Part 3

Once the _Phoenix_ was afloat and nearer the house, family participation picked up. Barbara took a particular interest in the galley, and made a number of changes in cupboard and drawer arrangements. She and Jessica also ran a series of experiments in food preservation and provisioning, including a number of methods of preserving eggs. Each egg was carefully marked as to process used and date, and every few days one of the batch was tested—naturally on me. In the end we found the simple practice of greasing the eggs with oleo to be the most practical.

Meanwhile, most of my free time was spent away from home, working on the boat or roaming the streets and alleys of Kure and Hiroshima, with a few jaunts as far afield as Kobe, Osaka, and Yokohama. Only too well did we learn that cruising is not just sailing—it is walking, talking (in halting Japanese), buying, planning, scrounging, compromising—for months and months—and all on dry land. Nevertheless, we did manage to save several thousand dollars by these efforts.

Our sails were made up by the Ohara (that is not an Irish name!) Company of Yokohama and required, before negotiations were completed, three trips upcountry—a day’s journey each way. Drawing up the sail plans was a task on which I had burned a lot of midnight oil, and after the contracts were let I could only hope there had been no slip of the pencil.

At last the day came when a dozen bundles, carefully wrapped in rice straw, were dumped on the Hiroshima dock. Eagerly we opened them, to be greeted by an exciting odor of canvas, manila, and tar. Inside were the sails, gleaming white. One by one we checked them, stretching each in its appointed place. Outwardly businesslike and matter of fact, I was tremendously relieved to see that each sail had been properly designed.

We now had a mainsail, mizzen, forestaysail and jib (these four lowers giving about 1,000 square feet), plus a mizzen staysail, topsail, top jib, storm trysail, and storm jib. We had spares for the main and foresail. (Later, in Honolulu, we added a genoa.)

The arrival of the sails was a high spot during a time which was otherwise rushed, uncertain, and confused. Crew problems were beginning to emerge. We had been aware that Takemura-san was becoming increasingly uneasy. Instead of moving aboard to help with the rigging and final fitting-out, as we had agreed upon, and as Nick had done, Takemura became less and less dependable and often failed to show up at all. One night, after a long conference which put a heavy strain on both Nick’s English and his loyalties, the two men went up on deck and talked for several hours.

The next morning Takemura-san came to me, shook hands long and earnestly, and with real tears in his eyes, said “Sayonara.” He rowed ashore and out of our lives, leaving us not only without a mate, but without a dinghy, as this had been his contribution to the _Phoenix_.

Well, we thought glumly, we can always buy a new dinghy, and at least we still have Nick.

This was the cue for Nick to appear and explain that, under these changed circumstances, he would have to reconsider his decision to join us. Since he had been Takemura’s protégé, constant satellite, and uncritical admirer, we were sure we knew what that meant.

“Okay, Nick,” I told him. “We understand.” I held out my hand.

Nick looked a little startled. “I will go home, talk to family.” He was obviously trying to let us down easy, passing the ultimate responsibility to his parents.

“Fine,” I said, “you do that. Good-bye—and thanks for everything.”

Hailing a passing launch, Nick too went ashore. We sat on the deck and watched the harbor traffic, too dispirited to talk. Below decks, Ted and Jessica were shouting at each other, in an overheated sibling dispute. Here we are, I thought—what remains of my crew. One woman—with only half a heart in the venture. One son, age fifteen—willing, but a bit absentminded and not too good with his hands. One daughter, ten years old and small for her age, expert at handling dolls—but what good will she be on the mainsail? And myself—an armchair sailor, an untried skipper, who can cope fairly well with things mechanical but has little finesse with human beings, even his own family.

The inescapable conclusion of my gloomy inventory was: You’ve had it. A foreign country, a half-finished boat, a dwindling bank account, a divided family, and your crew has just walked off. I hardly noticed when Barbara reached over to slip her hand into mine. Nor did I note that the wrangling below had stopped of its own accord—as it always did—and that Ted was now busily entertaining Jessica with a story.

The rest of the day passed like a funereal dream. In the afternoon I went ashore and bought a secondhand rowboat. That evening we sat on deck and were uncheered by the nightly visit of the local sightseeing bus, which had added to its itinerary a visit to the docks to see the American “Around-the-world-boat.” “Around the world!” I muttered bitterly. “We couldn’t even go around Hiroshima harbor.”

Early the next morning we were aroused by the sound of oars and by voices alongside. Onto the deck clambered Nick, grinning broadly, and with him were two young fellows I recognized as members of the Yacht Club.

“Ohio gosaimasu!” Nick greeted us cheerfully. “Good morning! My father said, You promise to go, you go. So—I go. Okay. Oh—and these my friends—Fushima-san and Suemitsu-san. They will help make boat ready. They both want to go with us, which one do you want?”

From that day on, Motosada Fushima (Moto) and Mitsugi Suemitsu (Mickey) slept and worked aboard the _Phoenix_, splicing rope, wrapping blocks, and in general competing, in a completely friendly fashion, for the berth vacated by Takemura. In the end, unable to decide between them and perhaps feeling that we might make up in manpower what we lacked in experience, we took them both. Now all our bunks were filled, with a ship’s complement of seven.

We were an oddly assorted group: two sexes, two races, two languages and nationalities—and _seven_ personalities, with a wide age range. How these personalities would act—and interact—would, I knew, have as much to do with the success or failure of our voyage as the seaworthiness of the boat itself. At the moment we could only guess—and hope.

Our crew selected, there remained the matter of obtaining the consent of their families, which proved not too difficult; and of acquiring Japanese passports and American visas, which turned out to be very difficult indeed. We finally got them, but it took several weeks of correspondence, several trips to Kobe, and several times the amount of patience I normally possess.

During this summer we had still another problem to contend with, and it was one we couldn’t do much about. This was the weather. In three years in Japan, only one typhoon had come close enough to Hiroshima to cause any real concern. However, in the summer of 1954, after the _Phoenix_ took to the water, no less than four typhoons paid us an unwelcome visit.

Typhoon June, the third of the unwonted—and unwanted—series, was the worst of the lot. At the advice of the Coast Guard we took refuge in a sheltered cove behind the island of Eta Jima. On the way we tried out our newly rigged mainsail and, for the first time, had the experience of heeling. As we tilted in the breeze, Barbara, who had been making lemonade in the galley, began to pick up broken glass and lemon peel, while Jessica, a bit shaken, took refuge in the cockpit. “I don’t like it,” she said. “I’d rather live in a house where things don’t fall around!”

That night, however, she slept unconcernedly through the worst of the blow, and by the next day was ready to brag of her experiences and feel more than a little superior to her shorebound friends.

For the rest of us, however, the night of Typhoon June is one that will not soon be forgotten. Around midnight, with the center of the typhoon less than twenty miles away, the wind shifted abruptly. We were no longer in the lee of the mountainous island, but much more exposed, and the waves in this little bay built up to enormous heights. Suddenly Nick, on anchor watch, let out a shout in frantic Japanese. I rushed on deck, and though I couldn’t understand Nick, could see at once what had happened. Our anchor chain had snapped. Endless minutes passed, as we drifted inexorably toward the nearby shore, while we struggled to get the spare anchor over the side. Only a few feet short of grounding, the anchor caught—and held.

Two souvenirs remain of that wild initiation night: the broken link of our brand-new half-inch anchor chain and a sheet from our recording barograph, which charts the pattern of Typhoon June. The line of barometric pressure descended sharply until, at the passage of the eye of the typhoon, the ship was bucking so wildly that the ink was spilled out of the pen, and the record stopped.

We also gained some valuable information and experience from this episode. First, we began to appreciate the difficulties in communication that were to plague us in time to come. Regardless of how well the men improved their English, and I my Japanese, in a crisis they lapsed into “man’s talk”—rapid, peremptory vernacular—which conveyed nothing but a sense of extreme urgency. The normal, formal Japanese language, which we knew a bit, was gone with the wind.

Beyond this I learned the absolute necessity for anticipation if this voyage was to be a success. At all times we must expect the worst, and try to be ready for it. Had the second anchor been ready for instant use, precious minutes would have been saved. On the credit side, I profited, because never again were we caught without ready anchors.

Typhoon No. 4, Marie, caused no great damage in our area, but roared past us and northward to Hokkaido, where she overturned a seagoing ferry with the loss of over a thousand lives. Locally, however, she did play havoc with the tides, and drowned out the machinery in the local shipyard, so we had to postpone our haul-out, for bottom painting, more than two weeks—another unavoidable delay.

However, by September, in spite of typhoons, troubles, and tape (red), we were far enough along to be thinking about a date for our departure. We still lacked such extras as electricity, running water, gimbaled stove, radiotelephone, and a host of minor items, but we ignored these and concentrated on the absolute necessities. Provisioning, of course, led the list, and Barbara took the brunt of this terrible task. Now that she had a better knowledge of the crew’s daily food consumption, she doubled her original estimates of rice, fruits, and canned foods, and then doubled the amount again as a safety factor. The total was prodigious. Day after day, carrying yardlong lists, she set out in a taxi-jeep, to return in the evening with a mountain of supplies to be hauled aboard and stowed.

Ted, meanwhile, when I informed him that he had been promoted to chief navigator on the defection of Takemura, redoubled his studies. With a textbook and the help of a navigation officer friend, Ted gained a competent grasp of at least the theoretical aspects of his assignment. However, when we worked out our practice sextant shots, we often found the _Phoenix_ not in Hiroshima harbor but somewhere up the slope of Fujiyama.

Jessica, too, had been given an official role, that of ship’s historian. She took her assignment seriously and, from the day we moved aboard, she kept a daily record of our activities—as she saw them (a _very_ important qualification). I might add that this diary was continued without a break for the next six years, and by the time we had completed our voyage around the world she had filled seven large ledgers with about 200,000 words. Unprompted and uncensored, Jessica’s Journal provides a detailed, refreshing, and sometimes chastening picture of our rather unconventional family life.

Time had now become an important element in our plans, for it was late in the season. After many conferences with family and crew, after a careful (and prayerful!) study of the North Pacific Pilot Charts, and after consultation with the Japanese Coast Guard, we finally decided that November was the very latest date we could leave Japan and still have a good chance of a successful crossing to Honolulu, over 4,000 miles to the east. This would put us at the tag end of the typhoon season and, we hoped, ahead of the worst of the winter storms which roar down out of the far north Pacific.

We decided upon Honolulu as our first landfall, because it was an American port, where we could have the _Phoenix_ registered as an American ship and could obtain certain supplies and equipment lacking in Japan.

The numerous unavoidable delays had made it impossible to fit in the shakedown cruise in the open ocean, which we had planned, but by leaving Hiroshima early in October we could have a short cruise up the Inland Sea and give ourselves and the boat at least a smooth-water test. We could then complete our fitting-out at a northern port, make any adjustments that seemed necessary, and still depart by the appointed date. It was not an ideal plan, perhaps, but it was the best we could do. For a number of cogent reasons, mainly financial, it was impossible to lay over until next June, the optimum month for crossing the North Pacific under sail.

Our departure was set for October 4, and throughout the day gifts poured aboard: flowers, candy, fruit, rice cakes, a painting of the _Phoenix_, a new heaving line, a can of metal paint, a gallon of used oil (“to pour on troubled waters”), and most formidable of all, a magnificent Japanese doll for Jessica, complete in a fragile glass case. This present brought Jessica exquisite joy and the captain exquisite pain, for he knew tears would flow when he had to jettison the case over the side—in anticipation of the inevitable.

We grew more and more harassed as we found our last-minute preparations and stowing of supplies continually interrupted by the need for greeting another well-wisher, making a short statement to yet another gentleman of the press, or posing on deck for one more group picture. To load last-minute supplies, we had come alongside the dock. All our friends, many of whom had never been aboard, now wanted a tour of the ship. They charitably assured us that they didn’t in the least mind if everything was a mess, and asked us literally hundreds of well-meaning questions, to most of which we didn’t know the answers. “How long will the trip to Honolulu take?” “Won’t you be bored?” “But isn’t it _dangerous_?” “How will the children go to school?”—all very good questions.

But the one most frequently asked, and the one we were least able to answer, was “But won’t you be seasick?” All we could reply was that we never had been—which was perfectly true. On board the _President Wilson_, en route to Japan—our only other experience on the high seas—none of us had been in the least sick. Of course, this wasn’t _quite_ the same thing.

Shadows were already long when we left the dock, with all the ceremony of tossing bright paper tape, singing “Auld Lang Syne”—in Japanese—and shedding copious tears. The tears, I might add, were all in the eyes of those who saw us off. We ourselves were much too busy to have time for sorrow or regret—then—but to our hundreds of friends the whole venture was nothing less than a gallant form of suicide—for which no one has a more subtle appreciation than the Japanese.

A fleet of snipes and sailing dinghies from the Yacht Club accompanied us halfway across Hiroshima Bay, while a plane circled overhead to drop a tiny silk parachute carrying a hand-lettered scroll of good wishes and prayers for our safe return. One by one, our escorts waved and turned back until at last we were on our own.

Our first day’s destination was not far—the shrine of Miya Jima, just across the water from where the _Phoenix_ had been hatched. There, while Barbara started supper and the men tried to find places to stow the piled-up gifts, I made my first entry in our nice new logbook:

Dropped anchor at Miya Jima Guchi harbor, opposite the shrine. Itsukushima is one of the famed “Three Most Beautiful Places in Japan.” All secure by 1900. Big spaghetti dinner to celebrate—too busy at noon to eat. Decks in good shape, but considerable of a shambles below—2 tons of last-minute ballast, now on floor of main cabin—169 iron pigs.

Many last-minute gifts—even a stack of old newspapers for Mi-ke. Poor Mi-ke—her box was forced to give way, in its nook under the starboard water tank, to a pile of iron pigs. The box is now in the aisle of the main cabin, where she is doing her business in the middle of traffic. Doesn’t seem to worry her too much.

That night, while the rest of the crew slept, I went on deck. Across the bay the shrine gleamed faintly in the moonlight. The _Phoenix_ stirred gently in the swells from a distant ferryboat. Above were the heavy masts, the intricate web of sturdy rigging, the white sails, furled now but ready to be raised at our command. We had our boat, and though she had not yet proved herself at sea, I knew she would, and proudly. This was not entirely a matter of wishful thinking. During her construction, a number of experts had looked her over, and their reactions had been unanimously favorable. But even without their praise I had faith in the _Phoenix_.

About the human beings aboard I was not so sanguine. None of us had ever been to sea in a small boat. The Japanese boys were good sailors of snipes in the Inland Sea, and I had done some sailing in an 18-footer, but this was a far cry from cruising outside.

And the family. How would the children take the trip? Would they be able to adjust to discomfort and occasional hardship? How much would they miss the companionship of others their own age? What of their schooling? We were taking along plenty of textbooks and teaching materials for both of them, and Barbara, who had been a teacher, would handle their lessons, but would this be sufficient?

And what of Barbara? We had made a contract with each other—for better, for worse—but was a situation like this anticipated in the contract? Suddenly I felt a surge of deep respect and admiration for her, as it came to me with full force that I was going because I wanted to go, but _she_ was going only because I was, offering me a rare and precious loyalty.

Our Japanese crew—what of them? How would they wear? How would two groups of diverse backgrounds get along, in weeks at sea under confining conditions? So far the men had shown themselves to be fine companions and hard workers. Moreover, on that wild night when Typhoon June almost had us on the rocks, they had proved themselves courageous and resourceful. Would these qualities last during the long grind?

Finally, the captain. Could _he_ take it? And could his companions take _him_? Could he curb his temper, learn to control his impatience? I deeply felt my inadequacies, my faults, and especially my lack of experience. Whenever one of the family called me “Skipper,” as they had begun to do, I felt uneasy and self-conscious. One of the biggest unknowns was the ability of this so-called Skipper.

Beset with doubts I finally turned in.

The next day we slept late, and did not get underway until midmorning. The doubts and introspection of the previous night were swept away in the sparkling breeze. We had made our choice, we were on our way, we would do our best. From now on, all thoughts and energies would be directed toward making a successful voyage.

Slowly we drifted past the shrine, so that the men could say their farewells to the goddess, which they did, standing in a row on the foredeck with caps in hand and heads bowed. Suddenly I realized that there was still another possibly divisive factor—one I had not thought of: differences in religion.

We continued up the strait and drew abreast the Yotsuda shipyard. We broke out the foghorn, Mickey blew lustily, and the entire shipyard crew—all four of them—came down to the shore while Yotsuda-san ran up the Japanese flag, and we dipped our American colors in a return salute. Just four months ago the _Phoenix_ had been launched from here.

The next several days were idyllic. The fall weather was perfect, the breeze light but fair, the scenery unsurpassed. We found out now that cruising may take a lot of work ashore, but that cruising is also sailing, and this is the reward.

And we were beginning to learn our boat. From the log of October 8, which was also Ted’s sixteenth birthday:

Good sailing practice today—many tacks, brisk breeze, getting smarter and smarter in handling her. If only the time element didn’t enter into the picture! But each day that passes puts us later and later in the season. Four days out and still not in Onomichi—only 72 miles (by land) from Hiroshima.

That night we dropped anchor in the beautiful harbor of Mitarai. Fishing boats were close about us and one of them, as it happened, was a bit too close, since we rammed him slightly while maneuvering for a berth. In the log, I virtuously recorded that the accident was a combination of poor judgment on my part and a shifting wind that pushed us down on the larger boat before we could stop our way.

From this we learned something about the momentum of our thirty tons and of the inability of our small engine to handle the boat properly in reverse. Later we called on the captain to apologize, and to have the damage assessed. It came to 556 yen, about $1.50 American. Accidents come cheaper in Japan!

During our trial run up the Inland Sea we made quite a few changes and improvements. We put downhauls all around, so we could get the sails down even in a gale. We rerigged our mainsail peak, painted and stowed most of the ballast, set up a third anchor aft, and got things more shipshape below decks.

We practiced, too, in the open areas, tacking over and over, learning to jibe smoothly, and establishing routines for various maneuvers. We loosed the dinghy, and practiced rounding up to it. When the breeze freshened, and we had our first taste of really brisk sailing, we found we could make seven knots with ease, using only the four lowers; moreover, the boat had a very easy motion.

We reached Takamatsu, at the upper end of the Inland Sea, on the morning of October 13. This would be our base for the final stages of fitting-out before the long ocean crossing to Hawaii. A Coast Guard boat came well out to meet us and escorted us to the Prefectural Docks, where a crowd was waiting, and we went through the usual gamut of questions.

The following morning we accepted the kind invitation of the Takamatsu Yacht Club to use their private dock, where we remained for a very busy two weeks.