SUVA TO HONOLULU

At five o'clock in the afternoon of the 2nd of July we weighed anchor and slipped from the quietness of Suva harbour out into a roystering east wind that was playing all manner of strange pranks with the placid sea we had come in through a week previously. For steep, short seas and uncomfortable small-schooner weather, nothing quite equals one of these reef-locked stretches of the south-west Pacific with a stiff blow on. The ever-imminent bottom, constantly dragging on the waves, retards them below and lets them keep going above, producing seas something between ocean swells and lines of surf. Sailing with seas of this description coming anywhere forward of the beam is like tobogganing on an uncleared mountainside.

Hardly was the yacht clear of the harbour before we were forced to begin shortening canvas, and by eight o'clock double reefs had been tied in the mainsail and foresail and the bonnet taken out of the forestay-sail. Even then she made bad weather of it. She would make a terrific leap skyward, almost standing on her rudder in an effort to clear an advancing wave, and then crash thunderingly down and bore her nose deep into the green water of the next sea before her bows began lifting again. There was not a great deal of weight behind the seas and they did little damage; but all night long they shook the yacht as a terrier does a rat, carried away a couple of boat-loads of fresh fruit contributed by our Suva friends, and made sleeping an impossibility. By morning a falling wind and sea made it possible to shake the reefs out of the foresail and put the bonnet back into the forestay-sail, but the mainsail languished all day with the most of its length along the boom.

Early in the morning of the 4th the yacht crossed the 180th Meridian, carrying us back to West Longitude. Regarding the unusual sequence of days on this occasion the "Ladies' Log" has the following entry under date of July 3rd:

"Yesterday it was Sunday, the 3rd; today, from twelve P. M. to four A. M., it was the Fourth of July. Then we crossed the 180th Meridian, and it was again Sunday, the 3rd. Tomorrow we will have a continuation of the Fourth which we started this morning. This figures out at one and five-sixths Sundays and one and one-sixth Fourths of July, making a total of three complete and consecutive holidays on which, according to nautical custom, the cook must provide us with 'duff.'"

Levity of the "Ladies' Log" aside, the coincidence was a most remarkable one.

It was possibly the first fragment of the Fourth struggling to join forces with the unbroken one that followed which caused an hour's diversion on the morning of the latter which was quite sufficient in itself to stand for an Independence Day celebration. The wind had been light but steady from E.S.E. all day, and when darkness fell there was nothing in the smooth sea, clear sky and high barometer to point any reason for not carrying the light sails all night. An easy nine miles an hour was averaged all through the first watch, and a freshening of the breeze shortly after the sounding of midnight had ushered in the Fourth was responsible for better than ten miles being run in the hour immediately following. Shortly after one o'clock the breeze, quite without warning, suddenly fell light, and all in a minute the celebration was on. What it was we managed to agree upon the next morning, and as to why it was the coming day also brought considerable enlightenment; how it was depended largely upon one's viewpoint, and no two of us appear to have seen it quite in the same way. I, sleeping on a cabin transom when the thing happened, can merely set down my own impressions.

With the startling distinctness with which the slightest sound above makes itself heard in the quiet spaces between decks, I noted how the rustle of the seas along the sides died down as the breeze fell light, heard the banging of blocks, the flap of sails, the slatting of lines, and presently the buzz of voices in puzzled conjecture. Then a low, grinding roar, like the distant sound of a dry-snow avalanche, began filling the air, and instantly the sharp, incisive voice of the Commodore cut in, shouting an interminable string of orders. Suddenly the sound of the voices changed to gasping snarls, the boom of boots on the deck to far-away rat-a-tats, and the whole of the outside Universe seemed to resolve itself into one huge roar. Then a great, big, solid something struck the yacht and all of the staterooms lay down on their sides, the lamps swung up and lay down against the ceiling, and everything movable jumped out and lay down on the port berths and transoms. A trunk broke loose from its lashings under the cabin table and slid down to mingle with a typewriter, a phonograph, a couple of hundred of the latter's loose records, and, incidentally, myself. Shortly a starboard bookcase vomited its contents into the shambles, and a big bunch of flags-of-all-nations, unrolling as it came, leaped out to lend a festal touch to the glad occasion. And over all, through open skylight and companionway, poured floods of brine to keep down the dust.

Time and again the yacht struggled to sit up, and as often settled shudderingly back on her side. Finally, the muffled snarl of orders forced from a wind-stopped throat cut down through the roar, to be followed by a scurrying on deck—tiny and distant like the scrambling of mice over paper—and the cabin leaped suddenly halfway up and hung there quivering as though balanced on its corner. Then, as some one ran forward the slide and jammed together the doors of the companionway, came the tense voice of the Commodore, gasping above the wind:

"Tumble up lively, you there below! Come a-runnin' an' len' a hand 'fore the sticks go out o' 'er!" Then, more indistinctly as his face was turned, "Le' go, there forrard; le' go!"

A moment later the cabin gave another jump back toward the normal, this time straightening up enough to give me a chance to burrow out from under a stack of phonograph records and crawl along the side of the port transom to the stairs.

I have a distinct memory of how my head was bumped twice in gaining the deck—once against the storm doors of the companionway and once against the wind. The air, which was rushing by as though all the atmosphere of the Universe was trying to crowd itself along the deck of the yacht, felt as tangible as a solid stream of water, and so mixed was it with water, in fact, that there was no telling where the surface of the sea left off and the air commenced. The hard-driven drops stung like sleet, and the act of breathing with the face turned to windward was a sheer impossibility.

Still heeling heavily, and with mainsail dragging over her port side like the trailing wing of a wounded bird, the yacht scudded off before the wind. Withal she was making good weather of it, and even before the coming of the rain marked the passing of the centre of the squall we had the main-boom amidships and the troublesome mainsail hauled aboard. The deck was a fathom deep in flapping sails and up forward a water-butt and a salt beef barrel were having a lively game of tag, but neither of the boats had started its lashings and none of the skylights was smashed. Most of the damage was done to the storm-tossed contents of the cabin. By daybreak the deck was cleared and the yacht, under all-plain sail, headed again on her north-westerly course.

Our "Independence Day Celebration," as we afterwards had explained to us in Honolulu, was what is commonly referred to in the South Pacific as a "leeward squall." This phenomenon is met with only among volcanic islands high enough to allow the wind to draw around them and meet again in "twisters" a few miles to leeward. If the wind holds steady from one direction this ordinarily makes little trouble, but if it chances to haul two or three points ahead when a ship is passing a high island the squall which comes boring in from leeward may take her aback with disastrous results. Trading captains passing under the lee of islands of this description always go under shortened sail. Light sails of all kinds are unpopular in the South Pacific—one never sees a trading schooner with a topmast on the fore, and not all carry them on the main.

It was a "leeward squall" of unusual force that Lurline encountered on the morning of the Fourth of July, and considering the fact that, with the exception of her foretopsail, she was carrying all the sail she had, the Commodore's work in bringing her through unharmed was creditable in the extreme. From so unexpected a quarter did the squall appear that only the briefest space was allowed for preparation; yet in these two or three minutes all hands were called, the maintopmast staysail and maingafftopsail were lowered to the deck, the jib-topsail and flying jib hauled down and furled, the ship put about on the other tack, the jib furled, and men stationed at the halyards fore and aft. All of this was accomplished before the squall struck, which then left nothing to do but let go the halyards when it became apparent that the force of the wind was too great for the yacht to stand up under. With the wind coming as it was, it was impossible to prevent the mainsail's falling in the water.

By the afternoon of the Fourth we were out of sight of the last of the Fijis and again dependent on observations for our position. It was our intention to call in at Fanning Island on our way to Hawaii, to which end the yacht was kept headed north-east whenever possible, a course two points more easterly than the direct one to Honolulu. With a light south-east wind 119 miles were run up to noon of the 5th, soon after which a shift to N.N.E. forced us to go about and head nearly due east all afternoon. Toward dark it fell calm and but three miles were run between six o'clock and midnight. By the 6th the wind was back to south-east, but blowing with little force, the run to noon of that day being but forty-five miles.

A Fijian warrior

Reefing the mainsail Untying a reef in the mainsail

A strong westerly current began making itself felt about this time—Lat. 14° 06' South, and Long. 176° 04' West—which gradually worked more to the north as we approached the Line. On the 6th it set us eighteen miles to the west; on the 7th, twenty miles to W.N.W.; on the 8th, eighteen miles to N.W.; and on the next four days from twenty-four to thirty miles to N.N.W. This was considerably more of a current than the Sailing Directions indicate for those latitudes.

In the forenoon of the 7th the wind hauled to the north-east, blowing strong from that direction until four in the afternoon, when, without abating in strength, it went back to east. Toward midnight a heavy squall struck the yacht, and while furling the jib a foot rope gave way under Bill, a big Dane of the mate's watch, and only a lucky grab at the bobstay saved him from being swept away. The yacht put her nose under a couple of feet of green water at the same instant Bill went down, giving him a fearful ducking, but the plucky fellow swung up to the bowsprit the moment it arose from the sea and finished his work without a murmur.

On the 8th, 9th and 10th the wind continued fresh but persisted in shifting back and forth in heavy rain-squalls between east and north-east, making it impossible to hold one course for more than an hour or two at a time. The runs for these days were 127, 125 and 126 miles, respectively. On the 9th and 10th we passed straight through the middle of the Union Group, but so far from any of the islands that their presence was indicated only by the sight of an occasional land bird. This group is composed only of low atolls which are but sparsely watered and thinly inhabited. On the 11th the sky was completely overcast, making observations impossible, and the day was one long succession of baffling winds and fierce rain-squalls. This succeeded to a dead calm, the yacht lying all night with the booms hauled amidships and the sails furled.

In the middle of the forenoon of the 12th the yacht sailed under a black cornucopia-shaped cloud which we had been watching for some time as it lay in wait across our path. As we ran into the misty tail, which hung so low as to seem almost dragging in the sea, a veritable deluge of water broke upon us. The downpour was so fierce as to threaten for a while to break in the skylights and flood the cabins. The water accumulated so fast on the deck that the scuppers would not carry it off, and when the rain was falling heaviest the cockpit was flooded a foot deep. The cataclysm ceased as quickly as it had commenced, not by passing on like an ordinary squall, but simply by exhausting its fount. By the time the air was clear of water the black cloud had drawn up into itself and disappeared.

After four more days of variable winds, at four in the morning of the 16th, we crossed the Equator in Long. 163° 07'. The wind was fresh from E.N.E. and the air (82°) and the water (80°) were each a degree cooler than for several days. The evening was marked by an unusually brilliant sunset.

Neither our rate of progress to this point, nor the course we had travelled, were all that might have been desired. On the 12th we made but forty miles and on the three following days an average of about 140 miles each. The course approximated N.N.E., all of two points to the leeward of the direct track to Fanning Island.

To noon of the 17th there was a run of 161 miles, which placed us due east of Fanning Island and at a distance of about 150 miles. The next twenty-four hours were spent in beating in short tacks against a wind which had settled itself contentedly to blow straight down our course. By noon of the 18th, having gained but sixty-two miles in the day's run, we gave up trying to make Fanning Island and slacked off sheets for Honolulu. Twelve hours later the wind, blowing half a gale, had hauled up to north-east, forcing us to close-reef mainsail and foresail and head off to N. by W.

Washington Island, lying in about Lat. 5° North, and Long. 160° West, the only land we sighted between Fiji and Hawaii, was on the horizon for several hours of the 19th. The wind continued as fitful as south of the Equator. By keeping the yacht close-hauled all the time we usually managed to hold her on the right side of N. by E., the course to Honolulu, but it was a rough, slap-bang, ding-dong task. Of this period the "Ladies' Log," under date of July 20th, records as follows:

"Lurline might have been mistaken for a coral island last night, so thick were the reefs upon her. 'The sea is going down,' cries the Commodore cheerily early in the evening. 'Ay,' answers the mate; 'most of it is going down through the galley skylight.' And sure enough it was. Contrary winds are forcing us to make considerable westing and the heavy sea cuts down our speed, the main element in linear progression. Reefs were shaken out at eight this morning and tied in again at seven this evening, the constant succession of one to the other during the last few days eliciting the suggestion from the mate that the reefs had best be padlocked in and the key thrown away."

Most of the following week was spent in reefing and unreefing and tacking this way and that at the caprice of the wind. The sea was heavy most of the time and the progress slow, the best days' runs being those of the 23rd and 24th, when 147 and 142 miles, respectively, were made. On none of the other days was there a run of over 100 miles, and on the 21st only fifty-one was marked up. On the 27th, though 150 miles west of the high island of Hawaii, we cut into the tip of the windless triangle which lies under the lee of its 13,000-foot peaks and for several hours floated without steerageway. When we got the wind again in the afternoon it was noticed at once that the log was acting in an eccentric manner, and on investigation its blades were found to be bent and twisted and heavily scarred, apparently by the teeth of some large fish.

At four o'clock in the afternoon of the 28th the green peaks of Oahu were sighted on the weather bow, distant sixty-five miles. With a light east wind the yacht averaged between four and five knots during the night and at four A. M. was six miles off the Barber Point Light, which bore N. by W. This was some miles to the leeward of Honolulu, and four hours of beating were necessary to bring us opposite the entrance. Here we were boarded by the pilot at eight o'clock, and a few minutes later the tug, Fearless, dispatched through the courtesy of the Spreckels Company, passed a line to the yacht and towed her in. We anchored in Rotten Row, with mooring lines made fast to the identical old man-of-war boilers from which they had been cast loose on our departure for the Marquesas, four months previously.

From the sailing standpoint this run was the most unsatisfactory of the voyage. Twenty-seven days were required to cover 3000 miles, an average of but little over a hundred miles a day. Practically all of this time the yacht was close-hauled, and a total of at least three days was spent in tiresome beating against a wind which blew straight from our destination. It is possible that two or three days might have been saved had we made a fair wind of the south-east Trades instead of keeping close-hauled in an endeavour to make Fanning Island; but this is by no means certain, as the easting gained at this time stood us in good stead when the north-east Trades were encountered.