A Voyage For Madmen by Peter Nichols

that the approaching ship would see him and alter course, as it is legally obliged to do: a vessel under sail has right of way over an engine-driven ship. Sailors could reasonably expect that any oncoming vessel would have a man in the bow peering out into the dark ahead who would see their little light and send a message back to the bridge, and the ship would turn away. But by the 1960s, this was increasingly not the case. As ships have grown larger and their systems more sophisticated, manpower aboard has been cut back. A supertanker may have fewer than twenty men aboard, and at any given time a third of that complement will be off duty, asleep, or below reading. A few shipping lines still maintain a good lookout, posting a man on the bow in radio contact with the bridge. Other ships, particularly those registered under the less demanding requirements of flags of convenience, are not so scrupulous. Lookout may be by radar alone, and if the radar doesn’t pick up a boat, it’s invisible. Yachts, particularly wooden yachts, do not make good radar pictures. They’re small, their radar echoes may be lost in ‘sea clutter’ – just more waves on the radar screen. And as sailors often find when calling a ship by radio to ask what sort of radar picture their boats make, the radar may be turned off.
    The bridge of a large tanker may be a quarter of a mile astern of its bow and 150 feet above the water – something like the view from the upper floors of a condo in Miami Beach looking out at the Florida Straits. The crew on the bridge can see the big stuff, other ships, from up there, but little sailboats can go unnoticed. At night, a sailboat’s navigation lights, close down to the water, willalmost certainly not be seen farther than half a mile away, even if anyone’s looking – scant minutes to collision. Then, if seen, the manoeuvrability of a large ship is poor and slow.
    The curve of the earth, it soon becomes apparent at sea, is quite pronounced. The horizon seen from the deck of a small yacht is about three miles away. Beyond 3 miles, a ship will be ‘hull-down’ below the horizon: only its superstructure is visible. Eight miles away, the whole ship will be below the horizon. Conditions of haze, cloud, rain, fog, or a large swell on a sunny day can reduce this to yards. A ship moving at 18 knots (the speed at which the average container ship might travel; many travel faster), unseen when the sailor comes on deck to make a careful scan of the sea before going below again, can steam up over the horizon and run a yacht down in twenty minutes or less.
    Clearly, most sensibly, it’s up to the sailboat to stay clear of the ship. The single-hander, therefore, must wake, climb on deck and look around every fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes – there is no rule, it varies from single-hander to single-hander.
    Knox-Johnston, the merchant seaman who had been trained aboard rigorously well-run British ships, had a touching, old-fashioned faith in the idea that all ships maintained a lookout. Before his voyage was over, this faith would be shattered. Near land and shipping lanes, he dozed in the cockpit, ready to wake and alter course. Mid-ocean, he was as untroubled by doubts as he was when swimming, and tended to sleep for hours at a time when the weather was fine and
Suhaili
didn’t need attention.
    But
Suhaili
was not without her problems. Even in quiet weather, the bilges were filling with water, and Knox-Johnston was having to pump them dry twice a day. She had leaked before, on the voyage from India, and he had noticed it again on the run from London to Falmouth. Now the leak was worse. A little water in the bilges is not uncommon for any boat, and more the rule for wooden boats of conventional plank-on-frame construction like
Suhaili
. But the amount of water now flowing into the boat was significant, and Knox-Johnston was worried that this might indicate a weakness in the