still have Nick.
This was the cue for Nick to appear and explain that, under these
changed circumstances, he would have to reconsider his decision to join
us. Since he had been Takemura’s protégé, constant satellite, and
uncritical admirer, we were sure we knew what that meant.
“Okay, Nick,” I told him. “We understand.” I held out my hand.
Nick looked a little startled. “I will go home, talk to family.” He was
obviously trying to let us down easy, passing the ultimate
responsibility to his parents.
“Fine,” I said, “you do that. Good-bye—and thanks for everything.”
Hailing a passing launch, Nick too went ashore. We sat on the deck and
watched the harbor traffic, too dispirited to talk. Below decks, Ted and
Jessica were shouting at each other, in an overheated sibling dispute.
Here we are, I thought—what remains of my crew. One woman—with only half
a heart in the venture. One son, age fifteen—willing, but a bit
absentminded and not too good with his hands. One daughter, ten years
old and small for her age, expert at handling dolls—but what good will
she be on the mainsail? And myself—an armchair sailor, an untried
skipper, who can cope fairly well with things mechanical but has little
finesse with human beings, even his own family.
The inescapable conclusion of my gloomy inventory was: You’ve had it. A
foreign country, a half-finished boat, a dwindling bank account, a
divided family, and your crew has just walked off. I hardly noticed when
Barbara reached over to slip her hand into mine. Nor did I note that the
wrangling below had stopped of its own accord—as it always did—and that
Ted was now busily entertaining Jessica with a story.
The rest of the day passed like a funereal dream. In the afternoon I
went ashore and bought a secondhand rowboat. That evening we sat on deck
and were uncheered by the nightly visit of the local sightseeing bus,
which had added to its itinerary a visit to the docks to see the
American “Around-the-world-boat.” “Around the world!” I muttered
bitterly. “We couldn’t even go around Hiroshima harbor.”
Early the next morning we were aroused by the sound of oars and by
voices alongside. Onto the deck clambered Nick, grinning broadly, and
with him were two young fellows I recognized as members of the Yacht
Club.
“Ohio gosaimasu!” Nick greeted us cheerfully. “Good morning! My father
said, You promise to go, you go. So—I go. Okay. Oh—and these my
friends—Fushima-san and Suemitsu-san. They will help make boat ready.
They both want to go with us, which one do you want?”
From that day on, Motosada Fushima (Moto) and Mitsugi Suemitsu (Mickey)
slept and worked aboard the _Phoenix_, splicing rope, wrapping blocks,
and in general competing, in a completely friendly fashion, for the
berth vacated by Takemura. In the end, unable to decide between them and
perhaps feeling that we might make up in manpower what we lacked in
experience, we took them both. Now all our bunks were filled, with a
ship’s complement of seven.
We were an oddly assorted group: two sexes, two races, two languages and
nationalities—and _seven_ personalities, with a wide age range. How
these personalities would act—and interact—would, I knew, have as much
to do with the success or failure of our voyage as the seaworthiness of
the boat itself. At the moment we could only guess—and hope.
Our crew selected, there remained the matter of obtaining the consent of
their families, which proved not too difficult; and of acquiring
Japanese passports and American visas, which turned out to be very
difficult indeed. We finally got them, but it took several weeks of
correspondence, several trips to Kobe, and several times the amount of
patience I normally possess.
During this summer we had still another problem to contend with, and it
was one we couldn’t do much about. This was the weather. In three years
in Japan, only one typhoon had come close enough to Hiroshima to cause
any real concern. However, in the summer of 1954, after the _Phoenix_
took to the water, no less than four typhoons paid us an unwelcome
visit.
Typhoon June, the third of the unwonted—and unwanted—series, was the
worst of the lot. At the advice of the Coast Guard we took refuge in a
sheltered cove behind the island of Eta Jima. On the way we tried out
our newly rigged mainsail and, for the first time, had the experience of
heeling. As we tilted in the breeze, Barbara, who had been making
lemonade in the galley, began to pick up broken glass and lemon peel,
while Jessica, a bit shaken, took refuge in the cockpit. “I don’t like
it,” she said. “I’d rather live in a house where things don’t fall
around!”
That night, however, she slept unconcernedly through the worst of the
blow, and by the next day was ready to brag of her experiences and feel
more than a little superior to her shorebound friends.
For the rest of us, however, the night of Typhoon June is one that will
not soon be forgotten. Around midnight, with the center of the typhoon
less than twenty miles away, the wind shifted abruptly. We were no
longer in the lee of the mountainous island, but much more exposed, and
the waves in this little bay built up to enormous heights. Suddenly
Nick, on anchor watch, let out a shout in frantic Japanese. I rushed on
deck, and though I couldn’t understand Nick, could see at once what had
happened. Our anchor chain had snapped. Endless minutes passed, as we
drifted inexorably toward the nearby shore, while we struggled to get
the spare anchor over the side. Only a few feet short of grounding, the
anchor caught—and held.
Two souvenirs remain of that wild initiation night: the broken link of
our brand-new half-inch anchor chain and a sheet from our recording
barograph, which charts the pattern of Typhoon June. The line of
barometric pressure descended sharply until, at the passage of the eye
of the typhoon, the ship was bucking so wildly that the ink was spilled
out of the pen, and the record stopped.
We also gained some valuable information and experience from this
episode. First, we began to appreciate the difficulties in communication
that were to plague us in time to come. Regardless of how well the men
improved their English, and I my Japanese, in a crisis they lapsed into
“man’s talk”—rapid, peremptory vernacular—which conveyed nothing but a
sense of extreme urgency. The normal, formal Japanese language, which we
knew a bit, was gone with the wind.
Beyond this I learned the absolute necessity for anticipation if this
voyage was to be a success. At all times we must expect the worst, and
try to be ready for it. Had the second anchor been ready for instant
use, precious minutes would have been saved. On the credit side, I
profited, because never again were we caught without ready anchors.
Typhoon No. 4, Marie, caused no great damage in our area, but roared
past us and northward to Hokkaido, where she overturned a seagoing ferry
with the loss of over a thousand lives. Locally, however, she did play
havoc with the tides, and drowned out the machinery in the local
shipyard, so we had to postpone our haul-out, for bottom painting, more
than two weeks—another unavoidable delay.
However, by September, in spite of typhoons, troubles, and tape (red),
we were far enough along to be thinking about a date for our departure.
We still lacked such extras as electricity, running water, gimbaled
stove, radiotelephone, and a host of minor items, but we ignored these
and concentrated on the absolute necessities. Provisioning, of course,
led the list, and Barbara took the brunt of this terrible task. Now that
she had a better knowledge of the crew’s daily food consumption, she
doubled her original estimates of rice, fruits, and canned foods, and
then doubled the amount again as a safety factor. The total was
prodigious. Day after day, carrying yardlong lists, she set out in a
taxi-jeep, to return in the evening with a mountain of supplies to be
hauled aboard and stowed.
Ted, meanwhile, when I informed him that he had been promoted to chief
navigator on the defection of Takemura, redoubled his studies. With a
textbook and the help of a navigation officer friend, Ted gained a
competent grasp of at least the theoretical aspects of his assignment.
However, when we worked out our practice sextant shots, we often found
the _Phoenix_ not in Hiroshima harbor but somewhere up the slope of
Fujiyama.
Jessica, too, had been given an official role, that of ship’s historian.
She took her assignment seriously and, from the day we moved aboard, she
kept a daily record of our activities—as she saw them (a _very_
important qualification). I might add that this diary was continued
without a break for the next six years, and by the time we had completed
our voyage around the world she had filled seven large ledgers with
about 200,000 words. Unprompted and uncensored, Jessica’s Journal
provides a detailed, refreshing, and sometimes chastening picture of our
rather unconventional family life.
Time had now become an important element in our plans, for it was late
in the season. After many conferences with family and crew, after a
careful (and prayerful!) study of the North Pacific Pilot Charts, and
after consultation with the Japanese Coast Guard, we finally decided
that November was the very latest date we could leave Japan and still
have a good chance of a successful crossing to Honolulu, over 4,000
miles to the east. This would put us at the tag end of the typhoon
season and, we hoped, ahead of the worst of the winter storms which roar
down out of the far north Pacific.
We decided upon Honolulu as our first landfall, because it was an
American port, where we could have the _Phoenix_ registered as an
American ship and could obtain certain supplies and equipment lacking in
Japan.
The numerous unavoidable delays had made it impossible to fit in the
shakedown cruise in the open ocean, which we had planned, but by leaving
Hiroshima early in October we could have a short cruise up the Inland
Sea and give ourselves and the boat at least a smooth-water test. We
could then complete our fitting-out at a northern port, make any
adjustments that seemed necessary, and still depart by the appointed
date. It was not an ideal plan, perhaps, but it was the best we could
do. For a number of cogent reasons, mainly financial, it was impossible
to lay over until next June, the optimum month for crossing the North
Pacific under sail.
Our departure was set for October 4, and throughout the day gifts poured
aboard: flowers, candy, fruit, rice cakes, a painting of the _Phoenix_,
a new heaving line, a can of metal paint, a gallon of used oil (“to pour
on troubled waters”), and most formidable of all, a magnificent Japanese
doll for Jessica, complete in a fragile glass case. This present brought
Jessica exquisite joy and the captain exquisite pain, for he knew tears
would flow when he had to jettison the case over the side—in
anticipation of the inevitable.
We grew more and more harassed as we found our last-minute preparations
and stowing of supplies continually interrupted by the need for greeting
another well-wisher, making a short statement to yet another gentleman
of the press, or posing on deck for one more group picture. To load
last-minute supplies, we had come alongside the dock. All our friends,
many of whom had never been aboard, now wanted a tour of the ship. They
charitably assured us that they didn’t in the least mind if everything
was a mess, and asked us literally hundreds of well-meaning questions,
to most of which we didn’t know the answers. “How long will the trip to
Honolulu take?” “Won’t you be bored?” “But isn’t it _dangerous_?” “How
will the children go to school?”—all very good questions.
But the one most frequently asked, and the one we were least able to
answer, was “But won’t you be seasick?” All we could reply was that we
never had been—which was perfectly true. On board the _President
Wilson_, en route to Japan—our only other experience on the high
seas—none of us had been in the least sick. Of course, this wasn’t
_quite_ the same thing.
Shadows were already long when we left the dock, with all the ceremony
of tossing bright paper tape, singing “Auld Lang Syne”—in Japanese—and
shedding copious tears. The tears, I might add, were all in the eyes of
those who saw us off. We ourselves were much too busy to have time for
sorrow or regret—then—but to our hundreds of friends the whole venture
was nothing less than a gallant form of suicide—for which no one has a
more subtle appreciation than the Japanese.
A fleet of snipes and sailing dinghies from the Yacht Club accompanied
us halfway across Hiroshima Bay, while a plane circled overhead to drop
a tiny silk parachute carrying a hand-lettered scroll of good wishes and
prayers for our safe return. One by one, our escorts waved and turned
back until at last we were on our own.
Our first day’s destination was not far—the shrine of Miya Jima, just
across the water from where the _Phoenix_ had been hatched. There, while
Barbara started supper and the men tried to find places to stow the
piled-up gifts, I made my first entry in our nice new logbook:
Dropped anchor at Miya Jima Guchi harbor, opposite the shrine.
Itsukushima is one of the famed “Three Most Beautiful Places in
Japan.” All secure by 1900. Big spaghetti dinner to celebrate—too busy
at noon to eat. Decks in good shape, but considerable of a shambles
below—2 tons of last-minute ballast, now on floor of main cabin—169
iron pigs.
Many last-minute gifts—even a stack of old newspapers for Mi-ke. Poor
Mi-ke—her box was forced to give way, in its nook under the starboard
water tank, to a pile of iron pigs. The box is now in the aisle of the
main cabin, where she is doing her business in the middle of traffic.
Doesn’t seem to worry her too much.
That night, while the rest of the crew slept, I went on deck. Across the
bay the shrine gleamed faintly in the moonlight. The _Phoenix_ stirred
gently in the swells from a distant ferryboat. Above were the heavy
masts, the intricate web of sturdy rigging, the white sails, furled now
but ready to be raised at our command. We had our boat, and though she
had not yet proved herself at sea, I knew she would, and proudly. This
was not entirely a matter of wishful thinking. During her construction,
a number of experts had looked her over, and their reactions had been
unanimously favorable. But even without their praise I had faith in the
_Phoenix_.
About the human beings aboard I was not so sanguine. None of us had ever
been to sea in a small boat. The Japanese boys were good sailors of
snipes in the Inland Sea, and I had done some sailing in an 18-footer,
but this was a far cry from cruising outside.
And the family. How would the children take the trip? Would they be able
to adjust to discomfort and occasional hardship? How much would they
miss the companionship of others their own age? What of their schooling?
We were taking along plenty of textbooks and teaching materials for both
of them, and Barbara, who had been a teacher, would handle their
lessons, but would this be sufficient?
And what of Barbara? We had made a contract with each other—for better,
for worse—but was a situation like this anticipated in the contract?
Suddenly I felt a surge of deep respect and admiration for her, as it
came to me with full force that I was going because I wanted to go, but
_she_ was going only because I was, offering me a rare and precious
loyalty.
Our Japanese crew—what of them? How would they wear? How would two
groups of diverse backgrounds get along, in weeks at sea under confining
conditions? So far the men had shown themselves to be fine companions
and hard workers. Moreover, on that wild night when Typhoon June almost
had us on the rocks, they had proved themselves courageous and
resourceful. Would these qualities last during the long grind?
Finally, the captain. Could _he_ take it? And could his companions take
_him_? Could he curb his temper, learn to control his impatience? I
deeply felt my inadequacies, my faults, and especially my lack of
experience. Whenever one of the family called me “Skipper,” as they had
begun to do, I felt uneasy and self-conscious. One of the biggest
unknowns was the ability of this so-called Skipper.
Beset with doubts I finally turned in.
The next day we slept late, and did not get underway until midmorning.
The doubts and introspection of the previous night were swept away in
the sparkling breeze. We had made our choice, we were on our way, we
would do our best. From now on, all thoughts and energies would be
directed toward making a successful voyage.
Slowly we drifted past the shrine, so that the men could say their
farewells to the goddess, which they did, standing in a row on the
foredeck with caps in hand and heads bowed. Suddenly I realized that
there was still another possibly divisive factor—one I had not thought
of: differences in religion.
We continued up the strait and drew abreast the Yotsuda shipyard. We
broke out the foghorn, Mickey blew lustily, and the entire shipyard
crew—all four of them—came down to the shore while Yotsuda-san ran up
the Japanese flag, and we dipped our American colors in a return salute.
Just four months ago the _Phoenix_ had been launched from here.
The next several days were idyllic. The fall weather was perfect, the
breeze light but fair, the scenery unsurpassed. We found out now that
cruising may take a lot of work ashore, but that cruising is also
sailing, and this is the reward.
And we were beginning to learn our boat. From the log of October 8,
which was also Ted’s sixteenth birthday:
Good sailing practice today—many tacks, brisk breeze, getting smarter
and smarter in handling her. If only the time element didn’t enter
into the picture! But each day that passes puts us later and later in
the season. Four days out and still not in Onomichi—only 72 miles (by
land) from Hiroshima.
That night we dropped anchor in the beautiful harbor of Mitarai. Fishing
boats were close about us and one of them, as it happened, was a bit too
close, since we rammed him slightly while maneuvering for a berth. In
the log, I virtuously recorded that the accident was a combination of
poor judgment on my part and a shifting wind that pushed us down on the
larger boat before we could stop our way.
From this we learned something about the momentum of our thirty tons and
of the inability of our small engine to handle the boat properly in
reverse. Later we called on the captain to apologize, and to have the
damage assessed. It came to 556 yen, about $1.50 American. Accidents
come cheaper in Japan!
During our trial run up the Inland Sea we made quite a few changes and
improvements. We put downhauls all around, so we could get the sails
down even in a gale. We rerigged our mainsail peak, painted and stowed
most of the ballast, set up a third anchor aft, and got things more
shipshape below decks.
We practiced, too, in the open areas, tacking over and over, learning to
jibe smoothly, and establishing routines for various maneuvers. We
loosed the dinghy, and practiced rounding up to it. When the breeze
freshened, and we had our first taste of really brisk sailing, we found
we could make seven knots with ease, using only the four lowers;
moreover, the boat had a very easy motion.
We reached Takamatsu, at the upper end of the Inland Sea, on the morning
of October 13. This would be our base for the final stages of
fitting-out before the long ocean crossing to Hawaii. A Coast Guard boat
came well out to meet us and escorted us to the Prefectural Docks, where
a crowd was waiting, and we went through the usual gamut of questions.
The following morning we accepted the kind invitation of the Takamatsu
Yacht Club to use their private dock, where we remained for a very busy
two weeks.
Takamatsu is a pleasant city, and at this season was gay and bustling in
preparation for the Hachiman Festival. In the evenings, after a day of
hard work, we usually wandered into the city where the open-front shops
remained ready for business. We would stop to watch groups of strolling
actors, or try out our Japanese in the process of making a purchase, or
enjoy a nightcap of soba—Japanese noodles—in a tiny booth before
returning to the boat.
During the days, however, we worked, and worked hard. Ted and Jessica
finished the job of painting countless iron pigs, and emerged at the end
of each day with a new layer of orange paint. In the course of this job
Ted uncovered a hitherto unsuspected talent: that of raconteur
extraordinary. Time passed quickly as Ted gave the iron pigs
personalities and guided them through a series of imaginary escapades in
the course of getting their faces painted. As we watched the young ones
at work we could sense a growing solidarity and identification with the
voyage.
We made a number of changes in the rigging, based on our brief
experience in the Inland Sea. We unstepped the topmast, suspecting—quite
correctly—that we wouldn’t need it in winter in the North Pacific. We
made stormcovers for all the hatches and portholes—hoping we would never
have occasion to use them. Also, we installed additional pinrails on
either side of the mainmast, having quickly learned that our one bank of
pinrails was inadequate.
On one day only, October 18, I exercised my prerogative of declaring a
holiday. By coincidence, it also happened to be my birthday. We took
this occasion to visit Kotohira, where Kompira-san, the god of the sea
and patron of Japanese seamen, holds sway. We toiled up the thousand
steps to the shrine and paused at the summit to admire the magnificent
view, while Nick, Mickey and Moto went inside to pay their respects to
the priests and to inform them of our plans.
When they emerged they were smiling broadly. Kompira-san, they had been
assured, viewed their venture with favor and predicted a successful
outcome _if_—and this, to us, seemed to be the joker—we promised to
revisit the shrine at the conclusion of our trip. It seemed to me that a
sort of Delphic aura surrounded this promise, but the boys seemed
satisfied, and we were only too happy to agree.
After this single day of relaxation we began our final preparations in
earnest. One by one jobs and purchases were checked off, from a list
which originally contained several thousand items. On the day before our
departure Barbara’s most recent provisioning efforts were delivered to
the dock: a box of apples packed in bran; 100 pounds of potatoes; 70
pounds of onions; 40 of sweet potatoes, 5 of carrots, 6 of green beans;
and some two dozen heads of cabbage. All that day, Barbara and Jessica
sorted out vegetables, setting aside the doubtful ones for early eating,
while the rest were packed in wooden crates and lashed to the cabintop.
Also on that day they coated and packed some thirty dozen eggs with
oleo. That night we had scrambled eggs for supper.
That evening Nick and Mickey stayed in the forecastle writing stacks of
last-minute notes, while Barbara, Jessica, and Moto went out to dinner
with new-found Japanese friends. Only Ted—and already I was coming to
depend upon him more and more—seemed to share a realization of the
enormity of the step we were undertaking. Of his own accord he turned
down the dinner invitation and remained to help make a final inventory.
Together we made one more check of the entire list of Things to Do and
Get. The water supply had been topped up—300 gallons in five unconnected
tanks. Canned food for twelve weeks at normal consumption had been
divided into separate duffle sacks, a week’s rations to a sack, and
stowed beneath the floor of the ladies’ cabin. The fresh produce was
aboard and stowed securely. For ship lights, stove, and engine we had
120 gallons of kerosene.
There were ample replacements for all expendable and vulnerable items,
from flashlight batteries to sail needles, and safety equipment was
complete from flares to heliograph.