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.