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Up that Particular Creek; Val Howells; Pavilion, 2^nd ed., 2004; CA 16512.

Val Howells became famous as one of the small, intrepid band who took part in the first OSTAR in 1960, which he wrote about in Sailing into Solitude. That account showed his brilliant seamanship as he navigated to Bermuda without battery power or chronometer. He took part in the 1964 and 1976 races. The present book takes the author’s story up forty years after that first OSTAR. Howell was suffering from depression and his G.P’s advice apparently was that it was “time he got off his arse and did a bit of sailing.” “A bit of sailing” becomes a circumnavigation in a 38’ cutter. We join him as he makes landfall in the Canaries, where he recounts various encounters. The main part of the account concerns a passage to Barbados. Half-way across, his rudder falls off. Unable to create a sail plan which will stop the boat rounding up, he achieves the hove-to position with a storm jib on the inner forestay and a sheeted-in, flattened trysail. This allows him to drift 30 miles a day to cover the remaining 1200 miles. He makes successful landfall near Martinique where he is towed to port. The last few pages briefly describe the rest of his circumnavigation till he returns to Milford Haven – perhaps he will describe it at greater length in his next book.

The book is too long – nearly 400 densely printed pages. It rambles, with conversations with an imaginary bosun, multiple footnotes, a fascination with the opposite sex etc.; and it is difficult to see who Howells thinks he is writing for. But he remains one of the great yacht cruising pioneers. You only have to return to Sailing into Solitude to realise the straight scariness of sailing into the virtually unknown. His consummate seamanship and his love of being on and with the sea contrast starkly with Chichester’s obsession with winning and using the sea as a racetrack, a very limited view now being followed –albeit very successfully – by MacArthur. Howells is a much more gut-basic, and more emotionally satisfying relationship. The CA member may therefore well want this account, by one of the pioneers who opened up the possibilities of cruising, on their shelf. - MPB

Page prepared 31 January 2006