Constantia sailor Maureen Girdlestone’s debut book, The Sailor’s Wife, is about a real-life adventure that would have made her late husband’s famous ancestor proud.
Maureen is an experienced sailor in her own right, and while this is her first book, it comes on the heels of years of writing. She had a newspaper column, Accidental Tourist, for one year in a Sunday newspaper with humorous tales from her personal travels. She also had articles published in SA Sailing magazine and a story in Cape Odyssey under Gabriel and Louise Athiros about the boy on the British troopship, HMS Birkenhead, that met its doom on a rock off Danger Point on February 26, 1852.
The Birkenhead became famous because it was the first shipwreck where the “women and children first” rule was applied.
“It happened at 2am, everyone was wearing nightshirts. One of Nelson’s ancestors, aged 15, swam ashore, quite a feat in those days,” says Maureen, whose late husband, Nelson, claimed descent from Britain’s great naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson.
And like his namesake, Nelson Girdlestone, harboured dreams of sailing the high seas.
In The Sailor’s Wife, Maureen describes the real-life adventure that unfolded after Alter Ego, the yacht Nelson built, was stolen in 1985.
It was after recovering the yacht in the Caribbean, explains Maureen, that she and Nelson, who were both then in their 40s, embarked on a nomadic, bohemian odyssey across the windward and leeward side of the Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean.
Maureen says it was a Spartan, self-sufficient life – catching rainwater, generating their own power and eating fish they had caught – and yet they had felt healthy and whole.
Living aboard a yacht has aerobic benefits, she says, describing how the vessel’s movement provides motion for every part of their body, even during sleep.
“We also learnt how to fix things ourselves. Even now I fix things myself, but fixing Eskom is a bit hard,” she laughs.
“Any spare time was spent sanding the teak on Alter Ego. When I reached the stern, it was back to the bow to start all over again. I needed something else to keep me occupied so I started writing the book.”
They would swim in the ocean, but the salty water left Maureen feeling sticky, and she would dream of long, hot showers with fluffy towels.
The couple often sailed to other islands to explore and on one of those trips, they found themselves swallowed by fog. Nelson was convinced he could smell land. It took Maureen a few minutes to realise he was smelling carrots that she’d prepared for lunch.
Nowadays kind friends take her on trips to Croatia, Turkey and Greece, but nowhere is like the Antilles, she says.
As for Alter Ego, Maureen says it was replaced many years ago. “It was like selling one of my children. She was bought and in Simon’s Town last I heard but is no longer there. I often wonder where she is now, like a long lost child.”
The couple’s three sons, Craig the oldest and twins Jeff and Charles, work in the family yacht charter business founded by their dad in what is now the V&A Waterfront.
Nelson died in 2003, but the four years he spent in the Caribbean were the best time of his life, says Maureen.