Part 12

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.