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.