We had hoped to have the fitting out completed by the end of May, and then to spend the summer cruising in the English Channel, gaining as much experience as possible, and learning how to adapt ourselves and our boat to our new life. As so often happens, the fitting out took much longer than expected.

It was not until 18^th July that we first sailed Penella, although we had her out, under power, a few times before then. We had never sailed anything like her, before. I had never even seen her with her running rigging in place until I rove it myself, without benefit of any plan, so we were naturally a bit anxious about our first sail. We motored out of the Hamble River into the Solent, and gave ourselves plenty of room. There was a nice force 3 breeze blowing and, in the event, all the sails went up sweetly, and all the sheets worked without a hitch. Penella proved herself easy to handle on all points of sailing. We than practised reefing, heaving to under various sail combinations, and sail changing, all in light winds and calm water, in preparation for the times when we would have to do them of necessity. On several subsequent outings, we practised these drills, and picking up a man overboard, again and again, until I was satisfied that we were reasonably proficient in them.

During this period, we settled two other matters which we had been mulling over for some time. When we were hunting for our boat, we had decided that we would rename whatever we got, 'Magellan Cloud'. However, after we had lived in Penella for a few weeks and sailed her a few times, we felt she was a personality in her own right and it would have been quite wrong to change her name; she was Penella.

It was rather necessary to give a yacht's dinghy some kind of name to indicate the ship to which it belonged. The usual thing then was to label it 'Tender to Lahloo', or whatever. We thought that was a bit pompous, and decided to name ours 'Penella's Pup'. Of course, that implied a quite undeserved slur on Penella's character, but she never held it against us!

We had the compasses adjusted at the end of July and on Saturday, 2^nd August, set off on our first cruise, with two friends who were not sailors. They had a week's holiday and we hoped to cross to the Channel Islands and Lezardrieux. However, that summer of 1958 was a real horror and we never got past Poole.

Our first leg was to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. We met two fierce storms with violent winds, torrents of icy rain and heavy hail. After that, the wind stuck resolutely in the SW and remained fairly strong. I had no intention of trying to fight our way down to the Channel Islands against that, but thought it might be a good idea to go over to Poole, with a view to getting a more favourable course to the islands, should the wind veer a bit. We crossed on Monday, 4^th August, and a very cold, rough, wet beat it was. When we got in, our friends told us they could not possibly face a channel crossing, and we could not blame them. They were not sailors; there was little they could do to help sail the ship, and they certainly could not safely keep a watch. As mere passengers, they would be very cold and uncomfortable on deck in any but really nice weather, and even more uncomfortable below. So, after three days of wretched weather in Poole, by which time, most of their week had gone, anyway, we took them back to Hamble. Naturally, we had perfect weather for that trip!

On Sunday, 10^th August, Dorrie and I set out on what proved to be a five and a half weeks cruise. As before, we made Yarmouth our first port, where we were able to watch and enjoy their colourful annual regatta. After wasting one day because of a wrong weather forecast of bad weather, we again crossed to Poole, where we were lucky enough to pick up the Bar buoy in fog, at a time when my DR said we were near Bournemouth pier! On the way up to the lake entrance, we saw a yacht of about 10 tons firmly aground on the shoals which form the eastern side of the channel. She had apparently tried to sail across them from the seaward side, presumably without ever having studied the chart of the area. The same day, a smart 12 metre yawl came in and, after cruising around the harbour a time or two, tied up on the town side, alongside another ship, Venturer. A day or so later, she had to let Venturer out and, in doing so, someone must have undone the wrong string. The tide was running out strongly and, in next to no time, she was sitting on the mud, just outside. She came to no harm, and was floated off on the next tide.

From Poole we decided to make for Brixham. We left at noon on Friday and had a very pleasant sail to Portland. As we had missed the west-going tide past the Bill, we put into Portland Harbour and anchored off Castletown Pier. There, we had a meal and a short sleep, prior to getting away again at 0230 hrs. As the tides were just about at a spring peak, I decided to go back around the Shambles light ship; I did not want to risk getting involved in the Portland Race at night, thank you!

After safely passing the Bill, the wind seemed to blow straight out of Torbay, no matter what we did. Dawn found us just off Lyme Regis, and noon found us closer to Portland than we had been six hours earlier. As the wind had now fallen very light, and as we needed to get into port before the shops closed for the weekend, we motored the rest of the way.

During the day, we began experimenting with the use of the BEME Loop, trying to fix position by taking and plotting the bearings of several radio beacons. The day was clear and we knew where we were at all times, so we were not going to be misled by any bad results. The loop measured bearings relative to the heading of the ship, so it was necessary to know Penella's exact heading at the moment of reading a bearing. This called for close co-operation between set operator and helmsman. We had not practiced this and we failed to get a fix on this occasion, but a series of 'dry run' practices while at anchor in several ports eventually enabled us to make very good use of the loop the first time we really needed it.

After three days at Brixham, we motored to Dartmouth, where we anchored opposite the middle of the town. We had hardly done so, when we were visited by Major Tait, one of Penella's previous owners, and were bidden to tea and very welcome baths in his delightful home, which overlooks the river. Whilst in Dartmouth, we explored up the river for several miles, in the dinghy, and very beautiful it was.

From Dartmouth, we had a very pleasant day sail around to Salcombe, carrying with us Alec Wotton, from Thornycroft's drawing office, and his charming friend Marguerite Childs, who were holidaying at Dartmouth. At Salcombe, we enjoyed a long walk out beyond Bolt Head, going out over the hills and returning via the cliff paths.

Another very pleasant day sail took us to Newton Ferrers, where we tied up to a vacant mooring buoy. In the village post office, we were delighted to find very pretty coloured postcards of the Yealm (pronounced 'Yam') estuary with Penella herself moored to the very buoy we had picked up!

A SW gale blew up during the night but only lasted a few hours. When we left for Plymouth, next day, there was still a good breeze blowing, and a big swell running. It gave us a grand passage and a chance to learn how Pen. would behave in a big sea. She behaved beautifully. At Plymouth, we anchored in the Cattewater, where we were joined by our younger son, Christopher.

Our next port was Fowey (call it 'Foy') to which we had another delightful sail, in a southerly wind. After a brief visit to the town for milk and bread, we left the very rolly anchorage opposite the town and moved up river to Wiseman's Pool. For discomfort, it was a case of frying pan and fire. With a strong southerly wind funnelling up the valley and the extraordinary swirls of the strongly ebbing tide, all of the yachts in the Pool began sheering about wildly in all directions, to the limits of their anchor or mooring chains. There were several bumps before the tide began to flood again, after which, peace and quiet returned to the Pool. This performance was repeated next morning and we were glad to return to the anchorage off the town.

That afternoon was marked by a visit to the beautifully situated small farm of Wing Commander and Mrs Allen, near Lostwithiel, and by the unintentional visit to Penella by Saoirse (pronounced Sirshay), whose new owner, Eric Ruck, had anchored a bit too close to us. It was our first sight of this famous ship and I am only sorry it was impossible for the two crews to exchange visits before we left.

Thursday saw us off to Falmouth. The wind was very light and variable, at first, and we motored at intervals until we were nearer Dodman Point. There, we picked up a fine breeze, which gave us a grand sail for three hours, by which time we were off St Anthony's Head. We motored the rest of the way in and anchored off the Prince of Wales pier. During our stay at Falmouth, the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club made us very welcome.

One purpose of our visit to Falmouth was to look for possible winter moorings. With this in mind, on Friday, we motored right up to Malpas, passing no less than 31 ships laid up in the river. We also passed over a shoal with the curious name of Maggoty Bank.

From Malpas, we came back down to St Mawes, and then went over and explored the Helford River, before returning to Falmouth for the night. Clearly, Falmouth, or the Fal estuary, would be a good place to spend the winter. Not only would we be able to move about and find shelter from strong winds from any direction, but we would also be able to do enough sailing, in sheltered waters, to prevent us becoming rusty (or mouldy!)

That point settled, we left for Dartmouth on Saturday night. From there, Christopher would have to return to his flying training school, and we intended to make our first channel crossing, to St Peter Port. All went well until after daylight on Sunday morning, when the wind failed and we had to motor. Here, I learnt a sharp lesson about not relaxing before one is safely in port. At 0750, we were eight miles WSW of Start Point, apparently with perfect visibility, and no sight of trouble anywhere. The wind had failed, so I started the motor, took in the log line, setting a fishing line in its place, and we ambled along in the general direction of the Skerries Bank buoy, which we had to round. I paid no attention to the navigation, as it was so obviously going to be a coast crawl for the rest of the way, with all marks becoming visible while still miles away.

After passing fairly close to Start Point, I became puzzled at not being able to see the Skerries Bank buoy, even with glasses. I was still looking for it, when we ran into a fog bank, which had been completely invisible until we began to enter it. I just had time for a snap bearing on Start Point lighthouse before it disappeared. I had to guess our distance off, guess our speed, estimate the tide set, work out a course for the buoy and the time we should take to reach it. I deliberately aimed off a bit to the right so as to keep off the numerous lobster pot lines and markers to be found over the bank. It was all very rough work, but, when we had run the time, I turned north and found the buoy in a couple of minutes, in visibility of no more than 200 yards. That was, of course, pure luck. From a now accurately known position, we set course for the Homestone buoy, off the mouth of the Dart. We sighted it, right on time, at less than 200 yards distance. At the same moment, the fog began to lift. We could just see the base of the cliffs at the river mouth, and there was nothing more to worry about.

We waited four days at Dartmouth, while the wind blew steadily straight from Guernsey. At last, on Thursday, 4^th September, the forecast promised enough east in the wind for us to be just about able to hold a course for Les Hanois, just off the west coast of Guernsey, so off we went, after spending half an hour clearing a badly fouled anchor. The wind was very light, at first, but picked up well towards evening. Unfortunately, it also brought a succession of fog banks with it, causing us a lot of anxiety, as we crossed the very busy shipping lanes. Later, the wind died altogether, and we had to motor for the last seven and a half hours, much of it in very wet fog. Twice during the night, we saw magnificent displays of red aurora borealis, the first of which lasted for two hours, the second for half an hour.

It was on this trip that we first made effective use of our BEME Loop for navigation, and it proved to be a great help. In the early hours of the morning, my DR and radio fixes began to diverge considerably. At first, I was inclined to distrust the radio bearings, but, after getting repeatedly consistent bearings on the loop, I decided that it would be stupid to disbelieve the only positive information at my disposal. Based on the radio fixes, I made quite a large alteration of course for Les Hanois, which duly hove in sight, about a mile distant, just when expected. Later, as I shall relate, the BEME Loop enabled us to predict another landfall with great accuracy, and that firmly established my faith in the use of it. I should add that I have never doubted the accuracy of the loop. My doubts arose from the difficulty of being absolutely sure of the ship's heading at the time of taking radio bearings.

We waited three days in St Peter Port while the wind blew straight out of the mouth of the Trieux River, on which lies Lezardrieux, our next objective. We visited our old friends, Air Commodore and Mrs de Putron, in their beautiful, and beautifully situated home, from which they have glorious views of the Little Russell, Great Russell, Sark, Herm, and as far as Jersey. We also took a bus tour of the island, which proved to be full of pleasure and interest.

We got away to Lezardrieux on Tuesday, 9^th September, on a forecast of a westerly wind of less than force 3. It was: we motored all the way in practically a flat calm. The approach to Lezardrieux, up the estuary of the Trieux River, is very beautiful, and splendidly marked. The anchorage is completely sheltered and we found the town very friendly. The river above Lezardrieux is very beautiful in places, and is well worth exploring. We took the dinghy as far up as the gates of the lock leading into the Pontrieux Canal. There was a customs office at Lezardrieux, but we never found anyone in attendance.

We had intended spending only two nights at Lezardrieux and returning to St Peter Port on Thursday; but the wind, running true to recent form, now blew straight from our intended destination for two days, reaching at least force 6 some of the time. As the true wind conditions were not apparent at Lezardrieux, we went down to the river mouth each morning, only to turn back each time, after seeing what the sea conditions were like, outside.

Saturday brought a forecast of fair wind, so off we went. Again, there was practically no wind and we motored almost the whole way to St Peter Port. On the way, we saw some spectacular evidence of the strong currents generated by the great tides in this area: great swirls and boils, and one very long standing wave two or three feet high.

On Tuesday, 16^th September, we motored, sailed, and motored again, to Braye, Alderney, via the Swinge Channel. Our progress was slower than expected. We met the full force of a foul spring tide in the Swinge, and had a very slow slog under power for the last two or three miles.

After visiting the town on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, we left for Hamble at dusk on Wednesday evening, and had the best sail of our whole cruise. The wind remained comfortably on our beam, at about force 3, all the way, and visibility remained perfect throughout. Even the tides worked out perfectly. After being swept well to the eastward during the night, we were swept nicely back far enough westward to be able to round Pot Buoy and head up the Needles Channel just as the NE going tide began to run again. We tied up on our pile berth in the Hamble River, just 17 hrs 35 mins after getting under way in Braye Harbour.

During this crossing, we again made good use of the BEME Loop for navigation. After one radio fix, I was able to say that, if the fix was accurate, and present conditions continued, we should sight St Catherine's Point light, dipping, at 0300 hrs, bearing 030degM. It hove in sight, dipping, exactly on time, and on the exact bearing. As on the crossing to Guernsey, my DR would have placed us a long way from where we actually were. We also tried out Consol for the first time, on this trip. The fixes obtained from it seemed to be less accurate than the radio fixes.

That was the end of our cruise. It had been very pleasant and unexciting. We had visited 13 ports. We had discovered a few snags which had to be put right, and we had learnt a lot about the practice of pilotage and navigation, the handling of our ship, stowage of gear, and a little (but only a little!) of the problems of adapting ourselves to life at sea. We were fairly confident that just the two of us could handle Penella at sea in any conditions we were likely to meet, and that long passages would be well within our capabilities and physical endurance. We would have liked another season of such cruising before setting out for Australia, for we were very conscious of our lack of experience. However, we felt that, if we had to start without it, we could, by the exercise of thought, common sense and care, succeed. And so it proved to be.

We now had to take the boat back to Thornycrofts for the installation of additional water tanks, ventilators, and new stowage chocks for our Duckling dinghy. Then, back to Hamble for Port Hamble Ltd. to install the twin spinnaker gear for trade wind sailing, and for Mrs Williams to make the twin sails. While waiting for those, I installed additional lifelines, waist high between the shrouds and sloping down to anchor points well forward and aft. These added greatly to our safety and feeling of security when working on deck, at sea. Then back again to Thornycrofts to sort the gear we had stored there, embarking some, selling some, and leaving some in store. By that time, it was the end of November.

We were now as ready for sea as we would ever be, but winter was upon us. What to do? We had received disquieting news about the health of Dorrie's mother in Australia and wanted to get home as soon as possible. If we could get through the Gulf of Panama by the end of February, there was a good chance that we could be home well within a year. To do that, we would need to leave England almost at once. In ordinary circumstances, we would not have considered setting out during the winter months. However, an unseasonable anticyclone had been giving easterly to north easterly winds over the Channel and western approaches for some time. If it should persist, and extend far enough to the south and west, we might be able to get away without encountering any of the usual winter storms. The sensible thing to do would be to get down to Falmouth as soon as possible and be ready to take advantage of any such favourable condition, should it ever occur. If it did not, we would be in the best place to spend the winter, any way; so off we went to Falmouth. We left Hamble on the morning of 26^th November, and arrived at Falmouth the following afternoon, after a smooth and comfortable trip, motoring for 24 hours.

On Monday morning, 1^st December, we got the weather forecast we had been hoping for: strong to gale force winds from east to northeast, extending as far west as longitude 25degW and as far south as latitude 42degN, and expected to continue for the next five days. Hooray! The Royal Cornwall Yacht Club roasted a leg of lamb for us while we were making our final preparations, and we left our mooring at ll35 hrs, with the intention of making Madeira our first port of call. All morning, the wind in Falmouth harbour was very light from north- west, so we started under all lower sails. Before we had gone a hundred yards, the wind switched to east and jumped up to force 5. Before we left the harbour, I had to take in the flying jib and reef the main down to the first batten; a foretaste of the work to come. All day Monday and Tuesday, the wind held at about force 5 to 6 from the east, and we made good progress to the south-west. During Tuesday morning, in perfect visibility, the tanker San Edmond passed us at a distance of no more than 200 yards, with not a soul to be seen anywhere aboard, and no one came to give us a wave. I wonder if we were seen?

Next day, the wind rose to about force 7 with a big swell running. For 24 hours we ran before it, under storm jib only. On Thursday morning, when the wind dropped a little, we set the mainsail with nine rolls in it, to balance the storm jib, and turned south-west again. Almost at once, the wind rose to gale force and we had a very exhilarating sail for a couple of hours. However it was to boisterous to be safe, and we soon had to douse the main again.

About this time, we got a bad fright on finding that Penella was taking in water fairly quickly. It took me quite a while to discover that it was coming in via the bilge pump, which was situated in the head, a little below the water line. The output pipe from it sloped upwards to the outlet skin fitting just above the waterline. Water was coming in through this and getting past a defective foot valve in the pump, into the bilge. I made a plug for the skin fitting and was able to hammer it home by lying on the deck and hanging over the side, with the mate holding on to my ankles.

We were very tired by now. Although we had been very careful about watch keeping, neither of us had yet learnt to sleep while off watch. Neither had we learnt to eat properly. Dorrie had had only about two hours' sleep since we left Falmouth and I had had only a little more. I had also been seasick since soon after leaving Falmouth, but had now allowed that to interfere with my work. Faced with a night of gale force winds and a very rough sea, we decided to take off all sail and let Penella lie ahull while we tried to get some sleep. I had no sooner completed taking off the sail when I collapsed, completely and utterly unexpectedly. It was a sharp warning of the dangers of carrying on too long. No harm came of it, however. We both slept for over twelve hours, that night. We both woke in the middle of the night, feeling ravenously hungry. We had a big meal of roast lamb sandwiches, hacked from loaf and leg placed on the cabin sole between our two bunks. The sleep and food did us the world of good and we were both fully fit for duty again by next afternoon, when the wind began to abate. That was also the end of my seasickness for that passage.

The strong easterlies blew themselves out by Saturday, 6^th December. At noon that day, our position was 45deg 31' N 12deg 15' W, or about 200 nautical miles NW of the NW corner of Spain. For the next three days we had calms and light northerly winds. During this time, we worked our way out to about 13deg 30' W longitude, and dried out clothes and blankets. Saturday was one of those days. First, the staysail boom began to work itself off its gooseneck and had to be repaired. Then the log stopped working, and it was several days before I got it working again. Finally, in about a force 2 wind, a jib sheet suddenly parted, and I had to make up a new pair. Sunday was a glorious, sparkling, blue and white sailing day, quite the most perfect of the whole passage.

Monday was memorable for a most beautiful sunrise effect. The sky was not particularly spectacular, but it produced an indescribably beautiful opalescence on the water, and the effect was enhanced by the presence of hundreds of Portuguese men-of-war of all sizes, all of whose sails took on the same tints. Then, on Monday night, while Dorrie was on watch, we were visited by a family of porpoises, who kept her very close company for over two hours.

Tuesday, 9^th December, saw the beginning of the westerlies which were to dog us for the rest of the voyage, and defeat us in the end. By midnight on the following day, the wind was up to about gale force, the sea very rough, and we hove to for a few hours' rest. Some time during Thursday we reached our farthest west, 13deg 45' W. From then onwards we were driven slowly but relentlessly eastwards. We were hove to all day Saturday, 13^th, in a westerly gale.

On Sunday morning, I did the silliest thing of the whole voyage. Early in the morning, the wind dropped to force 3 or less for a while, and we lowered the mainsail to renew the seizings on the top three slides, which had all broken loose. I had to disconnect the halyard in order to get the head of the sail down low enough to work on. I did so before securing it, and let it slip from

my hand while doing that. Pulled by the weight of the rope and block downhaul on the other end, it shot up to the masthead. There was nothing to do but get out the bosun's chair and go up after it, using the topping lift. That was a very exhausting job, and almost ruined me!

For the next three days the wind stayed in the west, mainly force 6 to 7, but with occasional lulls and stronger squalls. By now we were praying for a shift to the north-west or north, so that we could make some more westing. It was during this period that we adopted the slogan 'Nearer Madeira', which was later to give way to 'Canaries for Christmas', and later still to 'Any Port in a Storm'.

Quite early on the morning of the 17^th, we found ourselves being closely accompanied by one of those little black and white birds usually seen swimming in small groups, and which dive to escape danger rather than fly. I think it was a little auk. It was alone and seemed to want to cling to us for company. Hour after hour it would fly closely by and around us, go a little way ahead and drop into the water. There it would paddle furiously, trying to stay with us, but would soon be left astern. After a hundred yards or so, it would be on the wing, overtaking us again. Sometimes it threw itself into the water so close under our bows that it had to dive at once to avoid being run over. With its very high wing beat speed and no time for hunting food, it must have been very tiring for it. We lost it in a severe gale during the afternoon. I hope it found some of its own kind for company.

That afternoon saw the hardest blow we had so far experienced, when the wind shifted to north-west and blew with great force. I cannot reliably estimate its strength, but it was much greater than anything we had yet had, and my guess was that it was at least force 10. For a couple of hours it raised a very nasty cross sea, and we could do nothing but run slowly before it under storm jib. Later, we were able to make south-west for a few hours.

By late afternoon it had blown itself out, and we thought we could look forward to a day or so of fair weather and light north to north-westerly winds. Not a bit of it! By 20.00 the wind was already backing, and by midnight it was SW, force 4. We turned onto a course of 282deg T, trying and hoping to make a bit of westing. By ll00 next day (Thursday, 18^th), the wind was SW, force 8, the sea very rough with a huge swell. We were making no progress, so hove to again. The gale lasted all night, during which time we drifted north-east.

During the 18 hour period from 17.00 on Wednesday to 11.00 on Thursday, we had to make no fewer than eleven sail changes. No wonder we were tired.

By Friday morning, the wind had abated slightly and veered to the west, so we set off south again under storm jib and main reefed to the third batten. At midday, we were within a few miles of our noon position two days earlier, having meanwhile sailed and drifted around a big triangle. Very disheartening!

On Saturday, 20^th December, we admitted defeat. At noon, our position was 33deg 21' N, 10deg 38' W. A glance at the chart will show that we were not only a long way east of the meridian of the most easterly of the Canaries, but also of Cape Juby, on the African coast opposite them. If we carried on south, we might be lucky, run out of the westerlies and pick up a fair wind for the Canaries; BUT, if the westerlies persisted, we would eventually find ourselves embayed to the north of Cape Juby and might well be driven ashore on that shelterless and not very friendly coast. As we discussed the matter, the sky to the south-west was already darkening with cirro-status and alto-stratus cloud, which could only mean yet more westerlies, so we decided we must head for Casablanca. We hoped to reach it some time on Monday, the 22^nd.

All Saturday afternoon and night, we ran on a course of 053deg T, although the direct course for Casablanca was 080deg T. This was done partly to avoid the discomfort of a dead run in the prevailing conditions, and partly to avoid closing the coast too obliquely, when a slight error in navigation, or a shift of wind to the north-west, could easily land us in trouble. We eventually headed for Casablanca when El Hank (pronounced 'El Onk') radio beacon, just to the west of the harbour, was bearing 102deg T.

As we had no chart of the Casablanca area I drew an approximation of Mercator's graticule for a middle latitude of 34deg N, and covering meridians 7 and 8 W, to a scale of 10 miles to one inch. On this, from information given in The African Pilot, Vol 1, and The Admiralty List of Signals, Vol 2, I was able to plot the Casablanca harbour entrance, El Hank lighthouse and radio beacon, and the radio beacons at Port Lyautey, Rabat Sale airport, Cazes (Casablanca) airport and the light and whistle buoy near the harbour entrance. I could not, of course, draw in the coastline, but with the Beme Loop aboard, this made a perfectly adequate approach chart. It would have been possible to make yet another chart, to a much larger scale, of the immediate area of the harbour mouth, but this was not necessary, as we intended to regulate our progress so as to arrive in daylight.

By Sunday noon, the depression which we had first sighted the day before was well upon us. The barometer was falling steadily, it was raining heavily, and the wind was rising all the time. By 1530, it had reached force 9. We took off the last bit of sail and left the ship to lie ahull, resigned now to having to postpone arrival until Tuesday.

As there was nothing more we could do for the ship, we decided to get out of our damp and stinking clothes, have a bath, and go to bed. Having a bath in those conditions meant wedging oneself into a corner with a couple of inches of water in a basin, and sponging oneself down as best one could. I had just completed doing this and was still naked, when the staysail burst one of its lashings and began to flog madly. I grabbed a raincoat, belted it hastily around me, and rushed up on deck to secure the sail again, before it could be torn to shreds. I had just begun when we were struck by a squall of hurricane strength, and a huge wave broke clear over the ship. For one moment, the ship was right inside a tunnel of green water, then tons of it fell straight down on me. Never have I been subjected to grosser indignity! When I finished securing the sail and was able to look around, I saw that the entire surface of the sea was covered in deep froth.

That was the peak of the storm. By the time I got below again, the barometer had already risen noticeably. Never was there a better example of the old meteorological tag about first rise after low oft portending stronger blow.

Down in the saloon, Dorrie was having her 'bath' when she heard the great wave crash on the deck. She called to me to ask if I was all right, but I heard nothing because of the noise of the storm. Getting no reply, Dorrie tried to open the companion hatch to look for me, but found it jammed for some reason. Nearly frantic with fear, she then struggled forward into the focsle where she opened the fore hatch, looked back over the deck, saw that I was not there, and believed that I had been swept overboard. Her feelings then can better be imagined that described.

I had, in fact, just returned to the saloon, having had no difficulty in opening the companion hatch from the outside. I was mystified and alarmed to find Dorrie missing. She was not in the saloon or after cabin and I got no reply when I called her. I was still wondering what could possibly have happened to her when she emerged, naked and crying, from a tangle of wet sails in the focsle. In a moment, we were in each others arms, cold and wet, but all fears allayed.

Just to complete the story of that storm, it went on its way to Casablanca, Tangier and the Western Mediterranean. At Casablanca, the peak gust was only 63 mph, but the huge seas accompanying it breached the harbour wall in one place, and hurled a few hundred-ton blocks of concrete right over it. The wall is very similar in size and massiveness, to the one which protects Braye, in Alderney. At Tangier, the wind reached 93 mph and, in the Western Mediterranean, the Balearic Islands called it the worst in living memory. Incidentally, it was the first time since leaving England that the barometer had shown any appreciable variation, despite all the wind we had had. This time, it fell over 40 millibars.

On Monday morning, 22^nd December, about 05.00, I went up to start motoring gently towards Casablanca. On getting under way, there was no response to the steering wheel. Inspection quickly disclosed that the short iron tiller, to which the steering wires run, had been broken off short at the rudder stock. The broken ends showed no signs of any fault in the metal; just clean grey iron which had literally been torn apart after considerable bending.

Using a big screw wrench and the cut-down handle of the anchor windlass, bound together with stainless steel seizing wire, I managed to make a jury tiller, but it could not be connected to the steering wheel. The tiller worked under a grating, on which was carried the Chore Horse charging plant in a waterproof box. The engine and box had to be removed and taken down into the saloon; quite a job with wind still Force 7 and the seas at least 20 feet high. However, with Dorrie's able assistance, it was safely done, and the new tiller rigged and tried out for hand steering. It proved to be too short in the heavy seas then running and I was very nearly thrown overboard when I tried to set a course for Casablanca with it. However, it would obviously be usable in calmer conditions; so, for the time being, it was used merely to bring the slamming rudder under control, and was left lashed with the rudder central.

Three hours later, all the stainless steel seizing had been chewed through like so much cotton, and I had to set to and make it all over again. This time I improved on the method of lashing and greatly increased the amount of it. I decided not to use this one at all until the wind and sea should abate, unless it became necessary to do so to keep us from going ashore. I could always hold the ships head to the seas with it, using engine, but there was no need for that, yet.

All that morning (Monday), and until late afternoon, we drifted steadily towards Casablanca and saw never a ship. We were in no imminent danger and would not reach shore until some time in daylight on Tuesday, whatever happened. However, during Monday afternoon, we deemed it wise to prepare for the two worst of the three possibilities which seemed to threaten us. The first was that the weather might remain too bad for us to manoeuvre with our jury tiller and that we might be cast ashore. In that case, we would need to have our money, papers and most readily portable valuables securely attached to us in waterproof wrappings. The second possibility was that we might have to be taken off our ship, in which case we wanted to be able to take as much as possible in the way of clothing and less portable valuables. The third possibility, of course, was that we would come safely to port, by one means or another. Preparing for the first two and discussing just what we would do if Penella were driven ashore was a very gloomy business indeed; but at least we felt we were doing everything in our power to prepare for whatever might be in store.

Soon after nightfall we spotted the masthead lights of a ship hull down to the south-west. I could also just see El Hank light dipping, so knew we were about 20 miles off Casablanca. The wind had veered to the north-west late in the afternoon and was now drifting us towards the shore some miles to the west-south-west of Casablanca, so I reckoned that the time had come to call for help. Sitting astride the staysail boom, with one arm around the main mast, I used the Aldis lamp to flash S O S in the direction of the ship. Full marks to her lookout! Before I had done so half a dozen times, the lights turned into a vertical line and I knew rescue was on the way - or thought I did!

As the ship drew near, almost an hour later, I signalled to her in plain language and international code, telling her our steering gear was broken. Then, in plain language, I asked her to call the life boat from Casablanca (the African Pilot Vol 1 said there was one there) and to stand by until it arrived. None of these messages was acknowledged but she did ask our name, which I promptly gave. She did not acknowledge that, either. I kept on hammering away with my messages, but got no reply whatever. As we were soon to learn, they simply were not read, although sent in good, slow Morse, with a bright, well-aimed light.

From what followed, it seemed that her skipper was just intent on taking us off regardless. Because I am so grateful for her swift response to our SOS, I will not give her name. She was an old Liberty ship, in ballast, with half her screw out of the water. She came up close to windward, stopped and began to drift rapidly down upon us, with a ladder over the side, all ready for us to climb aboard. Having no steering control, there was nothing I could do to keep out of her way. Very soon, we were grinding and crashing horribly together and Penella was slowly being wrecked. From the deck we were told that the lifeboat had been called, and the ship would wait by us until it arrived. What was our name, and would we like to make fast alongside?! We said we would not, and gave our names.

Whilst this exchange was going on, Penella was slowly drifting towards the stern of the ship and I could see that we would soon drift under her counter and be crushed, unless we could get clear. We were lying port side to the ship. Our own propeller was offset to starboard. There was just a chance that, if we started the engine and went astern, and the rudder did not swing the wrong way, we might draw away from the side of the ship. It had to be tried, any way, and it worked. We got clear and I had a chance to see what damage had been done. The port spreader on the foremast had been broken, leaving the masthead shroud very loose. The bowsprit had been knocked sideways, its heel having broken out one side of the forward samson post, and that left the outer fore stay slack. The port side coach roof coaming had been split over the full length of the saloon and galley, letting water pour in whenever we shipped a sea, and the fearful creaking caused by the working of the now inadequately supported fore mast made it seem that there were broken frames in the hull. It was all very depressing and heart-breaking because, up till then, we had suffered absolutely no damage, apart from the broken tiller.

An hour later, without another word to us, this ship steamed away and left us, with no help in sight! We learnt afterwards that she had radioed the shore saying there was nothing more she could do for us, that we were very brightly lit and any rescue craft could not miss us. Actually, because our battery was getting low, we were showing no external lights at all, our only light being a pressure lamp in the saloon. She must have been dazzled by our Aldis.

About an hour after she left, I succeeded in calling the German ship Tanger (Capt. W. Janssen) to us. What a contrast his seamanship proved to be! For over two hours, he steamed slowly around us at a distance of about 200 yards. During that time, we successfully exchanged many messages by signal lamp, and he made all arrangements for a tug to come to our assistance. Then, with a final,

she sailed away to Agadir.

By now it was nearly midnight. Both Dorrie and I were utterly exhausted. With two hours to wait, sleep we must, and did. Two hours later, we surfaced and saw the lights of a tug a few miles away to leeward. I switched on the spreader lights (salt water had put the mast head light out of action) and the tug came straight to us, reaching us at 0200. It was the salvage tug El Kebir, owned by the Societe Cheriffienne de Remorquage et d'Assistance, otherwise known as SCRA.

She came up close to windward and put a line aboard us at the first attempt. However, we were blinded by her flood lights, could not see the line, and lost it. It was a whole hour before she got another one on board and during that time we watched a demonstration of as perfect seamanship as I ever expect to see. A fierce black squall interrupted proceedings for about 20 minutes. When that passed, the tug skipper decided to tackle us from leeward.

The seas were now running about 25 feet high. To get within line-throwing distance in the strong wind still blowing, he had to back the stern of his ship to within 20 or 30 feet of us, and his line throwers had to balance themselves on a wildly heaving quarter deck. Two of them worked furiously, recoiling their lines swiftly as throw after throw fell just short of us. From time to time, we would drift out of position or out of range, and the tug would have to be manoeuvred back into just the right place again.

Eventually a line fell on the deck beside Dorrie, who grabbed it and passed it to me. I very soon had the end of a 6 inch warp made fast to the foot of the fore mast, with a couple of turns around the forward samson post, and the two began. The wind was on our quarter, and I expected a fairly wild ride, but Penella behaved like a perfect lady. She sheered away out to starboard of the tug and lay there absolutely quietly until we entered sheltered waters, when she took a more normal position astern. On the way in we broke out and hoisted a new ensign and a new RAFYC burgee, just to show that we still had our tails up and, of course, we hoisted the Q flag. We could no pay the usual courtesy of flying the Moroccan national flag because we did not have one.

By 0800 we were tied up alongside El Kebir at her berth in Casablanca harbour.

This passage provided a good test of my first effort at marine navigation. I had been a navigation instructor in the RAF and was thoroughly versed in the principles and practice of air navigation. The principles were the same for both air and sea, but the practices differed considerably. I started using the sextant on the second day out, and soon learnt the knack of getting reliable sights, even in very rough conditions. I was able to fix position by sun sights on five days, and determine latitude on eight others. I got Consol fixes on five other days, and use the BEME Loop to fix position when approaching Casablanca, also for a succession of bearings which enabled us to determine the direction of our drift during the day before our rescue. We never felt lost, at any time, but always felt that we knew where we were, to within a very few miles.

Consol, which I have mentioned above, was (still is?) a navigation system consisting of a chain of long wave radio stations from Norway to the south of Spain, plus one in Northern Ireland, and a set of special charts. Every minute of the day, each station broadcast its identification letters, followed by a total of 60 dots and dashes. A listener might hear the transmission start with either dots or dashes, depending on where he was. At some point in each transmission, dots would change to dashes, or dashes to dots. By noting which came first, and counting the number of dots and dashes on either side of the break, a line of bearing from the station concerned could be marked on the special chart. Actual position could then be determined by obtaining a second position line from another station and marking where the two crossed. The positions so obtained were not necessarily very accurate, and were not intended to be. They were accurate enough for open ocean work and they also provided a useful check on positions, or position lines, obtained by sextant observations of the sun.

Before closing this chapter, I must mention one unusual feature of our voyage. Except for the depression which overtook us at the last, all the westerly gales which beset us blew out of clear blue skies, and the barometer never varied by more than a millibar or two. Under these conditions the scenery was quite beautiful, with the great waves coloured the intense blue of the deep ocean, crested and laced with silver foam, all sparkling in the sunlight.

From the moment of our arrival, we received the utmost kindness from all the French and Moroccan people with whom we came in contact. It started while we were still coming up the harbour, when a man came rowing out in a small boat and handed us a Moroccan flag, saying merely that we could pay him later. We had hardly got that hoisted when the port doctor's launch drew alongside and we were told, "You may take down your Q flag now; there will be no formalities for you". As soon as El Kebir berthed, we were invited aboard for hot showers and a hearty breakfast. Customs were just as kind and cleared us without even coming aboard. The local yacht club sent word that they wanted us to be their guests for as long as we were in port, and the Harbourmaster himself later came in his launch and put us on a mooring in the yacht basin, where we had shelter and the protection of lying under the eye of the club's night watchman. Finally for that day, the yacht club laid on a special welcoming lunch for us, at which we were served with the very food we were most craving - grilled steak with a nice oily salad, and good red wine to wash it down. There was not a word from anyone in the British community at first, but we later received much kindness and hospitality from several of its members.

That was only a beginning. Next morning, I went to see the local manager of SCRA, Commandant Prigent, to find out what the company was going to charge us for salvage. We were very apprehensive about this. We had very small cash reserves and realised that we might well be forced to sell Penella and abandon our voyage. When I asked Commandant Prigent, the crucial question, he replied, "I have been in touch with our head office in Paris, this morning, and they said to me, 'Group Captain Rankin was our comrade in the air during the war and now he is our comrade on the sea. He is not to be charged anything whatever for salvage. If he has any insurance, we will make a small claim on his insurers, but he himself is not to be charged anything at all'".

We had a two fifths, world wide insurance cover on Penella, one of the conditions being that I had to pay any charges incurred and present receipted bills to the insurers, who would then refund me two fifths of what I had paid. I gave these details to Commandant Prigent. He then offered to help us in any way possible, and was as good as his word. During the course of preparing for, and executing, repairs, Penella had to be put on the hard, and taken off again, no less than five times. Each time, SCRA sent one of their harbour launches to move us. They took our broken tiller and repaired it, and made us a new and stronger one, as well. They helped us in numerous other small ways, and never charged us for anything.

SCRA eventually made a claim for œ350, but did not ask me to pay it, saying that their solicitors could settle it with those of the insurers, in London. Because their London representative was away on sick leave, nothing had been settled by the time repairs to Penella were completed and we were ready to leave. SCRA made no objection to our leaving and did not ask for any promise that we would return, a fact which caused our insurers to exclaim that a miracle had occurred.

Early in May, SCRA sent one of their directors over from Paris to London, just to settle this very small salvage claim. He told the insurers' solicitor that his company did not wish to have me pay anything for salvage. They knew and understood the terms of my insurance cover and would, if need be, issue me with a receipt showing that I had paid the claim. However, he did not think such a subterfuge should be necessary. He then bluntly asked would the underwriters appreciate the generous attitude SCRA wished to show us, to the extent of paying their two fifths of the claim, namely œ140, knowing that I had not paid my share. In effect, this was also saying that SCRA was asking only œ140 for the salvage operation in which their ocean salvage tug, El Kebir, had been at standby and in action for at least 12 hours.

The insurers, The East Coast Mutual Yacht Insurance Association Ltd., gave their whole-hearted approval to what they rightly described as a most generous and pleasing proposal. They then went one better. Considerable legal expenses had been incurred in connection with our mishap. I was liable for three fifths of these, but the Association decided that, "in the special circumstances of the case", it would bear the whole of these. It never did say what the special circumstances were.

Max Tourniquet de Brandt was another to whom we shall ever be grateful. He was our first visitor at our yacht club mooring. He came sculling alongside in his tiny dinghy to let us know that he had a well equipped workshop and could carry out most kinds of repair work. He also comforted us by pointing out various indications that Penella's hull was unlikely to have been damaged. On Christmas Eve, he brought us a bottle of champagne to help make our Christmas a merry one. During our stay, he did several jobs for us, including cutting a new gear wheel for our steering gear, to replace one which had been found cracked. At the end, his bill came to only œ9, and he did not want payment in cash. Instead, knowing that we would be going to Gibraltar and returning again to Casablanca, he asked me to get him a particular kind of telescope from Britain. Because of currency restrictions, he was unable to import it, but we would be able to get it for him at Gibraltar. Happily, I was able to find him a much better one than he had asked for.

Our rescue had received a lot of publicity on the local radio and in the local press. In an interview with the local French language newspaper, we were dubbed 'les grandparents de la mer'.

Organising repairs took some time, as we had to go through the processes of a Lloyds Survey first, then call tenders for the work. The Lloyds surveyor estimated the cost of repairs at œ100. The lowest tender was for œ245 and the highest œ367. Two of the three tenderers said they would have to take the coachroof right off the saloon and galley, in order to replace the split coaming. That would have meant we would have to vacate Penella and find accommodation ashore for at least two weeks. We would also have to remove and store ashore all stores and movable gear, because of the risk of theft. The third, and lowest, tenderer said he could replace the coaming without lifting the roof, so he got the job. He took about six weeks to complete the work, after which I spent some time waterproofing the hatches and skylight. We had suffered badly because of leaks through these, during our voyage.

The total cost of repairs worked out at just over œ302. That seems a trifling amount, these days (1988). To put it in correct perspective, multiply it by ten, which is the factor by which my service pension has increased since then.

Dorrie and I have often talked about our Casablanca episode, and we still marvel at the wonderful kindness we received from so many perfect strangers. We quickly came to feel that, far from being the near disaster we first thought it, we were very fortunate to have had such an experience.

Captain Janssen and his ship Tanger revisited Casablanca while we were still there and the opportunity was taken to review the whole rescue operation. It transpired that the first message from the first ship simply said they had sighted a British yacht in distress, "au large" - at sea. No position was given. On receipt of that message, at about 2000 hrs, the port authority alerted SCRA and their salvage tug, El Kebir, was immediately brought to stand by.

No further useful information was received ashore until Tanger reported our position, at about 2300. Unfortunately, that message became garbled in transmission. The message, as received, gave a position which placed us almost in the breakers, about 12 miles west of Casablanca. As soon as it was received, El Kebir raced out to the position at full speed, but, of course, found nothing there, and nothing in sight. She then started a patrol line, back and forth along the coast, in the hope of intercepting us, knowing that we would be drifting towards the land. It was not until Dorrie and I woke from our exhausted sleep at 0130, and I switched on our spreader lights, that we were sighted.

Moored near us in the yacht basin was the queer craft illustrated. No doubt it was once somebody's dream boat. Looking rather like a small submarine, it was about 30 feet long, with standing headroom only in the conning tower. The width in this section was about the width of my shoulders. It was said to have been built for fishing, soon after the war. The authorities refused it a licence because they considered it unseaworthy, and it was just slowly rotting on its mooring.

It was also at Casablanca that we saw the Thing. It was apparently quite common, both there and along the south coast of Spain, but nowhere did we find anyone who knew of any name for it. It was about 8 inches long, very dark purple-brown in colour, with light yellow patches on its belly. It was of soft fleshy, almost jelly-like substance, except for a cartilaginous box for a belly. The box provided the only bit of stiff framework the creature possessed. It had nothing recognisable as a head, the neck being merely a tube ending in a decorative frill, which seemed also to act as a scoop. There were two stalks on its neck, which might have been eye stalks, for it certainly seemed to know where it was going. It had two thick, fleshy wings which, when fully opened, formed an almost perfect circle. It swam by 'flapping' them in a graceful undulating movement. It swam on what appeared to be its back, and slightly down by the stern. There was a deep groove down its back, between the wing roots. When opened out, the groove was seen to be bright purple. The animal emitted small quantities of purple ink when roughly handled. The local people said it stung on contact, but it had no effect on my hands during some extensive handling. Our two books on marine life mentioned nothing like it. What was it?

With repairs completed, we were ready for sea again by mid-April. There was now no question of crossing the Atlantic until the autumn, when the hurricane season in the West Indies would be past. We decided to move up to Gibraltar, where we would be able to get things which we needed for the boat, and some dental attention for me, which was prohibitively expensive in Casablanca. We would also be able to do some pleasant cruising from there, as the fancy took us.

We left Casablanca on Wednesday morning, 22^nd April, 1959, bound for Gibraltar. We were a bit apprehensive following our December experiences, but both the sea and the weather seemed bent on making amends. There was very little wind, only a very slight swell, and the weather was fine and warm. We motored for most of the first day and night, but a good sailing breeze from NW sprang up about 0300 on Thursday morning. We set Penella on course 021 deg T, on the port tack, under the four lower sails, lashed the wheel, and let her sail herself. She did this perfectly, on a fairly close reach, for the next 14 hours. About 0945 the wind veered to the north and Penella changed course to 066 deg, closing the coast rather sharply. By 1030, we were only about three miles off the coast and I was beginning to think we would have to go about. Then, at 1100, the wind backed to 340 deg and Penella altered course to 053 deg. I set the topsail and she immediately came up closer to the wind, altering course to 031 deg. At ll45, the wind backed still further to 315 deg and Penella altered course to 013 deg giving us a track exactly parallel to the coastline and not much more than a mile off it. For the rest of the day, Penella held this course without anyone touching the wheel, speed varying between four and five knots. There was now no perceptible swell, just the ruffle of a Force 3 wind. Dorrie and I just sat in the sun and watched the scenery go by. Perfect!

During the night, we had a near entanglement with some unlighted tunny fishing boats and their nets, and a wet beat around Cape Spartel. By daylight, we were able to lay a course for Gibraltar, the wind was fair, and the morning beautifully clear and sparkling. With all sails set, we made a fast passage to within about five miles of Gibraltar. There, the wind failed entirely, and we had to motor in to a jetty berth, inside the harbour.

We spent the next six weeks making alterations and improvements based on our December experiences. We painted out our rather dark saloon and sleeping cabin in white, lightly tinted with blue. That made a great difference to their lightness and apparent roominess. We also did some local sailing, testing out new or modified gear, and entertaining friends. One Sunday, we went to a small town in Spain to see a bullfight session. One could not help admiring the skill and courage of the toreador and the banderilleros, but the work of the picadors was just plain horrible, and we never want to see another corrida.

Amongst the friends we made in Gibraltar were Jean and Roger Howard and their three delightful children. We had just read Jean's account of their visit to Seville in their Fairey Atalanta, earlier in the year. When Roger offered to lend us his folio of Spanish charts of the Guadalquivir River, we decided to go there, ourselves, but did not then fix any date.

Shortly after that, our friend and neighbour, Larry, who was converting an ex-navy Fairmile MTB, brought along a very pretty girl named Yvonne, a complete stranger, who was in big trouble and had appealed to him for help. She was in her early twenties and lived in London, where she mixed with a very giddy set. She had accepted an invitation from a casual male acquaintance to fly down to Gibraltar and spend a weekend with him in his yacht. On arrival, he took the yacht over to Tangier where, surprise! surprise!, Yvonne discovered that he expected to sleep with her. She refused and he became very angry. She fled back to Gibraltar on the ferry, but did not have enough money to get back to England. She feared that her 'host' would follow her back to Gibraltar and attempt to do her an injury.

We took her off Larry's hands, made her write to her mother for funds, and then decided to make our visit to Seville, right away. That would remove Yvonne from any possibility of retaliation, and keep her safe until she could get back to England.

We set off for Seville on the afternoon of 9^th June, with a moderate levanter to blow us through the Straight. We held that wind until we were off Cadiz, about 0900 next morning. There, in a flat calm, thousands of tiny spiders began to descent on us, each floating on its own tiny thread of silk.

We motored into the Guadalquivir about 1500 that afternoon. Although the tide was at about half flood, we carried it until about 2000, when we anchored for the night and had a much-needed swim. An early start next morning brought us to the Seville lock about 1030. It was open and we were soon through. A short run, passing through one swing bridge, took us right into the middle of the town, where we tied up to one of a number of small landing stages immediately above the commercial port.

There we had our first experience of the charmingly casual Spanish authorities. A policeman arrived and asked us where we had come from, and our names. Shortly afterwards, two customs officers arrived and asked us our names and where we had come from. No one wanted to see passports or to know what we had on board.

Seville is a lovely city; the river channel is wide and deep, well marked with buoys, and easy to follow. Yachts going upstream and starting from the river mouth at low water have a fair tide for about eight hours and should be able to reach Seville on one tide. Two tides are necessary for the return journey, for one then has only about four hours of fair tide. It pays to anchor when the tide is foul. The best time to visit Seville is in April, when the Spring Fair is on.

On the Guadalquivir we saw fishing boats of a type new to us. A huge scoop net was rigged on booms projecting diagonally outwards from the quarters of the boat. The booms were 20 to 30 feet long and were partly counter balanced for ease of working. When fishing, the net was lowered deeply into the water by depressing the booms, and the boat was rowed stern first for a short distance. One member of the crew rowed towards the net in a smaller boat, making the greatest possible commotion with his oars as he did so. As he drew near, the net was raised quickly and the catch gathered into the boat. The river was teeming with fish and this seemed to be a very effective method of catching them.

Amongst our many visitors at Seville was a small group of students who spoke adequate English. We were flying the Australian flag and were asked many questions about the status of the country vis a vis Britain. They could not understand that Australia was a completely free and independent country while the Union Jack still remained part of its flag, and refused to believe that it was.

Our stay was partly spoiled by a few local larrikins, who persisted in leaning over the side and peering through the portholes, whilst smoking and dropping ash and lighted cigarettes on our deck. Once, when Dorrie and I were away in the town, some of them cast off our stern mooring. Fortunately, Yvonne was aboard and was able to secure it again, before Penella came to any harm.

From Seville, we decided to visit Puerto Santa Maria and Cadiz. We left Seville late on Sunday morning, 14^th June and motored down river all day, with a good ebb tide, but a dead head wind. Just before 1800, the ebb tide left us and we anchored for the night. We lay there all next day because of a near gale force southerly wind. On Tuesday, we had to wait until 1335 for the ebb tide to begin, and then motored down to the river mouth port of Bonanza, from which Columbus is said to have begun his most famous voyage. There, we topped up with fresh water and bought some fresh bread and vegetables before moving across the river to a sheltered anchorage for the night.

Puerto Santa Maria is at the mouth of the Guadalete River, and is the port through which much of Spain's sherry is shipped. We followed two fishing boats of about our own draft into the dredged channel leading to the mouth of the river, about half an hour before low water, on a neap tide. As the Pilot and the chart both showed 13 feet of water in the dredged channel at low water springs, we were not worrying about soundings, as our draft was less than five feet. Suddenly, one of the fishing boats ahead of us went aground. We hastily slowed down and switched on the Ferrograph echo sounder, to find that we had only a foot of water under the keel. We inched our way forward and the water began to deepen again as we entered the river mouth. However, even in the port itself, we found see feel less depth of water than is promised in the Pilot. Apparently this silting had been allowed to occur in the past few years, despite the presence of a fleet of dredgers in Cadiz, only a few miles away.

Santa Maria is a nondescript little place, but we liked it and spent two days there. The port is completely sheltered and, in that respect, is better than Cadiz.

When we moved over to Cadiz, we cruised around the harbour until we found that yachts were using the fishing port. We went in and tied up alongside the beautiful Swedish yawl Anna Marina. She was on her way from the Mediterranean to Cowes to take part in the Fastnet race.

Although just as friendly as other Spanish ports we visited, Cadiz did not really cater for yachts. The main basins of the harbour were very exposed to east winds. The fishing port was more sheltered, but was very crowded and busy, and yachts were rather a nuisance. We explored the town a little. We visited the cathedral and saw some really beautiful and wonderful treasure. We could not help comparing this great treasure with the wide-spread poverty, which we also saw in the town. We had one hilarious incident when Yvonne decided to buy a new pair of very short shorts, which, of course, had to be tried on. Dorrie went into the fitting room with her. When the first pair tried proved to be the wrong size, the young assistant serving us was so shy that he refused to take the next pair even to the door of the fitting room, delegating the job to me. Yvonne eventually got what she wanted, but not before everyone in the shop had had a good half hour's fun.

We left Cadiz at 1830 on evening, for a night passage to Tangier. There was a brisk sea breeze blowing in the bay, kicking up a nasty, choppy sea. We had to butt our way out against it for nearly two hours before we could bear away and begin sailing. Poor Yvonne paid the price of over confidence here. She was quite sure she would not be seasick; she would not take the Marzine pill we offered her until too late, and spent a miserable night in her bunk, missing a lovely night's sailing under a full moon.

That same full moon saved us from what might have been a nasty entanglement with tunny nets. While sailing several miles off the coast, we suddenly saw ahead of us a group of unlighted fishing boats. They saw us about the same time, and one of them began flashing a white light at us. Guessing they were tunny net fishermen, we altered course to pass at least half a mile to seaward of them. Even so, we presently ran over the extreme seaward end of their net, fortunately without fouling it.

The yacht club at Tangier was very hospitable, but we could not use the berth they offered us, right in front of the clubhouse, for lack of water. We eventually went out to the so-called yacht basin, and tied up in smugglers' row, where we had an uncomfortable time, being squeezed between much bigger ships for three days in a howling levanter. Apart from the discomfort of our berth, we had a pleasant three days there, followed by an exhilarating sail back to Gibraltar on Thursday, 25^th June. There, we found that money had arrived for Yvonne, and we saw her safely off to England.

About this time, two young men arrived in an ex-RAF target towing launch from which two of its three engines had been removed. They were ferrying it to Trinidad and had put into Gibraltar for supplies. When talking to the skipper, it transpired that he knew virtually nothing about navigation, had no sextant, almanac or sight reduction tables, and did not know how to use them, anyway. His one and only engine was also giving trouble, and he was short of money. He was blithely confident that he could find his way to Trinidad without any of those things. He had a compass, and had done so, once before. True, on that trip, he had finished his Atlantic crossing somewhere on the coast of Brazil and had then just groped his way to Trinidad. I offered to teach him some celestial navigation if he would get himself the necessary gear, but he was not interested. However, he did accept my advice to go to Casablanca and let Max Tourniquet check over his engine before starting across the Atlantic. I have forgotten his name, but, as I will have more to tell of him later, let us call him Frank.

We paid another visit to Tangier on 2^nd August. The king of Morocco was due to return from a visit to Paris two days later, travelling in a Moroccan warship and entering via Tangier. Security in the port area was very strict. Our movements were not restricted, but our passports were impounded and we were told we could not get them back until the middle of the night, many hours after the king had passed through. It was difficult to see how this action could affect security, and it caused some annoyance to the foreign yacht crews in the port. We were berthed alongside an American yacht which, like ourselves, dressed ship in honour of the king's visit. Its owner was very angry about the passport business and determined to leave as soon as he got his back. He then found that a Moroccan warship had dropped a wire hawser over his mooring warp and winched it up tight, making it impossible for him to cast off. He got me to cut his warp and shot off out to seas with his dressing flags still flying. We left soon afterwards and met him limping back into port under power to sort out a tangle of flags and halyards which had developed when he tried to set sails without first lowering the flags.

We left Tangier at 0235 on 5^th August to go back to Gibraltar. We ran into thick fog at 0400 and had a very scary hour in which two ships passed very close to us, neither of them sounding their fog horns. We ran out of the fog very suddenly, into bright sunshine. Later in the morning, an oil tanker passed close by us and we saw, for the first time, the great mound of water which a ship pushes ahead of her when travelling at her normal speed. Two porpoises were having great fun surfing down the slope of the mound.

We stayed in Gibraltar for another two and a half weeks, laying in stores and making final preparations for our return to Casablanca, which would be the first leg of the resumption of our interrupted voyage to Australia. Our plan now was to get to Brisbane about mid-October, 1960, which our planning charts showed to be the quietest time of the year for winds in that region.

We left Gibraltar early on Saturday, 22^nd August and had to motor against westerly winds until we rounded Cape Spartel, at about 1600hrs, when we were able to set all sails and bear away for Casablanca. Later that evening, a curious thing happened to the Cape Spartel light. Instead of flashing its normal group of four white every 20 seconds, it became a fixed white light for a good many minutes, and then resumed its flashing.

On Sunday morning, when 20 miles out into the Atlantic, we were becalmed in thick fog for about an hour and a half. During that time, the sea was absolutely still and Penella was as motionless as if on the hard. That surely must be unusual for the open ocean.

Sometime during our third and last night, an apparently sick tern came aboard and settled on the after coachroof, very close to the wheel. It showed no fear of us, and left us about dawn, when we were close to the land. All the time it was with us, another tern (its mate?) kept flying very closely around our stern and several times settled on the mainsail boom, close to our visitor. It left us at the same time as the other.

We arrived at Casablanca on Tuesday morning and went to our old berth in front of the yacht club, getting a great welcome from El Kebir as we passed her on our way to the yacht basin. Almost at once, we began hearing stories about the sensational arrival of Frank in his derated, ex target-towing launch, a few days earlier. He came to see us soon afterwards and we learnt what had happened.

Before daylight on the morning of his arrival, he got a clear sight of the lights of Casablanca. From the visible position of El Hank light, he was able to determine the position of the harbour mouth, took a bearing of it, and set that on his steering compass. Soon afterwards, a bank of fog drifted in, first blotting out the Casablanca lights and then enveloping him. Undismayed, he maintained full cruising speed and course, firmly convinced that this would bring him unerringly into the harbour. A couple of hours later, still in thick fog but now in daylight, there was a frightful crash: propeller and rudder were torn off, rocks ripped through the bottom, and the boat came to a stop within yards of the corniche road which skirts the water immediately to the west of the harbour and almost directly beneath El Hank lighthouse. The lighthouse had been sounding its powerful fog horn, but Frank and his crew mate had not been able to hear it because of the noise made by their own engine. Later, a mobile crane was able to reach out from the corniche and lift the wreck onto the roadway.

We dawdled at Casablanca for two and a half weeks, during which we met Eric and Susan Hiscock in their Wanderer III, and said goodbye to our many friends. So many of them turned up to wish us God speed that we were a day late getting away. We were greatly touched by another demonstration of their affection later, when over a dozen of them motored the eighty miles to Mazagan, our next port, to see us again.

We made a leisurely cruise down the Moroccan coast as far as Agadir, visiting Mazagan and Safi on the way, spending some days at each. The whole cruise was characterised by light winds and calm seas. The waters along this coast are very cold and teem with fish. At Safi, we learnt that as many as 1,300 tons of sardines have been landed in a single day. Spawn was often so thick on the water as to completely smooth out wavelets, in the manner of oil. Becalmed on the day after we left Safi, we found the surface of the sea covered with a yellow slime, which was laced with little lumps of clear jelly, often strung together like glass beads, each with one black speck in it. There were also many brilliant blue and green blobs of something, as well as some red and brown, extending as far down into the depths as we could see. The phosphorescence in the water at night had to be seen to be believed; every splash produced a blaze of light. We have never seen its like anywhere else.

We left Agadir just before the end of September as we wanted to be at Las Palmas in time to see the total eclipse of the sun on 2^nd October. We just made it, by dint of motoring hard on the last morning. The eclipse was well under way when we entered the port, and reached totality shortly after we had completed entry formalities. It was a strange and beautiful sight, but our most abiding memory of it has been the cry of awe and wonder which went up from all around us as the sun finally disappeared and the lovely corona burst into view.

We stayed sixteen days at Las Palmas, during which we explored the town and island and carried out several maintenance tasks. I made and fitted fiddle rails to the saloon ses and the galley benches. We called on the British Consul on arrival and were strongly warned against associating with the couple in a yacht called Sea Sprite. They were not only short of money; they also WERE NOT MARRIED, although they pretended to be! Needless to say, it was not long before we met Jack Ramm and his delightful Danish girlfriend, Brenda, and we all became good friends. The Hiscocks were also in port, and Susan welcomed us with a loaf of fresh bread as soon as we arrived. We also met for the first time, Si Ye Pambili, manned by four young policemen on leave from Rhodesia.

I struck an odd bit of nonsense when I went to buy a few gallons of diesel oil from the Shell agent. He said the law was that bunkers could only be supplied if the oil had been bought and paid for outside the country. This was for reasons of currency control. I asked could I pay for it in sterling or US dollars. No; that would still be paying inside the country. Well, could I give him a cheque on a London bank? No; that would still be paying inside the country. He said I should have gone to a Shell agent in London or Gibraltar, ordered and paid for the oil, and brought with me a receipted voucher for the required amount. Without that, sorry, he could not supply oil to a ship. However, he kept a stock of oil from which he supplied the island's fleet of lorries. If I brought my cans over to the depot, he could pretend I was a lorry! And that was what I had to do to get the 14 gallons we needed. It was the cheapest price I had ever paid, too.

That all seemed as mad as what had happened in Agadir. Diesel oil there was supplied duty free to ships of any kind, but it had to be delivered right into their tanks from the pump. The oiling dock was very crowded and the water in it covered with a thick scum of spilt oil. I refused to take Penella into it and eventually got a special permit from the Director of Customs to get the oil I wanted in our own cans. He sent a customs officer down to the pump especially to see that I got only the right amount, and that I took it away in our dinghy to the yacht. Yet, when I got to the pump with our cans, I was made to take them down onto the deck of a filthy sardiner to get them filled from the pump, which was on the quayside above. I then had to hoist them laboriously up onto the quay again, and carry them along to the dinghy. There was so much loss from the long run of pipe, across the quay and down the quayside to the deck, that I got only about thirty of the forty litres I had paid for.

We had decided to leave Las Palmas on the morning of 17^th October. By late afternoon on the 16^th, we had completed all our preparations. The dinghy was aboard and secured in its chocks, and we intended to turn in early and get a good night's sleep. Just then, in came Armorel, with Bob and Jane Van Blaricom and two crew, whom we had met and become friendly with, in Gibraltar. Seeing that we were ready to sail, Bob called out, "Hey! You can't leave yet; you've got to come and have a party with us, tonight". Nothing loath, we put the Pup in the water again, had our party with them, and left on the 18^th, bound for Barbados.

The crossing of the Atlantic was mainly unexciting, but very pleasant. Apart from a gale on the second night out, winds were mainly Force 2 to 3, with only an occasional Force 4 or 5, but we were never becalmed after the first day. Penella's twin staysails, with a total area of 400 square feet, were too small for such light weather, and we made a slow passage of 34 days.

The main event of the crossing was an almost incredible meeting with Armorel in mid-Atlantic. They left Las Palmas a week after we did, and overtook us ten days later, when we were just about half way across. We sighted a sail about mid-morning, hull down to the south. It soon became apparent that we were on converging courses and, an hour or so later, we were able to recognise Armorel. We both continued on our courses and they crossed our bows, no more than 200 yards away, as we were both taking our noon sights. It was not until that moment that they saw us for the first time. They then turned back and came up alongside us and reduced their speed to match ours. We swopped positions, which agreed pretty closely. After asking us to take some photos of their ship, they turned back for a few minutes, set every scrap of sail possible, including the galley tea towels! and came chasing after us. She was a lovely sight and we took a series of both still and moving pictures of her. She then quickly reduced sale to match our speed again, and we sailed along, side by side, only a few feet apart, for the next ten or fifteen minutes, exchanging gossip. She left us about 1330 and reached Barbados 11 days later, a week ahead of us.

We had the company of several kinds of birds all the way across. On four occasions, storm petrels came aboard for a rest. They showed not the slightest fear of us, even when picked up and handled. I put each one in a safe place in the coach roof fiddle and there it rested until it was ready to fly away. Porpoises came and played with Penella many times. Other visitors of interest were two large whales, a school of half a dozen bonito which kept us company for a whole day, and a type of flying fish quite unlike anything described in either of our fish books. We also had several dragon flies come aboard when we were about 150 miles from the nearest land. Flying fish came aboard on several occasions, providing us with a tasty breakfast each time.

In one region of the Atlantic, we came across noctilucent creatures which were not mentioned in either of our fish books, and which we had never heard of before. We found that, about two seconds after directing a torch beam into the water alongside, unidentifiable objects passing by began to glow. They were at all depths to which the beam penetrated. They glowed for about two seconds after passing out of the beam, and also for about two seconds after it was switched off. They were quite small, ranging in size from mere specks to an inch or so across.

It was during this crossing that I began to practice taking star sights. In big ships, I understand that this is only possible during morning and evening twilight, as the horizon is not normally visible during the hours of darkness. From our much lower height, the horizon was only about three miles distant, and I found I could nearly always see it clearly enough to get reliable sights at any time of the night. I also began teaching Dorrie to use the sextant and reduce her own sights. She became proficient enough to obtain quite good fixes from star sights.

The navigation worked out nicely. We made our landfall at night. Several hours before it was due, I wrote in the log that Ragged Point light (the expected landfall) should come into sight, dipping, when the taffrail log read so many miles. When that distance came up, I went forward and stood up on the coach roof fiddle, looking out in the direction from which the light should appear. After one minute, there was a pinpoint of light, dipping. It was the Ragged Point light. As the light only flashed once every two minutes, that was the first flash after the log reading came up. 'Flash', by the way, is a bit misleading where this light is concerned, as each one lasted 15 seconds.

We anchored in Carlisle Bay at 1035 next morning. A police launch came alongside at once and we were through all formalities in a few minutes, just in time for us to get into Bridgetown and collect mail, before the post office closed for the weekend.

We stayed in Barbados for a month, during which time the Canadian branch of our family came and spent a fortnight with us, and we explored the island. Our daughter Dorothy brought us a stainless steel, folding oven, which she had obtained from the United States. It proved to be a very valuable addition to our galley equipment.

My main concern at Barbados was to improve Penella's down wind performance. After finding a suitable length of 3" x 3" spruce, I got a local firm to make a 200 square feet triangular sail, 20 feet deep from peak to 20 feet wide foot. I made a spreader for this from the piece of spruce I had found, with strops at each end for attaching sheets, and another in the middle for shackling to the staysail stay, to prevent it swinging from side to side. The new sail was to be set from the top of the main mast. I don't know what such a sail should be called. I called it a raffee, from something which I had read, but I have never found that word in any dictionary. I also made and set up quickly removable separate stays for the twin spinnakers, put hanks on both of those sails, and had the battery washed out and recharged.

After topping up food, water and fuel supplies, we left Barbados on 22^nd December and sailed over to Bequia, some 90 miles to the west. We anchored close to the shore in deeply sheltered Elizabeth, or Admiralty, Bay. There we found Sea Sprite, with Jack and Brenda Ramm, and Si Ye Pambili, with Bill Baker and Roger Gowan, all of whom we had met in Las Palmas and Barbados. On Christmas Day, we pooled resources and all had dinner together in Penella. It was a very happy occasion.

We left Bequia on 30^th December, intending to spend a day or two at the uninhabited Tobago Kays on the way to St. George, Grenada. However, a few hours out from Bequia, a steering wire broke, rusted through where it turned around a quarter block. While I was making temporary repairs, Penella jibed herself and set course back towards Bequia, sailing quite steadily, so we went back there and stayed for another day while I renewed both steering wires and the tack pendants on both jibs, which were also rusty. We left again on 1^st January, 1960, spent a very uncomfortable night anchored off Hillsborough, in the lee of Cariacou Island, and were chased into St. George by a heavy, squally rain storm, early on the afternoon on the 2^nd.

We only stayed three days there, during which time we had the pleasure of meeting an old RAF friend, Air Commodore 'Freddie' Pearce and his wife, and I was able to buy some terylene rope and make up new main, jib and staysail sheets and a new staysail halyard. We also shopped for groceries and topped up fuel and fresh water tanks. What with one thing and another, this visit was so strenuous that we were both dangerously tired when we set out for the Panama Canal, and this led to a big change in our watch-keeping routine.

We left St. George at 1600 on 5^th January. Up to this time, we had always split the nights into four-hour watches, taking turn and turn about for the first watch. We had not been very happy with this arrangement, as the last two hours of each watch were sheer purgatory. On this occasion, I was still getting over a bout of 'flu and by nightfall I was just about exhausted. Dorrie was very tired, too. We agreed that she would take the first watch, for two hours only, which enabled me to get a bit of sleep and took the worst edge off my tiredness. I then did the same for her, and we kept up this two-hourly alternation all night. It worked so well that we adopted it as our night routine for the rest of the time we were at sea. We eventually modified it slightly to give the one off watch two hours actually in bed.

We had a lovely run to Cristobal. On the third day out, with the wind dead behind us, I set the raffee for the first time. It worked beautifully, giving us about an extra knot of speed, and it had one unexpected effect. Always when running under the twin spinnakers, Penella had rolled almost violently. She was doing so when I hoisted the raffee, but, the moment it filled, the rolling stopped completely, and Penella just surged along as if on tram lines. It was a wonderful change, greatly reducing our physical fatigue.

We entered the harbour of Limon Bay at 0218 on 14^th January and were boarded a few minutes later by an official of the Panama Canal Authority, who cleared us for health and immigration while directing us to an anchorage in Cristobal harbour. We dropped anchor there at 0300, within a few yards of Wanderer III, which had got in a little earlier. We had completed the whole run of 1,116 miles in exactly 8 days 12 hours. Our best day's run, noon to noon, was 165 miles, of which current accounted for 28.

We were both tired, and turned in as soon as we were alone, but were not allowed to sleep for long. At 0550, before daylight, another Canal Authority official came out and measured Penella for the purposes of calculating her tonnage, on which our transit dues would be based. In the early afternoon, a sanitary inspector came and inspected us and Penella, and issued us with a deratisation certificate, after which we were allowed to move in to the Panama Canal Yacht Club, where a berth had already been allotted to us, and we were made very welcome.

We stayed a fortnight at Cristobal, doing various maintenance jobs, laying in stores for the tun to Tahiti, making new friends and meeting several old ones. The Hiscocks had arrived from Curacao only hours ahead of us; Roger Gowan and Bill Baker in Si Ye Pambili came in from Bequia a day or so later. Our whole stay was made very pleasant by the hospitality of the Panama Canal Zone Yacht Club and its individual members. The club gave us a berth with water and power laid on and the full use of its facilities, free of charge.

Amongst the new friends we made were Hank and Nicki Horn, who were passing through in their yacht Ben Gunn, and Dave and Nellie Goffeney. They were living in their yacht Fortune while Dave worked as a driver of one of the electric mules which help to control and move ships in the canal locks. We were to meet them again, three and a half years later, in the Brisbane River.

The transit of Panama Canal involves being lifted at one end, through three locks, to about 90 feet above sea level, and being lowered again, in three stages, at the other end. The lock chambers are 1,000 feet long, 120 feet wide, and the rise and fall of water in each is a little over 30 feet. Once the lock gates are closed, each chamber is filled or emptied in about 15 minutes, the filling causing great turbulence. As if this turbulence were not enough, yachts were invariably put into the up locks behind big ships, and the ships, equally invariably, gave a kick ahead on their screws to start their movement from one chamber into the next. The resulting swirl was quite violent. There were no such troubles in the down locks, where yachts were sent in first, and all was peace and quiet.

In theory, there were two possible ways of working a yacht through the up locks. One was to ask for centre locking, in which the yacht was positioned midway between the side walls and held there by four warps from bows and quarters. The warps had to be at least 120 feet long and strong enough to hold the yacht safely in the turbulence which would be experienced, and an able bodied crew member had to be provided to tend each one aboard the yacht. The shore ends of the warps were handled by Canal Company employees. As each chamber was filled, the warps had to be retrieved and coiled down while the yacht motored into the next chamber. There, the warps had to be passed ashore again, and so on: altogether a laborious and anxious proceeding. In practice, the big ship traffic was so heavy that yachts could not be allotted the lock space needed for this method, although we were not told this.

The other possibility was to arrange with a banana boat or other small vessel to make fast to its side. Such vessels normally moored to one side of each lock chamber and would motor from one to another with the yacht attached. The yacht crew had nothing to do but make fast in the first chamber, and cast off at the top. The one snag was that such vessels usually had rows of motor tyres for fenders, set at such a height that they could cause damage to a yacht rails or rigging.

The Hiscocks were leaving before us, so Dorrie and I offered to help them through the up locks, and thereby gained some valuable experience. Eric had arranged for centre locking. With pilot aboard, he had Wanderer III up to the first lock in good time but, on orders from the lock master, was last to enter and was ordered alongside a Canal Company's tug. These tugs had low sides and massive but soft rope fenders right down to the water line. Securing to one of them seemed to me to provide both the easiest and safest means of getting through those locks, and that is how we eventually arranged it for Penella.

We were helped right through the canal by Hank and Nicki Horn, of the American yacht Ben Gunn. Roger Gowan, of Si Ye Pambili, also helped us through the up locks. We had a lovely day for our transit, sunny and sparkling, with a fresh northerly wind. The only noteworthy incident occurred when our pilot directed us through a very narrow passage between a tiny island and a steep headland. As we popped through the pass, we surprised a kite hawk resting in a tree. It so far forgot its airmanship as to take off down wind in a strong down draught, and crashed straight into the water. It managed to flounder ashore, looking very bedraggled and silly.

The charge for a yacht going through the canal was 72 cents per ton, Canal Company's measurement. For Penella, this was almost the same as gross registered tonnage, and the total charge was about nine dollars. This charge covered the services of the pilot for a very long day. His salary probably was about $100 per day.

At the Balboa end of the canal, we picked up a yacht club mooring, very close to the dredged channel leading into the canal. A day or two after our arrival, we saw three Canadian frigates approaching from seaward and saluted them by lowering our ensign as each one passed us. An hour or so later, two of their officers came alongside in a dinghy and, after thanking us for our courtesy, invited us to dinner in their flagship the next evening. They also offered to help us in any way we might need. They gave us some stainless steel wire which we needed for our life lines, and also the international code flags of our identification letters, MRTV, which we would need when approaching the signal station at the mouth of the Brisbane River. Many years later, we had a happy reunion with one of the, when he visited Townsville as the captain of a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer.

The Balboa Yacht Club and its members were all very kind and hospitable. Some of its members had friends living at Academy Bay, in the Galapagos Islands, and they asked us to carry various parcels to them, which we were glad to do.

The Enchanted Isles are, of course, the Galapagos Islands. They straddle the equator about 600 nautical miles west of Ecuador, in an area where the powerful Humbolt and other ocean currents meet, causing great and unpredictable variations in the surface currents. They were discovered in 1535 by Tomas de Berlanga, bishop of Panama, on a voyage to Peru, but there was no means, in those days, of accurately determining their position. Later navigators sometimes failed to find them, partly because of the strong and unpredictable currents, and partly because they also had no means of accurately determining their own positions. This gave rise to a feeling that the islands must be bewitched and could disappear and reappear, and they became known as Las Encantadas - the bewitched, or enchanted.

For almost 300 years the islands were unclaimed by any nation, but were used by many ships for various purposes. In this period, they became known as the Galapagos Islands because they were the home of the galapagos, the giant land tortoises, which were much hunted by ships' crews as a long-living source of fresh meat. During this time also, all of the islands were given English names. Ecuador took formal possession of the islands in 1832 and established the first colony there in the same year. Spanish names were allotted to all the islands and the group was renamed Archipielago de Colon. When we were there, in 1960, some of the islands were still commonly known (at least to English speaking people) by their English names, and others by their newer Spanish names. In this account, I have used the names which were in common use at the time of our visit.

When we were preparing for our voyage, in England, yachts visiting the Galapagos were reporting trouble with the authorities there, and exorbitant charges for entry permits and port dues, etc. We decided not to call at these islands and, consequently, did not lay in an Ecuadorian flag. There is no legal obligation for a ship to fly the flag of the country it is visiting, but it is a universally observed custom to do so, as a courtesy, and we had provided ourselves with the flags of all the countries we expected to visit on our voyage to Australia.

Whilst at Cristobal, we learnt that things had changed and that visiting yachts were now welcomed. An entry permit had to be obtained and a small fee was charged for that, but that was all, so we decided we would call there, after all. Not only would it give us a chance to see a very interesting and remote part of the world, but it would also provide a welcome break in the almost 4,000 miles passage to the Marquesas Islands, the next land to the West.

We went to the Ecuadorian Consul in Colon, got the necessary entry permit, and then tried to obtain an Ecuadorian flag. None could be found in Colon or Panama City, nor could the consul provide us with one, so we decided we would have to try to buy one as soon as we got to Wreck Bay, the port of entry. Had we but known, we could have bought a Colombian flag and turned it into an Ecuadorian one simply by cutting a bit off it. The two flags are identical except for shape: the Colombian flag is oblong and the Ecuadorian square. That would have saved us some unpleasantness.

We left Balboa on 6^th February, and had a rather slow trip to Wreck Bay, taking twelve and a half days for the 870 miles. Winds were very patchy and variable, and we motored for about 250 miles of the way. We got plenty of evidence of the strong and unpredictable currents for which the region is notorious. We also met quite a lot of squalls. None of them was very strong, but they came from all directions and stirred up some uncomfortable seas. These sometimes caused a very quick pitching movement in Penella, quite unlike anything we ever experienced, before or since. It was so quick that I described it at the time as tittupping. This, of course, threw a great strain on the fore and back stays. About three o'clock one morning, during one of these pitching spells, I heard a sound like a pistol shot from the stern. I could not see any cause of it at the time; but, at daylight, I found the bumpkin bobstay trailing astern and its anchor bolt broken off short at the sternpost. There was no way of replacing it at sea, and we had to nurse Penella along to Wreck Bay rather carefully. In fact, we could see no likelihood of replacing it before we reached Tahiti, and devoted a lot of thought to devising other ways of providing the necessary support for the masts.

On the second night out from Balboa, there was a very big ring around the moon, in misty conditions. The ring had round bright patches on it at three points, one vertically above the moon, and the other two square out from it on either side. One of the patches looked very like another moon. There was a bright streak running upwards from the moon towards the top patch. Cloud conditions prevented us from seeing whether there were similar streaks radiating towards the two other patches. The low angle of the moon made it impossible to see the bottom portion of the ring, but what we could see looked remarkably like the pictures we had seen of 'sun dogs' in the arctic.

We sighted Chatham Island at daylight on 18^th February, and arrived in Wreck Bay in mid-afternoon. On the way, we passed close by Kicker Rock with its colony of Magnificent frigate birds, the males of which have spectacular red pouches under their throats. (The 'Magnificent' is a species name, not just a description). Kicker Rock is really two rocks, almost 500 feet high and separated by a narrow, deep channel. Some Americans were said to sail their yachts through this channel in a marine version of the game of 'chicken'.

The Port Captain, who was also the governor of the islands, and other officials came out to us almost as soon as we had anchored. We were quickly cleared and then, before I could say anything, the Port Captain asked why we were not flying the Ecuadorian flag. I explained, and asked could we buy one from him. Instead of answering, he curtly requested me to go ashore to his office. There, he demanded a fine of $15 for not flying their flag, and persisted in his demand for some time, despite my repeated explanations that we had simply been unable to buy one. However, I eventually talked him out of it and bought a flag from him for $5, which was no more than its bare value. He gave strict instructions that it must be raised and lowered at the same times as their flag ashore. He then lent me, free of charge, the services of a petty officer electrician, who quickly and expertly fixed some electrical trouble we had. He also sold us, very cheaply, all the diesel fuel we needed - 20 gallons for $5.

Wreck Bay was a very dilapidated little settlement, which seemed to have no means of support since the big freezing plant there had closed down. However, we got there the best bread we had had since leaving England, and I got the most enjoyable haircut in years, in a little barber's shop and dwelling built around the trunk of a big shade tree. There were three general stores in the village, from which groceries, clothing, kerosine and hardware could be obtained. Diesel oil and kerosine were obtainable from the Ecuadorian Navy, and petrol was said to be available sometimes. Plenty of very soft water was laid onto the jetty, but it was rather dirty, and we used it only for washing.

Visitors to any port where there was a port captain needed to time their movements carefully, as they were charged $10 for any arrival or departure outside normal working hours, or on feast days or holidays, which seemed to be numerous. While we were at Wreck Bay, it cost the Hiscocks $10 for arriving during the lunch hour. Both we and the Hiscocks received our departure clearance papers on Saturday morning, too late for us to get away before noon. We were forbidden to leave between noon on Saturday and 0800 on Monday morning, unless we were prepared to pay $10, which neither of us was. As they had a navy patrol boat there, we waited.

On Monday, we both left on the tick of 0800, the Hiscocks for uninhabited Barrington Island and we for Academy Bay, on Santa Cruz Island, to deliver the parcels we had brought from Panama. Both wind and current were against us. It soon became apparent that we could not reach there before 1600 hrs, after which we would be charged $10 for late arrival, so we also put into the unnamed cove on the NE corner of Barrington. It is a perfect little cove with two to three fathoms of crystal clear water over white sand, and sheltered from all but easterly winds. We and the Hiscocks had a pleasant and amusing afternoon on the two beaches, entertaining and being entertained by, the numerous sea lions which live there. They were very tame and were as curious about us as we were about them.

Next morning, we set out again for Academy Bay, arriving mid-afternoon after beating all the way. We were carrying a lot of parcels for six families, the three Angermeyer brothers, the Schreyers, Albins and Rambecks. After completing arrival formalities, I set out to find out where they all lived. I first met Gus Angermeyer in his boat Liv and, through him, invited the others to come and collect their parcels. That evening, the three brothers, Karl, Gus and Fritz, with Fritz's wife, Carmen, and the Schreyers, all came off for a visit and we quickly became friends. Next night, we all gathered at the Schreyers for coffee, a sing song and lots of discussion, which lasted until 0300 next morning.

The Angermeyer brothers had 'escaped' from Hitler's Germany in the mid 1930s. After a good deal of hardship, three of them settled at Academy Bay; the fourth had died on the way. They had eked out a living by fishing and hunting, and growing what they could in that inhospitable land. They built their own houses, using local materials. They also built a sizeable fishing boat, sawing the planks and shaping the timbers from driftwood, and making their own nails. When Ecuador entered the second world war, they were interned on the mainland as enemy aliens, and nearly died of starvation. When that was over, they became Ecuadorian citizens and returned to Academy Bay and gradually built up international reputations as guides to the islands for scientific and other expeditions, such as Thor Heyerdahl's. They were educating their children at home and all were tri-lingual. The mother tongue of the parents was German; the language of their adoptive country was Spanish; yet, amongst themselves, they always spoke English. They had all agreed to this some years before our visit as they felt it was the language most likely to be useful to them in their growing dealings with the outside world.

There was an unusual relationship between two of the families. Karl's wife, Marga, had a grown up daughter from a previous marriage. She married Fritz, the youngest of the three Angermeyer brothers, and thereby became her mother's sister-in-law! For their children, Marga would be both aunt and grandmother!

'Sandy' Sanders was another unusual character whom we met at Academy Bay. He was a New Zealander, no more than about 28 years old, who had somehow drifted to the Galapagos Islands and settled on Santa Cruz Island. He had a farm up in the damp highlands and a house at Academy Bay. He could not carry on a conversation in Spanish, but had recently married a fullblooded Ecuadorian Indian girl on the mainland. She spoke no English, at all. He quickly found that he had also married the girl's family, and they were all living with him on his farm.

The delivery of the parcels which we had brought was very much appreciated, and we were very kindly treated during the week we remained there. Karl Angermeyer, one of those for whom we had brought parcels, produced an 18 mm Monel metal rod, with a forged eye worked on one end. It proved to be exactly what we needed to re-anchor the bumpkin bobstay. He would take no payment for it. His brother, Gus, gave us delicious turtle meat and magnificent crayfish tails, a meal in each one. Eddie Albin and 'Sandy' Sanders each gave us 30 gallons of rain water to top up our tanks, and other members of the community entertained us in various other ways.

At Karl Angermeyer's house, which is built on the edge of a low cliff overlooking the bay, we met Anton, a half grown sea lion. Some months previously, he had come out of the sea, discovered their verandah, and decided it was just to his liking. Ever since, he had spent a considerable part of each day sleeping on it. He really preferred their lounge, but had to be forcibly kept out of that, as he was totally un-house-trained. He was perfectly tame, loved people to scratch him in various places, and was great friends with their Alsation dog. There were also dozens of very tame sea iguanas about the house.

At one of the other houses, we also met a beautiful blue and yellow macaw with white cheeks. It blushed every time anyone spoke to it, its cheeks turning quite pink!

Whilst at Academy Bay, we learnt something of the isolation of all the island settlements, other than Wreck Bay, which is the capital of the group. Once a month, an old tank landing craft did the round of the settlements, bringing supplies, mail, occasional passengers, and taking away any produce which was ready for market. The only doctor and dentist were in Wreck Bay. Anyone in the outlying settlements needing medical or dental attention had to take passage to Wreck Bay in the supply ship on its monthly visit, find somewhere to stay in Wreck Bay (there was no hotel), and return home on the supply ship's next round trip. There was also a monthly service between the islands and Guyaquil, on the mainland.

From Academy Bay, we returned to the cove on Barrington to do a few maintenance chores before setting out on the 3,100 mile haul to the Marquesas Islands. When we were still a few miles from the island, a large black and white pelican came and flew around us a few times before alighting in the water very close alongside Penella. He paddled along with us, but was quickly left behind, whereupon he took to the air again, overtook us, and again flopped into the water close alongside, paddling furiously to keep with us, and again being left behind. This sequence was repeated several times, until we entered the cove and anchored, when Percy, as we had decided to call him, just settled peacefully in the water close alongside. When we rowed ashore in the dinghy, a bit later, Percy kept close beside us until we beached. In very different conditions, his behaviour was strangely like that of the little auk on our voyage to Casablanca.

'Wild' life on Barrington was incredibly tame. We walked about within feet of sea lions basking on the sand, and when they did take to the water, it was often just to show off to us at very close range. One day, when I was sitting on the coach roof doing some splicing, a small bird flew aboard and came and sat within inches of my hands. It sat there for some minutes, watching my every movement, apparently very interested, then flew down into the cabin, where it settled close to Dorrie and took an equal interest in whatever she was doing. When it had completely satisfied its curiosity, it flew back to the shore and never came aboard again.

Movement ashore, beyond the beach, was very difficult because of the sharp rocks which covered the ground, and the dense, thorny scrub. However, we did make one sortie into it, late one afternoon, and found plenty to interest us.

We found a prettily marked snake basking on the branches of a small bush. It made no effort to move at all as we approached it. Just before sunset, we came across a very handsome brown owl sitting on a rock. It let us get within about a yard and take photos of it, before it flew off. When scrubbing Penella's bottom, just before departure, I literally had to kick blow fish (toad fish) out of the way.

Before leaving this chapter, I must say a word about the pronunciation of the word Galapagos. Some people pronounce it with heavy emphasis on the second syllable; others call put equal emphasis on first and third syllables. I am told that both are correct, depending on which brand of Spanish is being spoken.

Just as we were getting ready to leave Barrington we heard the news that Agadir had been destroyed by an earthquake, with heavy loss of life.

We got away on the morning of 3^rd March, bound for Tai-o-hae on the island of Nuku Hiva, one of the Marquesas Islands. The log entry for 0900 hrs that morning reads as follows:-

Off NW corner of Barrington Island. Set course 226deg T for position 07deg 30' S. 97deg 30' W. Distance 595 miles. Streamed log reading zero.

Distance to Tai-o-hae direct is 3020 miles; by the route planned, it is 3145 miles. This route is planned to take us deep into the trade wind belt as quickly as possible, to a zone where we can expect winds to average Force 4, against the Force 3 further north.

Planning this passage brought home to us the enormous size of the Pacific Ocean and the immense loneliness of its eastern basin. In the Galapagos Islands, we were already 600 miles west of the South American coast. Another 3,000 miles to the Marquesas Islands would still leave us well short of half way across the ocean. On this leg, too, the nearest land on either side of our route was Clipperton Island, over a thousand miles to the north, and Sala y Gomez and Easter Islands, about the same distance away to the south, all only tiny specks in the vastness of their ocean surroundings.

As we left Barrington, there was very little wind, no swell, and the sea was almost glassy smooth. Throughout the day, we ran through a succession of what looked like mild tide rips. These consisted of parallel bands of disturbed water stretching from NE to SW as far as the eye could see, and moving steadily across the ocean from SE to NW. Each band was about 100 yards wide and the bands were an estimated two or three miles apart. In each band, the surface of the water was disturbed in a manner that could not be accounted for by the very light wind. Instead of the usual wind ripples, there were myriads of little heaps and sharp peaks in which the water was jumping straight up and down as if from some submarine vibration. This made quite a loud splashing noise, which could be heard well before each band reached us, and well after it had passed. In between the bands, there were often what we called oily boily patches, apparently caused by up-welling currents reaching the surface.

Obviously, there were strong currents in the area, and they seemed to be going our way. A fix in the afternoon showed that we had been set 13 miles to the SW in eight hours. Our noon fix next day showed that we were 101 miles from Barrington, although our log showed only 46 miles. We felt we had been squirted out of the Galapagos Islands!

For the next ten days, our progress was very slow, and we were becalmed for long periods. The sea was so smooth at one period that Penella actually sailed herself for two days, on a broad reach in light winds, with no one at the helm. It was not until we ran through the inter-tropical front, in about latitude 8deg 30' S., that we ran out of the doldrums. That front produced a magnificent thunderstorm, out of which we caught a useful quantity of rainwater. While running into it, the port staysail boom broke. I managed to repair it after several days of hard work, but it only lasted two more days before breaking irreparably. I then had to sacrifice the raffee spreader to make a new boom. That slowed us down whenever the wind went dead astern, but it did let us take advantage of the self-steering rig to get some restful days and nights, whenever the wind was right.

Some days out from Barrington Island, when we were a full 500 miles from the nearest land, we got an unmistakable sighting of a frigate bird flying quite normally, and apparently quite happily. This seems to be a very great distance from land for a bird which is said to be unable to take off again if it alights on water.

Some yachtsmen have written of the difficulty of getting noon sun sights when the sun is anywhere nearly directly overhead. We passed under the sun four days out from Barrington. At noon, it was little more than half a degree off the vertical, but I did not find any special difficulty in getting the sight. My sextant, by the way, was a Henry Hughes, which had been presented to me by the officers of No 3 Flying Training School at Feltwell, when I retired. It had an arc of three and a half inch radius and was beautifully light, and easy to use. I eventually gave it to our Canadian born grandson, Leigh Ross, who was then an officer in the South African merchant marine.

One night, when we were about 1,000 miles out from Barrington, Penella was sailing herself on a compass course which, after conversion, was supposed to be 270deg T, or exactly west. I was lying on my back in the cockpit, idly looking at the stars, when I noticed that the pointers to the Pole Star were just about exactly on our meridian. In that position, they should have been square on our starboard beam; but they were about ten degrees abaft that, which indicated a compass error of the same amount. I confirmed the error next morning by lining up Penella's masts with the rising sun and comparing her compass heading with the calculated azimuth of the sun. This rough check showed an error of about ten to twelve degrees. A careful check all around the compass position, above and below deck, disclosed no reason for this; no 'foreign' magnetic material was found, and everything which was present when the compass was last swung, was still in place. In the circumstances, the error was not serious; until we could swing the compass again, I simply made an allowance for it on our mainly westerly courses, and we arrived safely at our destinations.

It was somewhere about this time that we experienced a period of strong sun spot activity. For several days, using the sextant with its sun shades, we were able to watch the progress of a few big spots across the face of the sun.

The effect on radio reception was interesting. Up to then, we had regularly got our daily news bulletins from the BBC, and our time signals from WWV, near Washington, or WWVH, in Hawaii, and we often listened to music from stations on the North or South American mainlands. During the sun spot activity, all reception from stations to the eastward of us was blotted out completely, but stations far to the west of us kept coming in, loud and clear. We got our time signals from stations such as JJY in Japan and Brazzaville in the Congo, and news bulletins from stations in Africa and Australia, and even from Korea!

While we were on this long, peaceful passage, we were able, for the first time, to settle down to a fairly regular daily routine based on the two-hour night watches, which we had started in the Caribbean. Dorrie usually got the meals and I usually washed up. After breakfast, Dorrie did whatever domestic chores were needed. She then relieved me at the wheel (if we were not on self-steering) and I checked over all the working gear and attended to any maintenance which might be needed, took morning and noon sun sights, and worked out our position and the day's run. We took it in turns to take the first watch at night. After lunch, whoever was to take the first watch would turn in and try to get some sleep. After the evening meal, usually taken about sunset, we liked to spend an hour or two together in the cockpit, after which, at some mutually agreed time, we would start the night routine. The one off watch was given two hours actually in bed, before being called. As far as possible, any sail changing was left until the change of watch. This arrangement meant that the actual time spent on each watch was more than two hours, and could be as much as three, but the one going off watch was assured of two hours actually in bed, except in emergencies, of course. It also meant that, mostly, there were only four watch periods to be got through, each night.

We found this to be a very comfortable arrangement and an enormous improvement on the four-hour watches which we had used at first. Of course, there were a good many times when we had to vary this routine, and each watch keeper reserved the right to be kind to the one off watch, and let him or her sleep in a bit, following any unusually tiring exertions.

The night of 8^th April was a nasty one, with squally, thundery showers. During the night, we noticed that there was one thunderstorm, a long way ahead, which did not seem to move, and we realised that it must be over the island of Ua Huka, the most easterly of the Marquesas, and our intended landfall. Sure enough, at daylight, there it was, dead ahead. We entered Tai-o-hae Bay about sunset, and dropped anchor of Tai-o-hae pier in the dusk, at 1830, after thirty seven and a half days at sea. Dorrie now takes up the story.

We sailed into the keyhole-like bay of Tai-o-hae just at dusk and it so happened that the doctor was just preparing to go fishing. He came alongside as soon as we anchored and quickly cleared us for landing. We thought we would try to get some fresh bread, always one of our strongest cravings at the end of a voyage, so went ashore. By this time, it was dark and there had been heavy rain. We were soon floundering about in mud over our shoe tops! To add insult to injury, when we finally located the bakery, the bread was all sold. However, we managed to get some next day, Sunday.

Monday, we had our passports examined at the gendarmerie, changed some money, and then went to the post office, where everyone we had previously met had told us there was mail waiting for us. Everyone knows everyone else's business in these islands.

After that, we went and made ourselves known to the grand old man of Nuku Hiva, Bob McKitterick. I think he was disappointed that we had not come to see him on Sunday. He was over 70 and almost blind with cataract, but had a remarkable memory. While there, Mme Rouane, the wife of the administrator of the islands, arrived and invited us to a cocktail party being given to welcome the French frigate La Confiance, due to arrive in a few days.

We visited Bob several times during our stay, and became very fond of his wife Toupu (To-oo-poo), who was a pet. She did not speak English, and not much French, but we got along. When Leigh was sick with some kind of fever, she and Bob set out for a dressed chicken and some fish, and they were always giving us fruit of many kinds. On the morning we were leaving, Bob came out to say goodbye and presented us with a pair of carved, wooden paper knives.

There, too, we met Emily Hambuechen, wife of an American scientist who, with other, hard chartered a yacht and sailed themselves from California. The men had grants from the University of California to study the problems of soil erosion in these and other islands. Emily started a baby just before they left and did not tell her husband, Walter. She was left at Nuku Hiva, where there was a hospital and a doctor, while the others went off to the southern Marquesas. She was a very intelligent and studious girl, and had a university degree, herself. We spent lots of entertaining hours with her, and she and Leigh got into discussions on all kinds of subjects. She took us to see the island's wood carver at work. His tikis, or gods, were so ugly as to be lovely. We saw wonderfully carved spears, uus, and a ukulele which he was carving for Emily, with grotesque traditional figures on the back. The uu (pronounced oo-oo) was an odd looking weapon, which was used to catch an enemy by the neck and then break his neck by a single twist.

One day, we climbed about 2,500 feet up to the mountain pass leading to the next valley. It was a very humid day and, as we were climbing through coconut groves, coffee, cocoa, mango, orange, guava and banana plantations, there was very little breeze. The last 500 feet or so was very steep and, by the time we got to the top, we were literally dripping. There was a lovely breeze blowing up there, so I took off shirt and bra and wrung the water out of them while I cooled off a bit. The view from the top was magnificent. Thirty miles away, we could clearly see Ua Pou, with its extraordinary mountain peaks, needle like spires, some reaching up over 2,000 feet.

On the way down, we stopped at a stream and stripped off for a quick dip. I put everything in my hat, on top of a rock. When we got some way down, afterwards, I missed my watch. Leigh went back to look for it and was away so long I guessed he was having trouble, so went back to look, too. We searched everywhere but could not find the watch. It was a Rolex Oyster, too, so that was an expensive dip.

Si Ye Pambili arrived after we had been at Nuku Hiva for three weeks. Roger Gowan and Bill Baker had acquired two English girls as crew members at Colon. Cecilia Carlton and Olga Hoyle were on a world tour before settle down to careers as dress and fabric designers. They had worked for some months in Toronto, then bought themselves an old car, which they drove first to British Columbia, then to Alaska and back, before it gave up. They then bought bicycles and cycled 9,000 miles on the way to Panama, through parts of Costa Rica where there were no roads, at all. They lived on native foods, often slept out in the open, and eventually arrived safely in Panama. They tried to get work on any ships going to Australia, but were not allowed to do that and were advised to try the yacht club, where they found Pambili. They had no sailing experience, but the boys agreed to take them as far as Tahiti if they paid for their food. Leigh takes up the story again.

We stayed at Tai-o-hae for 25 days, doing the inevitable maintenance jobs, exploring ashore, and making friends. Soon after we arrived, we received news of the birth of our second Canadian grandson, Scott Howie.

On the 14^th April, the French frigate La Confiance arrived, carrying Admiral Evenou, the French C-in-C Pacific, and M. Rouane, the Marquesas Administrator. We had been told of their impending arrival, and had dressed ship in their honour; also, of course, we gave them a proper salute when the arrived, all of which was much appreciated by them and the local people. Mme. Rouane had earlier invited us to a cocktail party to meet the admiral, who was a delightfully unassuming little man. Before his Pacific appointment, he had served in the NATO HQ in Malta, where one of his staff had been Group Captain Andrew Willan, who took over Feltwell from me when I retired. Small world, again! That evening, as La Confiance was about to leave again, he sent an aid over to Penella, in pouring rain, with a bottle of champagne, and a message that it was to be drunk with our family, in Australia.

Our navigation time piece was a very accurate Zenith pocket watch. As a stand by, I bought Dorrie a Rolex Oyster wrist watch before we left England, and I had a special Smiths wrist watch. I thought we ought to be pretty safe with that lot. While we were at Tai-o-hae, the main spring in the Zenith broke, and could not be repaired on the island. As related above, Dorrie lost her watch during a walk on the island one day, and my wrist watch had become so affected by sea air that it would only go when turned face downwards! Thankfully, the radio continued to work faultlessly, and we were still able to get time signals whenever we wanted them.

We had some heavy rain storms during our stay. One storm nearly filled the dinghy. I was able to transfer 64 gallons from it into our water tanks, and still had to bail more out of the boat.

The Hiscocks had gone on to Nukuhiva soon after we left them at Barrington Island. After visiting Tai-o-hae, they had moved to the next bay to the westward where, as we learnt later, they were badly bitten by the no-no flies for which the island is notorious. They had gone on their way to Mangareva before we arrived.

We left Tai-o-hae on the morning of 4^th May. We wanted, if possible, to call at one of the island in the Tuamotu group, so we set course for the channel between the islands of Rangiroa and Arutua. If conditions were right when we got there, we would enter Rangiroa's lagoon and spend a day or two there. If they were not, we would carry on to Tahiti. By the way, the Polynesian word motu means island, so one should not refer to the 'Tuamotu Islands'.

The Tuamotus are all atolls and the passes into their lagoons can only be entered at certain states of the tide. At Rangiroa, it would only be safe for us to enter at about high water, and in fair weather. The weather on the run down from Tai-o-hae had been characterised by a lot of line squalls, some of them really severe, and we never knew when another was going to come along. This, and other factors, eventually forced us to abandon our intention of visiting Rangiroa. The log entry for the evening of 8^th May tells the story.

During the afternoon of the 9^th, for two or three hours, we sailed along the NW coast of Arutua, only about a mile off shore, and were much impressed by the huge blocks of coral which had been cast up on the reef by past storms.

We were clear through the channel between Arutua and Rangiroa a little before sunset. Let the log entry tell of the night which followed.

17.38: Clear of Arutua. Set course 229deg for Tahiti. The wind remained ENE all day, becoming easterly as night fell. Sea became smooth in the lee of the islands, and remained so all night. The night was the most perfect we have yet had, with a brilliant, almost full, moon, only a few light trade wind clouds, and a smooth sea, over which we seemed almost to glide at about three and a quarter knots. Whenever one of the clouds passed before the moon, the moon could always be seen brightly through it, surrounded by double 'rainbows' in full colour.

We sighted Tahiti at dawn on the 12^th and entered Papeete (pronounce it 'Pap ay ay tay') lagoon at 1010, where we were boarded by a pilot and directed to our anchorage. Most visiting yachts moor stern on to the town quay, with an anchor out ahead, and put a gang plank out from the stern to the quay. It would have been awkward for us, with our long bumpkin, and it was also a very noisy location. We were shown to a much quieter berth near the naval base, where we anchored stern on to the shore reef, with the main anchor and 20 fathoms of chain out ahead, and the kedge, on a two inch nylon line, laid out on the very shallow reef astern. We found ourselves next to the Hiscocks, who had just come in from Mangareva. They invited us to lunch and we talked for hours, catching up on each other's news.

It was nice to be back in civilisation for a while, with all the amenities of a good sized city right on our doorstep. There was money and a stack of mail waiting for us. There were old friends amongst the yachts along the town quay, and new ones to be made. There were shops and big general stores, and a wonderful market, where a great variety of fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers, and sea food could be bought at very reasonable prices, every day; meat was sold only on Sundays. Then there were the lovely, friendly Tahitian people. Their kindness and hospitality are legendary. To us, it seemed to stem from nothing but a natural good-heartedness; we never found any trace of self-interest in their behaviour towards us, either here or in any of the other islands which we visited in the Society group. Theft was virtually unknown. As a man, it was easy for me to see and understand the attractiveness of the Tahitian girls. The surprising thing was to discover that the women in the yachting community found them equally attractive, and the girls themselves were just as warmly friendly to the visiting women as they were to the men. Here is what Dorrie wrote about them, at the time.

The girls in Tahiti are so lovely it is no wonder the men rave about them. The pure Tahitian is not so pretty as the mixture with the Chinese. They are so dainty, so scrupulously clean and as sweet smelling as the flowers they almost always wear. Again, their expressions are so pleasant and friendly one cannot help liking them. They are every bit as friendly with women as with men, too, which is so unusual.

At a party on Si Ye Pambili, we met two Tahitian girls, Noeline and Pauline. Noeline had a guitar and sang beautifully, in a very deep voice. The pair of them were lovely to listen to, singing their native songs in harmony. Eric Hiscock later asked Noeline to sing and dance for him to record on film and tape. This necessitated a good deal of work for Noeline. When it was over, Eric offered her a small silver trinket by way of thanks. She burst into tears at once and said she did not want it as it would remind her of them every time she looked at it, and then she would be sad.

One day, we hired a small car, picked up Olga and Cecilia, and drove right around the island. When passing through one of the many pretty villages, our engine stopped and, on lifting the cover, we found a small fire, which had been started by a small petrol leak and a short circuit between two electrical wires. The fire was quickly put out, with no real damage having been done. As may be imagined, a crowd quickly collected around us. A young Chinese mechanic produced some insulating tape, quickly repaired the electrical fault and the petrol leak, and would take no payment for doing so.

Early on Sunday morning, 21^st May, a fierce squall blew up from the west. The wind was right on our nose. I managed to get a nylon warp out to a big mooring buoy ahead of us, but not before the anchor had dragged and set us back onto the shore reef. We only touched slightly, and no damage was done; but we had to use the engine, full ahead, at the height of the squall, to keep us off.

After that squall passed, there was a flat calm. We took advantage of it to re-lay the anchor. We also put out two lines astern, well spreadeagled, and a breast line out to a much bigger ship on our port side. About 0930, I saw another squall approaching from WSW. I immediately ran out a second warp to the mooring buoy ahead of us, but the full fury of the squall was on us before I finished. It was very much stronger than the first. Again we sagged back, dragging the anchor and pulling the mooring buoy with us. The water seemed to be smoking, so fierce was the wind. Despite full engine power, we again touched the reef behind us. The wind being more on our port side, we were also set over until we were almost touching some French boats in the naval base. The strain on the lines was terrific. Eventually, it got so bad that I cut adrift the awnings, which we had not had time to take down, as they were obviously causing tremendous drag. That eased things immediately and we pulled away from both the reef and the other boats. Soon after that, the squall passed away.

While we were at Papeete, there was a severe earthquake in Chile, which sent a tidal wave racing across the Pacific. The authorities in Papeete received adequate warning of its approach, and duly advised all the yachts along the town quay, early in the evening, but forgot to tell us. The others were all able to haul out into deep water in time, and later told us what happened. There was no great, destructive wave, or anything like that. First, the water seemed to be sucked out of the harbour, the level quickly falling several feet. Then, just as quickly, it came surging back in, rising to several feet above the normal high water level, and spilling over onto the roadway along the quayside. This process was repeated over and over again, with the magnitude of the fall and rise steadily diminishing until, by morning, the yachts were able to return to their berths along the quay.

There was no violence in this water movement; in Penella, we slept through it all without feeling anything at all. For the next three days, we had a series of these 'tidal waves', in which the water in the harbour rose and fell about two feet, at about ten minute intervals. In far away Sydney, the wave caused strong currents and swirls in the harbour, and a lot of damage to small craft.

At Tai-o-hae, the jetty and several houses were destroyed, including those of Bob McKitterick and his son, Maurice.

While on our mooring at Papeete, I was able to line up Penella's masts accurately with a marked point on Moorea Island, about 20 miles to the west, and determined that the compass error on that heading was 11deg, but was unable to do anything about correcting it then.

Whilst at Papeete, we discussed with other crews, and debated at length the route we should follow to Australia. We had arranged to collect mail and money at Pago Pago and Suva, but that would not have prevented us visiting the lower Cook Islands and Tonga, which we wanted to see, and which was the route which all the other west-bound crews intended to take. However, news from various sources indicated that the Antarctic depressions were extending further north than usual, that winter (1960), so we decided to keep as far north as possible.

We accordingly decided to visit most of the Society Islands from Tahiti to Bora Bora, then Pago Pago (always pronounced Pang-o pang-o), Apia, Suva and as much more of Fiji as possible. This decision was a lucky one for us, as the yachts which took the more southerly route did meet a lot of very bad weather, while we met very little. Eric Hiscock later described the passage from Rarotonga to Tonga, which he and Susan made in Wanderer III at that time, as 'the most exhausting passage of our sailing lives'. At one stage, they lay to a sea anchor for three days, in winds of up to 75 knots, if I remember correctly. During one storm, Eric was thrown across the cockpit and fell on a sheet winch, breaking some ribs.

Moorea, the most spectacularly beautiful of all the Society Islands, was our next port of call. We spent a week there, in Cook's Bay, exploring the island and fishing on the reef, with conspicuous lack of success. Here, for the first time, we met with the culture of vanilla. The strong, sweet smell of the drying beans was to become even more familiar than that of copra, before we left the Society group. The growing of this plant involves much delicate work, and was almost entirely in the hands of Chinese. It should have been a profitable crop, as the beans were selling at ten pence a pod; yes, pod; not pound.

There was a fine old gathering of yachts in Cook's Bay. They included our old friends Wanderer III and Ben Gunn, with the boys from Si Ye Pambili aboard the latter. As well as these, there were newer friends whom we had first met in Papeete. There was Koae from Seattle, with Buck and Dottie Taylor, an elderly American couple, and Tommy Cat. There was Romayne from Vancouver, and there were two New Zealand yachts. There was a lively interchange of visits and parties, and a very good time was had by all.

One day, we all hired a bus and went on a tour of the island. La Confiance had arrived earlier in the morning and some of her crew had the same idea. Their bus took off shortly before ours, but it was not long before we overtook them. They had stopped to pick wild flowers. We stopped behind them and the two parties began to fraternise, at once. The sailors had crates of beer and two guitars. Some of the sailors came into our bus, and some of our party transferred to theirs, and the tour continued with much banter, singing and laughter. Two of the sailors asked themselves to a meal with us when we got back, after which they intended to spend the rest of the day getting sozzled.

From Moorea, we made an overnight passage to the island of Huahine. There, in the little port of Fare, we found the most perfectly tranquil berth we ever had in the Pacific. Moored stern on to a low quay, with our anchor out in deep water, we were practically underneath some beautiful flower trees. Every afternoon, about four o'clock, all their flowers would fall into the water and go drifting slowly away on the tide.

Raiatea Island was clearly visible, about 23 miles away to the west, so we took advantage of the distant view and the perfectly smooth lagoon to swing our compass, using a crude, but effective bearing plate, which I made up aboard. We were using an aircraft type of compass, with a micro-corrector box screwed to its under side. There was, therefore, no practical difficulty about correcting it, provided the deviation could be measured and the headings held while the corrections were made. It only took us an hour to check and correct on the eight cardinal and half-cardinal points, and to construct a graph showing the error on all headings. I was a bit dubious about the accuracy of the swing, because of the crudity of the bearing plate, but all our courses worked out accurately, ever afterwards.

We moved over to Raiatea on Thursday, 16^th June, in perfect sailing conditions, and anchored off Uturoa, its main town. It was an uncomfortable anchorage, in 15 fathoms, necessitating the use of virtually all 45 fathoms of our anchor chain. Our chain and the gipsy on the windlass were not a good fit, and I had to get the anchor up by hand, which nearly killed me. For later deep anchorages, I devised a Heath Robinson system of ropes attached to the anchor chain at about five fathom intervals, overlapping at their ends. By using these on the warping drum, while the chain came in over the gipsy in the usual way, we were able to get the anchor up without further difficulty.

We went to the local dance on Saturday night. The hall was so dark that it was impossible to distinguish colours. The dancing was mostly European style. One or two of the young men were rather overcome by being able to hold their girls close and the effects were quite evident when they stepped apart, even in that poor light!

The islands of Raiatea and Tahaa lie within a common barrier reef, and there are a few patches of coral in the big lagoon. With a brisk wind behind us, we had an exhilarating sail from Raiatea to Hurepiti Bay, with Dorrie steering and me conning from the ratlines. We anchored in ten fathoms, near the head of Hurepiti Bay. Going ashore in search of fruit and eggs, we met a charming Chinese lass, who gave us a basket full of bananas and limes, and insisted on us sampling a banana tart which she had just made. She would not take any money, but said she would like to come out and see Penella when her man came home. She called him down from his work in the hills by blowing on a large conch shell! We collected them in the evening and they brought us a bunch of green bananas and a paper bag of vanilla beans. We were still using pieces of those, years later, to flavour our custards. We could only give them some Rose's lime juice and some tinned meat and tinned fruit, in return.

Next day, we sailed across to Bora Bora. On the way, we met Ben Gunn, bound back to Tahiti on a charter job. The lagoon around Bora Bora was one of the highlights of the voyage. For several miles, we sailed along just outside the barrier reef, which was smoking from the pounding of great, smooth-backed rollers pounding on it. Immediately beyond it was a wide expanse of beautiful, pale green water in the lagoon.

We went first to the jetty at the village, but found that we could not berth alongside, and the water in the anchorage was too deep for our liking, so we went to Faanui, which means Big Bay, and berthed alongside the old American Navy quay there. Water was available from a house on the quay, but we had to walk about two miles to the village each day, where there was a post office and store at which we could get fresh bread, groceries and beer.

The village square is quite pretty, with its big shade trees, school, and white painted gendarmerie. Across the square, on the water's edge, is the grey stone grave of Alain Gerbault of Firecrest fame. When he was dying, he asked to be taken back to Bora Bora.

There were several other yachts at Bora Bora with us, some old friends, and some new. One which we were meeting for the first time, was Kyalamie, owned and crewed by Ted and Izzy Mangles and son Gary. We visited back and forth, drank a lot of coffee, swapped books, and talked to all hours of the night. Kyalamie was steel hulled, built by Ted himself. He had put in only one transverse bulkhead, and used too light a gauge of steel in the skin. She was altogether too flexible and had already sprung one plate. They could only make about one knot on their far too tiny engine, and they were faced with the problem of getting back to Tahiti for repairs, a journey on which they would almost certainly have head winds all the way. We did not envy them that prospect.

Other companions there were Buck and Dottie Taylor, and Tommy Cat, in Koae. We had met them in Papeete and again at Moorea. Sad to relate, Tommy Cat died from unknown causes while we were there. Poor Dottie was terribly upset, so we took her over to one of the small islands in the lagoon to look for shells, while Buck disposed of the remains.

Here, as everywhere else in the Society Islands, we found the people absolutely honest. By this time, we had got so used to this that we never even thought about the possibility of theft. One day, a small group of young people came and asked if they could see over Penella. We invited them aboard and gave them the run of the ship. It took them only a few minutes to see all they wanted, after which, they just settled down under our awning, chatting amongst themselves. At noon, we said goodbye to them and set off on our daily walk to the village, leaving them aboard and all hatches wide open. It was not until we had gone about half way that I realised what an extraordinary thing we had done, judged by the standards of our normal world. I mentioned it to Dorrie but neither of us had even a moment of anxiety.

A Faanui team of dancers was training for the Bastille Day fete in Papeete. We were twice invited to watch them, but, each time, their drummer failed to turn up, and there was no dancing. However, we did see the women making up the costumes which the dancers would wear on the day. The costumes consisted of a 'grass' skirt, brassiere and crown, all made out of tapa, the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, which had been steeped and beaten into a soft, unwoven cloth. The long fibres in this were teased out to provide the 'grass' for the skirts, brassieres, crowns, and the belts of the skirts, were all heavily embroidered with shells and coloured berries. As the tapa is almost perfectly white, the outfits looked very pretty, indeed.

Lying alongside a quay has its disadvantages, one of which is that land creatures can find their way aboard. We got a rat, and it was several days after we left before we were able to catch it. However, the only alternative to lying alongside the quay was to anchor in 15 fathoms, and we had had enough of that.

At Nuku Hiva, we decided to make all our passages, from then on, during bright moon periods, because we found light nights less frightening than dark ones, and because most of the islands we had to pass were without lights. In the event of a navigational mistake, we would have a better chance of seeing them before we hit them. This seemed to strike some of our yachting friends as very queer; but it was really just a sensible safety precaution. Long experience in the air had taught me never to trust a navigator unless I knew he was right, and that included myself!

We left Bora Bora for Pago Pago on 29^th June, and had good conditions most of the way. As we happened to be passing them in daylight, we made slight detours to sail close by Bellingshausen Island and Rose Islet. Apart from interest, any such sightings provide a perfect check on navigation. We were particularly pleased when Rose Islet came up just where and when expected, for it is very tiny - just a low sand hill a few hundred yards across, densely covered with casuarina trees. It is set in the midst of wide sand flats on the eastern side of an atoll, which is possibly three miles or so across. The reef seemed very wide. Where we sailed close by it, the seaward edge was brick red. Scattered all over the reef were big lumps of rock or coral.

We sighted Tutuila Island, on which Pago Pago lies, at sunrise on the morning of 11^th July. During the morning, the wind turned southerly and gradually rose to gale force, with low cloud and heavy rain, in which visibility fell to about a mile. The best route into Pago Pago was via the Narraganset Passage. It led between rocky under water banks, which the sailing directions said were likely to cause dangerous seas in heavy weather. To be sure of finding the passage, I needed to be able to get bearings on Breaker Point lighthouse while several miles out, and this was not possible in the prevailing conditions. I therefore decided to go in between Aunui Island and Tutuila, and then follow a deep channel, close inshore, to the harbour entrance, using engine and jib only.

After rounding Aunui, we were close hauled in a very uncomfortable position, with a frightful rocky coastline only a few hundred yards under our lee, and a gale blowing obliquely onto it. The waves coming at our port bow were about fifteen feet high, with almost vertical faces. They always seemed to be on the point of breaking, but rarely did. They were also quite thin from front to back, and therefore almost equally steep on the rearward side. Once, on topping one of these, Penella simply sailed straight out into thin air and dropped with an almighty crash into the trough below. Many things, which had never before moved in their stowages, were jolted right out of them and were later found in all sorts of odd places. A life belt was jolted out of its stowage and lost overboard. It was the wildest ride we ever had in Penella.

When we brought the leading marks for the harbour entrance into line, we had to turn dead down wind and sea, and I quite expected more wild behaviour, but Pen behaved beautifully. Picked up almost at once by a huge wave, she simply surfed sedately straight ahead, with absolutely no tendency to yaw.

We thought our troubles would be over, once we got into harbour, as it is completely land locked, and no swell ever penetrates into it. How wrong we were! Pilotage in the port is compulsory, but the pilot merely stood on the main wharf and shouted utterly impossible instructions at us. He first instructed us to make fast alongside the main wharf, the deck of which was about 12 feet above the water. There were no battens or pilings to lie against, and the wind, now down to about Force 6, was blowing directly onto the wharf. Had we done as he ordered, Penella's hull would have been quickly swept under the wharf, and we could never have got her out again while the wind lasted. When he was made to understand this, he next ordered us to go alongside a lower quay, which formed the landward side of a sort of bay, formed by the projecting end of the main wharf at one end, and the equally projecting bows of a ship at the other. I estimated (quite correctly, as it turned out), that the width between these obstructions was 55 feet, and I knew Penella's overall length was 54 feet, so I declined that one, too. We were then told to go and find a buoy in the small ships mooring area, but there were none unoccupied which I considered safe to use.

Tired of receiving such unhelpful instructions, and being too far away from the wharf to receive any more, we anchored in about nine fathoms, just clear of the nearest boats, on what proved to be very poor holding ground. Before I could even stop the engine, we were hit by a heavy squall, with thick rain, and wind strength of at least Force 9. Penella at once started to drag her anchor and sagged back dangerously close to the nearest boat, so I had to take the wheel and begin motoring to the anchor, a tricky operation, as one has no steerage way. We really needed to get the anchor up and just get out into the middle of the harbour until the squall passed, but we could not possibly do this while I had to stay at the wheel. Presently, the pilot launch came out and put three men aboard to help us. They eventually got the anchor up, and we were then directed to a mooring buoy which I had previously rejected because it looked too close to the shore. I was assured that there was plenty of water and swinging room, so in we went, moored up as short as possible, stopped engine, and promptly went aground astern, as we sagged back down wind and dragged the mooring buoy out on its scope of chain. The grounding was quite gentle, with no pounding, but full power from the engine failed to drive us off.

The pilot, who was also the harbourmaster, then came alongside and proposed that we move to another buoy in just as bad a position, or anchor out, or go alongside the wharf. The storm was still raging as hard as ever, most of the harbour was too deep for us to anchor, at all, and the wharf was impossible, as I have explained, so I asked if we could tie up to the big ship mooring buoy, out in the middle of the harbour. It was used mainly by visiting aircraft carriers of the United States Navy, so I felt sure it could cope with Penella! This was agreed, the pilot launch hauled us off the putty, we motored out to the buoy, and our brawny Samoan helpers moored us up with two doubled two inch nylon warps. As we finished mooring up, the clouds broke, the rain stopped, and the wind began to drop. The storm had lasted a full hour. What an hour! What a day!

When we went ashore, next morning, to complete entry formalities, I discovered that the Harbourmaster had no chart or plan of the harbour showing the positions and safe swinging circles of any of his small ship mooring buoys! However, he was very kind and hospitable. He made no charge for the help which he had given us during the storm.

Pago Pago was a most uncomfortable harbour despite its complete shelter from the sea. The surrounding mountains not only caused it to rain almost every day, but so funnelled the winds that they rarely dropped below Force 6 while we were there. I can think of nothing to recommend it as a port of call for yachts, except the friendliness of the white residents, and the fact that there are good slipway and repair facilities there. We stayed for ten days, during which we received much hospitality and made several new friends. I also did a few necessary maintenance jobs, one of which was on the roller reefing gear. We had not had to reef for many months, and found the gear utterly immovable when I went to do so on the passage from Boro Bora. When I succeeded in dismantling the gear, I found that it had rusted up solidly, due to electrolytic action between bronze and galvanised iron components.

We left Pago Pago in the afternoon of 21^st July and made an overnight passage to Apia, on the island of Upolu. The only incident of note was when the light at Apia suddenly went out, at least an hour before the first glimmer of daylight, when we were using it as a leading light. It did not matter, as the sun was well up long before we entered the harbour; but it was a surprise, as it was supposed to be on from sunset to sunrise. As we motored in through the entrance, I was remembering the poem 'Ballad of the Calliope', which tells how a British warship of that name battled her way out of the harbour in the teeth of a hurricane which destroyed the three warships of other nations, which were also there at the time. The harbour was well sheltered and very peaceful, and we anchored just a comfortable distance off shore. Sad to say, here we had our first case of theft since leaving England, when someone stole our boat hook.

We were lucky enough to find a transistorised tape recorder at Apia, something we had been looking for since before we left England. We bought it and began recording local music at once. Some of it was sung by a group of young men seated on our cabin roof, beneath a nearly full moon, in a perfectly still harbour - a lovely memory. On another occasion, a Samoan girl sang us a group of love songs. Love is a subject with which most Samoans, of both sexes, seemed to be greatly preoccupied. Carried away by the subject matter of her songs, the girl presently began caressing, with her bare foot, the bare leg of a young man sitting near her. After a while, she became so carried away by her feelings that she could not sing any more.

We could see the Apia light house from where we lay, and soon noticed that the light, which was supposed to be on from sunset to sunrise, was coming on about two hours before the one, and going out almost as much before the other. When I went to see the harbour master about it, he was very huffy and denied there was anything wrong. He admitted that he had never checked the light at night because he was not paid any allowance for running his car and it was a ten minute run from his house! I told him that we were regularly reporting to the British Admiralty any necessary changes to charts and sailing directions, as we found them, and that we would be reporting the changed timing of his light. I do not know whether he was influenced by this, but the timing of the light was corrected very shortly afterwards.

We travelled about the island of Upolu as much as we could, and found it very pretty. However, with a few exceptions, the people were not particularly friendly, and we were left with the impression that they did not want tourists. When we had a half-hour meeting with their Prime Minister, he told us that was quite true; they were afraid of what tourism might do to their traditional way of life.

We left Apia for Suva early on Monday 2^nd August. Some time during that day, we crossed the international date line and so ran out of Monday the 2^nd straight into Wednesday the 4^th. As we cleared Upolu Island we ran into rough weather. For almost three days we were cold and wet, and I was wretchedly sea sick. The rest of the passage was very pleasant. We reached Suva on 9^th August and moved onto a yacht club mooring next day. The Royal Suva Yacht Club made us very welcome and supplied us with ice for the duration of our stay, which was a great comfort. Individual members showed us many kindnesses, taking us for drives and out for meals. A paint manufacturing firm let us have several gallons of paint at trade price, thereby saving us about six shillings a quart. We, of course, entertained aboard, and so we had a busy and happy time.

I understand the Fijian language was first put into writing by English speaking missionaries. It was, therefore, surprising to find some of the odd spellings and pronunciations which now characterise the language. For example, B is always pronounced as if it had an M before it, D as if it were preceded by N, and C as if it were TH. Thus, NADI is pronounced NANDI; RABUKA becomes RAMBUKA, and CAMARI pronounced THAMARI.

We were greatly surprised to find how musical the Fijians were. We had known about the Polynesians' love of music, but had never heard of this as a Fijian characteristic. We soon learnt that most Fijians would almost rather sing than do anything else. The students choir at the Nasinu Teacher Training College invited us to one of their practices and recorded many songs for us. The location was not the best - just a tin hut, with all doors and windows wide open, and a flock of Indian mynahs in the trees outside. Inevitably, we recorded the mynahs, too; but it did not seem to matter.

Five of the students came to visit us in Penella and recorded some more songs for us. One of them, Appeneser, came from the village of Nakasaleka in the island of Kandavu, but had not been home for nine years. The college closed for a vacation towards the end of our stay, and he accepted our offer to take him home, in Penella. We became the guests of his village for the two days we could stay. We were first treated to a ceremonial kava drinking welcome, after which the villagers sang songs for us to record. We were lucky enough to witness a dance which they held to celebrate the first occasion on which one of the village girls had gone fishing after her marriage. (It seemed that almost any occasion was a good enough excuse for a dance!). Curiously, the song which accompanied the dance was all about the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh.

While we were at Pago Pago, we heard from another yacht a lot about the charms of New Caledonia. We had not planned to call there, but we had the charts, and we still had two months to go to the planned time of arrival on the Queensland coast, so we now firmly decided to make Noumea our next port of call. As we were about to leave, we were presented with a great heap of fruit and a live duck! Lest the duck should become a pet, it went into the oven that night.

We got away from Nakasaleka early in the afternoon of 1^st September, and were well clear of the land by nightfall. The passage was mostly rough, and very cold all the way. However, we were well rewarded from the moment we entered the Havannah Passage and began our run along the south coast of New Caledonia. With its high mountains, their fantastic colouring of red and brown, gold and purple, its great island-studded bays, and its huge and equally island-studded lagoon, it was by far the most beautiful place we had ever visited. It was also a yachtsman's paradise; one could cruise in its waters for a year or more without ever using the same anchorage twice. Being just inside the trade winds belt, the climate is almost perfect, except for a short hurricane season. There was good fishing to be had everywhere and, in most places, there were vast quantities of superb oysters to be had for the picking. Oh, those oysters! The authorities were most friendly, and there were less formalities than we had met anywhere in the Pacific, except at Nuku Hiva.

When we first arrived at Noumea, we found that news of our practice of making moonlight passages had preceded us. One of the officials greeted us with the remark, "Oh! You are the people who always travel by moonlight". It sounded almost as if we were being accused of doing moonlight flits!

At Noumea, we met an old RAF friend, Group Captain H.M.S. Wright, who was acting as port officer for the Ocean Cruising Club, to which we belonged. He and his charming wife, and some of their friends, gave us a lovely time ashore. We later took 'H.M.S.' with us for a five day cruise in St Vincent's Bay, which surely must rival New Zealand's famed Bay of Islands in both size and beauty.

One of the highlights of our stay was a visit to the aquarium, at that time said to be the only one in the world in which corals were kept alive. Some of the corals were fluorescent, and quite wonderfully beautiful when illuminated. Amongst the fish was a baker's dozen of the fabulous chambered nautilus, and many others from depths which no casual swimmer could ever hope to visit.

We set out on the last leg of our voyage to Brisbane on the morning of 1st October, with a lovely Force 5 SE trade wind to speed us on our way. However, that petered out during the first night and we had light, variable winds and calms for most of the rest of the passage.

After the first day, the sea was smoother than we had ever had it since just after leaving the Galapagos Islands. I set our first course to pass north of the Kelso Bank, a shallow patch which lay on the direct route, and which could cause nasty seas in heavy weather. In the event, a series of baffling light winds, calms and currents set us right over it. As we motored over it, in a flat calm, a small pod of really big whales, probably hump backs, cruised slowly past us on the opposite course. To our alarm, they showed some signs of wanting to play with us. While still quite close, one huge fellow shot right up out of the water, doing three quarters of an upward roll before crashing back on his left side. They then turned and followed us for about half an hour at distances varying from about 100 yards to a quarter of a mile. We were rather relieved when they lost interest in us and went away.

During this leg, we saw quite a lot of other interesting marine life, and were able to catch and examine some specimens during a calm. There was one creature which looked a bit like a small Portuguese man-of-war, ranging up to about two inches in length. Instead of bladders, the 'hulls' and 'sails' were tough, flexible membranes. The 'hull' was a flat plate which appeared to float on the surface of the water without breaking the 'skin' caused by surface tension. This plate was oval, or sometimes heart shaped, with numerous short, fleshy tentacles depending from it, almost like a fringe of hair, slightly blue in colour. There were a great many of these about. There was also a small white animal, fairly flat, and oval in shape, with bushy antennae and a hair-like fringe around the edge of its body. There were many of these and they appeared to be eating the tentacles off the men-of-war. We saw many dead carcases floating about - just hulls and sails with nothing left of the tentacles. Most of these were capsized.

We also caught two glaucuses in a bucket of water, one about one and a half inches long and the other about three quarters of an inch. They float about on the surface, looking exactly like white feathers, except that no feather has so many branches. On being captured in the bucket, they immediately turned a beautiful blue colour, with lines and patches blue-green. Branching out from the body were six arms or legs, on the ends of which were what looked like hands, with seven or nine fingers on each. The whole creature seemed to be of jelly-like substance, without any noticeable stiffening structure. One of those we caught had had a hand either broken or bitten off, and seemed to be in process of growing a new one.

None of these creatures was mentioned in either of our books on marine life, but we were able to identify the glaucus, and its name, from a New Caledonian stamp, which we happened to have.

Besides these strange creatures, we again had a pilot fish with us, the first we had seen since mid-Atlantic. We saw a beautiful dolphin fish, and a mobile brown and gold jelly fish. There were also thousands of blobs of clear jelly of all sizes, from peas to several inches in diameter, many kinds of fish, and lots of porpoises.

Early on the morning of 6th October, we sighted the Dutch aircraft carrier Karel Dorman. Soon afterwards, one of its aircraft came to have a very close look at us, but did not attempt to communicate.

We were aiming to strike the coast at Double Island Point, well north of the entrance to the Brisbane River. There is a fairly strong south-going current along this coast, and we did not want to risk being set too far to the south and having to struggle back. We sighted land early in the afternoon of the 13th and altered course for the mouth of the buoyed channel which leads across Moreton Bay to the mouth of the Brisbane River. About midnight, when we were still about ten miles to seaward of that, we hove to, to wait for daylight and have a sleep.

Next afternoon, while we were still several miles from it, I saw that the signal station at the mouth of the river was calling us by lamp and asking, "What ship"? Our Aldis lamp was unserviceable, so I immediately hoisted our recognition letters - MRTV - and then acknowledged by semaphore. The station then sent, "Love from Lance" (Dorrie's brother). We knew he wanted to board us as soon as possible, so I replied by semaphore, "Anchoring at Lytton tonight", which the station acknowledged. I thought our exchange of signals was a pretty good effort on both our parts. I read their morse code light first time and they did as well with my semaphoring. Except for the exchanges on the night of our rescue at Casablanca, I had not had to read morse lamp signals for over 23 years, and had not used semaphore at all, in that time, and I guess that it was a long time since they had had to read semaphore.

We entered the river and anchored off Lytton late in the afternoon, spent the rest of daylight tidying up, and then turned in for a good sleep. Lance and his daughter, Carol, were alongside, in his boat, very early next morning, but could not come aboard until we had been cleared by the port health doctor. All entry formalities were completed by eight o'clock and we then motored up to the city, where we found Dorrie's mother and sisters, and a friend, Colin McNiven, waiting for us in New Farm park. We quickly anchored fore and aft, close to the bank, and went ashore to a rapturous welcome. The voyage was over.

We intended to stay in Brisbane until May, 1961, when the cyclone season on the Queensland coast would be over, and then resume our voyaging. We rented a mooring from Norman Wright and Sons ship building yard at Bulimba. I spent the next four months making improvements to Penella, which experience had shown were needed, and carrying out much needed repairs and replacements of worn or defective gear. At that point, I was offered a job with a small indent firm in Brisbane. Because of the heavy expenses already incurred, and the work which was still needed on Penella, we decided that I should take the job for a year to replenish funds, and we would postpone departure until 1962.

I took the job on the understanding that I would work for just the one year. I was called a market researcher and worked under a sales manager. My job was to take samples of anything handed to me by him and then go and try to sell them, on indent, to appropriate business houses. I really knew nothing about the business world and did not try to hide the fact. I met with a lot of kindness from buyers and manager, who often took the trouble to teach me what I needed to know. As I found out their real needs, I duly reported to the sales manager, who never once took any notice of what I was telling him. He spent altogether too much of the firm's time bending his elbow in pubs. Because of this, he was eventually sacked and I was 'promoted' to his position, with no increase in pay.

Not long afterwards, I was called into a board meeting one afternoon and told by the managing director that the firm would like me to get them started in the importing business. I asked what they would like to import and was told they would leave it to me! I had some samples of good tools, mainly from Japan. I felt that tools were something I at least knew a little about, so I suggested we start with them, and that was agreed. I never thought to ask, and the board never thought to tell me, how much I could spend. The idea was that we would import and then wholesale the tools, ourselves. To get an idea of what retailers would accept, I assembled a kit of samples of tools which I had tested, myself, and found fit for purpose; I was not going to try to sell any rubbish. I worked out a price structure and then took to the road in Brisbane and suburbs, in July, to book orders for delivery in time for the Christmas trade. Buyers were cautious, as we were an unknown firm, but accepted my assurance that we were in the business to stay and would be carrying back up stocks, and I got modest orders from most of them.

With those orders in hand, I made up my first import order for three times what I had sold. In doing so, I began to learn about such things as irrevocable letters of credit, and how imports are paid for through the banking system. I then set out on a series of selling trips into SE Queensland and northern New South Wales towns and got off two more such orders, each for three times what I had actually sold. Before any of these orders had arrived, I was ready to send off a fourth, when the boss told me the firm had run out of money. I offered to lend them the œ500 we had by now accumulated, and this was gratefully accepted. I then built racks, ready to receive the tools, and devised a system of stock control. When the tools began arriving, I packed and despatched the orders in hand, and it was not long before we began receiving repeat orders. By the time my year was up, our business extended from Kempsey and Armidale in NSW, to Bundaberg in the north, and the turnover was œ2,000 a month. That does not sound much, these days (1988), but one must remember that wages and prices have increased tenfold, since then. The firm is still in existence, having twice moved to larger premises. It soon gave up its indenting and concentrated on importing and merchandising.

It was during this period that Dorrie and I each had a bit of luck. On receiving my first week's wages, I bought a ticket in the state lottery and won a hundred pounds. Some months later, Dorrie was walking back from a shopping expedition when she saw a brooch lying in a small hole in the surface of the road. When she picked it up, she discovered that it was her own cameo brooch, which she had last worn two or three days before, and which she did not know she had lost. Protected by the depth of the hole, it had received only slight damage to its setting. She immediately went and bought a lottery ticket in the name of Lucky Brooch, and won œ40 with it.

On leaving my job, a friend lent us a car and we went off on a three weeks' tour to Melbourne and intermediate points, visiting friends and relatives. Two days after our return, our mooring chain parted. Penella drifted away and collided with the next boat down stream. Thankfully, no damage was done. We quickly got the engine started and everything under control; but, suppose that had happened while we were away!

As soon as we returned from our trip, we began preparing for sea again. By early May, 1962, we were just ready to go, when Dorrie was suddenly whisked off to hospital for a major operation, followed by a medical veto on sea-going for the next six months. That meant we could not now leave before May, 1963.

Customs, who, in 1961, had given us permission to stay the extra year without having to 'enter' (ie. import) Penella and pay the customs duty, now wanted us either to 'enter' her and pay the appropriate duty, or to pay a deposit of œ871, which we would be able to recover at our port of final departure, if we eventually did leave the country. That would have been at Darwin. I explained that such a deposit would take about all the money we had and that, without it, we would be unable to leave, because we would be unable to buy the stores we would need, and pay for the other preparations needed. The chief customs officer then relented and simply asked me for a written promise to pay the import duty within seven days of demand if we did not eventually leave.

That was only one of several kindnesses we received from Customs in Brisbane. On two occasions, we had imported fairly expensive parcels of gear which we could not find in Australia, and which would have been dutiable in the ordinary way. As Penella was a British ship in transit, no duty was charged, but the goods had to be taken directly aboard, without being opened. On the first occasion, a Customs officer came along with me in the dinghy to see that this was done. On the second occasion, they simply trusted me.

Of course, I had to find another job. This time, it was with Australia's leading firm of duplicating machine suppliers, selling and servicing their duplicators and selling the associated supplies of paper, stencils, ink, etc. This was a quite different kind of business experience for me. After the simple, absolute honesty of my first employers, I now met the ruthless type of manager who, in order to make a sale, never hesitated to make promises he had no intention of keeping. One such promise, given in writing to all prospective buyers, was that their duplicators would be serviced every month, free of charge, for life. When I later cited this as my reason for concentrating on servicing rather than canvassing for sales, he said, "Oh! nobody expects us to keep that kind of promise".

After training in the office, I was turned loose in the firm's biggest Brisbane territory, in which there were just over 180 duplicators, for which there were no servicing records, at all. As soon as I started calling on the owners, I found that about the only servicing any of them had ever received was when they had broken down. Many of them had never been looked at in years. I set about trying to make good the firm's promises. There were far too many machines in my territory to be able to service each of them monthly, nor did many of them really need such frequent attention; but I did set up a system of regular visits at intervals based on the amount of use each machine was getting. This worked well, but did not leave me much time for trying to sell, which did not please the boss. I don't think I ever sold a duplicator, but a lot of users were happier for the servicing I gave their machines.

My daily programme of routine servicing calls was often interrupted by calls to go and deal with breakdowns. One day, while servicing a machine on one side of the territory, I received an urgent call to a breakdown at the General Hospital, on the other side. I had to go by tram and, while waiting at a tram stop, a small blue car stopped and the driver offered me a lift. His name was Roy Holmes. He was interested in our sailing, and asked if he could bring his family to visit us in Penella. During their visit, we struck up quite a friendship. In the course of conversation, he casually mentioned that he had a very pleasant job, which took him to Cairns for most of each winter, and in which he was able to earn a quite good income without too much hard work. He did not elaborate, and I did not ask for any more information. We exchanged several visits during the remainder of our stay in Brisbane, and he was later instrumental in changing the whole course of our lives.

By the time we were ready to go again, we had been in Brisbane for two and a half years. In that time, we had made a good many week-end sailing excursions into various parts of Moreton Bay, sometimes with guests, and sometimes just by ourselves, thus keeping ourselves in practice and Penella's gear in good working order.

Thanks to the income from my two jobs we had, over the two and a half years, been able to overhaul Penella from mastheads to false keel. We found many rotten brass screws and fittings and replaced them with stainless steel or Monel metal. The cockpit was waterproofed and its drainage improved. The engine, which was under the cockpit, was cleaned of rust and repainted with a rustproofing paint. I redesigned the forward rigging and had two new sails added to Penella's wardrobe - Yankee jib and a fisherman topsail. New and stronger booms were made for the twin spinnakers and a new spreader for the raffee. All baggywrinkle was replaced and the seizings on the ratlines renewed. The deck was covered with Celastic, a waterproof sheeting. The working of the anchor winch was improved by adding a roller which kept the chain firmly in the gipsy, and two sheet winches were installed. All electric wiring was overhauled and the waterproofing of all external connections and lights improved. A new compass was installed and swung. As a final preparation, Penella was slipped, her copper sheathing checked and repaired where necessary, her caulking hardened up, her topside paint burnt off and she was repainted inside and out. In all of this, Norman Wright and Sons were wonderfully helpful. They allowed me to use their machinery to do jobs for myself at week-ends, gave me much helpful advice, and kept cost as low as possible when doing jobs which were beyond my capabilities.

As always before the start of a voyage, our preparations for departure were frequently interrupted by the visits of friends coming to say goodbye. By the evening of Thursday, 2^nd May, 1963, we had taken on all stores, topped up with fuel and water, and said goodbye to everybody. We still had a lot of stowing and tidying up to do, before we would be ready to put to sea, but we did not want to delay departure any longer.

There is a superstitious belief amongst sailors that a voyage started on a Friday will be unlucky. Thinking to avoid this threat, we started ours that evening by motoring down to the mouth of the Brisbane River, where we anchored for the night, intending to complete our preparations in the morning. Judging by what followed, the powers that govern these things were not the least bit fooled by this ruse!

We completed stowing and tidying up next morning and got under way at 0920, bound for Gladstone, on the way to South Africa. Half an hour later, when I went to mount the log, its swivel just broke in my hand. I was able to improvise another, which would do until we got to Gladstone; but that proved to be only the first of a series of mishaps and interruptions to our voyage.

In fickle winds and calms, it took us seven hours of sailing and motoring to get clear of Moreton Bay. Once out of the bay, we had a rough, wet and uncomfortable night, with the wind varying greatly in direction, and in strength from Force 5 to flat calm, with rain setting in towards morning. As usual after a long spell in port, I was wretchedly sea sick, but had long since learned not to let that interfere with my work. About daylight, while motoring in a calm, the engine suddenly stopped and could not be started again. This was a shock, as it had always performed faultlessly, up to then. I had no idea what had gone wrong, and could find no cause for the failure.

The Wide Bay bar, at the south end of Frazer Island and the Great Sandy Strait, was reputedly dangerous and always changing, thus rendering unreliable the leading marks which one was supposed to follow when crossing it. Because of this, I had intended to cross it under power, but now had to do so under sail. It did not prove to be difficult. Visibility remained poor, in continuous rain; but, on making in towards the land, we were able to make out the south end of Frazer Island and caught a glimpse of the leading marks for a few minutes. By avoiding areas of breaking seas, we worked safely across the bar. We then had to turn and beat along a coastwise channel inside the sandbanks. The leading marks for this were completely obscured, but we had no difficulty in following the channel. We sailed safely into the strait and anchored behind Inskip Point in mid-afternoon. We stowed the sails, had a quick meal, and fell into bed, almost exhausted after our first encounter with the ocean in two and a half years.

We spent Sunday and Monday trying to get the engine going. I found one faulty injector and changed that, but it made no difference. We then got a tow up to Tin Can Bay, a small fishing port on Schnapper Creek, where we could get some expert help with the engine. There, we met Ray Canniffe, a marine engineer, who was returning to Brisbane from Gladstone in his sloop Sequana, after taking part in the Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race. He volunteered to help and quickly found a blocked fuel line and evidence of a good deal of sludge in the fuel header tank. He cleared the fuel line and the injector pump, got the engine going, and would accept nothing for his help. Bless his heart!

We stayed at Tin Can Bay for the next three days, during which I thoroughly cleaned out the header tank and filters. I also had a two inch length of pipe brazed onto the tap, to stick up above the bottom of the tank and so prevent any dirt in the tank from getting into the pipeline. I also noticed that a beacon had disappeared from one of the most critical and dangerous parts of the channel leading into and out of Schnapper Creek. I found the stump of that, below the surface of the water, and buoyed it with a small oil drum, for our own benefit; I don't suppose the locals really needed it.

We got away again on 12^th May and motored northwards through the Great Sandy Strait. The chart made it look quite frightening, in places, but we had no difficulty in following the tortuous but well marked channel. One needs to 'work the tides' on this passage. The tidal wave sweeping around Frazer Island enters the strait at both ends, but at different times. The two tides meet at a point nearer the north end than the south. When making the passage, in either direction, the aim is to reach this meeting point at high water, and so have a favourable current with one all the way. As the meeting point was marked on the excellent chart of the strait, this was easy enough to do.

After anchoring for the night near the mouth of the Mary River, we had an easy and comfortable sail to Gladstone, where we arrived next day. We berthed between piles in Auckland Creek and were made welcome by the local yacht club and its individual members.

After getting the log swivel repaired, and having all the fuel injectors on the engine tested, we began investigating the possible ways of getting out of Gladstone Harbour to the open sea. We could, of course, go out via the big ship channel, by which we had entered; but that would mean several hours of sailing or motoring, during which we would be making no northward progress. Then there was the route via The Narrows, a narrow, winding waterway between Curtis Island and the mainland. It led northward into the estuary of the Fitzroy River and Keppel Bay, but the safe channel in it was unmarked and required local knowledge to navigate it safely. I was not impressed by assurances from locals that 'you can't miss it', as I remembered that the Hiscocks had been run aground when being towed through it by a local boatman.

The third possibility was the North Passage, between Curtis and Facing Islands. It offered the shortest and quickest way to the open sea. The local fishermen used it, but it could only be reached by a devious route through a lot of shallow water. The harbourmaster advised against trying it, saying that there were no channel markers anywhere on the route and that local knowledge was essential. However, Ron Isbel, who ran a regular mail service over to South End, near the Passage, told us the route was adequately marked and invited me to go over it with him on one of his mail runs. I did so, wrote up my own sailing directions for it as we went, and that was the route we eventually used.

We were just ready to leave Gladstone when, on Sunday morning, 19^th May, a policeman brought us a message saying that Dorrie's mother had died that morning, in Brisbane. We wanted to go back for the funeral, but quickly found that the only way we could get back in time was by air, that day, from Rockhampton, about 80 miles away, and the only way of getting to Rockhampton in time to catch the flight was by private car. We asked Noel Patrick, one of the yacht club members who had been particularly kind to us, if he could help. His own car was out of action, but he quickly found a friend who drove us and Noel up to the airport, just in time for the flight, and would accept only the bare cost of petrol for his trouble.

We returned to Gladstone three days later, by train, and resumed our voyage the following morning, Thursday, 23^rd May. We cast off at 0900 and had cleared the North Passage by 1010. There was very little wind; we motored nearly all day and were well north of Cape Capricorn by nightfall. During the day, a hole appeared in the exhaust pipe, allowing exhuast fumes to enter the cabin. This was annoying, but not really dangerous, and repairs could have waited until we reached our next port.

About 1900 that evening, I was suddenly smitten by the very strong feeling that we were doing the wrong thing, and that we should turn back and abandon all ideas of any further voyaging. I was shocked at my own feeling, but it grew stronger by the minute and soon became overwhelming. I called Dorrie to the cockpit and told her how I felt. She was as shocked as I, and terribly disappointed, but she loyally supported me and agreed we should turn back, since I felt so strongly about it. We turned around, and were back in Gladstone by 1130 next morning.

Twenty-five years later, I still do not fully understand what made me do that. I wrote in the log, at the time, that the reason was that I no longer felt that I had the mental and physical stamina to cope with the many anxieties and strenuous conditions we would certainly meet on the way (to South Africa and onwards). But that was only part of it, and may have been only an attempt to rationalise the irrational but overwhelming conviction, which had assailed me so suddenly and with absolutely no warning, that we were doing the wrong thing by continuing the voyage. Perhaps the long sequence of events which had kept us in Brisbane for so long, and delayed us after departure, may have had something to do with it - the shortage of money which had delayed us for one year, Dorrie's operation which delayed us for another, the engine failure after we did get away, the death of Dorrie's mother just as we were ready to leave Gladstone - but I certainly did not consciously consider that at the time.

Back in Gladstone, I began to wonder if I really had done the right thing. After talking it over with Dorrie, we decided that my decision to turn back might just have been caused by fatigue, so we decided to try again. After getting the exhaust pipe repaired and waiting for a few days for a favourable weather forecast, we set off again. Before we even got as far as the North Passage, I was feeling, just as strongly as before, that we were doing the wrong thing. Then the promised favourable wind went around to NNW, which would be right on our nose once we got out of the harbour, so we turned back once more and decided firmly and finally to remain in Australia. I nearly wrote 'settle down in Australia'; but 'settling down' was not what we really wanted, and we did not do so for another 21 years. But that is another story.

We left Gladstone on 3^rd June and made a leisurely return to Brisbane. On the first day, we put into uncharted Pancake Creek for the night, using a sketch map which had been given to me in Gladstone. Pancake Creek is on the west side of Bustard Head. While in there, a south-easterly gale blew up and kept us weatherbound for nearly three days, thankful to be in such good shelter. After a 24 hours passage from Pancake Creek to the southern end of Hervey Bay, we motored through Great Sandy Strait at night. It was an interesting pilotage exercise, but not at all difficult, as all the leads were well lit and easy to follow.

After a brief visit to Tin Can Bay for fresh bread and milk, we started out again for Brisbane on the 10^th, but turned back because of strong head winds. On this occasion, we met the trawler Irene Joyce, with the Foley family aboard, anchored at Inskip Point. We had met and struck up a friendship with them some time before, at Norman Wright's boat yard. They beckoned us alongside for a few minutes and gave us a big wash bowl full of cooked prawns and shelled scallops.

We eventually got back to Brisbane on 22^nd June, after a long, hard slog against head winds, and went back onto our old mooring at Bulimba. There we found Dave and Nellie Goffeney, in Fortune, only two berths away. We had last seen them at the Panama Canal Company Yacht Club three and a half years before. They had since been to Honolulu, where Dave had converted Fortune from a gaff ketch to a Bermudan cutter. As you may guess, we had a great old reunion with them.

We now had to 'enter' Penella. I went to the Customs House thinking I would just have to pay the œ871 which I had been asked previously to deposit, but had later been excused. It was not that simple. I was told I would have to employ a customs agent to handle the transaction. As a first step, I would have to get Penella valued, and it was suggested that I should ask Norman Wright senior to make the valuation.

At that time, there was, in Brisbane, no market for yachts against which Penella's value could be judged. To test the markets in the south, Mr Wright placed advertisements in Sydney and Melbourne papers, offering Penella for sale at œ4,500. Only one inquiry was received, and it was not followed up. Mr Wright then arbitrarily declared, in writing, that Penella's value was œ4,500, and the customs agent whom we had employed accepted this.

I was alarmed by this figure. It was over two and a half times the value (œ1,700) which I had declared when we first arrived, and on which I assumed the œ871 deposit had been calculated. I had visions of being asked to pay well over œ2,000 in duty and sales tax, and we simply could not have done that. However, the customs agent told us the œ4,500 would be taken as being the value after duty and sales tax had been paid; sales tax and duty would first be subtracted from it, and the figure finally used for calculating these charges would be much lower. The agent and the customs officer with whom he was working then, by some extraordinary juggling of figures in our favour, reduced Penella's value to œ1,200, on which we were charged duty and sales tax amounting to a total of œ490.50. The agent charged us only œ19.50 for his services. We paid the charges on 30^th October, 1963, and Penella became an Australian vessel.

While all the customs business was being worked out, we made another week-end cruise in Moreton Bay, this time to Redcliffe and Bribie Island. I also began job hunting about this time, looking now for long term employment in some congenial occupation. It quickly became apparent that living in Penella was seriously restricting the range of jobs which I could possibly undertake, so we very reluctantly decided that we would have to sell her and become land animals again; but we could not do that until the entry formalities had been completed.

Early in August, we set out on what proved to be a six weeks cruise to the islands around the Whitsunday Passage, in company with Dave and Nellie Goffeney, in Fortune. We all had a thoroughly enjoyable time, visiting many island resorts, uninhabited islands and anchorages, as well as mainland ports, meeting other boats and making new friends. The cruise provided some interesting navigation and pilotage experiences; once again we had to take shelter in an uncharted creek, about which we had no information except that it was occasionally used by fishing boats.

The only untoward incident occurred at Tin Can Bay, our last stop on the way home. As we were about to leave there, we heard screams and yells coming from Fortune, anchored near by. A rat had come aboard during the night, apparently by climbing up the anchor chain. Nellie and Dave both saw it at the same time, as they were preparing to leave. Nellie began screaming. Dave hit it with a spanner, not killing it, but splashing a lot of blood about. At the sight of the blood, Nellie became hysterical, screaming louder than ever and yelling at Dave that she would not sail in Fortune and demanding to be put aboard Penella. Nellie was never noted for her inhibitions, but this was a star performance, even for her. It took us a while to find out what had caused all the excitement. When we did, we went alongside Fortune, handed Dave the rat trap we had bought at Bora Bora, and told Nellie firmly that we would not take her aboard Penella. She soon simmered down and we all went on our way to Brisbane.

After returning to Brisbane, Dave and Nellie began to prepare for leaving Australian waters. We knew we would have to take Penella to Sydney to have any chance of selling her, so we also began preparing to leave Brisbane as soon as the entry formalities were completed.

Nellie had to return to the USA by air and Dave had taken on another crew member. Both boats had taken on all stores by the afternoon of 18^th October. We moved down river and anchored near the mouth for the night, where we made our final preparations for the sea and said our goodbyes. Next morning, Fortune left about 40 minutes before we did, but were still not far from us when we rounded Cape Moreton and set our divergent courses, Fortune's for the northern tip of New Zealand, and ours for Sydney.

Soon after midnight, while still over 50 miles from it, we sighted the loom of the Cape Byron light, at that time, one of the most powerful marine lights in the world. Soon after sunrise next morning, a water spout developed only about a mile away from us. A tubular white 'spout' came curving downwards from the base of a dark shower cloud. The bottom end of the 'spout' did not appear to reach the surface, by several hundred feet, but evidently the vortex did, for there was an area of sea below it, about a hundred yards wide, in which the water was greatly agitated. Spray was rising up about 100 feet from it, gradually becoming invisible towards the top. The visible part of the 'spout' was revolving rapidly with spirally moving streaks of vapour clearly visible in it.

We soon passed out into clear, sunny weather and set course to close the land at Cape Byron, in order to get a close look at old, familiar scenes. From Cape Byron to well south of Evans' Head, we cruised along only a mile or so off shore, broad reaching on a Force 3 wind, over an almost flat sea, and with a helping current. As night fell, we headed well out to sea again, aiming to clear all land by at least ten miles during the hours of darkness.

At daylight next morning, 21^st October, we were well out to sea off Coff's Harbour, still broad reaching on a flat sea, and still with a good helping current. The coastal waters weather forecast said a southerly change was moving up the coast and we could expect to run into it during the coming night. On hearing that, and with memories of the strong south-easters of the past few weeks, we very nearly decided to put back to Coff's Harbour to wait until it had passed. However, we finally decided to press on and bash our way into Port Stephens for shelter, should it become necessary. During the morning, the wind gradually freshened to Force 5 from NE, giving us a glorious broad reach under perfect conditions. These conditions held until the late afternoon of next day, when we were only a few miles from Sydney. Never a sign of the southerly change did we see.

Night began to fall as we passed the mouth of Broken Bay, which is also the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. The densely populated coast from Barrenjoey to Sydney Heads became very beautiful as all the lights came on. We entered Sydney Harbour just before 2100 on the 22^nd. Finding it very difficult to pick out beacons and leading lights against the background of the city lights, we pulled around into Watson's Bay and anchored for the night. That was the end of the best and most enjoyable passage we had ever made.

We moved up to Rushcutters' Bay next day and anchored off the Cruising Yacht Club's premises. The club made us welcome and we began to let it be known that Penella was for sale. Our asking price was œ5,000. It was not long before we began to get inquiries. One was from a very nice young man, who desperately wanted a boat. He told us, at once, that he did not have enough money, but he loved Penella and asked us, wistfully, if we could possibly let him have her for œ1,800!

Soon after that, a young couple, George and Gail Lawtey, came to look at her. They jointly owned a welding and steel fabrication business in Narrabri, (the final 'i' rhymes with 'spy'), an island town in northern NWS. They owned a power boat, which they used on an inland dam, but they had had no sailing experience. However, George had the dream of ocean cruising under sail, and Gail, was supporting him. They liked Penella at once and agreed to buy her at our price, subject to survey.

We then moved over to Sailor Bay, an arm of Middle Harbour, where we had Penella slipped and surveyed. No significant defects were found. We stayed at Sailor Bay after the survey, as it was much more sheltered and quiet than Rushcutters' Bay, and I began job hunting in earnest. I applied for several jobs for which I was quite well qualified, but was always told I would be informed, in due course, whether my application had been successful. Thinking about these jobs while I was waiting for decisions, I began to realise what would happen if I were accepted. We would have to find a house in the suburbs, and I would have to commute daily to work, possibly over quite a long distance. The very idea was quite appalling and I became almost terrified that someone would accept me for one or other of the jobs! It gradually dawned on us that we really did not want to settle down in any one place; we wanted to continue the very mobile kind of existence we had both known for most of our lives.

Just at this time, we received a letter from Roy Holmes. He knew I was job hunting and wondered if I might possibly be interested in the kind of work he was doing. He told us he worked for the Queensland branch of Universal Business Directories, compiling directories and selling advertising space in them. All reps worked an annual cycle of Brisbane in the summer, North Queensland in the winter, and South Queensland country towns in the spring. There was a vacancy in the Queensland branch and he gave me the name of the Queensland manager. I wrote to him and was invited to an interview. We clicked at once. The ownership of a reliable car was a condition of the job which, obviously, could best be done from a mobile home, such as a caravan. That would mean that Dorrie and I could always be together, no matter where the job took me. Perfect! The job was mine, as soon as we could get up to Brisbane to start. We got there in March, 1964, and that became my job for the next 20 years.

On 1^st December, we took George and Gail for a delightful sail on the harbour, after which George paid us a deposit of œ1,000 and they told us they would need until early February to sell their business and home, and wind up their affairs in Narrabri, before they could complete the purchase. We told them we would stay aboard for any reasonable time to teach them how to sail and handle Penella.

George came to live aboard with us at the beginning of February, while Gail remained behind to clear up everything in Narrabri. We began teaching George as much as we could. He made the final payment, and we transferred Penella to him, on 11^th February, 1964. When he handed us the cheque, we felt as if we had sold one of our own children. We had one more lovely day of sailing with George, next day, after which we went ashore, bought car and caravan, and became land animals again - or birds of passage, if you like, migrating each year from summer in South Queensland to winter in the north. Our almost six years in Penella had been a very richly rewarding period in our lives.

There was a sequel to the story of the sale of Penella. Before we left Sydney, we learnt that Gail had left George. She came to live on board soon after we left. Apparently, she found life afloat quite intolerable and she left after about three weeks. We felt sad for them both, as Gail had willingly contributed her half of their assets to the purchase, and could have had no idea, at the time, of the ultimate outcome.

A good many years later, we pulled into a caravan park near Innisfail, in far north Queensland. One of the permanent residents, who was acting as caretaker, directed us to our site. On seeing my UBD car-top sign (see next chapter), he asked if I happened to have a Narrabri directory, explaining that he had sold his welding and steel fabrication business in Narrabri and wanted to see if it had been deleted from the directory. I quickly satisfied him about that, then asked him if he had known a George Lawtey, who used to be in the same kind of business there. He replied, "Yes, I knew George Lawtey", in a tone of voice which clearly indicated that George was not his favourite aquaintance. I then told him briefly of selling Penella to George and his wife, how much we liked them both, and how sorry we had been to learn of their subsequent separation. I added that I thought there must have been some weakness in their marriage, before they bought Penella, for it to have broken up so soon afterwards. His reply was, "Yes, there was. George's wife was my daughter......"