A Casual Wager

"A good Englishman never jokes when so serious a matter as a wager is in question," replied Phileas Fogg.

--Jules Verne: Around the World in 80 Days It was enough to titillate the great storyteller's ghost. The wackiest ocean race of all time, it started in a cozy English club, the consequence of a five-bob (70-c-) wager between a balding ex-commando and a bespectacled manufacturer of pocket maps. The wager made, War Hero H. G. ("Blondie") Hasler and Mapmaker Francis Chichester approached the prestigious Royal Western Yacht Club for official sanction. Their casual proposition: to sail the perilous Atlantic, from Plymouth to New York, into the teeth of the prevailing westerlies --one lone man to a boat.

Under the rules no handicaps would be granted, and the course would be left to choice. Auxiliary engines were not to be used, and contestants would solemnly swear to take aboard no supplies during the crossing. The club, somewhat surprisingly, approved. Soon there were 150 inquiries from adventurous yachtsmen as far away as California, and hungry would-be sponsors clamored for a slice of the publicity pie. RCA offered radios, Autolite supplied batteries, and Plymouth Gin solicitously insisted on stocking each boat with a "survival kit"--one part gin, one part vermouth, and a guide to martini mixing.

Recorders & Cummerbunds. By the June n starting date, the field had dwindled to five: Favorites Hasler and ChiChester, a black-bearded Welsh farmer, and a London doctor, who had equipped his boat with a portable dictating machine so that he could record his own "hallucinations." A confident Frenchman, author of a book called The Atlantic for Me, started five days late, sailed gaily off into a pea-soup fog and has been sighted only briefly since.

Grimly serious, Hasler predicted victory, based his hopes on Jester, a radically designed, 25-ft. gin. boat that carried no rigging--only a single, easy-to-handle lug sail. Gentle and fun-loving co-Favorite Chichester packed his 39^-ft. Gipsy Moth III with potatoes, tomato soup, baked beans, wine, beer and whisky, took along a green smoking jacket and a red cummerbund to dress for dinner, and attached a wind vane to his rudder so the 13-ton sloop would steer itself while he slept. Asked to name his chief hazard, Chichester replied: "Being run down by an ocean liner."

Voices in the Night. On his 40-day, 4,000-mile journey, Chichester not only missed being run down; he saw only three other ships. Once a Russian tanker, jammed with radar gear, circled him cautiously, apparently decided he was not a Polaris sub, and steamed away. One dusk, said Chichester, "I thought I heard voices. I poked my head out of the cabin. Alongside was a freighter; people were sitting on the bridge, having evening drinks." Battered by huge waves, isolated by fog, Chichester slept only four to six hours a night, fought his loneliness by writing a 75,000-word diary, disdained a prescribed daily log (sample question: "Happy without feminine company?"). An expert navigator, Chichester accepted the risk of icebergs and storms, gambled on a northerly course along the comparatively short Great Circle route.

When he sailed exhaustedly past Ambrose Lightship last week an easy winner (nobody else was within 530 miles), Chichester was checked by a psychiatrist, who reported "nothing much in the way of abnormalities." Chichester's only complaints were that he was four days out of beer, three days out of whisky, and his velvet smoking jacket was mildewed. Told that he had broken the British-U.S. Atlantic solo crossing record by 16 days, weary Mapmaker Chichester bussed his wife (who had come over by liner) and embraced a glass of champagne. "Normally," he mused, "you would go mad."

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