DICK DURHAM For whom the bell tolls
It is unusual for a sailor to outlive his vessel, so it will be a poignant moment on the 26th July next year when veteran yachtsman Don Street celebrates his 90th birthday because his trusty yawl, Iolaire, will not be part of any celebrations. The 46ft of her pitch pine planking has been reduced to matchwood on the rocks of the north-east coast of the Mediterranean island of Ibiza following a reported accidental gybe while the 114-yearold classic was running in heavy seas close to shore.
Don is not a sentimental man, but he and his second wife, Trich, and their four children, will doubtless raise a glass to ‘absent friends’ on that day because 52 years of partnership cannot go unrecorded.
That is how long Don and Iolaire were together, sailing over 200,000 miles offshore, making nine transatlantic crossings, carrying scores of charter passengers, sounding hundreds of Caribbean reefs to make corrections to Admiralty charts and competing in many ocean races including the Fastnet.
That he sailed Iolaire – it means ‘white-tailed sea eagle’ in Gaelic – for over 37 years with no engine is testament to the mariner’s experience. But those years, of course, were not without mishap.
I well recall a former editor of Yachting Monthly,
James Jermain, telling me while on passage with Don from the Solent to the Thames Estuary, how they anchored off the Kentish Flats to await the next flood and went below for supper. Fortunately the sixth sense, which all skippers develop about their craft, kicked in and Don returned on deck to find Iolaire drifting across the shipping lanes of the London River.
Her anchor had never reached the sea bed and instead was hooked up under the stem having fouled the bobstay.
Later, on that same passage, Don misjudged the tide racing across the entrance to Limehouse Basin in Docklands, while sailing Iolaire
into the open lock, and sheared off her pine bowsprit.
Okay. Okay. Accidents do happen, but Don, nevertheless has sailed Iolaire into many South Coast harbours which, officially, do not allow their perimeters to be crossed by craft unless propelled by fossil fuel. If you don’t have an engine, of course, the regulation cannot stand!
Many years ago I once joined Don and Trich for a day sail aboard Iolaire. The spoon-bowed, countersterned, low-freeboarded beauty was moored off Cowes.
A RIB took me off and I stepped aboard the flush decks of Iolaire and was ushered by Don down below into a gloomy, scruffy interior with its areas of Thames Measurement sectioned off by curtains. Here Trich served us roast chicken cooked on a solid fuel stove while I listened to Don’s biography, delivered in his characteristic squawky voice. It was like an aural Bayeux Tapestry but longer, and my notebook ran out of pages. Mercifully there was good wine and after a good few glasses we all turned in.
It was only the following morning I realised just how congested Cowes Road was and how daunting a task it would be to sail the then still engineless Iolaire out clear into the Solent.
Don batted not an eyelid but set the mainsail and mizzen and, to avoid having to turn Iolaire
around in the myriad of moored boats, sailed her out... backwards, passing an incoming Red Funnel ferry by yards! Ashore I could see the whitecaps of Royal Yacht Squadron sailors, binoculars raised, following us, presumably sharing my amazement.
Once out clear I noticed an inbound container ship coming up from the east on her way to the Brambles turn and mentioned this to Don as Iolaire
nosed slowly towards the Prince Consort buoy. He did not acknowledge me and I became increasingly anxious as the ship approached, taking a rough aspect bearing on Iolaire’s rail. But we crossed the ship’s head with plenty to spare. Don had seen the vessel long before I had, and made his calculation.
So, thanks for the sail, Don, and my condolences for the loss of Iolaire. Thanks to you she had a life longer than many beautiful classics.
To avoid turning Iolaire he sailed her out backwards past an incoming ferry