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VAL


Voyage to a land of mirrors HOWELLS


Solo Transatlantic pioneer Val Howells talks to Barry Pickthall about solitude, the open ocean and the myth behind the Half-Crown Club


T


he Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race has generated six legendary names in solo sailing circles: the five pioneers from the first race back in 1960 – Blondie Hasler, the race


originator, race winner Francis Chichester, Dr David Lewis, Frenchman Jean Lecombe and Val Howells – together with the 1964 winner Eric Tabarly. Five decades on, only one of those six survives – the gentle, bearded Welsh giant, Val Howells. Now 86, and with a fund of memories big enough to fill five lives, he is now spending his days recording these adventures for posterity – and busting a few myths along the way. His latest book, Sailing into Solitude, takes on the sailing establishment for perpetuating a story now widely believed: that the first OSTAR developed from a half-crown bet between its two originators, Blondie Hasler and Francis Chichester. “It is complete fiction,” says Howells with conviction.


HALF-CROWN BET


The story has so much credence that in 1984 the Half- Crown Club was formed in a Cornish pub by Lloyd Hircock, Tim Hubbard, and Alan Wynne Thomas, with the sole purpose of commemorating the spirit of high adventure, comradeship and the good humour that characterises the five original competitors in the race of 1960. Only those few to have competed in an OSTAR are eligible to join.


Opposite: Val Howells at the helm of his modified Folkboat Eira, in which he completed the first Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race in 1960


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Howells says that the half-crown bet and Chichester’s involvement in the conception of the race emerged, not with the first event in 1960, but during the build-up to the second race four years later. “Apart from coverage in the Observer newspaper, the first race attracted very few column inches,” he says. “The yachting establishment was firmly against sailing solo across an ocean. It was seen to be unseamanlike and very likely to lead to fatalities, and with the exception of the Royal Western Yacht Club, the race organisers in Plymouth, no one wanted to be associated with it. But come the second race, it was clear this was no second-class train sitting in the station. It was a first-class express to fame and fortune.” Not only did the number of entries treble, but now there was interest from overseas, and those with


CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2012


, was just as keen to see the race thrive. Howells believes that the story of the bet and Chichester’s involvement in the conception of the race was a PR stunt dreamed up by the Ogilvy Agency, Chichester’s publicists, to draw fresh interest in the second event. “If there had been a bet, you would have thought the other competitors would have known about it,” he says. “The story was widely quoted at the time, and because it seemed good for the race, we stupidly didn’t do anything to correct the misconception. Now, whenever you read the history of the race, even on the RWYC’s own web site, the half-crown bet is firmly embedded. Yet it is complete fiction.”


commercial axes to grind brought in some high-powered PR gurus to sex up the story. By now, Chichester had a thriving cartography business, and David Astor, the owner of The Observer


Howells has some strong supporting evidence, not least Mike Richey, the founding director of the Royal Institute of Navigation, who sailed Hasler’s junk-rigged Folkboat Jester and its replacement in six further OSTAR events. He wrote to Howells in 2007 saying: ‘I have had the odd award from the Half-Crown Club from time to time and have always enjoyed its name, founded though it is on a myth. I have also, over the years, spent a lot of time telling different Commodores, Secretaries and so on of the Royal Western that the wager was a myth – clearly to no avail.”


Richey is joined by Ewen Southby-Tailyour, a long- standing member of the RWYC who wrote Hasler’s biography, Blondie. He wrote to the Club Commodore in September 2008: ‘I really hate to be a dampener, but I must put the record straight… As it was the RWYC that organised the 1960 OSTAR, I believe it is wrong for the club to perpetuate an untruth. If our club can’t get the historical facts right, then it is hardly surprising that the media doesn’t either.’


Howells, a veteran of three OSTARs, also points to a BBC radio programme recorded in London on 3 November 1960, in which Chichester, Hasler, Lewis and himself revealed how close some of them had come to disaster. “Supposing there had been a ‘half-crown bet?” he says. “Wouldn’t the occasion have been just the place to mention the wager and award the prize money right


PHOTOGRAPHS BY EILEEN RAMSEY PPL


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