Comment on our trip from Vigo to Las Palmas from Penny

We started off taking 4 hour turns at the tiller, but at night, after a couple of nights, we discovered how hard that was. Sitting there in the dark, hanging onto the tiller and steering, watching the compass, time passes extremely slowly, it was cold as well. The only way I could get through it was by having one of the packets of sweets we had taken with us, (fruit gums or blackcurrant pastilles usually) rationing myself to one sweet every 15 minutes, so that the time passed in 15 minute blocks.

Vigo to Las Palmas

British Yacht “Stella Mira"
C/O Real Club Nautico De Gran Canaria
Las Palmas, Canary Islands.

Dear Phyl,
This is to let you know that we are still at Las Palmas, & why. When we arrived from Vigo, we were, as you know, later than we thought. We arrived here after dark, and not knowing our way in, we were about 6 miles down the coast and had to motor sail up against a force 6 wind. In the morning we found we were taking water through our prop shaft, the bearings of which, proved to be slack.

The following 2 posts are letters Sim wrote from Las Palmas in the Canary Isles.
This letter was to Sim's brother in law in Australia


Dear Len,

No doubt Phyl has shown you the letter in which I told her of our trip to Vigo, so I will carry on from where we left there.

So now we were finally free, but with no idea where we were going to tie up our boat. We managed to get the engine started again (always a miracle when it did!) and motored around the buoy and back towards where the yacht club was supposed to be, hopeful we might find it this time and taking great care not to go between any large buoys and large ships after our last fiasco. It was still pitch black where we thought the yacht club was, so this time we motored in a slightly different direction and saw another large buoy, this time a round flat one about eight feet in diameter with bars all the way around the outside that would allow you to tie something to it.

After we left Ilfracombe and headed south towards the Canary Islands, I discovered that my dad hadn’t actually ever had any practice in celestial navigation. In those days we didn’t have GPS, you had to work out where you were at sea using Dead Reckoning and Celestial Navigation.
Dad had used dead reckoning for many years and knew the theory of celestial navigation, but had no experience. Consequently after a few days at sea, dad’s sights and workings were putting us in the middle of the Atlantic, somewhere we knew we couldn’t be, as we were definitely in the Bay of Biscay. We didn’t know if there was something wrong with the sextant or his calculations. We had a few arguments about this and finally decided that we’d have to head south east in a direction that would take us to the northernmost coast of Spain, then we could heat west, round Cape Finesterre and go into the port of Vigo where we could, hopefully, find out what was wrong.

This was my dad's first letter to Mum. As you will realise from the next post which is my version of some of the events, what really happened to us was a lot more scary, exciting and in retrospect, very funny, but of course, we didn't want to worry my mum by telling her the real truth!

For 15 years I had been the proprietor of a small general store in one of the newer suburbs of Bristol. I didn’t exactly hate every moment of it, but always felt that this was only a temporary occupation, that there must be more to life than this daily humdrum routine.

All the time these preparations had been going on, apart from a few friends, relatives and ourselves, no one knew about Sim’s plans as he had said that he did not want any publicity and had asked everyone not to get in touch with the press. Imagine my surprise then, when two days before they were due to leave, the telephone in the flat rang and I was asked “Could I speak to Mr Simpkins please, the man who intends sailing to Australia”. I asked who was speaking and he said that he was a reporter for the local newspaper. I also asked who had given him this information, but he would not say. Now this put me in a quandary as I had given my promise not to tell the press, but on the other hand I felt that this was a tremendous undertaking and that both Sim and Penny deserved some recognition, so I compromised. I decided that I had not promised I would not say anything about his plans if I was asked, and I told the reporter where he could find Sim and the Stella Mira, and hoped for the best.

Firstly all the food, which had already been sorted into categories and sealed, had to be carried from Tony's flat to the boat and as the interior cabins were rather on the small side and stowing space was under the floorboards, in lockers and under the bunks, we could only stow a little at a time. Also, as it was stowed, a list and chart was made so that they would know where everything was when they were at sea. A lot of food, such as sugar and rice had to be emptied from packets and stored in large plastic jars, medical supplies were all packed into one large box. A supply of sweets had been purchased for the journey and these were all packed in plastic bags containing a weeks supply for each of them.

The chandler came along and took them to see the folkboat, but again they were disappointed, but as they came back Sim admired the yacht they had been looking at once again and was told “She’s for sale.” However before making the final decision to he once again asked me if I wanted to change my mind as once the boat was purchased the course was set and I would not be able to change my mind then. Once again I rejected the offer and this was something I was to regret many a time during the next year or so.