eyes! What luxury! No getting dressed, no going up on deck—and not a
speck of water in the foreground to muck it all up!”
There are times when I suspect that Barbara is just a landlubber at
heart.
In these surroundings our writing flourished and almost before we knew
it the Harrises’ car had arrived to take us back to the city with our
completed manuscripts. Here we rejoined Ted and Minnetta, who had also
managed to squeeze in an overland trip, to Jogjakarta, seat of Javanese
culture. There Ted, exploring the vast archaeological ruins in the
vicinity, had the experience of being accompanied by an armed bodyguard.
Being an American, he was obviously a millionaire and a rich prize for
kidnapers! (Little did they know!) At night, through the solicitude of
his hosts, the bodyguard had slept across the threshold of Ted’s room,
but whether such protection is conducive to better slumber Ted didn’t
reveal.
Our last few days were divided between laying in last-minute supplies
for our crossing of the Indian Ocean and accumulating memories of a
diffuse and very confusing place. Jakarta is vast, sprawling, and
amorphous. It is a city of beautiful residential areas with red-tiled
houses set well back from shaded streets—and of squalid kompiangs where
hundreds of families are herded together without sanitation, light, or
even air. For these crowded thousands, the canals that traverse the city
are laundry, swimming pool, public bath, social center—and privy.
From the deck of the _Phoenix_ we could see, in one direction, the
beautifully appointed yacht club where a constant procession of
limousines drew up to discharge members and their friends who came to
swim, sail, or water-ski, or just to relax with a drink on the shaded
veranda. In the other direction, just across the road, a procession of
another sort moved slowly from dawn to dark—a long line of tired, ragged
women, each waiting with a pail or a battered old kerosene tin to get
water at the single faucet which served as the sole drinking and bathing
supply for hundreds of people in the dock compound. It was a desperate
imbalance, which obviously could not endure for long.
Generally speaking, the officials in Indonesia were very helpful and
pleasant. One of them, Commander of the Navy, Jakarta, presented each of
us with an imposing document which called upon “Whom It May Concern” to
give us all possible aid and assistance. I flashed mine several times in
the course of my shopping expeditions, until an old-timer pointed out
that, in the present state of the government, there were almost as many
to whom a letter from Major Lie would be an invitation to shoot me as
there were those to honor it!
[Illustration:
A Voyage around the World—October 4, 1954–July 30, 1960
]
[Illustration:
_Werner Stoy_
Yacht _Phoenix_ in full sail off Hawaii, after maiden voyage from
Japan
]
[Illustration:
Drying Sails—Wellington, New Zealand
]
[Illustration:
The Reynolds Family
Ted, Jessica, Barbara, and Earle
]
[Illustration:
Buying scrap iron in Japan to use as inside ballast
]
[Illustration:
Shaping up the hull by eye and by hand
]
[Illustration:
A solemn little man, armed with an enormous saw....
]
[Illustration:
Full-size patterns for the ribs
]
[Illustration:
The skipper and his ship—even the ladder is curved
]
[Illustration:
Launching the _Phoenix_
The skipper, as new as his ship, makes a speech
]
[Illustration:
Bora Bora, French Oceania. Earle Reynolds with Schoolmaster Sanford;
in front of schoolhouse
]
[Illustration:
The skipper and Mi-ke
]
[Illustration:
Sextant shot on a quiet day
]
[Illustration:
A seasick sailor Mickey wishing he weren’t there
]
[Illustration:
Galley scene, April, 1955
]
[Illustration:
Jessica and her Journal
]
[Illustration:
The sea at her best
Lassoing albatross on a calm day
]
[Illustration:
The sea at her worst
A stormy day on the Tasman Sea
]
[Illustration:
Repairing sails, L. to R.: Moto, Mickey, and Nick in Sydney harbor
]
[Illustration:
_UPI_
Staten Island Marina. Ted lost no time heading for the joys of New
York
]
[Illustration:
_Judith Belisle_
Ted painting the figurehead, Rowayton, Conn.
]
[Illustration:
Jessica sewing on Girl Scout badges
]
[Illustration:
Safe in port
Captain Reynolds, Jessica, and Mrs. Reynolds
]
The highlight of our stay in Indonesia, and one for which we laid over a
few extra days, was the eleventh anniversary of the founding of the
republic, on August 17. The entire city was decorated for the occasion
with archways of greenery across the streets and parades and festivities
in every district. We had received invitations from President Sukarno
himself, beautifully embossed with the Indonesian emblem in gold, to
attend a program of dances at the palace that evening. It was a splendid
affair, staged on the floodlit grounds, beneath the high branches of
enormous trees. The variety and fascination of the dances, representing
many of the islands of the spread-out archipelago, kept us enthralled
until well after midnight.
On August 20 we set out once more, bound for the Keeling Cocos Islands,
740 miles out in the Indian Ocean. It was not by chance that we were
crossing this ocean in August and September, but because, as I always
tried to do, we had chosen the season when, according to the pilot
books, cyclones are “unknown.” As far as we were concerned, they could
remain that way. We had had our bellyful of typhoons in Japan and we
knew that by any other name—whether cyclones in the Indian, hurricanes
in the Atlantic, or typhoons in the Pacific—these tropical revolving
storms are nasty customers and nothing to fool around with.
Our first two or three days out of Jakarta were quiet, with little wind
and frequent rains. The second evening, after passing through the Sunda
Strait between Java and Sumatra, we could see the volcanic cone of
Krakatoa with a trailing cloud, like a plume of smoke, rising from its
tip. As we ate our supper on deck, Ted read aloud the encyclopedia
account of that tremendous eruption, source of such widespread
devastation, and Jessica eyed the now somnolent peak uneasily.
“Shouldn’t we turn on the engine and go a little faster till we get
past?” she suggested, in a whisper.
“Better not,” Ted whispered back. “The engine might wake it up!”
Jessica, who showed a regrettable tendency to “put down roots” whenever
she had been given shore leave, was finding it particularly hard to
leave the land—and Susan Harris—behind, but she was not the only one who
felt a continuing malaise.
From Barbara’s diary on the third day:
Everyone feels unaccountably under the weather. No active seasickness,
but depressed and broody. Hard to carry out resolutions for making
good use of my time at sea when each trip seems to involve this period
of adjustment after life ashore. By the time the incipient mal de mer
and the regrets of leave-taking have subsided, the pattern of lazy,
do-nothing days has already taken hold.
Part of the mood was caused, I am sure, because the expected trades
never settled down, the seas remained high, and the weather was vaguely
threatening. There was a sense of uneasy anticipation which could not be
pinned down by any instrument. This is not aftersight, as I noted in my
log that on the fourth night I felt so strangely ill at ease that I was
awake most of the night and during my early-morning watch Barbara, who
also was wakeful, came up to keep me company as she frequently did at
sea.
Barbara’s own diary continues to reflect the unusual atmosphere:
A miserable, rolling, wallowing night with alternate rains and high
seas, followed by dropping winds. Rolled violently in my bunk from
side to side and dozed fitfully. The swift dropping sensation as the
boat rolls down, down, goes against one’s most basic instinct, the
fear of falling. A queer shuddering seems to have entered the picture,
giving rise to night fancies involving a loosened rudder or working
keel bolts! What terrors can suggest themselves and become rapidly
convincing in the dark!
The day before we were due to sight the islands, Ted and I spent a
number of hours checking the charts and making our plans. The Cocos are
low islands, with an altitude of only 10 feet plus the height of the
palm trees. If the day continued overcast so that we could not get a
good position, we might have quite a job finding them. If the weather
was bad, we would have to decide whether to attempt an entrance, to lay
off until the weather improved, or give the islands a miss altogether,
which would mean continuing on to Rodrigues, 2,000 miles to the west.
That night the barometer began a slow, ominous fall. The next morning
the seas were high and the wind at gale force. It was time to heave to.
With the wind out of the southeast, we lay under mizzen alone, facing
south, with a westerly drift of about two knots. The barometer was by
now at about 1000. We were riding well, and I hoped that the worst would
soon be over and we could continue on our way to the shelter of the
lagoon at Keeling-Cocos.
But the worst had just begun. By the afternoon, the barometer fell
sharply to 991, and for the first time in our trip we were in conditions
that I could honestly call “storm.” The peak hit at 1400 with solid
rain, blown horizontal by the wind. I couldn’t see the mainmast from the
cockpit and the seas were enormous. The wind, especially at the height
of the gusts, had a strength and fury I had never known before, on land
or sea.
Faced with this, we at once changed our strategy. The last thing we now
wanted was to be anywhere near the reefs of Cocos, especially with night
coming on. What we needed was plenty of sea room. The wind by now was
out of the northeast and shifting to north. The current in this area,
according to the charts, was about 18 miles a day, generally northwest,
but there was no telling what the storm had done to the pattern. Our
estimated position, about 25 miles east of the islands, was too close
for comfort and, if we remained hove to, it was not at all impossible
that we might drift down onto the reefs.
In spite of the weather, I decided we must try to make some easting. We
set up the storm jib and mizzen and headed east, managing to make good
southeast at about four knots even under this scrap of canvas. It was a
very bad night and my log book at this point is almost illegible, for
the following reason:
1930. Tremendous dollop of water through afterhatch—wet
everything—including this book. Gallons and gallons—worst _inside_
wetting I’ve ever had—bunk a shambles.
Barbara’s diary was spared, however, and she describes the same incident
with a bit more gusto:
In the early evening, after we had started to sail, a _huge_ wave came
aboard and _poured_, steadily and by bucketsful, down the afterhatch
on top of poor Skip who had been trying to snatch a brief rest. He
landed standing in the middle of his cabin, looking as though he’d
just been in for a swim with his clothes on. Even the folded blankets
_under_ the mattress were soaked and his pillow and bolster were
hopeless. With the patience of Job, he unloaded everything; wiped and
blotted his books and instruments; remade his bed—using dry wool
blankets on top of the wet mattress; got into dry clothes, and climbed
back to continue his sleep. What a man!
Throughout the night I arose frequently and kept an anxious eye on the
barometer, which was now slowly rising. By morning it was up to 1004 and
our spirits were obviously climbing right along with it. There is a real
lift in knowing that the worst is over and I feel sure it is no accident
that we refer to spirits, as well as barometric pressure, as being
“high” or “low.”
I felt we had made enough easting during the night so we could afford to
give everyone a rest by again heaving to. This time we tried a new
maneuver—lying atry: that is, taking down _all_ sail and letting the
ship take its natural position. It seemed to make little difference to
the _Phoenix_, other than that she lay a little bit more in the trough.
We rode quite comfortably.
The seas and wind were down considerably, but this is a relative
statement as they were still very high. With a constant drizzle,
visibility was poor and there was no chance to get our position. I
estimated that we were about 35 miles southeast of the islands, but that
could be only the merest guess.
During the next day the skies began to clear, with the wind still strong
and gusty. We could now be sure that the worst was really over and began
to check our damage. It was not too bad: four or five clips had pulled
loose from the foresail; the main downhaul block was broken at the end
of the gaff; the mainsail had chafed through in one spot where ironwork
had rubbed against the furled sail. Otherwise we were in good shape.
That afternoon the mizzen flag halyard, which had worked loose and had
been flying straight out and beyond our reach for the past two days, at
last allowed itself to be captured from the deck. I took this as a sign
that we were ready to carry on, so we set sail again to the northwest
under mizzen and foresail. In a couple of hours we had the main repaired
and ready for action.
Now our problem was to find the islands. The next day we were able to
get a hasty sun shot. Barbara took the tiller while Ted and I went below
to plot it. Suddenly she let out a whoop.
“Land ho!”
“Where?”
“Off the port bow!”
“Right where it’s supposed to be!” said Ted, with satisfaction.
We felt a tremendous sense of triumph after four days of storm and
aimless drifting—to have been able to find our low island after all,
almost by dead reckoning alone.
As we approached it, however, we began to have doubts. It was too small.
And where were the other islands of the group, some twenty or so, which
encircled a reef-enclosed lagoon?
Moto went up the mast and came down to report no other islands visible.
Ted, unwilling to take another’s word, went up next, with binoculars,
and reported that he _thought_ he could see other islands beyond this
one.
Nick went up last and announced, in his positive and dogmatic way, that
there was no other island. By this time we were close enough to make
further debate unnecessary. What we had picked up was North Keeling, an
isolated, seldom-seen island 15 miles from our destination.
At least we knew where we were, which was a great relief, but we also
knew we had one more night at sea with a very hard beat ahead of us, for
the main group of islands was dead upwind.
That night Barbara challenged Jessica to a game of cribbage, but both of
them were rather subdued and in the midst of the game Jessica began to
drip quiet tears and soon decided to crawl into her bunk “to keep Manuia
warm.”
Ted and I were up most of the night, trying to plot a course that would
keep us within a day’s sail of the islands without getting too close to
the reef in the dark. The only navigational light mentioned on
Keeling-Cocos is a “sometime thing” hung in a palm tree, so there was no
question of coming in close and standing off and on as we had done on
other occasions.
All night, with passing squalls and a high and confused sea, we worked
our way south, but by daylight there was no land in sight. As soon as we
could we got a sun shot, hasty and unsatisfactory though it was, and
estimated our position as being south of the main group. We turned
north.
At 0800 I sent Mickey up the mast, giving a specific order this time
instead of asking for a volunteer. It was a very tough job and the first
time he had ever done it, but the rest of us had taken our turns and I
felt that, for the good of the ship, he must not shirk the assignment.
He came down, looking green—reported nothing in sight.
I frankly didn’t know where we were, in spite of having had a good
departure from North Keeling the day before. I decided to look for the
islands one more day and then, unless the weather cleared so we could
get a definitive position, to stop flirting with the low reefs of Cocos
and carry on for the high island of Rodrigues.
It would not, I knew, be a popular decision.
However, by 1100 the welcome sight of palm trees shimmered dead ahead
and during the afternoon, with the weather improving rapidly, we
gradually closed the islands and rounded to the north entrance.
Never did water look so calm and clear and _blue_! Never did a beach
gleam so white and welcoming! We were eleven days, a thousand miles of
sailing, and one humdinger of a storm out of Java and very, very happy
to be here.
11 ACROSS THE INDIAN OCEAN:
COCOS TO DURBAN
“You have seen people of all sorts. Makes my mouth water....”
The Keeling-Cocos Islands are the perfect model of a South Seas atoll.
About twenty small, low-lying islets, of coral and sand topped with palm
trees, form an oval about a lagoon of some 5 by 10 miles. Only three of
the islands are inhabited: Direction Island, off which we had dropped
anchor, which exists solely for the purpose of operating the British
Cable and Wireless establishment; West Island, five miles away across
the lagoon, where a colony of some 200 Australians maintains the Qantas
airstrip and meteorological station; and Home Island, where some 500
natives live under the benign but feudal patronage of the Clunies-Ross
family, hereditary owners of all the Keeling-Cocos Islands since the
days of Queen Victoria.
During our ten days’ stay we were to learn more of the rather intricate
relationships and frictions between these three groups. At the moment,
however, we were just happy to have arrived.
On shore we could see a bustle of activity. Figures dashed here and
there, into buildings and out again, but nothing constructive seemed to
happen. At last a small native boat was launched and started out under
sail, bringing Chris Bartlett, manager of C. & W., some half dozen of
his group, and a couple of native boatmen.
As we helped him over the side, Mr. Bartlett’s first words were “Well,
how did you like the cyclone?”
This was the first time the word had been spoken aloud. I had secretly
_thought_ that this storm bore all the earmarks of a typical Indian
Ocean cyclone but had pushed the idea aside, because of course they just
didn’t occur at this season!
Jessica’s eyes grew round. “Was it really a cyclone?” she breathed.
“It certainly was!” Mr. Bartlett assured her. He handed us a copy of a
cablegram he had received from Perth, Australia:
28/8/56. HEREWITH CYCLONE WARNING AREA
AFFECTED LATITUDE 10 AND 25 LONGITUDE 90 AND
105 CENTRE BELOW 985 MILLIBARS MOVEMENT
INDEFINITE FORCE 10 TO 12 WINDS WITHIN 70 MILES
Jessica eagerly took the cable and rushed below to record the momentous
fact in her Journal. Later, at the weather station, we were given more
detail. Except for one other ship, on the edge of the disturbance, West
Island and the _Phoenix_ had been the only ones in a position to report
the out-of-season cyclone. Several hundred miles to the south the
freighter _Hollywood_ had reported rough seas, confused swell, and a
barometer of 1003. Mr. Lardi, meteorologist at Qantas, showed us all
their records and was delighted when I turned over the data from my log
so that he could round out the picture. The eye of the cyclone had
passed between the _Phoenix_ and the islands, coming down out of the
northeast. At the height of the storm, the Qantas rain gauge measured
seven inches in 75 minutes, and the barometer dropped to 988 millibars.
Peak winds were over 70 knots, or almost 80 miles an hour.
Barely within cyclone range but, as Jessica pointed out, “It was a
_real_ cyclone, even if it was a little one—just the way even a _baby_
dragon would be a real dragon!” Even with my dull adult mind I was able
to follow her logic.
Locally, damage had been considerable. All the powerboats in the lagoon
had been sunk or put out of commission—an embarrassing circumstance for
the Air and Sea Rescue Service. Both power and water had failed on West
Island; a number of houses were damaged, and several score palm trees
were blown down or decapitated. The roof of the passenger terminal at
the airstrip had been blown away. The schoolhouse was completely
demolished, the walls knocked down, and even the books blown away. Only
the blackboard had been left unharmed but this, as the schoolmaster put
it, had been “well and truly washed.” There were no serious injuries.
The Keeling-Cocos have one distinction which will always stand out in
our minds: never have so many parties been given so often by so few. Any
occasion, it seemed, was sufficient reason for a whingding: the 21st
birthday of one of the C. & W. “Exiles,” the arrival of a yacht, the
miracle of having survived a cyclone—or “just because it’s Thursday, you
know.”
Parties to welcome visiting yachts are rather rare, to judge from the
visitors’ book in the C. & W. office. I counted only five yachts, from
1952 until the arrival of the _Phoenix_ in 1956.
Supply ships, we were told, came almost as rarely and the Cable and
Wireless people, who must order everything out of Singapore, have to
provision almost as far in advance as we of the _Phoenix_. Qantas
employees, on the other hand, were receiving fresh fruits and vegetables
and frozen meats by air twice a month, which made for a certain amount
of envy on the part of the Exiles, who had to “make do with tinned
goods.”
On the other hand, the Australians on West Island were envious of the
luxurious standard of living enjoyed by C. & W., who could import Malay
help from the Straits Settlements, a privilege Qantas did not accord to
its employees, in conformity with the “whites only” policy of Australia.
Furthermore, both groups felt a certain resentment against the
benevolent dictatorship of John Clunies-Ross, from whom both Direction
and West Islands were leased, because he would allow none of his natives
to work for, or even to visit, the installations from which he derived
profit.
It was also forbidden to set foot on Home Island, except by express
invitation, which was rarely forthcoming. In the case of the
Australians, in the wake of some unspecified incident, such an
invitation was categorically denied. There was, however, some social
interchange between Clunies-Ross and the C. & W. personnel, another
cause for complaint.
As visitors, we were sought after by all three camps and exposed to all
three points of view. We were careful not to take sides, but it did seem
to us pitiful that, in such a remote and potentially peaceful paradise
as Cocos, it was not possible to escape the discord and the rivalries of
the outside world.
John Clunies-Ross and his wife were in England at the time of our visit,
but we spent a most interesting day on Home Island at the invitation of
the Keegans, caretakers and baby-sitters-in-residence to two-year-old
Linda, the crown princess of the Cocos.
The natives of Home Island, so far as we could tell from a superficial
visit, were happy, healthy, and content, although they are entirely
dependent upon the Clunies-Ross family for employment and subsistence.
All necessities are provided, so that their nominal wages for working in
the coconut plantations are needed only for such individual luxuries as
may be desired from the local store. The predominant religion is Muslim
and no attempt has been made to convert them. On the contrary, they took
great pride in showing us a newly completed mosque, simple but
attractive, which had been built to supplement an earlier one. All of
the houses were well built and in good repair, but the older buildings
are gradually being replaced with modern units with concrete floors and
fluorescent lighting.
Little “Princess” Linda accompanied us on our tour in her royal carriage
(pram, that is), standing up and waving in semi-regal fashion to her
subjects. Crowds followed us wherever we went, whether out of devotion
to their blonde, blue-eyed princess or out of curiosity over the
presence of a strange family, it was hard to say. Certainly, they seemed
genuinely happy and if, as we were told, they are being “ruthlessly
exploited,” they don’t seem to be aware of it.