GREAT SEAMANSHIP
ONBOARD ROWS, A GUN-TOTING SKIPPER AND A FEROCIOUS STORM ARE RECALLED FROM MICHAEL CHAPMAN PINCHER'S REDISCOVERED LOG
Michael Chapman Pincher, son of the great investigative journalist, left school at 17 to become a stagehand in London's West End. At 23 in 1974 he quit and went to sea with John Farrell and his sailing companion Carola, both Irish and both on the run from dysfunctional marriages. Together with the cat, Stryder, this unlikely trio sailed to the Caribbean on the 37ft Gander – not a large vessel for three and a cat on a protracted voyage. Michael's personal log of the trip went missing, but it turned up in Florida in 2020. It was somehow returned to him and is now published, complete with sketches, as Long Lost Log.
The genes of a great writer have clearly passed from father to son. What could be a mundane passage comes to vibrant life. No punches are pulled on tensions among the crew, the poetry that is astro navigation is revealed and the action leaps out at us. We join them becalmed a few hundred miles east of Antigua.
FRI 13 DEC: MOMENTARY MEANING
The wind, says the skipper, like death, can come like a thief in the night, and so be upon us at any time. Right now, the thief is stealing my dreams as I watch for zephyrs floating in the spooky stillness of a silent ocean. The new moon is up but too dark to see, so the stars are at their brightest. With the deck stable, it is a rare opportunity to take observations of seven navigational stars.
Standing up, sextant ready, I find my targets. Fomalhaut lies to our west. Capella is in the north-east, Pollux, Sirius and Betelgeuse high in the eastern sky, while Rigel and Canopus glimmer to the south; although I need only three to get a fix, I use the opportunity for practice and grab them all. Measuring stars by sextant is not easy but mine seems built for this moment. Its weight and ease of adjustment allows me to line up the faint horizon with the star on the mercury amalgam mirror. Each star is mesmerising in its own way. Fomalhaut is solitary and haughty. Capella twinkles brightly in the constellation Auriga. Sirius is easy to find as it lies directly in line with Orion's Belt – the vast constellation in which Betelgeuse, a red supergiant, defines a shoulder. Rigel, Orion's brightest star at the hunter's knee, has a blue-white brilliance.
Pollux shines a golden light in Gemini next to its Zodiac twin Castor. Last is Canopus, the second-brightest star. Low on the southern horizon and never seen at home, it shines bright white.
Having noted their altitude, I slip below to perch at the chart table and set to work on the spherical trigonometry while John and Carola snuffle in their bunks and Stryde
