Our radio listening was confined to five minutes a day—from a station in Los Angeles—at which time we caught a short roundup of the news and a time signal, to check our chronometer. That was all we wanted or needed. If anything of world-shattering importance happened, we knew it would be covered in that brief newscast. The rest could wait. My log says:
So far, this trip, compared with the N. Pacific crossing, has been a quiet afternoon’s sail on the Bay, complete with sunbathing, naps, reading, games, and drinks—not, unfortunately, cold. It’s full moon now and we stayed on deck late last night in a scene of fantastic beauty.
We had moved to better locations the last-minute miscellaneous items that had crammed the life raft on departure, and now we found the raft a perfect family playpen and a fine spot for astronomy lessons from Ted. We had time, too, for family games, such as Twenty Questions or Teapot, and for conversation, that forgotten art. Unconsciously we bridged the gap of years as we shared our reading and our thoughts and kicked ideas around. There was a new sense of relaxation. Hatches and portholes were left open day after day, and meals were often served on deck. Gradually we dared to believe that perhaps deep-sea cruising didn’t have to be under conditions such as we had experienced on the Long Shakedown—given the proper latitudes and the right season of the year.
Mickey continued in good health and spirits and I began to hope that that problem, too, was a thing of the past. Occasionally, when it was the watch of one of the men, the others would join him to hold long conversations. Once the discussion became so vehement that I almost feared they would come to blows. Overcome with curiosity, I joined them in the cockpit and listened silently although I could catch nothing of the quick and colloquial man’s idiom.
They were discussing Japan, Nick explained then—whether their country’s future was a “dead end,” as one of them apparently maintained, or whether there was cause for optimism. Also, I gathered there was some divergence of opinion about the United States—or as much of it as they had seen so far. One was apparently outspoken in his enthusiasm, while the others remained noncommittal. These points of view were not identified and I could only hazard a guess on the basis of incomplete knowledge. In Japan, the inseparable comrades had been Nick and Moto, both inclined to be reserved and thoughtful. As Nick had once told me, “We are like brothers. I am sorry for Mickey. He is outside.” It seemed likely to me that the ebullient, quicksilver Mickey would have been the one to take immediately to the ease and glitter of American living, while Nick and Moto, more conservative, would tend to reserve judgment.
On the other hand, during our stay in Hawaii I had noted an increasing tendency for Mickey to replace Nick, as Moto’s friend and companion. Often the two younger men had gone off sightseeing together, while Nick remained on board alone to read, to write letters, or to listen to music. At the time we attached little importance to this and certainly, once we put to sea again, there seemed to be no real schism among the three who ate and chatted animatedly together in the cockpit or around the table in the main cabin.
Only a few incidents served to mark the passage of time. Trouble developed with the head of the topmast and one afternoon we struck it—in one hour and twenty minutes, which I thought not too bad for a first attempt at sea although, of course, we were working under favorable conditions. The iron cap at the head was completely off—faulty design on my part—and we started fixing it in a leisurely sort of way.
Another day we had our first experience of sea life on a large scale: a school of hundreds of dolphinlike creatures, which sent Jessica scurrying below for her Journal and reference books. We saw them first off the starboard beam, where they passed well forward of us and seemed to be passing on their way. Suddenly they turned en masse and headed directly for our boat. For two hours we were completely surrounded. How many there were we couldn’t determine, but they extended as far as the eye could see and we had a matchless opportunity for taking pictures and enjoying their graceful performance.
Through illustrations in Jessica’s Book of Knowledge, we identified them as blackfish, a small variety of whale. They ranged in length from 12 to 15 feet, had short snouts and round foreheads with a blowhole on top. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, expelling air with audible snorts as they surfaced, or slapping their heads on the water with a thwack before they went under again. Sometimes a platoon of three or four would curve out of the water in graceful precision, or dive in formation beneath the boat. Others seemed to make a game out of swimming back and forth just in front of the bobstay chain as it cut the water.
After more than two hours they slowly thinned out and moved on, but several times during the night the man at the tiller could recognize the distinctive whumph of a straggler, surfacing and blowing just beside the boat.