Round Britain by Boat

Force 6 winds, bad visibility, and a 40,000-tonne ferry bearing down on him ' one man's voyage round the island he calls home

BBC TV reporter Rob Smith sailed 2,000-miles around Britain in aid of Leukaemia Research. Here he regales WideWorld with tales of dodging ghost ships, catching mackerel, avoiding unexploded bombs and the satisfaction that can only come from a three-week voyage.

A couple of miles off the Essex Coast things were beginning to look slightly tricky. The boat was in difficulties and we were drifting off course. In the busy shipping lanes off the British Isles this is never a good thing, but what was happening now was even more perilous. Not only were we without control, but we were drifting onto the site of the wreck of the SS Montgomery - a sunken World War Two vessel that contained over 1,500 tonnes of unexploded military explosive. You could say it wasn’t the best start to our first day at sea.

Since I was a child I’ve always had a great affinity for the sea and sailing. I’d been in the Sea Cadets as a teenager and as an adult have been lucky enough to own my own yacht: the diesel-powered Wild Rover, and I'd take her out whenever I got the chance. I always dreamed of sailing around Britain, following in the footsteps of the likes of Ellen Macarthur and The Spanish Armada but I never thought I would have the chance to do it 'til after I retired. I just never had the time with my job as a local TV journalist and looking after the kids. But that all changed after I interviewed a young woman named Jessica Whitmore for BBC news.

Jess, who was in the middle of her A-Levels, had been diagnosed with Leukemia, and despite doctors finding a bone marrow match, she later passed away. It was something no one should go through, especially someone so young. I wanted to help Leukemia research – to do something that would to try and ensure that what happened to Jess wouldn’t happen to anyone else. And then one night it all clicked into place – why not sail round the country and use the voyage to raise money for Leukemia Research?

SETTING SAIL

It took around six months to get the boat ready and everything in place but finally the big day arrived. Myself, and two friends, Marvin and Steve – a BBC cameraman – were waved off from Chatham and soon we were exiting the River Medway into the Thames Estuary. It was then that things began to go wrong.

The shroud – a wire that held  the mast of The Wild Rover in place – began to fray. It’s a 20-grade wire and it was now down to only five. We were in real danger of being de-masted. This is a situation you never want to be in, and adding to the danger was that we were being blown off course, towards the wreck of the SS Montgomery and its deadly cargo.

Ordinarily, the resting place of the SS Montgomery, a US-built 'Liberty' or cargo ship carrying munitions for the allied advance across Europe during WW2, would have been a passing curiosity, albeit one to avoid. But now it was a real and present danger. We were drifting too close to the wreck and though I doubted we would trigger the explosives, there was always that small chance. Plus if we did have to be rescued from the site, I’m pretty sure the sailing community would soon know us as prize chumps.

But I guess luck was our side that day and eventually we got the boat back on course and limped back into port. It wasn’t a good start, but I was determined we would put out to sea again as soon as humanly possible. And with a bit of good fortune, we did; we repaired the mast and set sail the next day.

We’d decided to go anti-clockwise on our trip – as the prevailing winds in the British Isles are South Westerly, so we thought with them working in our favour we’d be better off.  Adding to our confidence was that the east coast was the coast I knew best and had been sailing since my teens, so on paper this was going to be the easiest stretch.

But like all things that look good on paper the reality was very different. Almost immediately we sailed into a batch of northerlies and we were bashing into them for the first few days. We had expected the north of Scotland and the Irish Sea to be bad, but this was painful. Hard work. Very wearing. We were constantly fighting the sea and when the weather finally calmed down we were relieved, not that it meant we were going to be getting more rest, more that we could ease the tempo of our work.

To keep to our schedule we were only putting into port every few days. Boats do sail non-stop around the coast but they have much larger crews. As it was, two of us would be sailing the ship while the third slept. It was exhausting – your body clock quickly gets smashed up. I’d brought books with me and had planned a bit of navel contemplating but I barely opened a page. If you weren’t doing something, you were asleep and it became incredibly easy to sleep. One moment I’d be battling in Force 7 waves then it would be my turn to sleep and ‘boof’ - I’d be out like a light.

Life on board can be idyllic at times. The British Isles has an amazing range of breathtaking scenery and wildlife. Guillemots and puffins would regularly land on the boat and schools of dolphin would sometimes swim alongside us, darting beneath the boat and playing in our wake. We tried our hand at fishing to supplement our supplies of tinned curry but only ever caught one Mackerel. It was the best fish I’ve ever tasted.

Our original route was to take us round the north of Scotland. We were all looking forward to it; it was going to be challenging, no doubt, but it also held the promise of seeing the beauty of islands like the Hebrides up at close hand. Our hopes were dashed when two storms blew in from the North Atlantic. We thought about risking it, but it's one thing to be caught in open sea in a storm – you can weather that if the boat is prepared well – but it's entirely different when you’re hugging the coastline when there's a good chance you are going to end up smashed against the rocks.

Instead we took the Caledonian Canal, which cuts across the north of Scotland between Inverness and Fort William. It’s the same length in miles as rounding the north coast but takes longer as sailing is only allowed in daylight hours. We were still a little disappointed that we weren’t going to see north of the country, and we were getting behind our schedule, but we had a big test of our seamanship, perhaps the biggest of our voyage, as waiting for us soon after we exited the canal was the Hag Of Corrievrecken.

WHIRLPOOL

The Hag, or Cailleach as it is known in Gaelic, is a rock sat slap in the middle of the Gulf Of Corrievrecken, a narrow passage between the Islands of Jura and Scarba. Because of the prevailing winds and the rock, a whirlpool forms – one of the most spectacular in the world – and this maelstrom is calm for only a few hours a day. There is also the small matter of 20-knot tides running against us, a boat whose top speed was only six knots. We had to head through this gap and we knew we had to get our timing precisely right, or, well the alternative of being sucked into a whirlpool didn’t really bear thinking about.

Britain is a nation with a great maritime tradition so it’s no surprise that our seas and tides are some of the most mapped and observed in the world. This, when faced with such a daunting natural phenomena as the Hag is, I can say without reservation, a good thing. In times past we would have been taking our lives in our hands, with a real risk of death but with today’s technology it became, not a cakewalk by any means, but something that was possible. Nevertheless when we finally tiptoed past the Hag there was a palpable sense of relief on the boat.

The next few days were plain sailing. I don’t know whether this lulled us into a false sense of security or that we were just unlucky. But around three o'clock in the morning, which is usually when all the bad things seem to happen, disaster almost struck.

We were off the North Wales coast near a group of Islands called the Bishops. It was blowing a force six, visibility wasn’t too good and we were crossing one of the busiest sea-lanes in the world. We knew we had to be on our guard. Our navigation equipment was showing that there was a large ferry moving quickly towards us, but try as we might, we just couldn't see it – which is a big problem. If we couldn't see them there was a good chance that they couldn’t see us either. And the last thing we wanted was our 36-tonner to collide with a 40,000-tonne ferry. We would barely leave a paint mark.

Our plan was to stop dead in the water and let it pass in front of us. But suddenly the wind picked up and began pushing us into its path. For a few desperate minutes we struggled to change direction and then I spotted a light, which seemed to be bearing down on us. For a split second I thought it was the ferry and things were about to get very interesting, very quickly. But it wasn’t. In the confusion I’d miss-identified a nearby lighthouse as the ferry. We weren’t about to be smashed to bits, but it showed what bad conditions, confusion and fatigue can do/ I wouldn’t call it a lucky escape as we were probably never in that much danger, but if a few other elements had come into play, and our luck had swung the other way, it could have been a different story.

Thankfully, there were no more incidents after that. We were nearing the home stretch and  making excellent time. We managed to sail the length of the English Channel, some 450 miles, in only three days. Our journey was nearing its end, and I began to realise how much I was going to miss the life. The Wild Rover had been my home for three weeks and I’d grown accustomed to living at sea – even growing a beard like an old sea dog.

It was with both regret and pride that we finally sailed into our home harbour. Pride because we’d managed to compete the journey and I’d tested my seamanship and hadn’t come up wanting. Regret because, if I’m being honest ,if someone had said to me ‘You can go around again right now’ I would have leapt at the chance. But most of all I felt pride because we’d raised money for Jess’s Charity and perhaps through our efforts have helped to make sure it doesn't happen again.

For more on Rob Smith's voyage, visit: www.sailroundbritain.co.uk