Part 13

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:

First you try to _find_ the entrance to the overnight accommodations. (The façade of any Australian hotel is all Pub and every visible entrance leads to one bar or another.) Finally we were rescued by “Miss Marie”—pronounced Mahry—the manageress, and escorted up a creaking stairway which led from the lower side veranda to a wide upper one, off which opened all of the bedrooms. Every door was wide open for ventilation and most of the guests seemed to be sprawled on their beds in full view, in various states of _deshabille_.

Our own room was at the extreme end of the front porch, next to a room marked “Ladies’ Bath.” How very convenient, I thought, looking forward to an extra dividend in the form of a Hot Bath.