Chapter VI: Part 6

By evening we were well down the coast and had about decided to pay a visit to Christchurch, as long as we were in the neighborhood, when the evening weather forecast announced a strong southerly in Cook Strait. That was what we had been waiting for, so we put about. The breeze swung to the south, at first tentatively polite and then rudely boisterous, and we tore back up the coast, staying well offshore.

When taking our sun shots the next morning we suddenly realized that our latitude was now outside the range of the H.O. 214 navigation tables we had on board. Ted, in no way disturbed by this discovery, extrapolated the data necessary to work out our position. That afternoon the entrance to beautiful Wellington harbor rose out of the mists, dead ahead. At 1800 we were met by the pilot boat and escorted to a comfortable, if somewhat public, berth at Queen’s Wharf, five minutes from the center of downtown Wellington.

Our first visitor was Bill McQueen, an enthusiastic young chap from the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, who had spotted us through glasses as we entered the harbor. Anything he could do for us? Any shopping? Perhaps we’d like him to run up and bring us a few pies, since it’s well past teatime? (A pie, in New Zealandese, is a delicious and filling meat-and-vegetable concoction, a meal in itself.) We accepted the offer gratefully.

While he was away, our next visitors arrived: Commodore Tomkies and Vice-Commodore Catley, also of the yacht club. They, too, offered hot pies, and were a bit chagrined to learn that one of the youngsters had beaten them to it. However—would any of us care to come up to the house later for hot baths and supper? We would? First rate! Someone would be down to pick up the lot of us at eight o’clock.

The hot pies arrived, two apiece, fragrant and delicious. Handing over honorary guest cards to all of us, our new friends of the yacht club took their leave and we retired below to enjoy our pies. It was nice to be alone for a few moments, to sort out our impressions. Suddenly Jessica, curled up on the seat box by her desk, glanced out the starboard porthole and gave a gasp.

“There are _hundreds_ of _people_ up there on the dock—watching every bite I take!”

“It is rather public,” Ted agreed, “but you can always close your eyes.”

Our central location was both an advantage, for shopping, and a disadvantage. Each day, during the noon hour, some two or three hundred workers were decanted from nearby offices and all of them wandered down to look us over and comment on our activities while they stood about drinking beer and eating fish and chips. Frequently, I’m sure, they had no idea how their voices carried.

“Do they have to crawl around on their hands and knees?” we heard one citizen demand, eying the two feet of cabin that is raised above deck level.

“They came all the way from Hiroshima,” a man explained to his companion. Obviously he had read the newspaper.

The girl beside him let out a little cry as she spotted our bobtailed Mi-ke sleeping in the furled mainsail. “Oh, look at the poor little pussycat!” she crooned. “It must have lost its tail in the atom bomb!”

In Wellington we said good-bye at last to a quiet, but not particularly attractive, deck passenger—the _gempylus_, or snake mackerel, that we had caught and preserved on our passage from Hilo to Papeete. We had had some correspondence with Dr. Falla, of the Wellington Museum, and now we turned our specimen over to him with accompanying newspaper fanfare. “SNAKE MACKEREL ARRIVES!” proclaimed headlines on the front page and we were reminded again of how little it takes to titillate the reading interest of so remote a country as New Zealand. Accompanying the article was a picture of our unprepossessing-looking creature, curled into a tight U-shape, just as it had solidified in the can. It was obvious that it would need considerable expert attention to restore color and natural form before it would be ready for display.

Meanwhile, we were making preparations for our crossing of the Tasman, mostly a matter of laying in provisions, as we had given the ship a thorough overhaul in Auckland. Another boathiker was signed on for this passage: Peter Callander, a sensitive and intelligent young Britisher who was looking for deep-sea cruising experience and promised to be an enjoyable companion for Ted and a help to Barbara.

We sailed on March 5, with the promise of a southerly to push us through the strait, a promise that was not kept. Cook Strait had fought us coming in and it fought us going out. Unable to make progress against a fresh northerly and heavy seas, we crossed the strait and I checked the charts for a likely anchorage along the coast of South Island. There was a choice of two, but one was suspiciously empty of soundings, so I elected to backtrack ten miles downwind to a better-marked anchorage, Weary Bay. Once again my fellow crew members made it obvious from their attitudes that they felt I was being overcautious, and when I insisted on setting an anchor watch there was even more audible dissent.

I think we were all a little jittery about the passage, particularly as we had only recently been told, in graphic detail, about two yachts that had been lost, with all their crews, in the course of a race across the strait only the year before. We lay uneasily at anchor and even though I had set an anchor watch, my rest was disturbed. I was more than annoyed, therefore, when I found Mickey sound asleep in his bunk during the period of his watch. He apologized profusely, and promised it would never happen again.

Once again the ever-recurring dilemma presented itself. The only sensible thing to do with a delinquent or mutinous crew member would be to fire him, for the safety of the ship. But how could I fire Mickey when I hadn’t hired him in the first place? To sever our relationship now would mean putting back to Wellington and waiting for an indefinite period until passage could be arranged for him to Japan. On the other hand, to make it clear that I intended to terminate the association as soon as we reached Sydney would certainly do nothing to make for smooth crew relationships on the potentially difficult crossing of the Tasman. Again I compromised with my better judgment, accepted Mickey’s apology, and hoped that all would work out for the best. This solution was not an easy one for me, personally, as I am not a patient man by nature nor do I take kindly to mutiny. However, I was learning patience, a lesson I sorely needed.

The south wind finally arrived in the early morning and we began to work our way through the strait. By nightfall we had recovered our lost ground and made good progress, but we found the going very tricky at the northern end, where the currents were strong and unpredictable. It was another day before we had made a safe offing, and I had a deeper appreciation of the passages in Cook’s Journal in which he describes his own difficulties in this area, which came near to wrecking his ship.

Once again, after a wistful looking backward to friends left behind and things undone, we settled into the timeless routines of life afloat, with Peter to continue the galley boy arrangement that meant so much to our cook. It was good to have leisure to relax, to get acquainted with one another again, and to sort out our impressions of the country we had just left before plunging into the whirl of the one that lay ahead.

We were six days out before we had our first taste of “Tasman weather.” A front passed, with its sudden squall, and ripped out our foresail sheet. We had a busy half hour before we got all secure and then I made one of my rather rare radiotelephone contacts, reporting to the Wellington weather station the passage of the front. I had a very good contact.

Two days later, in the predawn darkness, Peter called me sharply. In an instant I was on deck.

“Someone just shot a flare—off the port quarter. A green flare.”

Together we watched for some time, but the signal was not repeated. As Peter described it, he had seen a greenish glow light up the white of the mizzenmast and had turned in time to see the tail end of the rocket’s flight and the star shower. I took a bearing, which was directly upwind of us, and attempted to report to Wellington by radio. This time, however, I was unable to raise them.

Whether it was an actual flare, a natural phenomenon, or perhaps a flying saucer—we had no way of knowing, but we tacked our way back, under power and sail. We cruised the area all day, with a man at the masthead, but found nothing. At nightfall we added the incident to our backlog of mysteries of the sea and set the course again for Sydney.

The next day we spoke the _Waitaki_, Union Steamship freighter bound for New Zealand, and reported the sighting and the approximate position. We have never heard any more about it.

On the thirteenth day the Tasman gave us another sample of its dirtier side. The barometer had been dropping slowly for two days and, at 0730, with a quick shift of wind to the south and a torrential rain, the seas and wind began to rise. By evening, with wind force 7–8, we took a reef in the main, and thereafter rode easily. According to radio reports, we were caught in the tail end of a cyclone centering over Lord Howe Island, north of us.

The next day was squally, with overcast skies, but with occasional fleeting glimpses of a wan sun. I kept a sextant to hand all morning, and near noon Ted and I were lucky enough to get two quick shots of the sun, so that we could be reasonably satisfied of our position. Late that afternoon we saw a line on the horizon that gradually hardened into land, and by dark we were able to identify Barranjoey Light, twenty miles up the coast from Sydney Heads.

The wind was now dead against us, so we tacked down the coast all night. The breeze and seas were dropping rapidly, and by 0600, with North Head in sight, we were becalmed between short bursts of mild rain squalls. Taking advantage of each flurry, we gradually closed the heads and went in under both sail and power.

It was good to drop anchor in the first likely-looking spot, Watson Bay, and there, with our Q-flag flying, we waited for the officials to arrive. The port doctor quickly gave us pratique, the immigration officer glanced at our visas and stamped our passports—and H.M. Customs took over. He was courteous and affable, but his duty was to guide us through the largest and most formidable assortment of documents and manifests that we had ever seen. By the time we had completed everything we were quite exhausted and ready for the more enjoyable aspects of arrival to begin.

After the officials had left, we sat on deck, ate a leisurely if belated lunch, enjoyed the splendid view—and felt a little bit deflated. We had been cleared—yes, but we had no idea of where to go next or what to do. Sydney’s harbor is so vast, her anchorages so numerous, her geography so unknown that we felt intimidated. We longed for someone to come and take us by the hand.

The afternoon wore on and still we were unmolested. No one on the shore seemed so much as to glance in our direction. A few yachts and launches passed at a distance, but we might have been a part of the permanent view for all the attention we got. We commented on how nice and peaceful it all was, how attractive the red roofs, how big and clean the city. But Jessica summed up our unspoken feelings when she demanded, at last, “Where _is_ everybody?”

“This is a big city, honey,” Barbara explained carefully, “the biggest we’ve visited. It’s a seaport, with hundreds of ships coming and going all the time. We can’t expect them to pay much attention to us.”

Suddenly I realized that she was right. We’re spoiled, I told myself, that’s our trouble. Okay, so we’ve just crossed the Tasman Sea of terrible repute, and we did it the hard way, direct from Wellington. So what do we expect—a medal? Nobody asked us to do it, nobody invited us to come. We complain about the fuss and furor of greetings, the invasion of our privacy by the press, the curiosity of dockside crowds, but when we are paid no attention at all we pout.

I went below and started checking the harbor chart for a likely anchorage, while Ted and Barbara hunted through the accounts of other yachtsmen to see what they had done about Sydney.

You’re on your own, I reminded myself sternly. Nobody is going to meet us, nobody is going to greet us. Sydney is just a great, big, impersonal city and, as they say down under, the inhabitants couldn’t care less.

A motorboat pulled alongside. “Ahoy, _Phoenix_!” sang out a cheery voice. “Welcome to Sydney! We’ve been watching for you!”

“You _have_?” unbelievingly.

“Too right! We’re from the Cruising Club of Australia. Throw us a line!”

“A line?”

“Too right! We’ll tow you over to your moorings.”

“Okay!” It was wonderful to turn over decisions to someone else, someone who knew his way around.

“We’ve been saving a spot for you, right off the clubhouse in Rushcutter’s Bay. We only just heard you’d arrived—sorry if you’ve been kept waiting. And, by the way—we have a couple of gentlemen from the press who asked to come along. All right if they come aboard?”

“Sure—come ahead! Boys, throw them a line!” And the fun began.

8 —AND BACK UP:
THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

“Better men than we had come to grief....”

Sydney, like most cities, is big, bustling, and impersonal, but it has its own atmosphere and flair. The hills, covered with typically red-roofed houses; the extensive harbor, with its multitude of bays and sheltered coves, dominated by the magnificent arching bridge that is Sydney’s pride; the breezy friendliness of the people—all these give Sydney a unique character.

Our own location, in quiet Rushcutter’s Bay, less than fifteen minutes by bus from the heart of the city, was as lovely a spot as one could hope to find in or near a metropolis. Through the kindness of Mr. Packer, editor of the Sydney _Telegraph_, whom we had met first in Honolulu, a company car was put at our disposal during our entire stay but, due to the trauma of driving on the left—and a vague fear of getting involved in some accident that could wipe out our entire savings—we depended mostly for transportation upon the scarlet double-decker buses that moved majestically through the streets.

One of the disappointing realities of travel is the impossibility of ever seeing as much of any country as one had hoped to do, and Australia was no exception. We had come armed with addresses: friends who had worked with me at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan; the Japanese wives of Australian servicemen whom Barbara had taught in Kure. All of them had said, cheerfully, when we parted: “See you when you get to Australia!” But now we discovered how widely scattered these friends were and how impossible to see them all. A few of the Japanese brides lived in or near Sydney, and through them Barbara was able to get news of many more, but the two friends Jessica had most looked forward to seeing lived near Melbourne and we had no time to sail farther south.

At last it was decided that Barbara and Jessica would travel overland to Melbourne for a short holiday from boatkeeping. Barbara stayed only a few days, long enough to fall completely under the spell of the city, which was in a fever of preparation for the Olympic Games, but Jessica was so delighted to be with Carol Exton, whom she had known when we first went out to Japan, and Clare Davis, the pen pal whose father we had first met in Tahiti, that we didn’t have the heart to tear her away while both families were urging extended hospitality. As a result, Jessica stayed on for the better part of two weeks in the army town of Puckapunyal and went with Carol to the dependent school, where she learned to figure in pounds, shillings, and pence. Then she switched families for a visit with Clare in Melbourne. By the time she rejoined us she was talking like a “proper Aussie,” throwing around such expressions as “beaut,” “terribly posh,” “it’s a dill” (meaning no good or stupid), or “let’s have a gig”—in Yankee talk, “let me see.” In addition, she had persuaded the Davises to let Clare sail with us up to the Great Barrier Reef—and now all she had to do was convince the Skipper that we needed a subdeb hitchhiker for a change. Since Clare’s parents were quite willing to pay for her to return by air from one of the northern Queensland ports before we set off for Indonesia, I was more than willing. One of the inevitable drawbacks to such a trip as ours is the lack of companionship for those who are under age. Ted and Jessica got along far better than most brothers and sisters with a five-year gap in their ages—but the gap was there. And although Barbara had found an amazing number of interests, confidences, and giggles that she and Jessica could share, we knew that even the best mother-daughter relationship is no substitute for an intimate of one’s own age.

At every port there are dozens of things on the list of Things to Do and Things to Buy. Sydney was no exception. Again we hauled out and gave the _Phoenix_ her biannual face lifting, using the Cruising Club’s slip. I arranged, at last, to replace the faulty chain plates that had been much on my mind for a reason which is obvious: there are two things that _must not_ fail on a seagoing yacht—the masts and the rudder. The chain plates hold the shrouds that support the mast. Period.

I laid in a supply of essential navigation aids for the next stage of our trip—pilot books, light lists, tide tables, and nearly a hundred charts, enough to get us to Durban, South Africa. As was always the case, many of the charts were for places we did not expect to visit, but plans have a way of changing—or of being changed—as one goes along, due to weather conditions, local advice, or dire necessity. Not too long before us, a yacht bound for Australia had been blown off course in a storm and had tried to put in to Lord Howe Island—without a chart. It had ended up on a reef, with the vessel a total loss.

There were the usual visas to arrange for, too. South African officials raised no objections, in spite of their well-known color bar, and even assured me that Japanese citizens were considered “European.”

The very young fellow at the Indonesian Consulate, however, was hesitant.

“Just why do you wish to visit my country, sir?” he asked politely.

I had a sudden hunch that the usual reasons would not be enough. It is one thing to fly to Jakarta, like any self-respecting tourist, there to follow the beaten track on conducted tours before flying home again—having “seen” Java. It is quite another to request permission to _sail_ in, to poke around in ports where there are no other foreigners and no liking for them, possibly to get oneself in a jam and even create an international incident. (Only recently, exactly that did happen, the yacht ended up a wreck and the yachtsman landed in jail.)

I reminded myself that, once again, we were going against all local advice in going to Indonesia at all. “Give the whole bloody place a miss!” was the way one recently returned Aussie phrased it. “They’re insolent puppies, the whole bloody lot of them. Threw me passport right on the floor, they did, and made me pick it up myself!” But we had heard similar unfavorable comments about almost every port on our itinerary—and since our informant had struck me as rather an “insolent puppy” himself, we reserved judgment.

The young Indonesian was waiting, not at all insolently, for my reply.

“The main reason we want to go is because Indonesia is a young republic. You won your independence as we did, by revolution, but you’re still having a lot of problems to face and the going is hard. Back in the United States, we’re not young and eager any more—we’ve forgotten our beginnings. We’d like to see how it’s going with you—and how you’re meeting your problems. And we’d like to be in Indonesia on August seventeenth to help celebrate your eleventh birthday.”

There was a long pause. Then the young man said, “Could you come back in two weeks?”

I could and did, to be handed a visa for every member of our _Phoenix_ party, without qualifications. Across the visas was written, boldly, “Guests of Indonesia.” There was no charge.

While in Sydney, I bought an additional dinghy, a flat little skiff that was promptly christened Flattypus. I also added a “gadget,” a small, kerosene-burning refrigerator. It seemed to work beautifully—in port, at least—and Barbara was ecstatic. Knowing who would have to service it for the rest of its natural life, I withheld my enthusiasm, but I had to admit that it cooled the beer nicely and hoped that happy condition would continue.

By late April (corresponding to October in the Northern Hemisphere) the weather was getting nippy and we accelerated our preparations for departure. Once again, Barbara drew up her commissioning list, making adjustments according to whatever “tinned goods” and staples were available. By now, she was quite an expert in estimating our needs for weeks or even months at a time, and the provisions she laid in now would be required to carry us all the way to Durban—an eight to nine months’ supply. Even in English-speaking countries, however, it is not always easy to find what one needs. Baked beans and spaghetti, for instance, were sold in tiny cans like potted meats and were used in much the same way—for sandwiches. And canned food for cats was practically unheard of.

“Cat food—in tins?” one wholesaler repeated incredulously. “Now, why don’t you just nip down to the butchery and ask for a tuppenny-’orth of scraps?”

When we sailed from Sydney it was our plan to make no stops until within the Great Barrier Reef, almost a thousand miles to the north. We all looked forward to a restful period at sea to recover from the gradually accelerating pace of life ashore which inevitably becomes frenetic as departure nears. Especially after a prolonged stay in port, the last few days are a rat race, complete with “little lists” and a constant, gnawing worry lest something vital may be overlooked—either socially or from a subsistence point of view. Have all thank-you’s been said—or written? All engagements remembered and kept? All necessary supplies purchased—and _delivered_? Human nature being what it is, there are always a number of items we tentatively check off because someone or other has said, helpfully, “Oh, I can get that for you wholesale—just leave it to me!” or “I’ve dozens of those lying around, I’ll bring you all you can use.” But, as sailing day approaches, where are they? If it is an important, but expensive, item, you find yourself torn between laying out money for it unnecessarily or running the risk of sailing without it.

As departure draws near, the visitors increase, as do the number of invitations, until at last every waking minute of every day is filled and only the nights are left for worrying over things-to-be-done and things-to-be-bought. In the end there is a real sense of relief when we shove off and know there will be no more chance callers, no more absolutely necessary places to go or things to see, and no temptation to rush downtown for one last vital item.

Naturally, there is never any way of knowing whether a given trip will be pleasant or not. We usually have some control over the first day or two, in that we can wait for a favorable weather forecast or a fair wind, but after that it’s anybody’s guess.

On our run up the east of Australia we had generally good luck and racked up an auspicious record of 600 miles in the first five days, which was not bad against the current and in variable winds. Young Clare, who had never been away from home before _or_ on a ship, was both homesick and seasick for the first few days, but she was a game sport. Gradually she perked up, and before long she and Jessica fell into an easy routine of schoolwork and play in a most congenial vein.

We all joined in studying the geography and history of the areas and towns we passed, for most of the time we were in sight of land and able to get a good idea of the vastness and, in the northern reaches, the desolation of the continent. Even Clare was properly impressed that it took the better part of four days to leave New South Wales behind—one of the smallest of Australia’s seven states. As Jessica observed, “Texas would certainly have its nose put out of joint down under!”

By day we passed mile after mile of white sand beaches, backed by rolling hills and occasional sharp, mountainous profiles. By night we could spot our position at any given time with the help of well-marked coastal lighthouses and beacons that made coastal cruising a pleasure.

On May 8 we entered the wide southern mouth of the Great Barrier Reef. Here the seas were calm, as quiet as any we have ever experienced, yet we were twenty miles offshore and well out of sight of land. The wind died away and for the next two days, by going absolutely nowhere, we managed to get back to our usual long-term average of four knots. Actually, we were drifting slowly northward, for here the current goes up the coast rather than down as it had to the south.

By May 10 we could see the five high islands of the Percy group, with grassy, wooded slopes, brilliant white beaches, and inviting bays. Jessica and Clare, who had laboriously made a pirate flag, complete with skull and crossbones, wanted to land and take over an uninhabited island. Barbara, too, had land fever and the islands looked so tempting that we yielded to their lure. Picking one from the charts at random, we cast anchor in a lovely bay off the west side of Middle Island.

A mile away, Pine Islet has a lighthouse and, through the binoculars, we could see a number of houses grouped about it. On Middle Percy, however, the only sign of civilization was an apparently deserted shack set well back from the beach with a big sign: TELEPHONE. This, we assumed, was connected in some way with the lighthouse settlement.

The surf was too high to carry four in Flattypus, so I rowed Barbara ashore first, promising to return for the excited girls. First, however, I decided to take a look at the shack. Inside was the telephone, looking as tempting as Alice’s cake marked: “Eat me!” How could I resist following the directions: “Wind crank and lift handset.”

At once I found myself talking to the sole family on the island, a Canadian sister and two brothers who lived high in the interior. They knew all about the _Phoenix_, as soon as I mentioned my name, having read my series of articles in the _Saturday Evening Post_.

At their invitation, and under the guidance of Claude and Percy White, who came down to the shore to meet us, we all trooped up to the White home, a good stiff hike. There we were able to send off a message of reassurance to Clare’s parents by the interesting expedient of flashing a message in Morse to the lighthouse of Pine Islet, from whence it was relayed by radio to Mackay on the mainland and thence overland to Melbourne!

This taken care of, we settled down to enjoy three days of wonderful hospitality, climaxed by a wild-goat hunt—or I might say a wild wild-goat hunt—which ended successfully with a barbecue on the beach.

Now began a new and delightful stage in our travels, island hopping, with a different anchorage every night. Our first call after the Percy Islands was at Lindeman, a resort island where Clare’s father “shouted us” by means of a cable to the management instructing them to entertain the entire crew of the _Phoenix_ in style. They did, and Clare took great pleasure in her role as hostess at a sumptuous dinner in the hotel.

From Lindeman we made our way gradually north, with occasional stops to explore scattered and mostly uninhabited islands. Barbara, especially, took great pleasure in “fossicking” on the reefs at low tide and invariably returned to the _Phoenix_ with pailfuls of live shells which we had no convenient way of cleaning while underway, since the approved method is to bury them for a week or two and allow ants and nature to do the job. As a result, we sailed always with a more or less pervasive odor of decaying animal life and, try as she would to keep her trophies downwind of our living quarters, she insists that many of them were given the deep-six by unnamed members of the crew.

Our next major stop was Townsville, on the mainland, where we spent four days, catching up on baths, laundry, fresh vegetables, and the news of mutual friends.

A day or two beyond Townsville we made one of our most interesting stops in the Barrier Reef, at Great Palm Island, the largest aboriginal settlement in Queensland. Great Palm is strictly _not_ for the tourist. There are no accommodations for overnight guests and no public services. Only those who, like ourselves, come in by boat and are self-sufficient—and who are able to obtain the permission of the superintendent—are allowed to remain after dark.

During our stay at Great Palm, we gave an evening of slides and movies in the outdoor theater, a program which was an outstanding success. For the first time, we ran the movies we had taken of the Bastille Day fete in Tahiti and the response of the Australian aborigines to the Tahitian belles and their vibrant hula was such that we had to run that particular reel three times! I made a special trip out to the _Phoenix_ at anchor to bring back the slit drum from Uturoa and the cowrie-trimmed grass skirts from Bora Bora, and these exhibits were passed around and tried out by every man, woman, and child in the settlement, to the accompaniment of much giggling and many gibes.

By the way of return, the native population put on a “corraboree” for our benefit. A great deal of care and elaborate preparation had gone into the costuming and make-up of the aborigines, whose black faces, ribs, arms, and pipestem legs were outlined in strange patterns of white paint. At the last minute, however, and when all was in readiness for the dance, it seemed that a native drum and drummer were not to be found. A plea for one, repeated several times over the loud speaker, finally turned up a volunteer who used, as his drum, that universal instrument—an empty kerosene tin!

From Great Palm Island to Cairns, the next mainland port on our itinerary, was only a day’s sail. My log notes that the seas were short and choppy after we had left the shelter of the island and we rolled considerably with the resultant sound of numerous crashes from below, “particularly,” as I remark smugly, “in the ladies’ cabin.” A couple of weeks of quiet sailing, plus sheltered anchorages, had made us all a bit careless in stowing.

We reached the outer lights of Cairns channel at 2:30 in the morning, but I refused to transit the narrow passage, five miles long, until daylight, especially with a balky engine. Again, my possibly overcautious decision to anchor and wait out the night was at odds with the ideas of my Japanese companions, who were all for going right on in. They grumbled a bit about waiting, and even more over my insistence on the ever-unpopular anchor watch, but I remained adamant. The _Phoenix_, with 30 tons displacement and a 25-horsepower engine (18 when using kerosene), is sluggish under power and coming in to a strange anchorage is always tense under the best of conditions. Channel markers, docks, and shore lines may be well marked on the charts, but neither chart nor pilot book can give advice about such imponderables as weather, poor visibility, the movements of shipping, or the vagaries of our own engine.

Since I was engineer as well as skipper, and since the engine is under the floor of the after cabin with no remote controls, coming in to a dock or mooring demanded a high degree of cooperation between the lookout forward, the man at the tiller, and myself.

The next morning, with the wind dead ahead, and the engine still acting up, we limped down the long corridor to town, stopping once to make a quick spark plug change. I think that even Nick was grateful for good visibility as he helped pick out and guide us past the intricate system of buoys that marked the channel.

As we entered the harbor we had another of those experiences which can only sound routine in the telling but was nerve-racking in the extreme. In Cairns there was a solid line of docks and warehouses along the shore to starboard, but nothing to indicate where we should go. Barely crawling, we moved down the channel, scanning the land. At last we saw a man in uniform emerge from one of the buildings. Waving a paper in one hand, he signaled to us to come in. I dived down the afterhatch, put the engine in reverse, ordered the helmsman to put the tiller over, and we began to maneuver our way alongside the dock. The current was strong, but we finally succeeded in bringing our boat up neatly, almost abeam of the uniformed official.

Moto made ready to throw a line.

_“Phoenix?”_ The official demanded. At my affirmative, he leaned over and handed me a letter. For Jessica. No greeting. No word of explanation. Just a letter.

I shoved it into my pocket while I prepared to cut the engine and make fast to the dock.

“You can’t tie up here!” the official told us, shocked. “This is the main dock!”

“Where then?” I asked.

He looked amazed and nonplused. At last he suggested that we had “best move right on down.” He gestured down the harbor into infinity.

I put the engine in gear once more and we headed away from the dock and on up the channel. At last, almost at the end of the harbor, we found an old jetty that seemed to be sufficiently out of anyone’s way. A couple of bystanders helped us come alongside, but we had barely made the lines fast and put the engine to bed when our friend the official arrived, panting.

“You’ll have to move on back,” he told us. “You can tie up where you first came in, for a few hours. Then you’ll have to move along, because there’s a big ship coming in.”

He also said we would be charged “regular docking rates” while there. I was a little annoyed by then and retorted that, if this were the case, I would have to charge admission to come aboard the _Phoenix_. (I had a wonderful precedent for that action: old Joshua Slocum himself did it, when officials tried to gouge him.)

After we had moved back to our original spot, I visited the dockmaster, who decided that if other ports in Australia had not charged the _Phoenix_ a docking fee, neither would Cairns. I then graciously invited him to come aboard at any time—no charge. He hardly seemed to know what to do with a yacht, and was concerned because we might interfere with the berthing of two big ships that were due in at the same time. I assured him that if they came close enough to interfere with us, they would be too dangerously close to each other. He finally agreed to permit us to remain where we were, which would put us right between them. And so it worked out very nicely—our forward lines shared the same bollard with the after lines of _Manunda_, while our after lines kept company with the bowlines of _Taiping_.

We spent ten days at Cairns, which was Clare’s last port of call before flying home to her family. Just before leaving us, she confessed that she had been “a little bit scared” when she started off with an unknown family—the first Americans she had ever known.

“I’d heard a lot about Yankees,” she admitted, “and I just didn’t know _what_ you’d be like.”

“What do you think about Yankees now?” Ted asked her teasingly.

Clare almost stammered in her eagerness to reassure us. “Oh!” she cried. “I’d like you now even if you were French or Turquoise!”

We made several trips into the magnificent Atherton tablelands of the interior, where dense jungle, crater lakes, rolling grassland, giant anthills and, everywhere, the typical dusty gray-green of the ever-present eucalyptus trees gave us a different feeling for the Australian scene. It was frustrating to be unable to get even farther from the seacoast, to experience the peculiar isolation and beauty of the “outback” and the renowned hospitality of those who live there.

During this stopover we had another flare-up of crew trouble, or rather, a lot of suppressed minor grievances had accumulated and become critical. This was something we were beginning to recognize as a pattern in our East-West relations, inevitable because of our very different backgrounds and philosophies. The American way (or, at least, _my_ way) is to speak freely and openly, to discuss problems as they arise, and to leave little doubt in anyone’s mind about my reactions to events. Our companions, on the other hand, had been reared in a tradition of reticence, submission, and fatalism. They kept their feelings to themselves and looked upon my occasional outbursts as signs of weakness. Moreover, the idea of a free and open discussion of differences of opinion was completely alien to them. They did not overlook or forget, however, with the result that every once in a while the pressure of accumulated misunderstandings or dissatisfactions would mount until some ridiculously small incident would bring our relations to a head.

Such an occasion arose in Cairns. I had called the gang topside one morning to help get a drum of fuel on board. Mickey, as usual, was slow to respond, and I called him rather sharply a second time. Almost at once, he emerged from his forward hatch, clad only in a pair of gaudily striped underpants.

“Go below and get dressed!” I commanded sharply, thinking he was being deliberately insolent.

“You never mind!” Mickey flared, unable to express himself in English.

“You can’t come up here in your underwear!” I spoke hotly, furious at what I considered an insult to the ship and family.

Immediately Nick, as hot-tempered as I, flung himself into the fray. “Not your business what Mickey wears!” he challenged.

My own problems with Nick had been many—open insurrection, like the one in the North Pacific, or simply sullen withdrawal, when he disapproved one of my decisions. Since he was, technically, first mate, and at most times a good and responsible shipmate, I felt the need of his cooperation. I decided that now was as good a time as any to have it out, so I called a conference of all the men in the hope that, somehow, we could achieve a meeting of minds.

We began with the immediate source of irritation, Mickey’s underpants. As was so often the case, the whole incident turned out to be the result of a misunderstanding. Mickey, who had had little experience in Western dress, had been given the briefs in Hawaii, along with various other articles of clothing: socks, shirts, bathing trunks, and neckties. Mistakenly assuming them to be sportswear, he had donned them for the first time that morning as being more presentable than the patched khaki shorts he’d been wearing at sea.

This was finally settled and, with the ice broken, a great many other grievances came out. Primarily, they stemmed from two sources: the Japanese interpretation of quite innocent actions as slights (as when we had once or twice omitted introductions all around when some quite casual visitor came aboard); and their continued feeling, in spite of everything we did to combat it, that we did not treat them as “equals,” as fellow yachtsmen. Nick showed us a local newspaper report which referred to the “Reynolds family with crew of three Japanese,” and seemed to feel it was my fault because I had not properly briefed the newsman responsible. In this instance, as in many, it was Ted who quietly stepped into the breach, pointing out that the reporter in question had come aboard when only the three Japanese were there and that any information he had or had deduced must have come through them. Ted, I might add, was a very important member of our conferences if only for his rare ability to remain objective, aware of all points of view and partisan to none. More than once, after a more than usually acrimonious debate, he would manage to sum up the entire controversy in a simple and direct restatement of viewpoints which often had the effect of soothing and pointing the way to agreement at the same time.

So it was in Cairns. Gradually our various points of disagreement were dredged up and disposed of, the air was cleared, and good relations were re-established—or so we liked to believe. Now we could hope for smooth sailing, for a time at least, until the next accumulation of resentments boiled over.

Two days after leaving Cairns we reached Cooktown, a veritable ghost town, whose glory, like its gold, has long since played out. From the days when it was the third largest city in Australia, with some 30,000 population, Cooktown has dropped to 400 individuals, who live quietly amid the ruins of the past.

We tied up at a dilapidated dock and walked to town along wide streets lined with deserted mansions and tumbledown hotels with rotting floors and elaborate wrought-iron balconies. The few existing shops close during the heat of the day, so we wandered the streets until four o’clock, inspecting the inevitable monument to Captain Cook (he had been _everywhere_ before us, from Hawaii on through the South Seas) and musing over the memorial drinking fountain (dry) which commemorated the heroism of a woman who had died of thirst in 1883.

When the shops reopened, we located an enterprising baker who regretted his almost-empty shelves—“Hardly ever get strangers here, and Cooktown people know what _they_ want!”—but who agreed to bake whatever we cared to order. It was our last chance to get fresh supplies until we reached Thursday Island, beyond the still-extensive reef, so we ordered a dozen loaves. The baker also suggested a couple of pies and I, thinking to surprise Barbara at her birthday dinner that evening, slipped back to close the deal in secret.

“What kind do you have?” I asked, my mouth watering at the possible choice between apple, cherry, and lemon meringue.

The baker greeted my question with stupefaction. “_Meat_,” he answered, implying, Natch—what else?

For Barbara’s birthday dinner we had a pie apiece—meat.

With our departure from Cooktown began the serious part of our trip through the reef. Above this point, the coral closes in, the channel narrows day by day, the trade winds sharpen, the tides and current strengthen. We would have to thread our way with great care during the next 400 miles for, unlike the larger ships that ply up and down, we could not follow a radar course from one beacon to the next.

Ted and I consulted the charts and laid out anchorages in advance for each night: Lizard, Bewick, Hannah, and Night islands; all uninhabited, of course. The last 200 miles we planned to do in a final stretch from morning of one day until afternoon or evening of the next.

Back of our planning was the knowledge that better men than we had come to grief in this treacherous region, including Captain Cook himself. Even the old master, Slocum, had nicked a coral reef with the _Spray_, “while going full speed.” He was a lucky man, in that a six-inch difference in the tide would have put a sudden end to his voyage.

There was no settlement along this stretch, no emergency telephone or first-aid station, nor any outside help. To me, it seemed somehow more isolated than mid-ocean and many times more dangerous. The area offers fabulous beauty, endless variety, wonderful sailing, and just below the surface—treacherous, lurking danger. Even cloud shadows playing across the surface of the blue-green waters could be nerve-racking, suggesting the presence of underwater coral heads.

Our fears were not without justification. On the evening of June 15 we approached Hannah Island, whose automatic light had already begun to flash its signal through the dusk. Under mizzen and foresail, we came in slowly from the south, staying well west of the light and taking soundings. Suddenly events kaleidoscoped.

“Eight o!” called Moto, swinging the lead up forward. Almost immediately, on the next cast, his report changed urgently. “No! _Cannot! Yon dake!_—Four!”

“Hard to port!” I shouted. Ted, at the helm, pushed it hard over but before we could even begin to swing around there was a shock of impact. With an ominous crunch we ground to a stop.

“We’ve hit!”

No further words were needed. Barbara and Jessica huddled on the deck box, keeping out of the way while the men sprang to drop the sails. I went below and started the engine, but already the moment was past. Pushed by the current, the bow of the _Phoenix_ swung gradually and she drifted free astern. Unbelievably, we felt again the gentle rise and fall of the deck beneath our feet.

Hardly daring to credit our luck, I kept the engine going as we drifted and sounded until we had reached eight fathoms. Then we dropped the hook. We checked immediately and pumped out, but so far as we could tell only the keel had hit and we were taking no water.

In the morning—after a restless night in which treacherous coral heads intruded into my dreams—we checked our position and tried to estimate where we had been the previous night. As far as we could determine, we had been nowhere near the reef as indicated on the chart. It seemed likely that we had happened on an isolated coral head, as yet unmarked, and we made careful notes so that the maritime agency could check further.

In any event, the sound of our keel crunching on coral in that desolate section of the Great Barrier Reef is a sound none of us ever wishes to hear again!

More than ever I became convinced that in every successful round-the-world cruise a certain amount of luck—or, at least, the absence of bad luck at a critical moment—must play a part. Pidgeon, who twice sailed around the world singlehanded, went ashore while asleep, just after sailing from Cape Town. He landed on a small, sandy beach, the only such on a rocky coast that extended for scores of miles. Moreover, he had miraculously gone over a rocky ledge, passable only at high tide, in order to have landed there! Slocum himself, in addition to his brush with Moody Reef, went ashore on the coast of South America, but was fortunate enough to escape without damage to the _Spray_. Every voyager, I am sure, can recall some incident which could have meant the end of his trip had not good fortune—or Providence—intervened.

So intrigued did I become with these speculations that, during a stay in Cape Town, I gave a talk on the subject, calling it “The Fifth Ingredient”—the other four being a well-found ship; a good crew; adequate preparation and maintenance; and seamanship. Regardless of the other four essentials, it is my contention that a generous portion of this fifth ingredient is essential if success is to be achieved.

During the afternoon of June 17 we knew we were truly in the neck of the funnel. From deck level we could see the discolored water of the fringing reef closing in, mile by mile, as we sailed northward. Occasional blackish coral heads of the white mounds of sand shoals humped above the surface at low tide, only to disappear treacherously as the tide rose. Low-lying reef islands broke the surface of the waters ahead as the channel grew progressively narrower. We _knew_ there was a passage, but it was easy to understand how early voyagers, with square-rigged ships that were unable to beat back against the wind, must have trembled when they reached this spot!

The final approach to Thursday Island was a harrowing finale to a sleepless night, during which we had to pick our way from beacon to beacon. Our entry into Ellis Channel was complicated by brisk winds, a heavy tide, and a sharp rain squall which hit just as we started through and forced us to turn and head out again until it had passed. No one was in sight when we finally entered the harbor and drifted down on the Thursday Island dock, so we continued past and dropped anchor in three fathoms just beyond the wharf in the midst of a fleet of pearling luggers, sailing ships like ourselves.

Only then, as Jessica filled another red line on the map of our trip, did I dare to relax and draw a deep breath of relief. Another phase of our apprenticeship had been successfully completed: the passage of the treacherous and awe-inspiring Great Barrier Reef.

9 INTO INDONESIA:
THURSDAY ISLAND TO BALI

“Our life at sea was teaching us....”

The importance of T.I., as it is called, is out of all proportion to its size and population, for it is the focal point for the thinly settled Cape York peninsula and for the many islands of Torres Strait. Its principal products are pearl shell, crocodile skin, and tall talk. Among other tale spinners we met a team of two young men who had made a tidy stake out in the bush, shooting crocs. They had started their venture with only a gun and a flashlight apiece, their method being to stand in a stream, with water up to their armpits, and shine their lights until they attracted a customer. The technique seemed to be to shoot the croc between the eyes before it got close enough to grab one of them, but not so soon that the valuable carcass would be swept away by the swift current before they could get to it.

After they had spent a season in this way and collected enough skins the enterprising hunters took their trophies to town and invested the proceeds in a boat. As one said, the hunting was drier that way.

Our location at anchor was well out from shore and had its drawbacks. Rowing in presented no difficulties, as tide and current set strongly toward the shore, but getting back was a different matter. The first night, when we went ashore for our celebration dinner, we met a genial old codger who was just full of anecdotes.

“Terrible current out there,” he told us proudly. “Hardly a month passes but what it puts some ship on the reef—or takes them off to sea. Wretched holding ground—slick—nothing for an anchor to grab. And as for getting out to your ship—why, just a couple of weeks ago two men were rowing out to their lugger—got caught by the current and swept off to the westward somewhere....” He gestured broadly. “They sent out a powerboat, but never caught up with them.... Yes, it’s a terrible current!”

I resolved to make arrangements as soon as possible to bring the _Phoenix_ up to the dock. Meantime I spoke to the proprietress of the Royal Hotel, where we were dining, and reserved a room for my womenfolk for that night. They deserved a night ashore—and I had no desire to risk getting them back to the ship after dark.

Barbara’s diary account of their accommodations was well worth the pound I paid for their one night’s lodging-with-breakfast: