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  Lionheart

  A JOURNEY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

  JESSE MARTIN

  With Ed Gannon

  A SUE HINES BOOK

  ALLEN & UNWIN

  This paperback edition published in 2001

  First published in 2000

  Copyright © Jesse Martin and Ed Gannon 2000

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  A Sue Hines Book

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (612)9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Martin, Jesse, 1981– .

  Lionheart: a journey of the human spirit.

  ISBN 978 1 86508 570 8

  ISBN 1 86508 570 7.

  eISBN 978 1 74115 397 2

  1. Martin, Jesse, 1981– . 2. Sailing, Single-handed. 3. Voyages around the world. 4. Sailors – Victoria – Melbourne – Biography. 5. Teenage boys – Victoria – Melbourne – Biography. I. Gannon, Ed. II. Title.

  797.124092

  All photos are from the author's collection unless stated otherwise

  Text prepared with the assistance of Ed Gannon

  Maps and diagrams by Chris Heywood

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  To Mum, who made it all possible.

  Dad, my best friend.

  And the dreaming child in all of us.

  Contents

  Map of Jesse's Voyage

  Author's note

  Prologue

  1 The First Steps

  2 From Belize on a Breeze

  3 Making the Dream Come True

  4 The Mad Rush

  5 Reality Bites: Australia to New Zealand

  6 On to Everest: New Zealand to Cape Horn

  7 Through a Mind Field: Cape Horn to the Azores

  8 Please, God, Stop this for Me: Azores to Cape of Good Hope

  9 The Final Run: Cape of Good Hope to Australia

  10 Beyond the Waves

  Appendix 1: Equipment List

  Appendix 2: Glossary

  Appendix 3: Parts of the Boat

  Acknowledgements

  1 departed 7 December 1998, arrived 31 October 1999

  2 Christmas day

  3 met fishermen

  4 first bad weather

  5 position of rescued Autissier

  6 first proper knockdown

  7 second knockdown

  8 whale encounter

  9 becalmed for four days

  10 close call with tanker

  11 met family

  12 pirate scare

  13 furler problem

  14 passed over previous track

  15 third knockdown

  16 force 10 storm

  17 no power

  18 eighteenth birthday

  19 mid Indian rough patch

  Author's note

  Throughout the book kilometres and miles are used to refer to distance. Distances on land are recorded in kilometres, while distances at sea are in miles. All reference to miles refers to the metric measurement of nautical miles (1.852 kilometres), which is longer than the land mile of 1.6 kilometres. All speed at sea is in knots, the term for nautical miles per hour. Distance at sea can be worked out by one degree of latitude equalling 60 nautical miles. The boat industry also tosses up some anomalies, referring to the length of craft in imperial measurements, which is why boat lengths are referred to in feet and inches throughout the book. While explanations for sailing terms are given throughout the book, a full glossary can be found on page 245.

  Many thanks to John Hill for the use of his technical notes in the writing of this book.

  Prologue

  It is better to live one day as a lion than ten years as a lamb.

  — Anon

  The world is a funny place.

  It's hard to imagine, as you stand in your backyard or lie in your bed, that there is a spot on this amazing globe directly opposite you. If you drilled a hole directly through the earth, where would you come out?

  At 5.36 p.m. on 7 December 1998, I sailed from the safety of my home waters of Melbourne, Australia, on my 34-foot yacht Lionheart, and set course for that other point—latitude 38°18'N, longitude 35°22'W. And when I got there, I kept going, returning to Melbourne on 31 October 1999, 328 days and roughly 27,000 nautical miles later. In my quest, I became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo, nonstop and unassisted.

  Why? Simply, for the adventure. I had dreamt of sailing around the world, so that's what I did. If we don't live our dreams, what's the point of living?

  Lionheart—the name of the boat that carried me there and back, and also the title of this book—is a story of that journey More than that, it is a story of the human spirit, the very same spirit that lives in all of us, and what it can achieve when put to the test.

  CHAPTER 1

  The First Steps

  Sunday, December 7, 1998

  With the genoa unfurled for the first time, I passed Sorrento, then Portsea, making my way through the South Channel to the starting line—the heads of Port Phillip Bay, the most treacherous port entry and exit in the world.

  I cut a thick slice of salami, then rushed up on deck to correct the wandering steering that had once again deviated slightly towards land. Maybe Lionheart was trying to tell me something. Maybe she'd prefer to stay at home in the shelter and safety of the bay rather than enter the unknown of Bass Strait. Did she know we were about to take on the world? Moments later I crossed the line, and my new life began.

  What makes a seventeen-year-old decide to sail around the world? I'm not exactly sure, I was actually fourteen when I first started to think about doing so. When I sailed from Port Phillip Bay on 7 December 1998, the trip was the culmination of years of dreaming. Others may have thought I was a foolish young man, but I'd been working towards that dream for a long time.

  Why? That's the question I get asked most. And one of the reasons behind this book. I don't just want to tell the story of how I sailed around the world on my own, but to reveal why a teenager would want to leave the comfort of home for eleven months at sea, and what I learnt from the experience.

  It has been said that every great adventure begins with one small step. It's cliched, but it's true. I've taken thousands of steps to become the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world.

  But what was that first step? Was it sailing through the Port Phillip Heads, my official starting point of the trip? Was it waving goodbye to family and friends at the Sandringham Yacht Club? Was it when my major sponsor agreed to commit $160,000 to my trip? Was it that moment, at fourteen years of age, when I first dreamt of sailing around the world? Was it my previous adventures? Was it the first time I stepped aboard a boat? Was it when I was born?

  Who knows, but I suspect Mum and Dad had a fair bit to do with it.

  I suppose my story begins in 1979, when my parents, Kon and Louise, did something quite radical for a happily married young couple living a comfortable suburban life in Melbourne. They sol
d their cars, rented out their house and set off in a Volkswagen beetle to see the world. I was born on that trip, and their spirit of adventure lives on in me today.

  Up the east coast of Australia they drove, to Far North Queensland and Darwin, where they ditched their car and made for Bali, spending several months backpacking through Asia. From there it was on to Europe, arriving at Dad's birthplace, Germany, in June 1980.

  They decided to stay in Germany for a while. Dad got a job driving trucks while Mum worked in a supermarket and as a hotel room cleaner in Bonn. But the travel bug bit again so they bought another VW, this time a kombi van, and travelled through the rest of Europe.

  A few weeks into this trip Mum discovered she was pregnant. They decided that when the time came for me to arrive, the birth would be as natural as possible. Dad's relatives pointed them in the direction of a small village called Dachau, near Munich, that had quite a reputation for its natural birthing clinics. Of course, Dachau is better known as the site of the Nazis’ infamous World War II concentration camp.

  I was ten days late entering the world. Luckily, for it was only a few days before I was born that I was given a name. It came to Mum when her frustration at spending her final days of pregnancy in the sweltering heat of a campervan finally boiled over. On this day she lashed out and kicked the van's radio. It jumped from a German station to the American armed forces’ radio station. Playing was the song ‘Jesse’ by Carly Simon. She decided on the spot that if I was a boy, I'd be called Jesse. She'd already decided on Heidi if I was a girl, much to my German relatives’ horror, as Heidi was a pretty common name in Germany. Mum thought it would be sufficiently exotic in far-off Australia.

  I arrived safely into the world at the local hospital on 26 August 1981, a helpless little thing, according to Mum. And just in time to cause my first controversy, which even made the German newspapers. ‘Baby in der Mühle der Biirokratie,’ said the headline, which translated as ‘Baby in the mill of bureaucracy.’

  To get a birth certificate in Germany, Mum and Dad had to present their marriage certificate, which they duly did. They were married in Melbourne in 1975 in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. But the local authorities had never heard of that church, and wanted to check the authenticity of the church and the marriage certificate before they'd issue my birth certificate. Mum and I were stuck in hospital for two weeks until the matter was sorted out. Mum still wonders what would have happened if she had been a single mother. Would she still be in hospital as the authorities demanded a marriage certificate?

  As soon as my parents got the birth certificate, it was on to the Australian embassy at Bonn to have me put on Mum's passport so I could begin my life of travel. Mum wanted to come home to Australia, so we made our way to Hungerford's carpark in London, where backpackers—mainly Aussies—bought and sold campervans. Selling our campervan proved difficult initially as it wasn't a pop-up vehicle. But luckily we came across someone planning to travel to a part of Africa where, if you cross a river, you are charged extra for a pop-up van. Strange rule, but it enabled my parents to sell the van.

  We had to virtually dash from the carpark to make it on our flight to Australia. We must have looked a sight entering the airport: Mum had me slung across her front and a pack on her back, and Dad had a pack on his back and another on the front.

  I was five weeks old when I touched down in Australia. And although I've left her shores many times since, I've always returned.

  We settled into a bungalow behind Mum's parents’ house in Upwey, an outer Melbourne suburb. But Mum and Dad soon grew restless, and wanted to move on, to live life their own way. So they bought an HR Holden station wagon and drove up the east coast looking for some land to build a home. They got to Cairns, 3500 kilometres north of Melbourne, where they were told of a one-hectare block at Cow Bay in the Daintree rainforest 120 kilometres further north. The agent was at least honest. He said they probably wouldn't be interested as it had no electricity, no water, no anything.

  He was wrong. It was ideal, as my parents wanted to turn their backs on a boring suburban life. They paid $23,000 for their own piece of tropical paradise. Before we could move there, however, we had to go back to Melbourne while Dad worked to raise some money to pay for the land.

  In Melbourne, my mother became pregnant with my brother Beau. Dad decided to move back to the Daintree block so that he could build a shack for us, which meant he was away for a couple of months of Mum's pregnancy. He came back four days before Beau was born, on 6 June 1983.

  Five weeks after Beau was born, we loaded up an old Toyota Land Cruiser with a boat on the roof and a caravan behind, and headed north. Beau travelled in a fruit box at Mum's feet. I was just on two years old.

  When we first arrived, things were pretty basic. Home was four poles, a roof and a floor—the correct term is a ‘humpy’. There were no formal windows and doors, and snakes slithered outside. Sometimes Mum and Dad would return from swimming at the beach or a trip into town to find hoof marks from wild pigs throughout the house. For water there was a creek with a waterfall, so Dad rigged up a system to pump water into the house. Electricity came from a generator.

  When I was two-and-a-half years old, my parents realised I'd developed a serious stutter, which worsened over about six months until I was virtually unable to talk. Mum freaked out. After doing some reading, she took me to a child psychologist in Melbourne who confirmed her suspicions. It seems Mum and Dad were going through a bit of a rocky patch at the time, and although I was too young to understand or remember it, I was able to absorb a lot of what was happening, which resulted in the stutter. I was actually feeling the tension between them. The doctor told Mum that the only way to fix things was for them to encourage me in everything I did and to build my self-confidence.

  From that moment on, with my family's support, I was made to believe I could do anything. I had no boundaries in the rainforest. I could run anywhere, explore and experience new things with the blessing of my parents. My life was real Jungle Boy stuff. It was a life of fishing and snorkelling on the reef. Mum has photographs of me running proudly about the forest naked. Dad picked up labouring work to keep some food on the table, and sometimes he'd shoot a wild pig, which we'd eat or use for bait.

  The freedom continued throughout my childhood and teens. Looking back, those pivotal decisions my parents made to help me overcome my stutter probably set me on the path I would choose, and to achieve what I have.

  By 1985 we'd moved again, this time to Sydney, so Dad could get work as a builder to earn some money to build a bigger house on the Daintree block. We ended up buying an old Victorian house in suburban Sydney and renovating it.

  In 1987, after two years in Sydney, Dad decided it was time to move back to the Daintree. Mum didn't. So while Dad headed north, Mum, Beau and I moved back to Melbourne. I was five years old, and didn't see much of my father during the next six years.

  We moved into a bungalow behind Pop and Gran's house in Upwey and I soon started school at Upwey South Primary School. I loved it. Beau and I spent a lot of time with Pop in his shed, where he showed me how things worked. If a toy was broken, he'd help us fix it.

  ‘It can't be fixed, Pop,’ we'd say.

  And he'd reply, ‘Of course it can, we'll fix it.’

  That simple message taught me a lot. One of my biggest regrets is that Pop did not live to see me undertake my voyage. He died eight months before I set sail from Port Phillip Bay. For him, to see me set off and come home safely would have made him the proudest person in the world.

  What I remember most about my primary years were the great holidays that Beau and I could look forward to when school broke up. Mum would usually take us out of school a week before the term holidays and let us go back a week into term—she reckoned there were some things you couldn't learn in the classroom.

  Mum took me to the United States when I was five years old. She always made the effort, when Beau and I were young, to take us to places that were
a bit unusual, like Darwin, Uluru or even Asia. Like any normal primary school kids, we wanted to go to McDonald's and the movies, but Mum would sit and talk to us about what we could do.

  ‘Boys, we have an option here,’ she would say. ‘We can do those things, or we can do the interesting stuff.’ Luckily, the interesting stuff usually won. The decisions came from Beau and me—Mum never forced them on us.

  One trip stands out in my mind. When I was in Grade 5 Mum took Beau and me backpacking across southeast Asia for five weeks. It was amazing. We went to Thailand and visited the Golden Triangle, where we saw opium fields, and bridges built from bamboo over steep ravines. We went on an elephant trek and visited the island of Ko Samui, which was a real buzz. For an eleven-year-old, catching buses crammed with chickens in baskets while people threw up around you was an incredible experience. I fell in love with Thai food on that trip and am forever trying to recreate it at home, without much success.

  Beau and I spent most of our time in Thailand scouring the local markets for flick knives and sling shots. We were fascinated by weapons, and had collected quite an arsenal, which we used to catch birds at Upwey.

  The following year, I was off overseas again on an exchange for four weeks to Mexico. It sounds strange, but I really didn't think I was doing things differently from the other kids at school. I should have realised I was the only kid bringing flick knives and nunchakus to show and tell.

  On my eighth birthday I had my first taste of sailing, when a friend took Mum, Beau and me out on a yacht on the Gippsland Lakes. I can't say it was a pivotal moment in my life, but it was the first time I had sailed, even if the highlight of the weekend was when the yacht ran aground. For the record, I was not at the helm at the time.

  I was a good student at primary school, one of those kids who got solid marks, was good at sport and never got into trouble. I actually had an individualistic bent, even then. Although most of my sports were team sports, I'd basically play for myself. If the team won I'd only be happy if I had played well. If I played my best and we lost, I'd still be happy. But I was not a selfish player—I would happily pass the ball if someone had a better chance of scoring. I knew in my mind that I'd contributed to that goal, and that was satisfying.