Michael Chapman Pincher - Long Lost Log

Long Lost Log

Diary of a Virgin Sailor

Dedication

To John Francis Kearney Farrell

Sea Captain of the Gay Gander (19171997)

The way of the superior man is rare; For a moment I followed his footsteps I Ching

Long Lost Log

Diary of a Virgin Sailor

Michael Chapman Pincher

THE LILLIPUT PRESS

First published 2022 by

THE LILLIPUT PRESS

6263 Arbour Hill

Dublin 7, Ireland

www.lilliputpress.ie

Text copyright Michael Chapman Pincher 2022 Illustrations copyright Michael Chapman Pincher 2022 Nicolae Negura redrew original sketches for publication

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this publication is available from The British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978 1 84351 827 3

The Lilliput Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council /An Chomhairle Ealaon and the Howth Group.

Inside covers: Gay Gander s inventory, from JFKF s original logbook.

Set in 11pt on 16pt Adobe Garamond Pro and Goudy Sans by Niall McCormack.

Printed in Spain by GraphyCems.

Thick Mick Chapman Pincher is a child of the Sixties, a fellow-traveller, open and in-the-moment. He comes of age in this memorable rite of passage. His account of being an uncouth understudy bending to the will of a man equally adrift in the world makes an affecting undertow to these gripping pages, with a baton passed between generations.

As The Lilliput Press approaches its fortieth anniversary, Im proud to put our name to this manuscript-in-bottle thrown up on our shores. Long Lost Log reveals a long lost world captured in real time, a remarkable sliver of analogue released into digital life.

It describes my father, John, his fellow sailor Carola, and the ships cat, Stryder, on a journey into the unknown. Their story is given voice by Mick, their green-horn crew, as they followed the Atlantic slave route to the Caribbean in 1974.

My father stood six foot three in his stockings, like Peter OToole, avowing an Irishry different in kind from others. I scarcely knew him before he left Ireland. He was enigmatic, austere, proud and selfdisciplined. I thank Michael for restoring a parent to me through this adventure story. Here my father relishes the unexpected, freed from the shackles of what he saw as a life of servitude to windy acres, a big house and social convention.

His chain-smoking companion in arms was a neighbours wife in flight from an unhappy marriage, an Indian memsabh whose father was a retired army colonel. Through her son Charlie, my childhood friend, they formed a relationship over our weekends out from boarding school.

They then slipped away to a house on the Isle of Man to plot their seascape. Heading to the Solent, my father purchased the yacht G ay Gander , a Laurent Giles thoroughbred that he took on manoeuvres to the Outer Hebrides while visiting his sister Toots on Mull. A year later they travelled up the Seine via Paris, into Frances interior during a harsh January when Charlie and I joined them at Nevers on a school break: memories of frosted mistletoe, frozen hawsers and black-clad bargees. The Canal du Midi brought us to the Rhone past Avignon and the Carmargue into the warm salt-waters of the Mediterranean.

My relationship with this once-distant man was now forged over long summer holidays in the Mediterranean, touring from Malta to Yugoslavia, Turkey and Greece across to Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the sea roads between.

Here in 1969 I read Ulysses in its original Penguin edition as we drifted from Lesbos to Samos, down the Turkish littoral to Rhodos during langourous nights in the Eastern Dodecanese. Joyce opened a dazzling portal to the Dublin of my forebears, who introduced porter to the world from their Blackpits brewery in 1781. He brought Ireland home to me, its voices, cultural duality, assonances, and deep rhythms, determining my future.

One of my proudest subsequent achievements at Lilliput was to publish the first Dublin edition of Ulysses in 1997, edited by the great textual scholars Danis Rose and John OHanlon, returning the wanderer to his native city.

When I left Trinity College Dublin in 1973 to find work in London, an earlier crew member of Gay Gander , an English rose named Emma Stacey, secured my first employment: Daddyll give you a job. Daddy was a charmer called Tom Stacey, his HQ in Covent Gardens Henrietta Street.

I joined his staff as a warehouse packer in September. By December Tom Stacey Publishing had gone bust. Ex-army employees ran knock-off books through the pub out back over Christmas while I helped the boss out front salvage what remained, transporting stock to his Kensington Church Street basement out of reach of creditors.

These were the lotus-eating days of publishing.

AF. March 2022

For years I believed the logbook detailing my sailing adventure across the Atlantic back in 1974 was lost forever. Out of the blue, during the 2021 pandemic lockdown, it was unexpectedly returned by a former love living in the US.

On reading my journal after forty-six years, it felt as though the trip happened yesterday with a sense of the moment in the daily entries.

After being reunited with my long-lost logbook, Kieran Fogarty convinced me to sail the journey again and recount it day-by-day, without revealing what happens tomorrow or adding anything learnt since I cast off the years in between and set to work.

Anchored in the present by Phil Mr Gerund Bryden and helped by Ian Smith to ensure the narrative held focus and pace, I enlisted the help of Ted Howard-Jones to check for any nautical howlers and Elaine Jones to stop the sex going overboard. Kevin Keogh pointed out a chronological mistake at the last minute, and Scott Beadle resolved a couple of celestial ones. Vincent Domingo reminded me of forgotten Spanish flavours and the price of everything.

Thanks also to and to my sister Pat who had the letters I wrote home as more source material, along with my brother-in-law Jeremy who kept me churning out the pages. Appreciation to Rose Miranda Hall, who laughed at the parts I didnt realize were funny.

An honourable mention goes to Adrian Bracken, who encouraged me to record the audiobook as a serial for his breakfast, as does one to Laura Stickney for checking the paperwork. Also, to my wife, Becky, who tolerated the endeavour, and her brother Mark Bailey for one tart but pertinent comment.

While impossible to thank my dead skipper John, his capricious companion Carola and Stryder the cat, it leaves just a pat on the bow for the only other survivor of the trip, the Gay Gander herself.

Lastly, to Antony Farrell, who is the midwife and undertaker to this armchair adventure. Without him, I wouldnt have set sail with his irascible father, nor latterly know the background I was ignorant of at the time, but which gives this book its ballast.

MCP