Pat is a heavy solidly-built Sharpie, so pot-bellied that I believe her to be a distant descendant of the Coracle. Constructed from driftwood near Portrush in Northern Ireland in 1942, she was built to sail in those rough offshore waters. Stiff as a church, no one had ever succeeded in capsizing her.

She yaws and pitches in a heavy sea, but is outstandingly safe. A sliding gunter sloop, all halliards were brought aft via blocks near the foot of the mast to cleats on the after thwart, and a stout spraycover then fitted from coamings over a centre ridgepole. This leaves just a small cockpit about eighteen inches between thwart and sterndeck, so that practically all seas coming aboard just pour back off again.

Well, given a boat that can obviously take it, and being an adventurous person myself, the obvious goal from Falmouth was Brittany, some 100 miles across the Channel entrance. The previous winter found all spare time spent in assimilating practical sea-lore, mostly from Reid's, and studying charts, Channel Pilot Vol II, tide tables etc. A real off the map, Breton fishing village was selected as the venue, with alternatives such as Morlaix, Roscoff and Abervrac'h in case weather or poor navigation should so dictate.

It became evident that navigation by something more than compass alone would be highly desirable, so being a TV engineer I made myself a miniature RDF set. This was, and still is after six years use, a modified little transistor radio, which due a little horse trading, cost me less than nothing apart from the time involved.

Since the single-hander in a sailing dinghy cannot mess about with holding and swinging, the set for ‘nulls’ on possibly three or more beacons, the set was fixed amidships with its ferrite rod aerial in line fore and aft. D/F’ing is done by swinging the whole boat for a null and noting simultaneously the compass reading. A grid-steering compass is mounted on the thwart away from the steel centreplate. Homing on a radio beacon is dead simple, as a dinghy does not travel absolutely straight but keeps swinging slightly through the null. Fortunately there is a radio beacon, (B.A.) bang on my wanted landfall, the Ile de Batz. Although the nominal range of B.A. is only thirty miles, I found that I could pick it up faintly at nearly a hundred miles.

One does not listen-in continuously, but picks as guide a distant cloud or star which is found to lie on course, referring to compass and RDF occasionally. So luckily I homed in on the Ile de Batz right across channel. There is also a strong Consol station in Brittany, FRQ, though its ambiguous (useless) sector extends beyond that landfall. And for cross bearings there is Ushant, CA, and also Round Island, RR. However, in practice BA filled all my needs.

Well - having retrieved Pat from the dust and shavings in the dismal boatstore of my friend Stuart Nield, and paid him £30 for her, I obtained a secondhand Seagull 40 plus. Could get no precise information on sails but made a guess which was well interpreted by Bowker & Budd.

The eve of departure found us, Pat and I, at Calamansack on the Helford River, rigging the new terylene sails and making a final checkover. After a good breakfast and making up sandwiches and thermoses of soup and coffee, George Bruton (who had done most of the building of Pat in Northern Ireland) gave me a shove-off to clear an iron stake at the mooring. With a fine west wind we were away at a good pace down river with I must admit a little trepidation on my part. Soon Calamansack faded away up river and then the Helford Estuary disappeared gradually in haze and Pat and I were alone on the open sea.

What a glorious feeling of release and of being “monarch of all one surveys”. From initially sitting-out, natural with a heeling boat and untried sails, I now sat inboard with the brave west wind giving my maximum of 4 knots on a broad reach. This ideal sailing lasted right across the Channel, with the sun by day and the stars at night. A powerful torch was kept handy to illuminate the sails in case of a vessel bearing down on me, but ships were mainly conspicuous by their absence - even the Lizard shipping lane had been almost empty.

Daylight again and no cessation of that glorious reach. My radio beacon had not become much louder, though now less than half the distance away. Bore away slightly so as to arrive east of landfall, as tidal current would be running WSW out of the Channel, and is pretty strong off Ile de Batz (5 knots at springs, but this was neaps as planned). The radio beacon transmitter is in the top of the lighthouse, and as one might expect the sea was often scanned long before this landmark could possibly come into view, searching for a grey stone lighthouse. Then, in the distance through the haze, something perhaps. Turning my head away, then back that something was still there. Quickly in materialised into the lighthouse, fading and reappearing as the haze thickened and thinned - dead ahead.

Some thirty hours on passage, nearly forty without sleep; could no longer keep awake. The tiller would swing idly, and the lighthouse re-appear anywhere but on course when I awoke. Something had to be done so I splashed the cooling waters of the Channel on my face and by keeping this up was able to make the course round the island, past the pillar-buoy of the Chenal de Batz, till a sandy bay appeared beyond a channel left rocky by the low tide. Dead for sleep, I made for Santec's Sand. Could not beach boat, due to shallow rocky bay, so anchored and fell asleep after a quick bite to eat.

(continued….046/09a)