Frank and Margaret Dye

Roger Barnes reflects on the legacy of small-boat sailors Frank and Margaret Dye

- Roger Barnes

"B  2015 it was Bill's watch, and the seas were bad, at least 30ft (9.14m) and very heavy. Suddenly a real bad one roared down on us from the port side, and crashed in. Roaring right over us, it rolled us over. I had a fleeting memory of being thrown clean out of the stern, seeing Bill going under me, then the boat coming down on me. Down I went into the green depths with tremendous weight driving me downwards."

Fortunately, the two crewmembers were attached to their vessel with lifelines, so they managed to swim clear of the upturned hull, right their boat and then scramble back aboard, only for her to be rolled over one more time.

Smoking seas

"It was now quite impossible to look into the wind. It was screaming, and the tops of the waves were blown completely away, hitting one's body, and feeling like hail. Within our limited vision the whole sea seemed to be smoking. Entire waves were breaking in a wall of solid water with tremendous roars." (Ocean Crossing Wayfarer, Frank & Margaret Dye: 2nd edition, Adlard Coles, 2006).

Frank Dye and Bill Brockbank had set out in a Wayfarer dinghy from Kinlochbervie in Sutherland in July 1964, and sailed north-west into the Atlantic Ocean. They stopped briefly in a bleak anchorage on the uninhabited island of North Rona to cook and eat a square meal to compensate for Bill's incessant seasickness, then sailed on for the Faroes, finding their way to the distant archipelago by RDF and sextant: all this in a wooden dinghy less than 16ft (4.8m) long, with no cabin and an open cockpit. They rested in the Faroes for three days, then departed on a 450-mile crossing of the Norwegian Sea. It was to be a 10-day passage.