by Graham Cox

Donald Ridler & Erik the Red

JRA Hall of Fame

The voyage was also somewhat more

his seal of approval, as well as some

invaluable advice.

Donald Ridler.

precariously financed. When Donald set

out, he had £20 in cash, £50 invested in

stores (mostly porridge, corned beef,

curry powder and rice), and a rainy day

fund of £50 in traveller’s cheques.

1

941 –

The keel was of concrete, with

stainless-steel reinforcing, and he

took professional advice on the

construction of this. The masts were

Douglas Fir trees, planed smooth

and smeared with linseed oil. Later,

when the parrels rubbed the oil off,

the masts developed deep cracks.

The mast steps were cut from

railway sleepers. Sails were made

from unbleached cotton, that Donald

bought cheaply, and were sewn on

his mother’s sewing machine in the

space of one week. Some of his

blocks were old electrical insulators

that he found on a rubbish tip,

others cheap industrial pulleys with

steel sheaves.

In the northern spring of 1970, while Bill

King was sailing Galway Blazer from

Gibraltar to England, another junk-

rigged yacht was setting out on the same

passage in the opposite direction.

Donald Ridler, aboard his small, home-

built ketch, Erik the Red, was bound for

the West Indies via Gibraltar.

The boat had taken four years to build,

in the back garden of his father’s rectory.

A lot of time was spent scrounging

materials or waiting for suitable weather.

When it rained he had to cover the boat

with sheets of plastic. He also hid it from

view whenever his father had visitors, as

he was rather ashamed of it.

Unlike the dapper, retired naval

commander, Donald was a child of the

sixties, long-haired, bearded, attired in

scruffy jeans, and something of a drop-

out by his own admission, although he

was an Oxford graduate and the son of a

clergyman.

Unable to find or afford suitable timber

for the frames, Donald sawed some of

the boards into strips and glued them

together. He had very few clamps (or

other tools), so had to use Spanish

windlasses to clamp the strips together.

His only power tool was a small drill

with a cutting attachment. In his book,

entitled Erik the Red (which contains

some excellent droll humour), Donald

wrote, If the boat could have been built out of

twigs, the birds in the village would have had

Apart from having junk rig, their vessels

were also very different. Galway Blazer,

built by Souters, one of the best boat-

building firms in England, had cost more

than £14,000 and was superbly finished,

right down to the last detail. She always

looked sleek and uncluttered. Erik the

Red, built with demolition timber and

driftwood from nearby Chesil Beach, cost

the astonishing sum of £165, plus another

The boat had been designed by an

American, John Rowland, some 20 years

earlier, based on a traditional Cape Anne

he could build on his budget that would

still be seaworthy.

He had no contact with Blondie Hasler,

or others involved in junk rig in England

at the time, but appears to have copied

details from Chinese working junks.

There is no doubt he could have

dory.

It was a small boat by any

standards, only 26 feet 10 inches LOA,

made smaller still by its very large, open

cockpit, leaving a cabin that was only 8

feet by 5 feet, with 4 feet 6 inches of

headroom. Donald changed the rig from

bermudian ketch to junk ketch, with

spars of the same height and in the same

location as the originals, drawing a junk

no nests.

However, unlike many

dreamers, he had a fine knack for

knowing just how much he could get

away with. Besides the glue, which cost

more than the timber, he also used

bronze Gripfast nails, so that the boat,

despite its alarming, ramshackle

appearance, was actually quite strong.

An old shipwright, Ernie, who had

retired to the village, came by and gave

benefited from some advice.

For

£

60 for anchors and other gear, and £30

for navigation equipment. The majority

of the wood was old, three-quarter inch

instance, his sheets did not have enough

drift, so that he had to sheet them to the

windward rail, shifting them from side to

side in the Chinese fashion. This might

be acceptable on a working junk with a

large crew, but it gave Donald many

difficult moments. Reefing or gybing

floorboards.

The boat looked a bit

sail plan over the existing one.

thought it would be fun to sail, and also

rightly deduced that it was the only rig

He

dilapidated and cluttered right from the

start, something Donald cheerfully

conceded.

Erik the Red left Bridport in February,

970, bound for points south. Donald

his paraffin lantern. Luckily the mizzen

absorbed most of the blow and Erik only

suffered a small dent in the transom.

After this he hoisted an old biscuit tin to

the masthead. It soon became a rusty

eyesore but hopefully increased his

radar image. It also gave a satisfying

clang every time the boat rolled. He

said it reminded him of the bells outside

Eastern temples, intended to ward off

evil spirits, and hoped it might provide

a similar service.

1

knew it was a bit early to leave, but

Bridport Harbour proved a dangerous

place to keep a boat in winter. Having

already sailed as crew on a yacht

delivery to Gibraltar, he was not entirely

without experience, but he gained a

great deal more over the next 10 days,

tacking back and forth across Lyme Bay

in a severe gale.

He made it into

Falmouth eventually, where he decided

to take the Harbourmaster’s advice and

wait until May before proceeding.

When the northerlies freshened off the

coast of Portugal, he began to

experiment with ways of getting the

boat to self-steer downwind. He had

already discovered it would sail itself

happily to windward, albeit very slowly,

with the helm lashed. Off the wind, he

eased the mizzen until the leech was

pointing forwards and spilling some

wind from the sail, then took the sheet

to the tiller with shock cord on the

opposite side.

He was thrilled, nonetheless, to know

that Erik the Red could withstand storm-

force winds. The only problem had

been the loss of his halyards due to

weak mast strops on the upper blocks.

He rigged temporary halyards with the

lifts and carried on with reduced sail.

Before he left again, he made sure he

had spare halyards on both masts.

Eric the Red - Plans and sections

downwind became a bit of a nightmare.

The topping lifts were also arranged in

the Chinese style. They were not

On such a short boat with two masts, it

is difficult to gain sufficient drift,

particularly on the forward mast, but

using double sheets might have

improved the handling of his sails.

attached to the boom, but to the next

batten up. The lowest sail panel was

reefed by tying it up to the batten above,

then the rest of the sail was reefed or

furled into the lifts as usual. The theory

behind this is that you can get the

maximum sail area for a given mast

height in light airs, but lift the sail up in

rough weather to avoid breaking seas.

In Falmouth he met the first of many

ocean voyagers who gave him advice

and assistance. On this occasion it was

the legendary boatbuilder, designer and

artist, Paul Erling Johnson, on his 28

foot, engineless, gaff ketch, Venus II.

Paul’s first Venus had been an ancient,

clinker-planked fishing boat from the

Shetland Islands: 18 foot LOA, which

he’d sailed to Norway and across the

Atlantic singlehanded. Originally an

open boat, he had decked it and rigged

it as a gaff ketch, largely with scavenged

materials.

He discovered that he could make

incremental adjustments to the course

by tensioning or easing the mizzen

His battens were bamboo, with thinner

keep battens on the opposite side,

originally tied together with twine. He

soon reverted to the Chinese method of

tying them together with wire. He used

short batten parrels, with chopped

plastic hose threaded onto them like

beads, and very long Hong Kong

parrels, with the lower end tied abaft

amidships. He found it important to

keep just the right amount of tension on

these, so that only the parrel on the

boom (or lowest batten, as Donald

called it) had any strain on it. This

allowed the sail to go up and down with

minimum friction, provided there was

no wind in the sail.

halyard.

Eventually he also set the

mainsail this way and took its sheet to

the tiller opposite the mizzen sheet.

This was not particularly efficient, as

both sails were spilling some of their

wind, but the boat still managed to sail

The boat had no engine or electrics, a

paraffin lamp and stove, a sextant,

wristwatch and transistor radio for time

signals and entertainment. There was

no self-steering device, but Donald soon

developed novel, if not particularly

efficient, ways to make the boat steer

itself.

at 3 - 4 knots.

This arrangement,

however, did have other drawbacks, as

he was soon to discover.

Like many sailors before him, he ran

into a moderate easterly gale as he

approached the Straits of Gibraltar and

Donald left Falmouth on 10 May 1970,

bound for Gibraltar. He was afflicted by

calms in the first week, and was run

down in the Bay of Biscay by a fishing

boat, that did not see the weak glow of

He named the boat Erik the Red because

he came across a supply of cheap red

paint. He was launched into Bridport

Harbour in late December, 1969.

lay ahull for 2 days.

Erik the Red

behaved impeccably, bobbing up and

down and riding the breaking seas quite

to shift the mainsheet to the other

side, this was always a bit frantic.

characters, sailing a fascinating

collection of vessels - people such as

Christian, a Swede with a derelict

Brixham trawler, built for the salt-fish

trade in Africa. He was an artist with

very little money and he was refitting

his boat with bits and pieces salvaged

from other wrecks, most of which were

on the harbour bottom. Anything you

want, he said, it is down there. Donald

and Erik the Red fitted perfectly into this

crowd, a lifetime away from the smart

yachts of the Solent.

He always reefed the mainsail first, as

he found this large sail, so far forward,

had a tendency to depress the bow and

make the boat round up. He usually

just dropped one or two panels, but, if

necessary, the boat would sail quite

happily under full mizzen with just a

scrap of the main up to assist in self-

steering.

On this occasion it proved more

traumatic than usual. When the boat

gybed, the mainsail suffered a fan-up,

the battens lying up along the mast.

One of the drawbacks with easing the

sails so far forward is that you cannot

haul the sheets in without first

spilling wind from the sail, as there is

too much compression of the battens,

which are liable to break. (Practical

Junk Rig (PJR) specifically cautions

against gybing in strong winds with

slack sheets.)

(This possibly makes a good argument

for schooner rig, with the added

advantage that the foresail can be used

as an effective storm sail. It can also be

argued that a small boat like Erik the Red

is more efficient with one mast, but self-

steering with the sail would have been

challenging, if not impossible.)

They departed Las Palmas for Barbados

on 17 October. Erik had 30 gallons of

water aboard, enough for 60 days he

hoped. Besides porridge, corned beef

and rice, Donald had a small quantity of

fresh fruit and vegetables, and hoped to

collect some flying fish, those obliging

creatures which jump out of the sea and onto

Donald then tried to round up to get

the battens to come down again, but

instead the whole sail blew up to the

masthead. His system of tying the

topping lifts to the second batten

meant he did not have a tack

Erik running

Donald went on deck at dawn and

checked the rig, raising more sail if

conditions warranted it, prepared

breakfast, did some exercises, made

celestial navigation observations. In the

your plate.

In this he was to be

comfortably.

He dropped anchor in

downhaul fitted.

It took some time

disappointed. Apart from some tiny

specimens, the only one he got, came

aboard on the last night at sea and he

Gibraltar 24 days out of Falmouth. It

was a slow passage, he did not cook

much en route and his navigation left

something to be desired (he was still

having trouble establishing longitude),

but he was satisfied. Both skipper and

boat had proved they were capable of

making a singlehanded ocean passage.

fishing with the boathook before he

hooked one of the lifts and dragged the

sail down. This was to be an ongoing

problem, and Donald came to dread

squalls and reefing downwind,

especially at night.

afternoons he read.

He learned

Shakespeare by heart and recited it to

the birds. At dusk he cooked a curry

and read by the light of his lamp for a

couple of hours before turning in. These

rituals helped him ward off lethargy,

which he found to be a constant risk of

singlehanded sailing.

threw it back.

Food was always

carefully rationed as he had so little

aboard. He did not find this depressing,

however, noting that hunger sharpened

his appreciation, and that eating

sparingly was good for his health.

He had intended to stop in Casablanca

but missed it due to poor navigation.

From then on he determined to take the

subject more seriously, and eventually

became an extremely competent

navigator. Most of the passage to Las

Palmas passed uneventfully and he

dropped anchor in that port on 26

September, joining a zany bunch of

fellow voyagers anchored in the outer

harbour.

They departed Gibraltar on 16

September, bound for the Canary

Islands. On the first night out, off Tarifa,

Donald discovered the shortcomings of

h i s d o w n w i n d s e l f - s t e e r i n g

arrangements. Running wing and wing

with the sheets tied to the tiller, he

found he needed to reef in rising winds.

That meant first gybing the mainsail in

order to spill the wind from the sail.

Because he had to let go of the tiller in

the middle of the gybe and rush forward

Once, in light airs when the boat hardly

seemed to be moving, he jumped over

the side and was alarmed to discover

that he could barely swim back to the

boat. After that he hove-to and lashed

the tiller down when he swam. Later he

gave up swimming or even washing in

salt water, because he began to develop

salt water sores on his skin.

The winds were light at first and he saw

ships every day for the first 7 days,

which kept him on high alert, napping

for short periods.

Then the ships

disappeared and he settled into a

comfortable routine. He reefed most

nights in case of squalls and went to

bed, sailing happily without lights, since

other, more experienced voyagers had

told him there were no ships out there.

Those were the days when the majority

of ocean voyagers were memorable

In unsettled weather, he set his alarm for

every 2 hours, otherwise he left it for 4

hours.

He would lie in his bunk,

The weather became squally in the

second half of the crossing, a common

phenomenon on this passage, and from

then on his nights became very trying.

It was with considerable relief that he

dropped anchor in Carlisle Bay,

Barbados, after 31 days at sea. The

waters of Carlisle Bay were so clear,

with the bottom looming up, that he

feared he would run aground until he

saw some of his cruising friends from

Las Palmas anchored up ahead of him.

Erik the Red sailed from Antigua

on 14 June 1971. Amusingly,

listening to the boat rushing through the

seas, sounding like a rocket-ship

blasting through space. Through the

hatch, he watched the moon and stars

wheeling across the sky.

Donald though he’d left on the

7th: somewhere along the way

he’d lost a whole week! This was

t o c a u s e s o m e n a v i g a t i o n

problems as he approached

Bermuda, but initially, with the

sun high overhead in the tropical

summer, he did not notice any

differences between his DR and

celestial fixes.

Sometimes the boat would suffer an

accidental gybe and he would have to

scramble on deck, untangle everything

and re-set the self-steering lines. This

inevitably meant sail repairs, as the

sheets would tear the leech of the sails,

but, having junk rig, he could usually

keep sailing until dawn. Eventually he

tied rope between the batten ends, as an

external bolt rope, which helped

support the luff and leech.

After a pleasant few weeks in Barbados,

enjoying the company of hospitable

locals and other voyagers, he began to

think about what came next. Most of

the other voyagers were in no hurry to

go anywhere, having spent a lifetime

dreaming of the West Indies, but Donald

astonished them by declaring he

intended to sail back to England. The

trip out had been just too easy, he

He broke a batten on the first day

out, once again as a result of

sheeting his sails out beyond 90°

Erik careened

for self-steering purposes.

He

continued to experiment with the

best arrangement for self-steering, this

time setting both sails to leeward but

running the mainsheet to the windward

charts of this reef-beset island, but

tacked in by eye, lamenting how

reluctant Erik was to come about when

on starboard tack.

Erik covered 1,000 miles in the first 11

days, and then had a spell of 120-mile

days. The boat had a fast, quick roll

which he found exhausting, but

eventually he realized he could go a few

degrees off a dead run and the rolling

stopped. More troubling, was that the

masts began to move about, loosening

their wedges and banging around. The

noise almost drove him crazy until he

jammed an old chisel into the mainmast

partners.

side of the tiller.

It worked, but if

possible he preferred to lash the tiller.

Bermuda was far too expensive for

penniless ocean vagabonds, despite the

generous assistance of a local tourist

operator, and he left after one week. He

headed north, looking for the Westerlies,

and in order to skirt around the Azores

High that lay on the direct route.

decided.

He felt that crossing the

On this homeward passage, he decided

to sleep in the day and stay awake all

night, due to being close to shipping

Atlantic in the Westerlies would be more

of a test.

However, first of all he had to get some

money together so off he went looking

for work in the charter fleet. He worked

for a month in Grenada, made a few

memorable friends but found the

lanes all the way.

The first week

provided easy sailing with steady beam

winds, but then they ran into squalls.

One of these damaged the main and he

lowered all of it except for the top

panels. Erik continued sailing at the

same speed but was much easier on the

helm, with less tendency to depress the

bows.

Donald soon settled back into his ocean

routines. Although his logbooks were

just ordinary exercise books, arising, he

said, from the English law of Not Taking

Things Too Seriously, he was a good

navigator by this stage and kept an

accurate record. At night he listened to

the radio and read, looking out every 15

minutes. He kept the lamp burning all

night, in the cabin, ready for immediate

deployment on deck if needed. When

he was sleepy he used an alarm to make

sure he kept to his regular lookout.

Donald was initially enchanted with the

voyage, looking about him with a keen

eye, hoping for interesting sights, sea

monsters perhaps, or at least the odd

whale or sea-bird. Mostly, though, he

just saw an empty ocean and fell to

musing. What a strange feeling it is to sail

a small boat alone in the middle of an ocean!

It is a feeling of such unreality. The boat

himself seems to have purpose enough but

what of you? What are you doing here

being carried endlessly over surging waves

in a world of nothingness?

political atmosphere oppressive.

He

then sailed to English Harbour on

Antigua, where he worked for 6 months.

The political climate on Antigua was

much the same as Grenada, but the

charter boat fleet of English Harbour,

existed in a world of its own. In the end

he decided it was too close-knit, riven

with rivalries, affairs and feuds. He was

glad when he’d made enough money to

set sail once again.

They arrived in Bermuda on 29 June,

discovering that they were 9 miles out in

longitude due to his error with the date.

Apart from the broken batten, a broken

halyard and a near collision with a

whale (he was alerted by the whale

slapping its tail on the water), it had

been an uneventful passage. He had no

rust. He then used methylated spirits

in a tin until he began to run out of

that. Later in the voyage, after he left

Horta for England, he resorted to

using candles, then just the candle

grease.

incessant boat handling. One night he

fell asleep and had a close shave with a

ship. Despite the lively motion and

tiredness, however, he completed a

temporary repair of his gunwale which

was showing signs of opening up.

Things were getting desperate. He was

down to using candles for light and

cooking, making a lamp out of a candle

in a glass jar, although it was too weak

to alert other ships to his presence. The

mainsail was in bad shape. He had to

lash several battens together to take out

the top three panels, which made the

boat sail even more slowly.

Unsettled weather continued, with

As his food supplies dwindled he ate

less and less, foregoing breakfast

winds gusting to Force 6.

Erik ran

along at 3 knots, buffeted by large,

confused seas, and Donald began to

cast a jaundiced eye over his vessel.

He noted that the boat always

appeared to be extremely untidy,

above and below. He took, rather too

enthusiastically at times, to throwing

things overboard. He looked around

at his rough workmanship and felt, he

wrote, that they were riding on the

rims.

altogether.

He might have been

somewhat hungry when he arrived in

Horta on 3 August, but he was well-

looked after here by the legendary

Henriques and his son, Peter, at Café

Sport. He loved Horta, but the risk of

autumn gales and dwindling funds sent

him back to sea on 20 August, on the

last 1,600 mile leg, which turned out,

surprisingly, to be the longest passage of

the voyage.

It took 6 days to sail from Fastnet to the

Isles of Scilly. They passed the Lizard

after 31 days at sea, but it took another 3

days, battling strong spring tides, to get

into Falmouth. He ran completely out

of food and fuel and had to resort to

using amphetamine pills to stay awake.

In Falmouth they were met by family,

friends and the press. Erik and Donald

became briefly famous, appearing at the

London Boat Show. Few people could

have voyaged so far and so successfully

Erik in the Azores

In Antigua he had made a new suit of

sails from an old cotton genoa that was

given to him. They were better than the

original bed-sheet sails but now they,

too, began to suffer from hard usage.

He tied lines between the after batten

ends of both sails to take weight off the

leech.

Erik immediately ran into a NE gale, and

then was beset by squally, variable

winds. In one vicious squall he cut the

mainsheet to stop the boat being

overwhelmed (once again, his ungainly

mainsheet system proved to be

dangerously inefficient). They made

good 480 miles in the first 10 days and

then had a run of 400 miles before SW

winds for four days, before the wind

went into the east and stayed there.

N o n e t h e l e s s , h e d i d d o z e o ff

occasionally and had a couple of scares.

with so few resources.

But Donald

refused to take the attention seriously.

He gave the boat to Exeter Maritime

On 12 July they ran into strong

westerlies and driving rain. The cabin

was soon soaked, as Donald had to

leave a small gap open in the hatch,

which was his only source of

ventilation. Erik ran on under 2 panels

of the mizzen plus a tiny portion of the

main to maintain self-steering.

He also noted how hard it is to work on

a junk sail at sea. PJR recommends

lowering the sail bundle to the deck

and, if necessary, removing a few of the

battens, but Donald concluded that the

best way to work on it was to hoist it,

although sewing can then become

precarious. He decided that next time

he would take an office stapler and just

staple temporary patches on.

Donald awoke one morning to the

sound of a dog barking. It sounded

almost overhead and he leapt on deck

to discover a large trawler alongside,

attempting to salvage Erik. When he

made his appearance they withdrew

somewhat ungraciously.

These days, whenever he went on deck,

he tied himself to a rope that he kept

attached to the mast, with the end in the

cockpit. At least he could still prepare

meals, as his galley had a large

gimbaled shelf on which he placed

stove, pots, cups etc.

The stoves,

Squalls and fickle winds kept driving

them south out of the Gulf Stream.

Their daily average fell from 80 miles to

The SE wind drove Erik up to the coast

of Ireland near Fastnet Rock, where he

was almost run down by a passenger

liner in misty drizzle.

however, were causing him escalating

dramas. He broke the pricker in his

Primus and reverted to using a solid-

fuel stove, until it crumbled away from

5

0 and he became exhausted from

Erik’s Mizzen Sail

real Chinese junk), then set off on a

circumnavigation of the world.

Erik was seen in Darwin, Australia,

s o m e y e a r s l a t e r b y f e l l o w

Englishman, Colin Martin. He was

sitting in the cockpit, reading.

He

had a very long beard, a dark tan,

and was wearing just a pair of old

shorts. He told Colin about sailing

across the Pacific using rudimentary

Polynesian navigation methods, with

a ‘chart’ made out of sticks, stones

and string. He slept in a hammock

(at least in Darwin, which is hot even

in winter) and seemed to have only a

few possessions.

He left for Bali the next day, rounded

the Cape of Good Hope the

following summer and was wrecked

in the Cape Verde Islands in 1977.

Still engineless, Erik was becalmed

and drifted onto the rocks, a sad end

for a gallant vessel that had almost

crossed her outward track and

circumnavigated the world.

The book cover has the best colour picture

of Erik

Unfortunately, Donald did not

publish any material about this later

voyage (his logbooks may have been

destroyed in the shipwreck) and the

details of his subsequent life are

unknown.

Museum and quietly retired from the

limelight.

When he left the West Indies, he said he

was sailing home to complete the

voyage, rather than drift endlessly on

Note: All quotes in this article are taken

from Donald Ridler’s book, Erik the Red,

published by William Kimber, London,

1972.

across tropical seas.

He envisaged

moving on to new challenges, now that

he had the confidence to tackle them.

However, just a couple of years later, he

retrieved Erik from the museum, built a

large cabin aft, over much of the open

cockpit (which made the boat look like a

[“Erik the Red” can be

downloaded in

PDF format

from the JRA library]