Sheila in the Wind
BOOKS
Former Gurkha officer Adrian Hayter resigned his commission in 1949 and set out in 1950 to sail solo from the UK to his home in New Zealand via the Suez Canal, India, Malaya and Australia. It was a voyage of extreme endurance and adventure which lasted six years. Here he is approaching Bombay.
By evening I could distinguish low jungle-covered hills rising into the cloud behind; ahead lay a long headland surmounted by a fort. This landmark was little use, as on that coast almost every strategic headland is surmounted by a fort. These are massive stone buildings, built either by the Portuguese about the 16th century, or by the Mahrattas when their kingdom controlled that coast and also threatened the Great Moghul as far away as Delhi.
I lay-to about eight miles off, and at ten o’clock that night spotted the flash of a lighthouse between lulls in the rain. It was Dabhol, about 80 miles south of Bombay. My first concern then was to regain deep water, and I beat all that night to the nor’-west-by-west across a westerly wind.
By dawn the next morning the wind had lost much of its force, and the lead showed only seven fathoms.
The huge rollers of the open ocean in depths of 2,000 fathoms now became rearing giants, screening the wind from Sheila’s sails, lifting her dizzily and flinging her towards a shore of rocks and shoals […] By noon I was in five fathoms in spite of all I could do to get offshore. Sheila was under storm canvas, because I had doubts of the repaired rigging holding in the heavy squalls, but she was very underpowered between them.
By mid-afternoon she was among an area of shoals, still about five miles offshore, over which the rollers reared high and top-heavy. They raced forward with tremendous speed, their crests curling over and falling with a thunderous roar, churning up the mud and sand from below.
Some of these shoals I could not pass to windward, and to avoid them had to give way precious sea-room to pass inside them. But one caught us, and as a mounting crest approached I hastily lashed myself to a cleat. Sheila was lifted high, tossed and flung like a chip of wood, and then battered and covered by the seething torrent of foamy mud. The fall was like descending in a fast lift, and I waited endless seconds for the sickening thud as Sheila’s
keel struck. Instead an irresistible suction drew us bodily into the muddy cavern of the next curling sea. I knew Sheila
could not survive, and remember nothing now except the sharp bite of the rope round my waist as solid darkness covered me, and through it all the sensation of being lifted and hurled away by a gigantic force.
The water drained off cabin-top and decks, and Sheila
rode upright in the sheltered water inside the shoal. We had been carried right over it.
This fright made it startlingly obvious that unless
Sheila had more power between squalls we would never clear that area. I took in the storm canvas, working fast, and put on full sail less the mizzen. Slowly we made out between the shoals and I even held on to full sail in the squalls, nursing Sheila and praying that the repaired rigging would hold.
It was no use reefing down for these squalls – reefing takes time before the squall arrives, and by the time you have un-reefed after it has gone, it would have been time to begin reefing again to meet the next. It was all or nothing.
The wind steadied further offshore, and by dark I was reasonably safe though still not back in blue water. Landsmen often think that sailors are quaintly sentimental for loving their ships, but this is not so. We love a person not for their flesh and blood but for their integrity, their reliability under all circumstances. These are the qualities Sheila has, enduring qualities, and this is why whatever happens I can never be parted from her.
At midnight I turned parallel with the coast, about eight miles off, and checked my course, in case of currents, with hourly soundings of the lead to keep me in about eight fathoms.
I had to keep close enough to the coast to see Khanderi Island light – which marks the entrance to Bombay harbour – through the rain, but not so close as to get into the danger of shallow water again.
The light showed up in the early hours. I hove-to, hung a light in the rigging and slept till dawn.
Later that morning I cleared The Prongs, a reef guarding the entrance opposite Khanderi Island, not knowing that I had already been sighted, and that instructions were being issued to shipping and aircraft to cancel the alert ordered for me a week previously. Inside the harbour, a representative of the Royal Bombay Yacht Club came out to meet me in a large launch which, if carelessly handled, could have smashed Sheila’s side in with the heavy surge running.
The Indian pilot drew near, keeping far enough off to avoid the force of the surge, but close enough to take immediate advantage of a suitable lull when it came.
I held a steady course, and he brought the launch close alongside, Colonel Seymour-williams stepped on board, and the launch drew clear. Never before or since have I seen a small ship better handled under those conditions than by that Indian pilot.
The Colonel had everything organised, and with a minimum of bother Sheila was soon in a snug berth, a watchman on board, and the police, health, and customs satisfied. Within an hour I was sitting back in clean, dry clothes after a hot bath, drinking my first beer for five weeks.
Outside the monsoon flooded the garden, and at the end of the lawn waves flung themselves unrepentant against the stone buttress. I looked out through the harbour entrance from my comfortable chair, and let my mind slide back over 7,000 miles to that rainy day a year before when I had sailed out of Lymington. I believed it as I believed the experience of a dream.
Three days later came the news of a Liberty ship driven ashore by the monsoon seas, just north of Bombay, on her way from Karachi. In the privacy of my mind I felt a great surge of affection and gratitude for Sheila, which somehow passed beyond her into something greater.
Despite his emotional pledge Hayter did eventually sell the Albert Strange-designed Sheila II in New Zealand. Currently she is once again for sale, damaged and needing restoration.