Speedwell of Hong Kong (Pinterest)
The roar of the one-burner kerosene stove sputters and dies to a hiss. The jet is fouled. The heavy, covered frying pan with the pizza dough is put aside. The stove is removed from the gimbals in its countertop hole, a small tool is produced, practiced moves are made under the burner, and the lighting procedure begins again: a flaming alcohol wick to preheat, the roar of the burner, then back through the hole and onto the gimbals. The cooking resumes.
“That the stove you used on your Patagonia adventure?”
“Same kind,” Shirley Carter answers. “They are cheap in South Africa. I have three. When it’s really rough, I change stoves when it happens.”
Carter’s Patagonia adventure had been aboard Pete Hill’s China Moon, a junk-rigged catamaran with a mast on each hull. And it had been an adventure – gales, storms, broken rudders, and all. And they landed in a dinghy on Cape Horn Island. Pete is a dedicated junk-rig sailor, designer, builder, adventurer, and explorer.
Carter sailed her own boat, Speedwell of Hong Kong, from Cape Town, South Africa to Brazil via St. Helena and Ascension. Speedwell was put up for the China Moon adventure, thence sailed to French Guiana, then to Tobago and the Caribbean. Carter sailed all of Speedwell’s passages single-handed.
Speedwell caught my eye because she’s so small, 25 feet four inches, mere inches longer than my own little yacht. She’s a pretty little thing, nice lines. And colorful, white trimmed in blue and yellow, with maroon canvas and a South African flag. Speedwell of Hong Kong is a Vertue, a Laurent Giles design dating from 1936, characterized as “a miniature Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter.” She and her class are famous for ocean cruising. One book characterized the Vertue as the most perfect small ocean-going yacht ever built. She is also characterized as perhaps the heaviest yacht for her size ever built. Modern yachts being built light and counting on an EPIRB when the keel falls off, that may still be the case. Built in Hong Kong in 1952, Speedwell’s planking is teak, so she is heavy even for a Vertue. The original Vertue was gaff rigged. Speedwell is Bermudian rigged, but will be converted to a junk rig.
“Why a junk rig?”
“Ease of operation,” Carter answers. Ease of reefing, for example, and sailing ability and other advantages I hadn’t realized.
Our hard dinghies, Bokkom and Fran hang astern nudging each other and slapping the waves. “Bokkom” is a salted fish specific to the Cape West Coast of Africa. ("speedwell” is a flower.) Bokkom is a Bolger “Nymph”, which Carter built a foot shorter than plan to fit the foredeck. She is a panel built pram with high, slightly tumblehome topsides and an amazing amount of rocker. She looks like a toy as she bobs lightly on the water but settles right down when you get in – stay near the center. Choosing a hard dinghy as a tender is indicative of something, especially if it is primarily (exclusively in this case) used as a rowing dinghy.
The stove sputters out a second time. Twice is unusual. The ritual, moves such as I knew when I had a pressure alcohol stove, repeat. Combined with cooking a pizza, it is a performance. I try to visualize it aboard China Moon, lying to a sea anchor in a blow in the Southern Ocean.
“Why kerosene?”
“Partly sentimental.” The gimbals system it fits was a parting gift from a dying friend whose last sail was aboard Speedwell. And safety – Carter has seen yachts using gas that exploded.
Now, “single-hander” is too broad a brush for us single-handers though we do tend toward certain traits, such as talking to ourselves and wanting to take our own dinghy. But there is also where and when we came from and who we were when we left. Carter’s profession was cyber stuff. And she’d been a partner in a cruising dream that bogged down in the boatyard. She’d sold her sailplane on the promise of sailing, done some paragliding in the meantime then decided, “the only way to get out to sea is to do it on my own.” She bought Speedwell, sailed her some, did a year in a shed renewing and refitting, then set out across the South Atlantic. She did have previous cruising experience, including a Pacific crossing as crew, and she’s an experienced traveler.
“Liberating.”
“The Pacific?”
“No. Single-handing. Crossing an ocean on my own boat. Fixing things when necessary.”
Delicious smells rise through the companionway as the heavy glass lid is removed and the final toppings are added to the pizza.
“This is going to be wonderful.”
“This is going to be wonderful.”
Sindbad, the ship’s cat, is perched in the companionway. Sindbad’s abandoned litter was rescued from a storm drain and divided among several yachts. His lot fell with Speedwell. He had been living aboard since, including the year in the shed, going on the Patagonia adventure, then living in a boatyard guarded by a Rottweiler while Speedwell got a new engine and termite treatment before continuing to the Caribbean. Sindbad is crew, the watch cat, alerting Carter to approaching boats and meeting the arrivals. Cats are just plain curious, but Sindbad had inspected my strange little dinghy like he knew what he was seeing.
We eat deep-dish pizza in the cockpit on a tropical evening in the Windward Islands. It is wonderful.
Crossing the ocean had its difficulties. Once out of Cape Town, current and wind pretty much commit a sailing vessel, especially of Speedwell’s size, to continue. The first three days had been in bad weather. The windvane steering was having problems. The topsides and cabin side were leaking. The engine had problems at St. Helena and quit at Ascension. Then on to Cabedelo, Brazil and up the river to the boatyard at Jacare (“alligator”, which also has mosquitoes). Speedwell’s sails from Brazil to French Guiana and then to the Caribbean were Carter’s fastest and most enjoyable passages. Since arriving, she has visited Tobago, Trinidad, Grenada, and a number of the Grenadines.
That was just the beginning. Carter is still a traveler. She’s “been a few places”, is still moving, and writes a good blog. Google 'Speedwell of Hong Kong.'
Caribbean Compass, Aug. ’04