Part 12

He disappeared around the next corner, but we were not alone for long. A car drew up to the curb and four very large bobbies stepped out. They deployed in approved Scotland Yard fashion, one remaining near the car and two covering the fence, while the fourth strode toward us purposefully. His face was officially stern. He opened his mouth—but not fast enough, for Barbara, always the strategist, spoke first.

“Can you tell us how to get out of here?”

The policeman seemed taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

“Out!” I pressed our advantage. “We want to get out!”

“We were informed,” he told me reproachfully, “that some person or persons were attempting to break into this yard.”

“Quite the contrary!” We explained the circumstances and suggested that they summon the manager.

“The manager? Of the shipyard? Impossible. It’s the holidays, you know.”

I explained, as gently as my nature permitted, that we well knew it was “the holidays.” In fact, that even increased our desire to be free to come and go. We, too, would like to celebrate Christmas. So would he please get the manager? Or could he get a key to the gate? Or perhaps it would be simpler if I just broke the lock?

That did it. My last suggestion was vetoed in horrified tones, we were told to wait, and sometime later a defensively apologetic manager came down and unlocked the gate. He permitted us to put our own combination padlock on it for the duration, and even gave us the key to the W.C. and shower for which we had quite forgotten to make arrangements.

Our original plan, to sail on down to the South Island after the first of the year, was rudely changed in the course of this overhaul, for a routine inspection revealed the presence in the head of our mainmast of a nasty variety of boring insect, the first of which we had discovered in the course of our trip to Tahiti. After digging into the mast and finding that it had been badly infested, I decided that, like a bad tooth, the whole thing would have to go. The situation was discouraging, however, for—unlike an infected molar—it would have to be replaced immediately.

There was no doubt what wood we wanted for the new mast—kauri pine, historically famous for its use as spars on sailing ships. However, there is a modern-day hitch in that kauri has become so scarce that it is now protected by law.

Where there’s a law there’s a loophole, however, and it was the helpful manager of the shipyard who helped us find a way. Suppose someone wished to build a new house—or construct a road—and a kauri “ricker” just happened to be growing in the way? In such a case, permission might be obtained to cut the tree and no questions would be asked as to its subsequent disposition.

After scouting around for days we were finally directed to the right combination of tree and circumstance. Permission was granted, the tree was cut, and the trunk, bark and all, was hauled to the shipyard and dumped. I had announced that our own gang would do all the work, but when we looked the log over it seemed a truly formidable undertaking. I could feel my feet getting cold.

“Are you quite certain you know how to go about making the mast?” the yard foreman asked.

“Quite certain,” I said firmly.

“Is there anything you need?”

“Nothing but adzes, axes, spokeshaves, planes, sandpaper—and a few weeks.”

He lent us the tools and told us to take as long as we needed. The boys looked at me.

“What do we do first?” asked Ted.

“First,” I said, “we take off the bark.”

About a month later we had our mast, gleaming smoothly in the summer sun. Frankly, I was proud of our job. Kauri is beautiful wood, both to look at and to work, and it has the added advantage of needing no seasoning period. With the help of the workers at the boatyard, we rolled the mast into the water, borrowed a motorboat, and towed it across the harbor to where the Auckland Harbor bridge was under construction.

I approached the operator of an enormous steam crane.

“I have a boat,” I explained, “and that mast over there. I’m trying to figure out how to get them together. Any ideas?”

He grinned. “Bring them on over.”

We did so, the crane lifted our new mast like a twig, poised it dramatically for a moment over the gaping hole amidships, and then lowered away. By nightfall we had our “homemade” mast completely wedged and shrouded, with a bright “thruppenny” bit—a gift from Jessica, which we were assured would bring luck—nestled beneath the base.

It was time to move on and I began to inquire about the possibility of sailing down the east coast as far as Wellington, through Cook Strait, and thus across the Tasman to Sydney.

“Wellington?” everyone demanded scornfully. “Why do you want to go to Wellington? There’s nothing there, really. And as for the trip down the coast—you’re likely to have very bad weather, you know—shocking! Wellington harbor’s not too good, either—exposed and windy. My word! Terrible! As for Cook Strait—worst stretch of water in the world—absolutely notorious. No yachts go that way to Sydney. You must go north first, then west and around the cape. It’s the only way.”

Still I hesitated. We’d come from Russell and it seemed a shame to go up that way again when there was so much farther south that we hadn’t seen. Surely there must be another side to the story.

At last I found it. One day I met a charming chap on the dock. He had just come in from his mooring. In the course of our chat I mentioned the possibility of our sailing to Wellington. He was delighted.

“Ah-h-h, yes-s-s! Wellington! Splendid place. You’ll like it. Very active yacht clubs there—real sailors, you know—nothing they won’t do for you. The trip down the coast? First-rate fun—easy course. Fine sailing. Wellington harbor? Couldn’t be better. Bit of a wind there, true—but it’s well protected. Wellington to Sydney? Through Cook Strait? Well, why not—why not? I remember distinctly another yacht made it that way—no trouble at all. Back in the thirties, I think it was. Not as sturdy a craft as yours, either.”

Here was the optimistic note I’d been seeking. I turned away, encouraged, but had a sudden thought. “By the way, where are you from?”

He smiled cheerfully. “Ah—Wellington, actually!”

At any rate, on February 6 we sailed south, en route to Wellington. We left Auckland with a bit of a flourish, in a force 6 southwesterly, amid showers. For two days we bowled along, covering a record 280 miles in 48 hours, but then the winds fell off. In the next few days we experienced the wide variety of weather that can be expected in these latitudes, with winds ranging from calms to gales in rapid succession, and neglecting no point of the compass. First-rate fun, indeed!

Early on the morning of the eighth day we rounded the last headland and tackled notorious Cook Strait. It did not disappoint us—although we were more than willing to be disappointed. A northerly gale funneled down on us and after a few rough and profitless hours of beating through high seas we eased off and continued on across the southern approaches to the strait and ran for the lee of South Island. The _Phoenix_, which takes a bit of a breeze to get underway, was making an easy seven knots under storm jib and reefed mizzen alone and her motion evoked unwelcome memories of our North Pacific crossing.

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.