Part 11

Eight days out we saw the loom of Wailangi Lala Island light and another of those incidents occurred which demonstrate how narrow is the borderline between success and disaster. Knowing it would be several hours before we came up on the light, I went below to rest, leaving what I thought were clear instructions with Mickey, on watch, that I was to be called _before_ we reached it, so that we could make a necessary change of course at the light. I slept fitfully and came up on deck without having been called—to see the light already abeam and the boat on a course that would very shortly have piled us on the rocks. I changed the course and asked Mickey why he hadn’t called me according to orders. His only reason was that he couldn’t remember what I had told him, and thus had done nothing!

It is necessary to navigate very carefully in the Koro Sea. All day we cruised among countless inviting-looking islands, wanting to stop, but required to push on to Suva, the official port of entry for the Fiji Islands. We knew that, on this trip at least, we would not have the time to backtrack, for the hurricane season was approaching and by the first of November, at the latest, we would have to be on our way south to New Zealand, out of the area of tropical storms.

That night, as we worked our way through a tricky series of lights at the western exit of the Koro Sea, I stayed on deck. I had no desire to push my luck and knew there would be plenty of time to catch up on lost sleep when we had dropped the hook in the harbor of Suva.

By afternoon on October 18 we were rounding Viti Levu with a good breeze and at 1600 we dropped anchor off the Royal Suva Yacht Club. A very nice birthday present for the Skipper!

As usual, the first hour or two was hectic. The port doctor cleared us without difficulty, but the customs official sealed not only our guns and liquor, but a case of root beer as well. (Beer, he insisted, is beer!) The immigration officer was a bit bothered by the presence of three Japanese tourists without visas, although I explained that I had checked in advance and been assured that no visas would be necessary for a short visit of a yacht to a crown colony. At last he solved the dilemma by deciding officially to ignore their presence so long as they did nothing to call attention to themselves. In other words, so long as there was no trouble they had the freedom of the port.

After we had been cleared there came, as usual, the press, followed by the Commodore of the Royal Suva Yacht Club, who presented the family with honorary membership cards. When we introduced Nick, Mickey, and Moto, emphasizing that they, too, were yachtsmen, there was an awkward pause.

“Er—well—yes!” I almost expected him to add, “Raw_ther_!” Instead, he drew me aside as soon as convenient and confided that the club was forced to adopt a “Whites Only” policy—because of the Indians, you know—and although he, personally, had nothing against the Japanese—and he was sure that most of the others would feel the same—well, there it was, you know, and all that.

As a family, we discussed the situation long and seriously and decided, at last, that we could do more good by accepting the proffered membership than by huffily refusing. As Jessica expressed it, “We’ll make friends and sow destruction!” This we tried to do, taking every opportunity of bringing our companions into the conversation: “They’ll be the first Japanese yachtsmen ever to have sailed around the world” and “Those chaps of ours are pretty good small-boat sailors. They made a fine record in the All-Japan Intercollegiates—they sail Class boats much like those you have here,” etc., etc. When we admired the clubhouse, we expressed regrets that _all_ of us couldn’t see what a fine place they had and described how wonderfully we had been treated by yacht clubs in Japan. “Wonderful what a common interest in sports can do to bridge international barriers, isn’t it?”

Our campaign didn’t seem to have much effect at first, but after a few days we noticed that those who came aboard made a special effort to be cordial to the Japanese, albeit somewhat ponderously.

We did not change the policies of the Royal Suva Yacht Club; Nick, Mickey, and Moto never saw the inside of the clubhouse, and yet we felt we had gained something when one of the senior members remarked, in tones of obvious astonishment: “Those lads of yours are fine chaps—very intelligent!” And he added thoughtfully, “It is rather a pity they can’t go into the clubhouse—walk around a bit, what? Some of the trophies make a good show—and then, there are the photographs.... Yes, it is a pity.”

We could not hope, during our brief visit, to sort out the rights and wrongs of the complex issues here, but we found the racial tension in Suva a disquieting contrast to that other crossroads of the Pacific: Honolulu. Jessica, for instance, found that although a Girl Scout may be “a sister to every other Girl Scout,” in Fiji her sisterhood does not cross color lines. There are Fijian Guides, Indian Guides, and European Guides—and never the troops shall meet, not even for an occasional jamboree.

Barbara and Jessica, however, visited them all and were warmly received. The Fijian Guides, wearing costumes of beautifully designed tapa, put on a program of native dances and entertained the visiting Scout from America with lemon tea (made by boiling lemon leaves in a tin can “billy”). They even invited her into a native bure, the Fijian name for the shaggy grass huts that are as completely closed and airtight as the Samoan fale is open. But this was about all the Fijian life they saw. True, the city of Suva itself is colorful, with its tall and picturesque Fijian policemen, hair trained to a bushy headdress, wearing red and white sulus with scalloped hems; its tiny, fine-featured Indian women in gauzy saris, with jeweled pins in their nostrils; its blatant Chinese shops; its bustling open-air market, like something out of the _Arabian Nights_; its colorful flower vendors. These sights are all worth seeing and remembering.

But over it all hangs a sense of tension. There are sharp contrasts in Suva between the principal ethnic groups: the dominant British, the cheerful Melanesians, the quiescent Chinese, and the restive Indians. The last-named are rapidly increasing their economic and political influence in the islands, and there is clearly a conflict brewing. There is no contact between Fijian and Indian, nor between these groups and the British. The British in turn have a patronizing affection for the Fijians, but a dislike and distrust of the Indians, which is reciprocated. The Chinese sit in the background and make money.

When we left Fiji we felt we knew even less of the people here than we had in other Pacific islands, and we regretted it.

7 DOWN UNDER: NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA

“Ah-h-h, yes-s-s!...”

On the trip from Suva to Auckland, New Zealand, we had a marine hitchhiker along, a lanky, cheerful Australian, Bill Sherwood. Bill was on his way home to take part in the World Championship 18-footer races and, as we all liked him at once, he had little difficulty in persuading us to give him a lift for the first 1,100 miles.

The first few days were quiet. Once we had cleared the several islands of the Fiji group, south of Viti Levu, the course presented no particular navigational hazards and we settled quickly into our sea routines. With an extra man, I evolved a new system of watches to give everyone, including the cook, a bit of change and occasional relief. We continued our schedule of two-hours-on-eight-off, but each day one of the men was relieved from tiller duty and put himself at the cook’s disposal for such chores as peeling vegetables, washing the rice, or washing up the pots and pans. Mickey wasn’t too happy about this, evidently considering galley duty as beneath the dignity of a Japanese gentleman, but since the Skipper took his own turn whenever it came around, there was little Mickey could do but conform.

The missing ship _Joyita_ was still on our minds and, in the early-morning darkness of the seventh day we had an encounter that gave me some moments of uneasiness. A ship passed us fairly close to port, only her riding lights showing. Changing course, she pulled ahead and stopped as we sailed by. I recalled that other boats besides _Joyita_ had disappeared without a trace in this region and the thought of pirates flashed across my mind. As we approached, I began signaling with the flashlight: “Yacht _Phoenix_. American Yacht _Phoenix_. We are okay! We are okay!”

I sent this several times, but there was no response of any kind from the silent ship ahead. After we had passed, the vessel got underway again and moved on out of sight.

We were working our way south now, out of the area of steady trades and into the horse latitudes. Gradually the wind dropped and at last for several days we were becalmed outright or made bare steerageway in very light airs.

Far from being bored, we found these quiet and indolent days full of interest. We lolled on deck, read aloud, fished (without success), shot at cans for target practice, and slept. A great deal of time was spent just staring at the gently heaving sea.

In some strange fashion, a sea that is utterly calm seems to me more alive than a sea in a gale. An angry sea is a mechanical monster, all sound, power, and threat of immediate destruction. But a calm sea, its surface breathing slowly and gently like a sleeping giant, seems animate and, in spite of its seeming gentleness, somehow more menacing.

At various levels below the surface we could see hundreds of life forms: jellyfish of many shapes and colors and innumerable other floating shapes ranging from tiny, confetti-like blobs to fairly large and elaborate, flower-shaped creatures. We caught a man-of-war, floating on the surface of the water like a child’s plastic bath toy, and Jessica, who spent hours hanging over the gunwales, discovered a school of half a dozen little banded fish, about eight inches long, who were escorting us faithfully, in the shadow of the hull.

Our most memorable day at sea was the one we christened the Day of the Albatrosses. In the glassy calm these birds, who had been following us for hundreds of miles, one by one left the air and skidded in for a landing on the quiet sea, braking with feet flat ahead as they hit the water. We threw out bits of pilot cracker and soon they had been lured up to the boat where they squabbled noisily over the scraps.

Our next move was obvious! Rigging a loop on the end of a bamboo pole, we began to try our hand at lassoing them. To my amazement, when I finally succeeded in dropping a noose over the head of my chosen victim, he struggled hardly at all—nor did his neighbors show the least alarm at his predicament. I pulled the ungainly creature alongside, Nick and I lifted him by his outspread wings and held him while Barbara got a picture, and then we released him. He withdrew only a few feet, grumbled a bit, and smoothed his ruffled feathers. In no time at all, he had forgotten the indignity and rejoined his fellows to battle under the stern sprit—and another threatening noose—for the delectable bits of sea biscuit.

During the next couple of hours each member of the family had a try and all of us, including Bill Sherwood, earned our membership in P.A.L.S.—the _Phoenix_ Albatross Lassoing Society. Since there weren’t enough birds to go around, it is obvious that some of them must have been captured more than once! (Sidelight on the mysterious East: Nick, who was mildly interested in our capture of the first albatross, soon went below without attempting to try his luck: Mickey, reading in his bunk, never did appear throughout the excitement; neither of the two bothered to wake Moto, who was taking a nap.)

At last a light breeze, out of the northeast, rippled the surface of the sea in a tentative manner. After a few false starts, it settled down, and we were again on our way. With the breeze came a large school of porpoises and a solitary whale, who surfaced nearby as if to round out the entertainment.

On the sixteenth day Ted calculated that we should be able to see the lights of the north end of New Zealand soon after dark. At this information Bill, suddenly infected with land fever, glued himself to the upper shrouds and began to strain his eyes to the south. Every half hour or so he descended, wondered volubly where the light could be, and climbed to the crow’s nest again. Watching his antics, we realized how really seasoned we had become. Naturally we would be glad to make our landfall, but none of us was impatient. We knew we’d see the light sooner or later. Poor Bill, however, was in a fever of eagerness and doubt. Not until 2200 did a loud and happy shout come from aloft and Bill climbed stiffly down to announce triumphantly that he had found the lights, right where Ted had said they ought to be. Shortly afterward we were able to see them from deck level.

By morning we could catch glimpses of land through the haze and set our course for the entrance to the Bay of Islands. Once we were in the straits, the wind came up strongly and sent us bowling in so that, by midafternoon, we were riding to anchor off the little port of Russell and ready to be granted pratique.

Russell, New Zealand, is a charming village of some two thousand souls, a world-renowned center for big-game fishing. The clustered red roofs and the green hills beyond were very inviting and we all looked forward to our traditional celebration dinner ashore—and the nice, cold drinks that would precede and accompany it. But now we were to have our first taste of New Zealand casualness. We met with no difficulty in clearing customs and immigration, the officials seeming far more interested in the details of our passage than in trotting out regulations. But quarantine? “Ah-h-h, yes-s-s ...” in a delightful New Zealand drawl. That was a bit of a problem, that! The only doctor, you see, was out fishing and there was no telling where he was or when he might be expected back. It was a pity he had chosen this day to go fishing, but there it was. We would just have to wait.

When we asked about the prospects of getting dinner ashore, we were assured there would be no trouble, no trouble whatsoever. The Duke of Marlborough could serve any number and no advance notice need be given. The only thing, of course, was that we must get there before seven o’clock, when the dining room closed.

Rather enchanted than otherwise with this evidence of the small-townishness of Russell, we settled down to wait for the doctor’s return. In the meantime we tuned in the news and learned that _Joyita_ had been found at last, a battered and empty hulk, drifting among the islands of the Fiji group. Passengers and crew were missing and there was no clue to their fate. No one of us said anything, but I was sure that in all our minds was the knowledge that it could have been us.

The afternoon passed and the shadows lengthened. Finally the sun set and Bill, who had been regaling us with descriptions of the huge steak he intended to order, with two—no, three!—fried eggs sitting on top, began to consult his watch more and more frequently. Every time a fishing boat came in he dashed hopefully on deck, only to rejoin us below with obviously sagging spirits. At last, and with only a few minutes to spare, the doctor arrived—apologizing charmingly for the inconvenience. He glanced around, gave us a clean bill of health, signed the guest book with a flourish, and then took us ashore in his own boat and rushed us to the hotel, where the entire gang was treated to a seven-course dinner as guests of the management!

We spent a week in Russell and then, eager to reach Auckland, where mail had been piling up (we hoped) for several months, we started cruising down the coast. This was a type of sailing we’d had little experience with. We found it fascinating to be always within sight of land, sailing by visible landmarks rather than by celestial navigation. The countryside was fertile and lovely, with brilliant green uplands dotted with the woolly blobs of grazing sheep, while along the shore stretches of sandy beach piled into yellow dunes or reared up in sheer sandstone bluffs.

We made only one stopover, at Kawau Island, where we spent a most enjoyable weekend tied up to the private dock of Roy and Irene Lidgard, New Zealand’s number one entry in the Be Kind to Visiting Yachtsmen sweepstakes. There we fished, went crabbing, helped crew the small-boat races at the Kawau Yacht Club, and took long walks into the hills hunting for elusive wallabies. The climax was a spontaneous potluck picnic that eddied back and forth between the _Phoenix_, Jim Lawler’s _Ngaroma_ out of Auckland, and the Lidgards’ front lawn.

Auckland, when we finally arrived, proved equal to its reputation as one of the most yacht-conscious cities in the world. It supports more than three dozen yacht clubs and its beautiful and extensive bay provides opportunity for every type of yachting activity. Certainly the welcome extended to overseas yachtsmen would be hard to beat and, for those who are interested in racing events, the Annual One-Day Regatta, with its hundreds of entries, is undoubtedly the largest and most varied of its kind.

Our concern about our Japanese companions was quickly dispelled, for although we did hear one or two uncomplimentary asides, most of our visitors were happy to accept us all as yachtsmen rather than racial types. In addition, a number of “Kiwis” who had spent some time in Japan under the occupation came down to show the boys around as a gesture of appreciation for courtesies shown them in Japan.

During our three months in Auckland we learned much about the strange mixture that is New Zealand—a country where personal relationships are warm and hospitable, but where business contacts can be irritating in the extreme. The casual absence of the doctor on the day we arrived turned out to be quite typical of the “couldn’t care less” attitude of the average New Zealander. The socialized state provides free medical care, free dental care, old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions (with bonuses to Maori mothers for increased production!), and many other benefits so that worry scarcely enters the consciousness of most individuals. No one works any more than he can help and business and industry have to beg for laborers and make all sorts of concessions to keep them happy. We had hardly settled down after arrival when I overheard the following conversation on the dock:

“How would you blokes like a job while you’re here? We’d pay you right!”

“But we have only tourist visa. Cannot work.” This from Nick, who had been strongly warned against trying to earn any money while staying in Hawaii.

“Oh, you can work here right enough! Anybody can. When will you start?”

“I don’t think ...” Nick was obviously bewildered, afraid of getting into trouble, not sure he had understood correctly, or perhaps reluctant to desert the boat. I knew how low all the boys were in personal funds and hurried up to reassure him that they were quite free to take any job they might wish. Before I could get there, however, the would-be employer had pressed ahead so eagerly to close the deal that he had twice raised the going rate—although even the base pay was far more than any of the men had ever received in Japan—and had even agreed, without being asked, to have a taxi call for and deliver them every day.

And, as Moto said in bewilderment after the visitor had extracted their willing promises and gone, “We don’t even know what kind work! Maybe we cannot do!”

Actually, the job turned out to be the breaking up old American planes for scrap metal, a task that all three could do very well and took a particular delight in getting paid for.

Christmas in Auckland, 8,000 miles from home, found us locked up behind the high board fence of a deserted shipyard. December being midsummer in New Zealand and the height of the yachting season, we had found only one shipyard that could accommodate us for the bottom job we had promised the _Phoenix_—and that only if we would do our own work over the holidays. On the morning of Friday the 23rd the workmen had made a feeble gesture of assisting us to haul out—then silently stole away to start their vacations. Before we knew it, the last of them had gone, locking the gate behind him, and there we were—trapped.

Of course, we could always rescue ourselves by rowing the dinghy along the shore until we found an escape hatch, but we wanted easier access to our ship. Moreover, we were smarting with the indignity of it. How _dare_ they just walk off and lock us in? (We had yet to learn that the New Zealand workman will dare anything.)

The family and I explored the yard, whose fences extended down to the waterfront on either side, in a vain search for a man-sized mousehole. Nick, Mickey, and Moto stayed on board and settled themselves for a philosophical nap. Situations like this, they seemed to feel, were pre-eminently the problem of the Skipper.

Dusk was falling as we climbed onto a pile of lumber near the main gate and peered over into the silent, empty streets.

Suddenly Jessica shouted, “Man ho!”

Sure enough, far down the street a speck resolved itself into a pedestrian. We waited until he came abeam.

“Hey!” I hailed him.

He looked up. “My word,” he observed genially, “Americans!”

“Too right!” I responded in flawless New Zealandese. “Can you tell us how to get out of here?”

“I’m frightfully afraid I can’t,” he admitted. “I should think everyone’s gone home by now. The holidays, you know.”

He started on, but then he had a thought. “By the way,” he added, coming back and speaking directly to Jessica, “if you should want a Christmas tree, you’ll find bags of them at my stand just down the road. No one seems to be buying this year, I’ll take a frightful loss. Just trot on down and help yourself!”

“But there’s still time. You’ll sell lots tomorrow,” Jessica pointed out.

The man sounded positively shocked. “On _Saturday_! Now, what would the wife and kiddies say if I was to tell them I was going back to the stand on a Saturday just to sell a few more trees? No, I stayed a good half hour over as it is and now I’m for me holiday! And a happy Christmas to you!”