Lawrence H. Rogers II
The author and his wife, having sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1984, beginning with the race from Newport, RI to Bermuda, lived for the next fifteen years on the Cote d’Azur, their yacht (a 48-foot NY 40 Swan, built in Finland), moored at the Chantiér Navale at Beauleu-sur-Mer, halfway between Nice and Monaco. They rented a villa in St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat for the three months of winter, and cruised the Mediterranean the rest of the year. This story is about their attempts to sail all the way around the Italian boot, to cruise the Dalmation coast of Jugoslavia. Three times they left for Corsica, Sardinia,and dozens of other Italian islands but, before they reached the Adriatic, all three times they had some disaster, such as losing all engine power.
Finally, the fourth year they attempted the journey, again, it was a howling success. Various members of their family (six children, fifteen grandchildren) were with them every summer. There were even. years when the paid crew were grandchildren, two years a boy and a girl. This time, a daughter and son-in-law, with a two year old girl, came along for the cruise. The author and his wife left them in Ajaccio, Corsica, to get a ferry back to Nice for their return home. But when they got to Jugoslavia, they were joined by the author’s eldest son and his wife, and completed the cruise.
Among other anecdotes was their experience at Santa Maria de Leuca, at the very tip of the heel of the boot of Italy. The couple had reached this place after about a month at sea and needed some minor engine repair. So the yacht was put in at this ancient harbor and found a modern boatyard. While walking around waiting for the engine repairs, they discovered there was a yacht club. The author’s yard arm always flew the burgee of the New York Yacht Club, and carried an NYYC ID. So he and his wife went to the yacht club and asked to have dinner that evening. The steward was overcome and took them to the commanding officer, who was so overwhelmed,, he insisted that the author and his wife must be his guests, and all the club’s officers were rounded up to have dinner with them. This was, it seems, the first time a New York Yacht Club Member and his yacht had ever arrived at Santa Maria de Leuca, and they were determined to make a proper affair of the occasion.
Lawrence H. Rogers, II earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton University and served as a captain in Patton’s army in World War II before building his first television station in West Virginia, where he worked from 1946 to 1959. Mr. Rogers then became chief operating officer and president of Taft Broadcasting Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, in which capacity he served until 1976. He also was chairman of the board of the Cincinnati branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and president and CEO of Omega Communications, Inc., of Orlando, Florida. Earlier, he had designed and constructed the first privately owned long-distance microwave relay transmission system in the television industry and personally brought an end to the FCC ban on editorializing by radio and television licensees.
Having started on three previous occasions, in 1985 and 1986, and again in 1987, to cruise from the French Cote d’Azur to Yugoslavia, we set sail again this year with some trepidation. Perhaps this trip was jinxed and not supposed to happen at all. On each of the earlier attempts HALCYON had been betrayed by our Volvo engine, which simply quit on us; and true to Murphy’s Law in the worst places and at the worst possible times! Twice it was a burnt-up fresh-water cooling system pump, and the third time a kin to it: a ruptured salt-water heat exchanger. In each case we were somewhere in Italian waters, where it was necessary to cool our heels for a considerable time while the replacement parts were flown in from Stockholm by way of Milano, thence to Messina, Reggio Calabria, Porto Cervo, Ischia, or God knows where. At least for our pains we got acquainted with the back streets of old Napoli, where we had to locate the Volvo distributor. We don’t recommend that experience!
Naturally, in every case with the exception of Porto Cervo, we had to make the repairs and new parts installations ourselves, since there was simply no mechanic available who was able to do the job! In Porto Cervo, of course, there’s a first class Cantieri Navale, since that place is the primary yachting center of the whole Mediterranean.
While awaiting completion of our repairs there a couple of years ago, we were fortunate enough to get one of the seven rooms at the very elegant Yacht Club di Costa Smeralda in which to luxuriate: one of the benefits of flying a New York Yacht Club burgee!
“You’re a slow learner!” Suzanne told me.
She had plenty of justification, for it had taken me those three miserable experiences before junking that old Volvo diesel and replacing it with a brand new Perkins. Once that was accomplished last year at the Chantier Naval White Rose Mediterranee in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, we had plenty of time in which to run it in and be sure all the systems were working perfectly. At the same time as the new engine, we intsalled a new electric refrigeration system, which is a dream. So we should have been ready for our adventures this year with a minimum of fuss and feathers. In retrospect, that’s exactly what we had.
We arrived back at Beaulieu-sur-Mer, HALCYON’S French home port on the 10th of June, to find that Jay White had preceded us by a week and had everything on board in apple-pie order. What a great idea that was!
We were hardly settled in for a day at Beaulieu, when Natalie and Patrick arrived with one-year-old Jenny Eloise in tow. We picked them up at the Nice airport after an initial fear that we had lost them forever. Their baggage arrived right on schedule, but they were nowhere to be seen. It seems Natalie had gone in the wrong door and they ended up in the departure lounge for a flight to Germany! Then they had the devil’s own time convincing some one they were arriving in Nice, not leaving!
Trying to break in our guests as easily as possible -- after all, neither Jenny nor her daddy has ever been to sea before -- we drove to Antibes for supplies and sight-seeing. Among other things we bought a stand-by electric sea-water pump for the fridge system just in case. Our new pump had thoughtfully conked out on us while we were lunching at anchor off Paloma Beach, thus reminding us how vulnerable we are without spare parts. By the time we left we had two spare fridge sea-water pumps; and, of course, the old one is still going strong. All it needed was to have its brushes cleaned.
But by far the most important purchase was a chair for Jenny to sit in while she ate. We looked all over for one of those little canvas seats with a wooden apron and clamps that enable you to fix it to the dining table; but no luck. After we had scoured the Cap Trois Mille Hypermarche for an hour, one of the clerks sent us to a maternity shop across the arcade. There we found a very attractive printed cloth back pack seat for a baby, complete with a sunshade.
Ahab figured we could stand it up on the settee by the table and use the webbing straps to fasten it in the cabinet above the bunk. It worked perfectly, and whenever it was necessary to feed Jenny or to immobilize her down below, we could merely put her in her little private chair. It remains on board for the next comer!
While on the subject, every one asks, “What do you do with a one-year-old on board? Aren’t you terrified she’ll fall overboard?”
Well, of course not. In the first place she can’t get up the ladders, so the whole below decks became a giant play pen where she could not get in any trouble. In fact, she only tripped over the bulkhead between the galley and the aft cabin once. Thereafter she climbed over it like a veteran salt.
We rigged a bunk canvas on the starboard settee in the main cabin and that became her crib. She slept in it well, and when she awoke she would stand and hold onto the top of the canvas. She never even thought of falling out and didn’t even try to climb out.
She was never on deck without her ma and pa, and always dressed in a little life jacket to which was affixed a safety line that was either made fast or was held by Nat or Pat. We put the lexan hatch board in the aft companionway, which turned the whole cockpit into a playpen for her. She always tried to climb up and out on deck, but she was always on a tether.
Finally, on June 14, we anchored for dinner outside the harbor of St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where Jay and Ahab picked up the spare outboard motor from M. LeClerc who had it in for tune-up. Having disposed of the rental car, filled the fuel and water tanks, and completed all our supplies -- wet stores and dry -- we anchored out for the night in beautiful moonlight after a dinner of caille and saumon: superb!
Off the anchor at 0830 under fair skies with an east wind at five knots, we headed west for St. Tropez, having warned Tom Murphy by telephone that we were about to descend upon him again. Barometer at 30.38 and rising, it looked to be the perfect day to begin our adventure. By noon we were past the La Chretienne lighthouse on the red cliffs of the Massif de l’Esterel, and into the lovely Bay of Agay to anchor for swimming and lunch. Anchor up at 1415, we motored out past the rocks into a freshening southerly breeze and set a course of 220 for St. Tropez under the new mainsail and genny. With the wind at 15 knots on a beam reach we were able to turn off the engine and sail the remaining 22 miles at 7.5 to 8 knots. It was a beautiful day’s sail, more like one on Buzzard’s Bay or Vineyard Sound than the Mediterranean, but the water is much deeper blue. It was actually chilly under the awning, which we now have rigged so that we can leave it up while sailing — until the wind reaches twenty knots. Then it gets a bit unmanageable.
We discovered at this point that the new mainsail had still not been cut down enough on the luff, in spite of our having returned it to Technique Voile to have it repaired. It’s still about four inches too long. So we had to rig a Cunningham to get enough tension up the mast. That’s just a small length of line as a down-haul to the flattening reef. The other way is to put in a single reef, which we actually did for nearly the whole summer. I prefer to reef while sailing at night anyway, just to be on the safe side against a sudden squall. It’s a whole lot easier to shake out a reef if you don’t need it than to put one in after it’s already blowing hard.
