HONOLULU TO SAN PEDRO

The two weeks spent ashore during Lurline's return visit to Honolulu were a welcome respite from the four months of unbroken life on shipboard that had preceded them. The absence of the passengers was taken advantage of to give the yacht a thorough overhauling in preparation for the long, hard beat back to San Pedro, especial care being taken in the renewal of the running rigging. Moreover, as we were scheduled for a short stop at Hilo and confidently expected to run down with a fair wind and arrive there all ready to receive calls, unusual attention was given to brasswork and hardwood. Thus our plans; how they worked out will appear presently.

On the evening of August 4th the Royal Hawaiian Yacht Club gave a banquet for the Lurline party, among other amenities of the occasion being the election of the Commodore to an honorary life membership in that organization. In his speech of acceptance the Commodore dwelt at some length on the ideal sailing conditions existent in the Trades latitudes of both North and South Pacific, and suggested as a means of bringing those waters more closely to the attention of coast yachtsmen, the inauguration of an annual race, in one direction or other, between Honolulu and a California port. The idea was not entirely a new one to Hawaiian yachtsmen, but the Commodore's assurance of the hearty co-operation of the South Coast Yacht Club of San Pedro gave the movement an impetus which resulted in the establishment of the Trans-Pacific Yacht Race as a regular biennial fixture. Too much credit cannot be given to the people of Hawaii, both in and out of yachting circles, for the enthusiastic sportsmanship which has made this, the only regular deep-sea yacht race that is sailed in any part of the world, an accomplished fact.

At this banquet, also, were arranged the details for a match race between two old rivals, Tom Hobron's sloop, Gladys, and Clarence McFarlane's schooner, La Paloma. It was decided that the yachts should run down to Lahina, on the island of Maui, remain there for a day or two and then race back to Honolulu. As the date of the start, August 10th, about coincided with that on which we were planning to sail for Hilo, and as Lahina was but little off our course, the opportunity of following the race seemed too good to neglect. Accordingly a party of our friends was asked to accompany us, and preparations made to start the ball rolling with a musical send-off in Honolulu and stop it, at the disembarkation of our guests in Lahina, with fireworks. On the arrival of the racers at Lahina—of course Lurline would arrive first—our friends were to go ashore and await the steamer, while we proceeded on to Hilo. Never was a schedule more carefully elaborated—even the gastronomical preferences of each individual guest were consulted—and never did a party of pleasure-seekers board a yacht with such firm intentions—expressed and implied—of enjoying, unmixedly and uninterruptedly, a really good time.

The water-front was gay with flags and black with people when, early in the afternoon of the 10th, we hove up anchor and filled away for the passage, following in the wakes of Gladys and La Paloma. It was "Aloha, Aloha Nui," from every pier and dock and bulkhead, that we passed as we stood down the bay, and "Aloha, Aloha," from every tug and schooner. At the landing of the boat club, at the inner end of the passage, was a big crowd of friends with the band, and from there the "Alohas" again burst forth as we sailed smartly by, running at an easy five or six-knot gait before a light but steady breeze.

As the yacht entered the passage and made her first curtesy to the ocean swell, the band struck up Aloha-oe, and the crowd, falling silent for the moment, vented its feelings in a flood of waving handkerchiefs. Simultaneously, a similar muslin broadside flashed forth in reply from the port side of the speeding yacht, and then, with friends looking in the eyes of friends and the whole affair—even to the music—going off as smoothly and dramatically as Lohengrin's Farewell in an end-of-the-season performance, the lashing of the fishing-tackle block on the forestay parted and let the anchor and thirty-five fathoms of chain slide back into the sea.

An atmosphere histrionic gave way to one profanely sulphurous, for in addition to spoiling the dramatic effect of our departure, the contretemps left the yacht in a really awkward position. The wheel was thrown hard down and mainsail and foresail sheets let go with all possible dispatch, but not in time to prevent her from rollicking on to the limit of her cable and bringing up short like a colt at the end of its tether. Then she swung round, head to the wind, and began tugging at her anchor as a colt tugs at its halter in trying to slip it over its ears. While the sailors wound away on the winch in the thin, blue smoke that still hovered forward—the mate had lost a good deal of cuticle from the inside of his hand in trying to check the run of the cable—our amiable guests brought up sofa pillows on the quarter deck and, making megaphones of their hands, held long and animated conversations with their friends on the landing of the boat club.

Getting under way in the narrow passage was by no means a simple operation, but, thanks largely to a favourable set of current, it was accomplished without accident. Gladys and La Paloma were something more than hull down to the south by the time Lurline was clear of the reef, but with a fair wind, which was increasing steadily as we worked from under the lee of the land, it was hoped to overcome their lead in time to give our guests a good view of the race. Lurline gained rapidly while daylight lasted, and by the time the banners of a brilliant sunset fluttered low in the west and Tantalus disappeared behind the dusky pall of the coming night we seemed in a fair way to accomplish our purpose.

Never was there such a night; never so jolly a yachting party. The slow-heaving sea, bathed in a flood of moonlight, was a-dazzle in dimples of liquid, lucent gold; the sky was a star-set vault of purple, and the breeze, milk-warm and redolent of the smell of some distant, flower-clothed valley, a caress from heaven. The temper of the party matched the night.

Dinner was a huge success. There were a few negligible incidentals of the soup, fish, roast and salad order, preliminary to a huge feast of preserves made of every known variety of Hawaiian fruit from mangoes to mummy-apples, sugared down in jars at all known stages of ripeness and unripeness. These, with countless boxes of candy and fresh fruit, were the contributions of our guests and their friends. And how we did eat, and drink each other's healths, and with what acclamation agree that, never since the voyage of the Argonauts, had cruise been so auspiciously begun. Banjos and ukuleles were a-twang and a-tinkle on the after deck, accordions and a bugle wailed and brayed from the forecastle, and through it all ran a fog-horn obligato played by a festive Hawaiian miss who had unearthed that instrument of torture from the lazarette.

About ten o'clock the wind died down and the yacht, deprived of its steadying influence, fell more and more under the disturbing sway of the swinging swells from the channel. Before long a decided current became apparent, running with the seas and setting us rapidly toward the rocks of Makapu-u Point. At midnight Diamond Head Light, which is arranged so as to change colour to the ship passing shoreward of the danger line, showed ominously in a solid beam of warning red. And still the yacht continued to drift, with the land looming higher and the threatening roar of the surf on the reef growing louder every minute.

From rolling but gently when she first dropped the wind, the yacht, in the wrench of the steeper seas nearer shore, was shortly executing a pas seul of singular intricacy and animation; so that our guests—frankly, openly and unfeignedly seasick, every one of them—from a half hour of fear that they were going to be cast on the reef and drowned, relapsed into an indefinite period in which they were afraid that perhaps nothing of so felicitous a nature was going to befall after all. Bundling the sufferers below as gently as the exigency permitted, the boats were cleared and swung out ready for launching. Towing off, in the face of swells and current so persistent, held scant promise of success, but we were about to try it as a last expedient when the sails began filling with vagrant puffs from an awakening Trade-wind, and we slacked off sheets and got away without putting it to the test.

The rest of the night we spent in crabbing across the lumpy channel, to come out in the grey dawn upon a windless patch of swell and current-churned water in the lee of Molokai which, of all the fiend-infested corners of the Seven Seas, is the spot most accursed. Steep, viciously-heaving humps of water, wallowing without rhythm or reason, wrangled angrily to see which could pitch or roll the yacht farthest in its own particular direction. She was like a kitten thrown to a pack of hungry hounds. They pulled her, hauled her, rolled her, dragged her, tossed her on high and trampled her underfoot. Not all the other rough-and-rowdy intervals of the whole cruise crowded into a single day could have compared with it for the sheer discomfort it imposed. All but two of the sailors, and the cook as well, were violently seasick. Only a couple of us of the regular guard of Lurline were holding up our heads, and the guests were a unit of prostrate despair. Not a bed or a bunk on the yacht was tenantable in the fearful rollings; no bed or bunk less than a covered box could have been. Everything not screwed or lashed into place—and even many objects which had been thus secured—sought the lowest level, and a survey of the cabin, looking forward from the foot of the companionway, suggested something between a tableau of the aftermath of Belshazzar's Feast and the Kishneff massacres staged in a secondhand store. Banjos, ukuleles, fog-horn, no longer thrilling to the touch of the revellers, complained intermittently with muffled chords of protest as they rolled drunkenly to port and starboard with the lurches of the yacht. And as for the revellers themselves—but the Hand of Charity throws the Helm of Description hard-a-lee and sends me off before the Wind of Pity on another tack.

We have since estimated that this slap-banging ten hours of "devil and the deep sea" in the lee of Molokai did more damage to the yacht's rigging than all of the four months of cruising south of the Line. Most of this became apparent in subsequent overhaulings; at the time the principal trouble arose through the repeated carrying away of the boom-tackle. This happened four times: once through the splitting of the block, a flying fragment of which narrowly missed decapitating the man at the wheel; once through the tearing loose of the cleat on the boom; twice through the breaking of the wire lashing on the boom. How the yacht escaped being racked to pieces in the crazy tug-of-war between the keel, on the one side, trying to hold her to the normal, and on the other the waves, savagely bent on throwing her on her beam's ends or standing her on bowsprit or rudder, has always remained a mystery to us.

At four in the afternoon a light breeze sprang up from the south. We were still somewhat nearer to Honolulu than Lahina, which, with the fact that the wind was fair to the former port and dead ahead to the latter, quickly decided us as to what our course would be. Under all-plain lower sail we made the thirty-two miles to Diamond Head in three hours and a half, only to fail—probably on account of the hour—in our endeavour to attract a pilot. Finally we were forced to lower a boat, which, with some difficulty, got through the reef at Waikiki and landed a man to telephone for a tug. The Waterwitch came out in due time and towed the yacht to her old anchorage in Rotten Row. Our guests, as fast as they revived, went eagerly ashore. Gladys and La Paloma, as we subsequently learned, after nearly going on the rocks of Rabbit Island the same night that Lurline was threatened with similar disaster on Makapu-u Point, continued the race to Lahina, Gladys, as usual, winning.

On the forenoon of the 13th, after a day spent in effecting such renewals and repairs as were absolutely necessary, we again set sail for the island of Hawaii. We left with the intention of proceeding to Kawahaie, on the leeward side of the island, to pick up our friend, Eben Low, who had a ranch in that district, and carry him on to Hilo. A glance at the chart, however, revealed the fact that the course to this point would expose us to possible calms in the lees of Molokai and Maui, and the idea was promptly given up. So we sailed the windward course, and even by that met weather which dragged out to over three days a run which we had hoped to make in a little more than one. At four o'clock in the afternoon of the 16th we were off Hilo harbour, but unable to enter for lack of wind. An anchorage was finally reached at the end of a tow-line kindly passed us by the freighter, Charles Councelman.

We remained in Hilo five days, renewing old acquaintances and allowing the crew opportunity still further to repair the ravages of that night of accursed memory in the lee of Molokai. The bay, with its mile or more of exposure to the north-east—the quarter of the prevailing wind—was as uncomfortable as ever to lie in, the yacht, without sails to steady her, rolling and pitching much of the time more violently than in the open sea. Fortunately there was no heavy weather of the kind that throws up a line of surf across the river entrance and makes it impossible to land in boats for days at a time. Hilo harbour is badly in need of extensive protective works.

Shortly before noon of the 21st of August, Lurline left anchorage in Hilo homeward bound for San Pedro. Close-hauled on the starboard tack to a light northeast wind, we stood out of the harbour, dipping to several steamers and sailing vessels whose crews lined up to give us good-bye cheers as we passed. Outside the wind was coming in weighty gusts, and a rumpled, squally-looking northeast seemed to give the lie to a barometer that was soaring optimistically around 30.05. The instrument had its way, however, for the squalls worked off inland in a couple of hours, leaving us with a steady E.N.E. wind and a brilliant fair-weather sky full of cottony Trade-clouds. At three o'clock, when we took departure with Alia Point bearing S.W. ¾ W., distant six miles, a course of N.N.E. was set, to be held with scarcely a quarter of a point's deviation for four days.

On the 23rd two steamers were sighted heading S.S. W., probably for Honolulu. These were the first ships seen in the open sea since the sails of a bark, hull down on the horizon, were sighted a few days after leaving San Pedro, seven months previously. These three confused blurs against the skyline, all of them too distant to signal, were the nearest approach to company that Lurline knew during the entire cruise. Probably no other circumstance could so strikingly illustrate the utter loneliness of the mid-Pacific. Anywhere south of Hawaii, off the tracks of the two Australian-American steamship lines, the crew of a disabled ship might float for ten years—or ten times ten years—without smoke or sail breaking the smooth line of the horizon.

Early in the morning of the 25th the watch reported a lunar rainbow, and all hands, fore and aft, tumbled out on deck to view the unusual phenomenon. The full moon was shining brightly from a clear sky to the southwest, having sunk to about thirty degrees from the horizon. Up to the northeast a fluffy bank of dove-grey clouds were heaped half-way to the zenith, and against this, an unbroken arch of mother-of-pearl, the rainbow stood clearly forth. From red to violet, all the colours of the spectrum were there just as in a solar rainbow, yet shining with a light elusive and unearthly where the spectral hands that fashioned it had woven a warp of moonshine into the woof of the blended iridesence. Twice it faded and reappeared before dissolving for the last time in the first flush of a sparkling daisy and daffodil sunrise.

For some days after leaving Hilo the wind held steadily from the northeast, forcing us several points to the north of a direct course to San Pedro. Crowded close on the wind all the time, the yacht made slow headway, averaging but little better than 120 miles a day. On the 26th, however, the wind veered to southeast, and on the three days that it remained in that quarter runs of 143, 188 and 176 miles, respectively, were registered. This was followed by a spell of calm, and that by a succession of days of varying, uncertain weather and head-winds, which held all the way to San Pedro. Most of this latter period the wind was moderate and the sea light, as is evidenced by the fact that both fore and main gafftopsails were carried, day and night, from the afternoon of August 24th to the morning of September 4th, ten and a half days.

In the evening of September 3rd, at about Lat. 34° north, Long. 133° west, we encountered our first fog, and from that time on were hampered more or less by thick weather all the way to port, which we reached a week later. The brilliant tropical days of sunshine and squalls succeeded to dull temperate days of much cloudiness and little wind and rain. Some days the fog was high and troublesome only in making observations impossible; on others it settled down close to the sea in banks so dense that the main truck was not visible from the deck. On these latter occasions, though it was not likely that there was another ship within 500 miles, prudence had the call and our little hand-cranked fog-horn—the same that had figured in the revels of our guests the night that the yacht nearly went on the rocks of Oahu—was kept incessantly at work.

Between fogs and light and baffling winds, our progress for the latter half of this traverse was slower than for any other similar period of the voyage. On but three of the last nine days did the yacht log over 100 miles, these being the 4th of September, 153 miles, and the 8th, 150 miles. The runs for the other five days were twenty-six, forty-six, forty-seven, eighty-seven, and sixty-seven miles, respectively. The winds, for the most part, were northeasterly, but the comparatively good run of the 8th was made with a very light but steady breeze from the west.

Several land birds came aboard on the morning of the 10th, and not long afterward the brown slopes of Santa Rosa Island took shape through the lifting fog. The heavens were overcast all day, but for a brief space in the afternoon a long strip of cloud ran back across the east like a sliding door, and through the rift we had a brief glimpse of the rugged Sierra Madres, a hundred miles distant, standing sharp and distinct in a flood of sunshine against a vivid background of California sky.

Doing the best we could with puffs of wind that came by turn from all points of the compass, we crept along at three or four miles an hour until midnight. Then it fell dead calm, and during the next eight hours the log recorded but a single mile. This was broken by a light westerly breeze and before it, wing-and-wing, we went groping in through the fog, watching for a land-fall that would give us our position. This appeared at noon, when the familiar cliffs of Point Vicente began showing in dark brown patches through the thinning mist off the port bow, distant about five miles. Three hours later the Commodore was able to close the log of Lurline with the following entry:

September 11th, three P. M.—"Anchored near our old mooring in San Pedro outer harbour, having been away seven months and seven days, travelling 13,500 miles without accident or serious trouble."

THE END