The long wrong way

Oliver Dewar looks at Dee Caffari's progress around the world non-stop westabout and on her own

Preparation

From the outset, Dee Caffari’s challenge to become the first female, westabout solo circumnavigator - sailing against the direction of the earth’s rotation, its winds and currents - seemed a daunting task before she had even crossed the start line off Lizard Point, Cornwall, on Monday 21 November last year. Her choice of Aviva - a strong, solid yacht normally handled by 18 crew - guaranteed strength, a semblance of comfort and an illusion of safety, but would undoubtedly place huge demands on a solo sailor. The speed of the yacht’s refit after completing the 2004-05 Global Challenge race took just eight weeks, including minimal customisation for Caffari, with a frugal (in offshore racing terms) budget of £170,000 - an extraordinary achievement in itself. Many experienced singlehanders maintain that the hardest part of a circumnavigation is making it to the start line. However, any problems or pitfalls encountered by the 33 year-old solo sailing novice during preparation for the voyage would be a fond memory compared to the experiences she would encounter offshore.

North Atlantic

After only eight days at sea, the yacht was lashed by 60 knot winds in the North Atlantic, gusting to 72 knots, launching Aviva off waves at 12 knots, sending 42 tonnes of mild steel smashing into the deep troughs. Careful to avoid “sewing a torn mainsail across the Equator”, Caffari dropped the sail, taking 90 minutes to complete the manoeuvre. This first gale and the effort involved in dropping the main must have been a sobering experience and would have sent many fully crewed yachts scampering into Madeira. Caffari, however, chose the aftermath of the storm as an opportunity to build an extraordinary bond with her yacht - a moment recorded in her log:

“I went on deck and had a chat with Aviva. She was quite happy now that the sea state had died down a little and I am sure she is well aware of how good her progress has been but I told her to take it easy, it is a marathon not a sprint and she shouldn’t show off.”

Endowing a yacht with a personality is a useful, solo sailing ploy; providing companionship in the absence of any physical human contact, supplying reassurance and offering a valuable alter ego. Caffari, however, understood the character of her new sailing colleague and added: “…yachts are very female, they are expensive, everything that goes with them is expensive and they need constant attention.” The final four words of the skipper’s insightful comments were to prove prophetic. Her strong union with Aviva was unable to fill the solitude entirely and Caffari’s gregarious nature and formidable party constitution saw the development of a weekend routine that would sustain her across the Equator. Thus, Saturday and Sunday became “domestic time” (“I wasn’t going to be invited to any wild parties, so I should put the time to good use”). Weekend chores through the Doldrums included scrubbing the yacht’s living areas with anti-bacterial cleaner to limit the risk of any infections, cleaning leaked fuel discovered in the bilge and inventing a fish scoop (“dead flying fish smell really bad”). When not involved with “housework”, Caffari spent time playing Su Doku in the cockpit, wondering what was happening in X Factor and celebrating with “Sunday Brunch” (“A square block in an airtight foil bag”).

South Atlantic

This paradise of homely bliss was soon to be shattered and - 50 days later – Caffari would be stripped of any ability to maintain a sense of normality in the most remote area of the planet’s Southern Ocean, conceding: “I will just stick to the sailing, eating, sailing, drinking, sailing, sleeping, sailing routine.” Crossing the Equator on the 18th day at sea marked a turning point in fortunes onboard Aviva; three days later, while dodging tankers 190 miles off Recife, Brazil, the watermaker’s high pressure pump failed and although Caffari managed a repair, there was a niggling doubt as to the unit’s reliability; a problem that could dramatically effect the success of the challenge. This stress was soon magnified by exhaustion, forced by a period of 90° windshifts with strength fluctuating from 10-25 knots, requiring constant sail changes and opening a crack in the skipper’s resolve: “It is frustrating as hell having unstable winds. How on earth am I meant to make decisions when there is so little to help me. I just really [want] a break.”

This gloom was quickly dispelled as a period of consistent weather arrived in the third week of December, allowing Caffari a domestic weekend checking halyards and winches pre-Southern Ocean. A time spent washing hair, drying clothes, musing over the “cheesy film line up for Christmas Day”, but always overshadowed with worry over recent, recurrent, niggling autopilot errors. The “Christmas Corner” photograph taken on board Aviva on 25th December shows Caffari wearing a comical hat, surrounded by an extravagant pile of presents, seated in an area that could be mistaken for a spacious, modernist, loft apartment. The reality behind this image is far from festive. Caffari admits in her log that reading messages left on board Aviva before the start and emails flooding into the yacht made her cry, but the hydraulic autopilot pump emptying itself of fluid reduced an emotionally charged Christmas Day to a hell of “alarms sounding, tears and trimming.”



Conditions on board failed to improve on Boxing Day as the secondary pilot began ejecting oil from its header tank. Struggling in 30-35 knots of breeze, Caffari topped-up the tank and scrambled to send an email to her shore team requesting advice. Ten minutes later the pilot died completely: “It had lost its oil and its will to live” she comments in her log. Having reverted to the primary pilot, Caffari and her shore team enter a three-day consultation process to find a solution. Continuing sailing south to Cape Horn and into the Pacific Ocean without reliable pilots was not an option and this crushing frustration is clearly recorded in her log:

“I had laughed, cried, stamped my feet, and had tried hitting Aviva, but she is steel and I just hurt my hand” adding that the mechanical failure had “nearly pushed me over the edge.”

Whatever the true cause of the pilot problems-– a design flaw, poor manufacture, sloppy installation, inadequate maintenance - it is possibly significant that neither the pilot’s manufacturer nor the model of pilot are listed in the yacht’s extensive inventory of hardware. Nonetheless, on New Year’s Eve, after rewiring and re-calibrating the pilots, a decision to continue the voyage was reached: Aviva gybed away from the Falkland Islands, sailing through Le Maire Straits three days later and rounding Cape Horn on 4 January. Caffari’s rounding was a particularly busy day at the world’s southernmost cape and Aviva was joined by a frigate from the Chilean Navy base at Puerto Williams in the Beagle Channel and the polar, pocket-cruise liner, Hanseatic, ferrying adventure tourists around the high latitudes.



Southern Ocean (Pacific)

After 44 days at sea without sighting land, the breeze dropped to 5 knots off the Horn, stalling Aviva before building to 45 knots within the space of an hour, sending the yacht barrelling southwest through Drake Passage towards Diego Ramirez Island and into the Pacific zone of the Southern Ocean. Caffari’s 35 days sailing through the Pacific Ocean’s high latitudes became a constant battle of dodging low-pressure systems in the hostile corridor between 40°S and 50°S, where a lull in wind speed to 30 knots soon became “positively comfortable”. The solo skipper quickly developed a 45 minute sleep regime, opting to doze at the chart table rather than occupy a customised bunk in the yacht’s saloon.





The hardship and stress levels onboard are difficult to grasp, particularly when Caffari was forced down to 55°S in 50 knots to avoid a weather system, then suffered further pilot failure causing Aviva to round-up and tack (to put this feat into perspective, the Volvo Ocean Race southern limit ice gate imposed on the yachts for Leg 4 between Wellington, New Zealand and Rio, Brazil was 48°S). Days spent launching off waves, then hanging weightless before slamming into a deep trough became truly exhausting: 28 days after rounding Cape Horn, Caffari went into “survival mode” on 1 February, admitting that she was “just hanging on for the ride” in gusts of 52 knots.

Southern Ocean (Indian)

On 8 February Aviva transferred from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, then - four days later - Caffari made a rendezvous with a WestPac Rescue Helicopter off South Island, New Zealand, to transfer video tapes from the yacht via hi-line. The first sight of another human after 83 days alone at sea was likely to trigger strong emotions, but this was intensified by the chopper’s winchman, Dave Greenburg, the WestPac crewmember responsible for airlifting an injured crewman from Aviva (ex- Imagine It Done) off Chatham Island during the 2004-05 Global Challenge race: an occasion when Greenburg presented Caffari with a stuffed toy, Rescue Bear. For Caffari to see and speak to a familiar face was a huge boost to morale. Having spent the Pacific half of the Southern Ocean strapped to the communications roll bar on Aviva, it is hard to guess Rescue Bear’s thoughts upon seeing Greenburg again.



Eleven days into the Indian Ocean, Aviva passed the 15,000 mile mark after 92 days at sea, prompting Caffari to remark in her log: “Considering I have never been alone for even a week before, I am impressed that I still seem relatively sane.” However, events were soon to prove the ultimate test of her sanity. A lightening strike to the yacht’s masthead forced Caffari to climb the rig. This was not to be a replica of the swift, slick mast climb carried out in the Doldrums in order to free a jammed take-down line above the mainsail’s third reef. As the wind dropped from 30 knots to 12 knots, the skipper attempted to climb before the swell had eased. Caffari quickly realised her error and planned a return to the deck before reaching the second spreaders, but became trapped, flung about like a “rag doll” sustaining bruises before finally freeing herself. Afterwards, Caffari found that raising her arms produced pain and getting dressed had become a struggle: far from ideal conditions to discover a fast moving depression with a front extending for hundreds of miles blocking Aviva’s path: a scenario causing a “well earned dread” onboard.



‘Dread’ levels on the yacht during the day preceding the storm can be estimated by the skipper’s first omission of her habitual, superstitious “White Rabbits! White Rabbits! White Rabbits!”, last-day-of-the-month, introduction to her email log. The system arrived delivering 40-50 knots of breeze and mountainous seas, forcing Caffari to strap on and perfect her “bum shuffle” around the decks, unwilling to reduce the yacht’s headsails and leave Aviva floundering powerless in the troughs. Loads on the mast were phenomenal: “Seeing the leeward rigging slack enough to flop around in the wind [……] I tried to close my eyes to make it go away.”





The following day, Caffari spotted an iceberg, a “real iceberg” she noted in her log, “…where it should be”, recalling the rogue iceberg encountered 300 miles north of the Falkland Islands between Christmas and New Year. The Indian Ocean berg was not a solitary anomaly, but part of 20 X 15 km berg calved from Antarctica earlier in the year. Soon, Caffari was becalmed and trapped in a field of bergs, recording a total of six visible to the naked eye. Struggling to clear the ice before nightfall, she reached a state of “total despair”, taking six hours to overhaul one berg.

Shortly after release from the icy prison and with 10,000 miles to the finish line, Aviva prepared for a dive south on her approach to the Kerguelen Plateau avoiding a storm system. In the first instance of sail-related damage during the voyage, a headsail sheet parted during a tack, snapping two stanchions, forward, port side. Taking advantage of a lull in the weather, Caffari made repairs and then pointed the yacht south, glued obsessively to the wind speed instruments, willing the readings to drop.





Having weathered the storm, Caffari spotted another low pressure approaching as Aviva headed north of Kerguelen. After a fortnight of fierce storms, icebergs and gear damage, the skipper’s morale was beginning to dim, admitting via email, “I can feel my resolve fading rapidly.” While the proximity of South Africa and the voyage’s final cape loomed large, Aviva suffered a final 58 knot blast of Indian Ocean fury before Caffari turned north, leaving the southern Ocean and slipping above Latitude 40°S on 27 March: her first visit to the Roaring Forties since the South Atlantic, pre-Cape Horn.

The Cape of Good Hope represented the final turning mark for Aviva and an end to 14,000 miles of Southern Ocean. Approaching the tip of South Africa, Caffari stowed the #2 Yankee headsail, swapping it for her larger, #1 Yankee in preparation for offwind sailing and southeasterly breeze in the South Atlantic. While the water and air temperature continued to rise, Caffari took immense satisfaction in changing her electronic and back-up paper charts to a new ocean area and reprogramming the InmarsatC communications equipment to a fresh, eastern Atlantic, satellite constellation: a tangible indication of progress. O nboard, the yacht’s active echo unit bleeped continually as Aviva was interrogated by radar from coastal shipping and the depth sounder finally recorded a reading - 124 meters - having displayed only a series of bottomless, flashing dashes for the three months sailing over the Southern Ocean abyss.

South Atlantic

On 3 April, with 133 days alone at sea logged, Aviva rounded the Cape of Good Hope, rendez-voused with a helicopter for a second video drop and began the projected 6,200 mile climb up the face of the planet to the finish line. A week after entering the South Atlantic, Caffari’s voyage became jeopardised; not by natural phenomena - fast moving weather systems, punishing seas and icebergs – but technology.



Once again, electronic gremlins plagued the yacht. The autopilot began triggering the electronic alarm system and Caffari’s watermaker underwent complete failure. The skipper and her shore team were in constant contact, hoping to “beat the watermaker into submission”. The unit’s fuses were changed, wiring was checked, gears were serviced and the complicated option of rebuilding the watermaker with cannibalised parts from a matching, secondary machine damaged before rounding Cape Horn was considered. Andrew Roberts, Aviva Challenge Project Director, explained the dilemma facing Caffari: “She could keep going by collecting rainwater, but it’s physically quite difficult to do and we can’t be sure there will be enough rain. We might also need to assess how much tinned food she has left and other things that have liquid in them.”

Meanwhile, in England, Caffari’s technical team worked with and identical watermaker, transmitting directions to the yacht. After three days of meticulous testing and experimentation, the unit on Aviva fired back into life and Caffari continued north to the Equator in high spirits: “This [the Equator] is another milestone accomplishment and I have noticed that as I progress each celebration seems to be increasing in size and having a bigger effect on morale, progress and the feeling of accomplishment.”



North Atlantic

After 138 days in the Southern Hemisphere, Caffari returned to the north on 25 April. However, festivities were premature and Aviva ran out of wind in the Doldrums 24 hours after crossing the Equator, reducing progress to “sailing on a mirror”. In blazing sun and roasting conditions, Caffari developed intense headaches while struggling to find a cool spot out of the sun in the stuffy, airless interior of the yacht although every hatch on Aviva had been opened wide; an environment that sent the skipper’s spirits plummeting: “This morning I had got to the point where I just wanted to sit on the deck and cry, in frustration, in tiredness and just because I was still out here trying to get home.”

When the breeze finally arrived after six days, Aviva unglued herself from the Doldrums and Caffari continued to pick-up the pace northwards. Passing the Cape Verde Islands, further pilot issues arose as Aviva re-entered the shipping lanes and crossed her outbound track on 6 May, but conditions became intense a week later as Aviva ran through an Atlantic depression. Caffari’s log records the incident:

“I not only had the pilot alarm going off, but also the radar alarm was sounding for a squall it had picked up, then the battery alarm decided to go off at the same time [….] and then for good measure the SatC had an urgent message and sounded an alarm to let me know. It was like an alarm orchestra.”

A little over a week after this final offshore upset, Aviva crossed the finish line after 178 days, 3 hours, 6 minutes and 15 seconds having sailed over 29,000 miles ‘the wrong way’ around the world.