THE OPEN BOAT: Across the Pacific the OPEN BOAT
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THE OPEN BOAT: Across the Pacific THE OPEN BOAT by WebbAcross Chiles the Pacific by W.W. Norton'W•Norton & Company & Company New New York York ·London In reading this for the first time in a quarter century, I am struck by how much the South Pacific has changed in the intervening years. I have returned to most of these places many times since 1979-80, and have been in French Polynesia, Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand within the past three years. Places where I seldom saw another person or automobile are now crowded. Papeete is a disaster; and the problems I mention between native Fijians and Indians have resulted in three military coups. And of course prices which I once thought outlandish now seem laughably low. The islands are still worth visiting, and some places, such as Opua, New Zealand, I like even more now than then. What hasn’t changed is the experience of the sea. I have made only the most minor of changes in the text from the printed version: a few changes of verb tense and the elmination of an excess word here and there. Webb Chiles April 29, 2007 Copyright © 1982 by Webb Chiles Published simultaneously in Canada by George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto. Printed in the United States of America ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FIRST EDITION Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Chiles, Webb. The open boat: Across the Pacific 1. Chiles, Webb. 2. Pacific Ocean. I. Title. G53o.C4773 1982 910'. 09164 81-14014 ISBN O-393-O3268-X AACR2 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. 10110 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. 37 Great Russell Street, London WCiB 3NU 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 To Suzanne Contents 1. Farewell 17 2. To the Marquesas 18 3. On the Eve of His Execution 34 4. Typee Revisited 41 5. The Last Six Miles 48 6. Papeete 79 61 7. Once More, with Feeling 71 8. Fayaway Found 81 9. Crazy in Paradise 86 10. Slow Sail to the Evening Star 97 11. Tonga, Butterflies, and Bats 105 12. An Appointment with Captain Bligh 119 13. Fiji 128 14. How the Other Half Lives 137 15. Night Watch 147 16. A Change of Season 156 17. A Single Wave 167 18. Adrift 176 19. Over the Reef 185 20. To Win the Big Sea 194 Charts 1. San Diego—Emae Island endpaper 2. Nuku Hiva 32 3. Through the Tuamotus 50 4. Around Tahiti I 54 5. Around Tahiti II 69 6. Huahine to Mapiti 89 7. Vavau 108 8. Vavau—Suva 117 9. Suva—Emae Island 166 10. Emae Island 200 Line drawing of Chidiock Tichborne AcknowledAcknowledgementsgments Many people in many countries have shown me friendship and kind- ness. Although I cannot mention them all, I thank them all, and particularly the following: Ralph and Martha Saylor; Robert Reed; Howard and Susan Wormsley; Terry Russell; Dave Brewster; A. Barry Jones; Neal Esterly; Alex and Michelle duPrel; Hugo Wehner; Stephan and Jackie Itchner; Trevor and Brenda Dunn; Mel Eden; Gene and Kathy Taatjes; Fred Timakata; Kalo Manaroto; James and Mary Mcln- tosh; Dean and Anna Ellis; Al Jenney of Boston Whaler; Voyageurs; Luke Churchouse and Rich Hufïnagle and the men who build Dras- combe boats, for their honest workmanship. Parts of this book have appeared in Sail; Cruising World; Sea; the San Diego Evening Tribune; Voiles (France); Yachting World (En- gland); Modern Boating (Australia); and Sea Spray (New Zealand). In San Diego I recited the following to those who came to see me leave: My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain; The day is past, and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done. My tale was heard and yet it was not told, My fruit is fallen, yet my leaves are green, My youth is spent and yet I am not old, I saw the world and yet I was not seen; My thread is cut and yet it is not spun, And now I live, and now my life is done. I sought my death and found it in my womb, I looked for life and saw it was a shade, I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb, And now I die, and now I was but made; My glass is full, and now my glass is run, And now I live, and now my life is done. —Chidiock Tichbome, l558?--1586 judge a man, then, by that against which he must strive against what if not this soft night and the wind and sea against the myth he must become and his own will the ocean waits to measure or to slay me the ocean waits and I will sail —Webb Chiles From my reading since then I would add: No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. —Aristotle We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! —Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit First sail. In San Diego before departure. —s. CHILES 1 FarewellFarewell There was a crowd on the dock: television cameramen, reporters, friends, the curious. Suzanne and I were alone together for only a moment. Her hand started to reach for my arm, hesitated, and dropped back to her side. I turned and climbed aboard the little yawl. "Will you cast off the bowlines?" She bent over the cleat quickly. Her face was hidden. "Ready?" she called, standing now. "Ready." She tossed the lines aboard. I backed the oars for a few strokes to swing clear of the neighboring boats and then rowed around the corner of the marina. At the end of the dock, I felt some wind and stopped rowing and set the sails. "Good-bye," she called as the gap between us widened. The water was gurgling past the hull. I waved and shouted, "Good-bye," then added more quietly, "love." For almost an hour I thought I could see her, a lonely figure at the end of the dock, until finally she was engulfed by the land as I was by the sea. 2 ToTo the Marquesas You do not belong in port that first night. The habits and rhythms of sea life don't cease abruptly with the setting of the anchor. Only now, as your eyes are repeatedly startled to find the compass bracket empty and the knot meter registering O, do you realize how many hun- dreds of times a day they have been making the circuit from those instruments to the masthead telltale to the pattern of the waves to the set of the sails, while your mind continuously calculates whether the boat is doing her best. And only now, with a half dozen other yachts anchored nearby to provide scale, do you realize how tiny is the vessel that has carried you 3,000 miles across the Pacific so quickly. During thirty-four days at sea, her eighteen-foot length and six-foot beam and sixteen inches of freeboard had come to seem normal, as had her lack of a deck. When first you arrive, sailing most of the way up Taiohae Bay, then rowing the last hundred yards when the wind dies, people think you have come in from one of the nearby islands. Then they discover the truth. Two forty-footers that left San Diego about when you did have made the crossing only four and five days faster. A native fisherman waves as he powers past. Even his boat is larger than yours. All this keeps running through your mind as you try to force yourself to go to sleep. Simultaneously you are exhausted yet restless. At sea you have slept with waves beating the hull like a drum, with wind shrieking and rain blasting down. Now, for a few moments, even the slightest To the Marquesas 19 sounds—an almost inaudible creak from the mizzenmast, the inflatable dinghy gently brushing the hull—are distracting. Then, in an instant, the exhaustion prevails and drowns you in your first deep sleep for more than a month. And you don't belong in port that next day, when you awaken, stunned, to find yourself surrounded on three sides by 3,000-foot green peaks. It is a day of plodding formalities, of learning where to exchange currency and where to buy bread, of surveying the stock of the few tiny general stores and learning how to send a telegram, of filling out forms for the gendarmes. They are friendly, but still it is bureaucracy. There are no great distances involved, not more than a quarter mile along the single rough road running beside the shore, but you walk slowly on creaking legs with an old man's walk—measured, deliberate, almost as though you were learning to walk all over again, which in a way you are, for you have not taken a single normal step or stood without hanging on to a mast since the start of the voyage. Only that second night, when after dinner you lean back and gaze at the sky, does the passage begin to come to an end. You think about the inventory list you completed for the gendarmes. Your French and their English were equally inadequate to explain that what was signifi- cant was what was not listed, all those items you had aboard when you left San Diego and that were either washed overboard or lost in the blue-sky knockdown or surreptitiously destroyed by the sea.