Ondine, recalling an ocean sailing adventure from my youth
Stepping off the dock with all my worldly goods not quite filling a medium-size duffle bag in those days, onto the deck of my new ride, I thought to myself “America, here I come,” a notion that I was disavowed of within the hour by our Skipper, Sven, who informed me that we would eventually be sailing to the States, but via a detour to Australia for the 1968 Sydney/Hobart race. Sven, decently, gave me the option of swimming ashore if I wanted to try for a more direct ride. I decided to stick around. Why not? It was a crisp, beautiful day with light breezes, golf-ball-sized wavelets and the ‘wine-dark’ Aegean Sea sparkling in its own very special shade of blue. A mere ten miles to the east, Poseidon, from the remains of his lofty temple on Cape Sounion, smiled. The Gods were at peace. The omens were good.
Turning south after transiting the Med. and the Strait of Gibraltar, we headed across the Bay of Tangiers towards the Cape Verde Islands for fuel and provisions. My shipmates were about my age – 26 at the time; all experienced sailors, from different backgrounds; each following his dream. We were a multi-national crew: three Americans, two Brits, one German, one Australian and one Japanese – all under the highly skeptical eye of our skipper, the aforementioned Sven. All sinew and muscle, with saltwater running through his veins, he moved like a cat and bit like a crocodile. We speculated he was about 50, but no one knew his age for sure, and Sven wouldn’t say. He was a Finn with two things on his mind; the first was deciding how many times he had sailed around the world – seventeen, in all- but since one had been in the opposite direction, he didn’t know whether to subtract it from the total. Also, thoughtfully chewing through the stem of yet another pipe, he wondered how he was going to convert eight young hot-shot sailors into seamen capable of getting us to Sydney in time for the race, quickly and safely. We were on a tight schedule and there was little time for mishaps.
Built in 1967 for one of the most successful offshore racers of his time, Sumner (Huey) Long, Ondine was a 73’ all-aluminum Ketch out of the Abeking & Rasmussen yard in Lemwerder, Germany. She was built to go fast and win offshore races against the world’s best. Ondine, in French folklore, was a water goddess and nymph of legendary beauty who, betrayed by her unfaithful husband, Palemon, placed a curse on him that let him breathe only so long as he was awake. Poor Palemon never slept again. We contemplated ‘Ondine’s Curse’ on the many sleepless nights on storm-tossed oceans as we pushed the boat and ourselves towards Sydney!
After a short 11 hour stop in Cape Town for fuel and provisions, we rounded the Cape of Good Hope on November 6thand entered the Indian Ocean. We were headed South in search of the mighty westerlies that live below 40 degrees South latitude to push us quickly towards Sydney, some 7,000 miles away. Spirits were high as we anticipated sailing some of the world’s most challenging waters.
Log entry: Saturday, November 16th, 1968
Lat 41° 17’ South Long 51° 35’ East
“Wind force 4-5 all morning – died slightly about lunchtime and then increased. Wind shifted slightly toward the north and increased. Barometer falling fast – 1900 hrs. Wind force 5 with squalls to force 6. Twin headsails set, trysail and mizzen – course held 125° M. Wind increasing – Barometer falling like a brick.”
It is a sailing axiom that bad things happen at night, in deteriorating conditions. At 2135 hrs. I was at the wheel, in a bumpy ocean, when a loud crash announced that the mainmast had broken and fallen across the starboard side of the boat. Sven, who never seemed to need sleep, was on deck instantly exclaiming in his natural language, “Wotthefock?” The black night, icy rain squalls and stinging saltwater spray made it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage. The boat, which had been pounding into heavy seas, was now losing steerage and began rolling freely in the deteriorating conditions. The ‘off-watch’ immediately appeared, in various stages of foul-weather gear undress, prepared to go to work. We were soon able to assess that about 60’ of broken spar suspended only by internal halyards and wiring, was swinging around dangerously and we tried to bring it under control by getting lines around it and tensioning them on nearby deck winches.
Despite our efforts, the friction and banging continued between the broken part of the spar and the remainder of the mast and, more dangerously, the hull itself. The staysail and headsail were both in the water, dragging, keeping the spar anchored. What seemed like endless miles of stainless-steel wire rigging and rope lines lay all over the deck in a tangled mess like discarded spaghetti flung into the sink of an Italian kitchen. We painstakingly removed all the fixed rigging from their anchor points on deck and cut the rest to clear the broken spar in case we needed to jettison it.
The broken spar continued to pound the side of the hull violently and we decided it was time to cut it loose. It sank like a stone into depths of the violent maelstrom below. The wind continued to increase and the sea was rough – the boat rolled violently as an icy rain poured down. To get steerage, we turned on the engine which promptly stalled as the propeller fouled the remaining lines attached to one of the submerged headsails. We cleared away most of the remaining mess, stowing everything below or in the cockpit. Nothing more could be done until daylight. We posted watch and slept intermittently.
0500 hrs. – On deck. Full gale blowing. The bottom fell out of the Barometer last night at 900.8 mbar. Very rough seas. Very high winds. Very cold. Icy rain. Salt spray. Everything traveling horizontally. Violent, chaotic, boat motion. An artist’s palette of greys painted a desert landscape of infinite emptiness as Sven and I tried, in vain, to retrieve the staysail, whose sheets remained wrapped around the propeller. Nick, a fearless ex-marine, volunteered to dive on the propeller to cut the tangled lines free. Reluctantly, but with few options, we tied a secure line around him and lowered him into the icy water, aware of the limited time he would be able to continue to function. For almost 15 minutes, we waited anxiously on deck before winching him out of the water on his signal. “Crank-up the engine,” he murmured, as we took him below and set-about raising his body temperature.
Taking stock of our situation, we were 2,300 miles from Cape Town, 3,500 miles from southwest Australia, short of fuel, and with our sailing capability crippled. We needed to notify the owner in New York about our situation and, lacking any onboard long-range communication capability, we needed to get physically close to someone who could relay a message. A French meteorological station on the tiny island group of New Amsterdam, some 1,300 miles to the east seemed to be our best option. We set to work jury rigging the boat using our only available resources: a 28’ mast stump and the remains of the sails we had cut free the previous night, with the objective of attaining acceptable speed under sail while counting on the prevailing westerly winds to assist what would be a very inefficient rig. By midday we had a series of strops around the top of the stump, secured by two hooks. To this we rigged a backstay and a storm jib hoisted upside down so it would fit. With a strong following wind, our new rig went to work; we killed the engine and altered course slightly northward toward New Amsterdam. Despite the icy driving rain and frequent soakings as breaking seas slammed into and over the boat, there was a sense of positive exhilaration aboard. We were sailing!
The gale peaked early that afternoon. The barometer began peeling itself off the bottom of the scale, allowing us to begin work making new sails from the tattered remains of those we had salvaged. Watch-on and watch-off for several days, with sailmaker’s needles, palms, twine, and knives, we cut, stitched, and spliced with a passion to produce a serviceable staysail and a trapezoid mainsail to work as a gaff rig using the spinnaker pole as gaff.
Nine days later, we raised New Amsterdam and, standing off the northeast end, preparing to make contact, we sighted a large passenger ship approaching from the east, which turned out to be “The Canberra” en route from Australia. We raised signal flags on the mizzen mast and hailed her in Morse code, via signal lamp. Canberra offered help and agreed to send the following message: “To: Long Tanker New York City…Ondine main dismasted 41°S 56’ E …Unable to salvage spar…Proceeding SW Australia at 5 knots under jury rig”. We re-set course for Albany, Southwest Australia.
Sailing long distances offshore changes the way we perceive time. In the fixed watch cycle and routines of sailing an active boat 24 hours a day, time suborns itself to the objective. Pushed by strong westerly winds and ever-rolling swells, we found ourselves in Albany some 16 days later, where a message from the owner informed us that a new mast had been shipped to Sydney. We left in the early hours of the following morning, after taking on fuel and provisions (including a few beers) for the final leg. 11 days later, we passed through the ‘Heads’ into Sydney Harbour on a warm summer night, two days before the arrival of our new mast.
It had been 89 days since leaving Greece, and we had sailed over 14,000 nautical miles. It was not without a tinge of sadness to accept that this part of our journey was over. Sitting with my back propped against that 28’ stump of a mast that had served us so well, watching the approaching lights of the city, I allowed myself to reflect on our trip and that near-perfect late September Aegean day. I recalled many occasions that I had sailed past Cape Sounion, paying homage to Poseidon in the Greek tradition with a glass of Metaxa. This particular adventure was over, and while I didn’t know it then, my seafaring days were as youthful as I was. The omens had, indeed, been good.
