had heard tales of pirates there. He was captured twice but was able to escape quite easily. After transiting the Suez Canal they made their way to Gibraltar and from there swung down to the Canary Islands, then across the Atlantic to New York, thus completing the circumnavigation. It had taken three and half years.
After the Second World War, during which he opened a shipyard and built ships for the American Navy, Robinson went back to the South Pacific in a beautiful schooner he had built for himself and spent the rest of his days exploring there. He had a Polynesian wife and family.
I have another book that he wrote of one of those journeys; it's called To the Great Southern Sea. Anyone reading the writings of W.A.Robinson could not fail to feel the stirrings of adventure.
