Both planking and deck seams were calked with oakum. When the job was done, the cooperation of the local fire department was enlisted and a hand pump set up on the sea wall. A contingent of volunteers spent hours pumping the Inland Sea into the hull, while workmen on the scaffolding outside marked the few small leaks with chalk. At the end of a busy day, a hole was drilled in the bilge and the sea allowed to drain out.
The chief exceptions to traditional Japanese methods were in my insistence on the use of wood preservatives, marine glue and American putties and paints. Such procedures are not a part of normal sampan-building activities. A certain preliminary confusion was also caused by the fact that Japanese shipwrights do not operate in terms of feet and inches, but with shaku and sun, which are only rough equivalents. Eventually, I discovered that the work proceeded much more smoothly if I adapted to their measuring system and translated my figures into Japanese dimensions. I became quite casual, as time went on, in the use of shaku and sun, not to mention bu, ken, kan, kin, tsubo, sho, to, and koku.
We never did become casual, however, about the manner in which the workmen smoked on the job and tossed their butts and matches—sometimes still aflame—into nearby piles of trash and shavings. Naturally, there was a fire clause in the contract, but we were realistic enough by now to know that if the job came to a fiery and untimely end, Yotsuda-san would be profoundly distressed, but absolutely without means to rebuild our boat. Insurance? Just the thought of beginning negotiations made my head reel. No, the men must stop smoking on the job. I told them so, and they smiled and bowed politely. From then on, each time we came out to the boatyard, they smiled, bowed, and carefully put out their cigarettes. We smiled and bowed also, and hoped for the best.
Nevertheless, these months were happy ones for us all. The work progressed steadily, if slowly, and although we had gradually reconciled ourselves to the fact that we would not launch in June, we felt that surely by July—or, at the latest, August.... We still had much to learn.
During this time hundreds of problems arose, and each, after its own nature, had to be met and surmounted. Scores of items, major and minor, had to be hunted down, designed or made, or contracted for. A principal source of supply was in the junk and secondhand marine shops that lined the waterfronts. The nearby city of Kure had during the war been a mammoth shipbuilding center, and even then in some half-forgotten bin at the back of a shop one could sometimes make rich strikes. I would emerge sneezing, dragging out a length of galvanized chain or an assortment of bolts. The proprietor, knowing quite well who I was and what I was up to, would grin amiably. The conversation usually went like this:
“Kono jonku wa—ikura desuka?—This junk—how much?”
“Jonku!” he exclaimed in mock indignation. “Jonku nai! Yotto no mono desu!—Not junk! Yacht equipment!”
“Iie! Jonku dake! Ikura?—No! Only junk! How much?”
He laughed. “Hokay. Sekai isshu no yotto kara, jonku desu.—Okay. Because it’s for the round-the-world yacht, call it junk.” He weighed it up, I paid for it at the rate of scrap iron, and hauled it down to the boat.
In Kure also was an offshoot of the Korean War, the BCOF—British Commonwealth Occupation Forces—salvage depot, which was a high-class name for another junk yard. War materiel poured into this depot in bewildering abundance and a wide variety of conditions, from completely unused to completely useless. Climbing the mountainous piles of scrap in the yard, or delving into the bins in the sheds, I would sometimes make a fine haul, as on the day I picked up two new 65-pound plow-type anchors for one pound Australian ($2.25) apiece.