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to guess when the sun would reach its maximum height, following it on its upwards curve to the top of its arc, and only too relieved when my calculations tied in with the pencilled RDF positions. For a few days I continued this cross-checking until we were 300 miles into the Atlantic, when the signals faded. Now we would have to depend on dead reckoning and the sextant.
    Dropping below the Azores,
Solitaire
picked up the beautiful trade winds, constant at Force 3 to 4 over our stern. There were times when I thought she had stopped: surprised by the silence, I would put down my book and go on deck only to find the log spinning merrily away at a steady 5 knots.
    In these conditions, I started to learn the importance of a varied food supply. Cooking would have given another interest, another pleasure, were it not that nearly all the food on board was tinned: the fresh food I had bought in Falmouth had been eaten in the first week. One meal I relished was rice and curried chicken, and I regretted having no more. In time I would learn to carry the things that would last and were cheap to buy: rice, flour, onions, cabbage, eggs.
    The main event of our Atlantic crossing took place on September 23rd, at precisely 1400 hours GMT. It would be many weeksbefore I learned the importance of this day and the changes it would make to my life. All that is recorded in the ship’s log for that day is ‘Distance travelled 2,442 miles. Latitude 23°41´North.’ From then on things would happen that made no sense. I would go over incidents again and again, sometimes believing I was losing my sense of reason as I tried to understand why, after things had gone so well, suddenly I seemed unable to do anything right.
    I kept pushing
Solitaire
south but the reduction in latitude was too slow and simply would not agree with the compass course or dead reckoning. I checked the compass against that on the RDF set but both gave similar readings. I went over my latitude figures repeatedly, always getting the same answer. It could not be my method of working out sights whose correctness I had confirmed long since. I tried to remember where the fast-flowing Gulf Stream started its journey north: I knew its current sometimes reached 5 knots but I had no charts to guide me and the sea tells no secrets. Could it be I was under the influence of the Bermuda Triangle, where ships and aircraft had vanished, perhaps, it was suggested, as the result of large compass variations? Day after day we pushed further south into dangers that would subsequently make me shudder at my stupidity.
    As the trade winds began to drop we had periods of calm punctuated by vicious squalls, the first of which started at night. Previously there had been light rain squalls but these were something quite different. I would wake up in the night to an eerie silence. Suddenly, screaming winds would start whistling in
Solitaire
’s rigging, whereupon she would come off her broad reach and luff up. I would dash on deck naked, stopping only to throw on a life harness, to find sheets of warm water pounding the sea flat. I would drop the mainsail and within a few seconds all would be normal, with
Solitaire
back on course under a clear, starry sky, as if nothing had happened.
    Two days later I saw these squalls for what they were – seemingly atom bomb mushrooms, starting at sea level and spreading upwards to blank out the sun. Normally I would dropthe mainsail as quickly as possible and free the genoa sheets if it seemed the squall would blow for any length of time. Later I was to question many seamen how they reacted. One said he merely allowed the yacht to luff up, arguing that you were through a squall quicker than trying to run with it. Most of those I spoke to seemed to drop or slacken sail. During this confusion and despondency, I learned a lot about the sea,
Solitaire
and myself.
    One day we were beating into a breaking sea with a long swell,
Solitaire
’s bow being