Sea Change - Ian Dickens

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was based on crew members’ weight, since they needed to be winched aloft, and, realising I might be the next ‘volunteer’, I set on a crash course of heavy eating at breakfast. It didn’t work, though, so up I went, hanging on for my life, threading new halyards at the top of the mast and then going up again half an hour later to check if they were free-running. And although I am not a great fan of heights, the view from such a lofty vantage point was breathtaking.

      It seemed that bad luck was in the ascendant as we battled to overcome all the difficulties that came our way. But battle we did, with a never-say-never Blitz spirit, and as each day brought a new problem we dealt with it, dispatched it and challenged the gods to try us some more.

      London beat through Force Eight storms that sent several of the crew to their bunks with debilitating seasickness. The foredeck crew struggled up at the bow to change sails. Stuart took flyers on the weather and bucked the fleet trend by pushing out to meet the weather fronts in the Atlantic, in order to get a broader reach across the Bay of Biscay, and we had a collective teeth gnash when those fronts failed to materialise and wind shifts took us in the wrong direction.

      The two watches alternated through nights of rain, spray and prolonged tiredness as we raced for longer than we had ever endured in our training. But, through all the problems, there remained an incredible focus, spirit, commitment and desire that saw us make up all the lost miles, and more, as we came back through the fleet.

      It provided a huge test, which we passed with flying colours.

      And, by electing to live life at such extremes, we enjoyed rewards that were correspondingly inspirational. We were the only people in the entire world to sail under a harvest moon in a heaven alive with pinpricks of starlight and criss-crossed with shooting stars reflecting on a phosphorescence-creaming sea, and hear a gentle ‘plop’ in the water just a couple of arm lengths away from where we sat. There, in the moonlight, swam a lone dolphin, keeping us company in the long night. We sat awestruck by sunsets and sunrises that no one would ever see from land. We saw schools of whales alongside the boat and marvelled at the breadth of the vast grey-black backs that lolloped out of the water right alongside us.

      We watched, fascinated, as the torpedo-like wake of a large male whale headed straight for us, a rippling, oily, eight-foot-across shimmer of water betraying the beast’s presence as it nosed forward, diving at the last minute and giving our keel the gentlest of nudges as it passed by below. We ran for the birdwatcher’s guide to identify two large brown boobies, flapping their huge and heavy wings, far out to sea. Anna fed an exhausted sparrow that came out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, and settled in the cockpit, hopping from crew member to crew member and sharing the Alpen and Weetabix breakfasts we were eating. We baked fresh bread, we made pancakes and challenged each other to produce the best supper on board. And no matter which team was on watch, the crew drove the boat with more stamina and willpower than we thought possible.

      As the Bay of Biscay gave way to the coast of Portugal, the bows of London headed back in from the Atlantic and for forty-eight hours Stuart, Gary, Ali and I battled with the elements at the wheel. One hour on, one hour off, in two different watches, we ran, under spinnaker, in a Force Eight blow with a huge following sea. The knife-edged course needed was marginal, and could easily have resulted in an on-the-side broach, with the boat blown over nearly horizontal, or in a mass of sail cloth tangled around the forestay. It required a massive amount of strength and commitment.

      With my hour on the wheel done, I headed for my bunk but struggled to find a position comfortable enough to let sleep come. Muscles that had never been tested over such lengthy periods by such powerful forces shrieked in agony, no matter how I lay in my narrow ‘coffin’. And just when the burning ache subsided a little, it was my turn back at the wheel, for another sixty-minute workout. But everyone, as they had from the start, delivered and did so big time. So much so, that London set a Clipper Ventures speed record for the leg of 17.4 knots – amazing when one considered the thirty tons of hull, fourteen crew and several hundred tins of baked beans that we carried.

      Whether it was 14.00 or 02.00, the boat was being driven with the same dedication and focus, which was why, twenty miles from the finish, we rounded Cap St Vincent, Europe’s most westerly point, and found ourselves reeling the competition in at a rare rate of knots.

      The towering cliffs, with their dramatic lighthouse, were a spectacular landfall, and as we rounded them close in to shore and headed east down the Algarve coast, the Mediterranean came to greet us. The last remnants of the onset of a British winter fled and a warm sun baked down on to a glistening azure-blue sea that revealed two of our competitors just a few miles ahead. We knuckled down for one final push as the sun dipped into the ocean behind us and the race carried on into the night. In light and fickle winds, London slowly narrowed the gap and then overtook first Jersey and then Portsmouth. From being more than a hundred miles behind in last place, we had worked our way up to third.

      At the end of our first race we had beaten Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds and Jersey and just missed grabbing Portsmouth’s scalp by a mere twenty seconds after a thousand miles of racing, thanks to a wind shift in their favour just a mile from the finish. Fourth, after all our difficulties and problems, was a result we were mighty proud of, and with ‘Jerusalem’ pouring out of the speakers we motored in, breaking the silence of a sleeping Vilamoura. Back on dry land, we wanted a beer, we wanted to party, we wanted to celebrate our safe arrival, but the bar owners and restaurateurs had other ideas. In the hotels and timeshare apartments clustered around the harbour, clocks, watches and radio alarms were showing 02.00, and for the landlocked the rules said ‘sleep’.

      When the sun rose we were truly back amid normality, where people and shops and supermarkets and traffic reports and lawnmowers and newspapers from home and all-day fried breakfasts existed, and the secret world beyond the horizon faded to a distant blur once more. Already, after just a few days, we were questioning whether true normality really existed ashore. By comparison, the simple reality of living where the planet was at its most raw was startlingly attractive and honest.

      I got to a telephone in a huge hotel that towered over the marina, amused at the memories that it brought back. A year ago I had been there, suited and booted, for the annual winter sales conference. Reps with their golf bags, PowerPoint presentations that looked at profit margins and retailer incentives, earnest messages from the sales director at black-tie banquets, all echoed like ghosts around the foyer. Now the staff looked down their noses at the boat bum in shorts and T-shirt who had dared to enter their marbled halls in search of a phone.

      The mere seven days that had passed since the emotional departure felt like seven weeks, so varied and intense had been our experiences. I connected up my laptop, sent off e-mails to announce my safe arrival and attempted to try to convey at least a little of the drama and intensity of what we had been through.

      I spoke to home and learnt that our journey had been dutifully watched on the web and, with twelve-hourly updates provided by Clipper, they had been able to share every high and low. My father, who for years had dismissed computers and e-mails as the devil incarnate, was especially fascinated by the level of information on offer and had spent the week standing at my brother’s shoulder, poring over the facts on his screen. Like an anxious admiral back in Whitehall, he became immersed in the race, zipping from the official Clipper site to weather sites, to satellite pictures and back to the race site again. At seventy-four he decided that a laptop was now a must and, much to the amazement of the family, went off to PC World, bought the kit, signed up for an e-mail account and logged on. The town of Crowborough is a fair distance from the sea, but, from that point on, all the maritime sites in the world came flooding into East Sussex and on to the bridge, from where he directed operations.

      The weekly shop, the allotment, the Telegraph crossword, all the day-to-day routines that fill the life of a retired couple, were replaced with real adventure. Mum stepped on to the bridge too and they settled down to run the race with as much involvement as if they had been on board alongside me. From home, similar stories were relayed and the official website was getting an amazing number of hits, as friends logged on to chart our progress. The on-board diaries that I was writing for The Times On-Line seemed to be

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