AS MY EIGHTH DAY of practice hauled around, I decided to do something more impressive than “playing around in close.” So the morning of June 2 saw me cleared away for a “long distance” cruise around the whole Perlas Group. With my kittens wide-eyed and capering on the cabin I stood out to south from Perry Bay.
I could, by a nearly rectangular sailing pattern, make the entire trip in a twenty-four-hour day. But I hadn’t counted on the uncertainties facing the seaman in the Gulf of Panama. Between calms, which were relieved only by impotent winds, I coaxed Pagan at a snail’s pace.
I coasted around to the south of Del Rey, past Punta de Cocos. East of Pacheca Island (the last island in the string), and with the little isle bearing west by south, I turned northwest, and prepared to heave to for the night.
It was my first night on the water. I was eager to know what my boat would do, how she would express herself with a lashed tiller all night, sailing under her own free hand, while I was below in the bunk.
I didn’t know exactly what to do, so I left all sail up. Pagan struck a northwesterly course with the wind playing at west of north. I lashed the tiller slightly aweather and eased the mainsail. As the wind billowed Pagan’s sails, she tended to move her bow into it. Thus, close on the wind, the mainsail luffed fruitlessly. Jib and staysail barely pulled, but pulled enough to give the slightest headway. Then at the rudder’s command she fell off west of north, with sheets straining and a few ripples in the wake. Thus, backing and filling, I left her to bide her night.
Somewhere late at night I awakened to the raucous whipping of headsails, the screech of wind in rigging, and driving rain. Gusts from a squall were beating her down. Gunwale to the water, she was flying into the night.
I hadn’t yet handled Pagan in a squall; this was my first one. To get the extreme angle out of her decks I pulled down the belligerent main. She righted, as I hoped she would, and squalls suddenly lost their terrifying reputation. One thing was important: get the mainsail down. The jib and staysail could take it.
Dawn found me west of Saboga, with a light wind bearing to northwest. I swung to a heading of southwest and crawled along a lee shore under the beam wind. Pagan steered herself under a lashed tiller all day with nothing untoward happening. The afternoon was especially calm. My fishing luck was in the doldrums too, because I failed to catch my mewing cats their usual afternoon fish. They fretted on the foredeck, hiding under the anchor, refusing to be friendly.
Later, though, I hooked a beamy yellowtail, big enough for all three of us. Fried fish with strips of bacon, slack-baked corn patties, washed down with coconut milk went well for an early dinner. One nice thing about the crew on Pagan was the lack of complaints with the food.
The day was waning. I was standing well off the southeastern tip of San José. My course was shaped easterly; Mafafa, southernmost Perlas village—a good two hours’ run—was my destination. It would have to be a night approach, but I wasn’t worried, now that I had some “experience.” I could make it all right by rounding Punta de Cocos in time to sight something prominent in the village, then steering through the dark by compass.
Punta de Cocos is the rocky end of a fingerlike peninsula that juts southward off Del Rey. In the crook of the finger of land lies Mafafa. Once I passed round the point, I could see the village.
The enclosing dark was outsailing me to the point. In one of those reckless moments, I decided to cut in hair close in rounding Punta de Cocos. I could see, every so often, a number of growling rollers crash onto the point, where a fast shoaling ledge threw them up. Seas were piling on it suddenly and toppling onto themselves, throwing white arms of water upward. If I timed my approach carefully I could shoot past the point at the interval between rollers. If one could rely exactly on the actions of natural things, wouldn’t it be a dull world?
At the moment I changed Pagan’s angle to cross Punta’s bow closely, two big combers bore down on me from abeam. Pagan got a deck washing I shall never forget. It came so suddenly, and at what seemed a peaceful moment, that I was overwhelmed. The mast from the hounds down was awash with spray. I froze to the tiller and watched the water scurrying over the decks—the first water I had seen there. The solid rock wall was a heave-line toss away. Another roller rammed her, and crowded aboard; this one had broken farther out and came aboard in a surge.
I thought of the engine and the mistake of not having used it.
Pagan was thrown so close to the rocks that I could see crabs clinging to them. My decks were water-loaded. When I looked out to see if I could fend the boat off, I saw the cats swimming aft along the flooded deck rails, only their heads in view, wild-eyed, pawing through the water.
Pagan was about sixty seconds from the closest fists of rock. I slung the tiller alee and grabbed the kittens, ready to toss them high onto the rocks. A counter sea rolled back from the rock face, killing the effects of the next roller. Pagan steadied, filled away, and pulled off a few feet. But the next sea caught her where the first had. In a smother of foam she fell back. I could see nothing I could do. Cats in hand and tiller underfoot, I waited petrified. A fourth sea boomed broadside against her, spilled over the rail, and rapped her sharply against the first line of boulders.
As the jolt ran up from the keel I was terrified lest her mast jump out and fall over me. Without looking directly at it I could see the mast was swaying wildly.
All this time the tiller had been hard down. Her bow had twisted away from the rock face and bow-on she met the next sea. As she slithered a few feet sternward, I could visualize the rudder and propeller smashed into the rocks. But somehow she lost little way. She rose to it, foundered momentarily, and battled on. With her bowsprit thrown sky-high one minute and immersed feet deep the next, she slowly pulled away from the angry cape. Her sails were pulling with all force or she would never have made it.
She slipped away to smoother water, but my eyes were glued on Punta de Cocos, where the seas charged against the rocks, and where I had nearly lost my boat. I had brought her off safely, and I felt a flush of kinship with what sailormen call seamanship. I had saved my boat—had acted sensibly under duress.
I smiled happily to myself. At last my confidence was thoroughly built up, I was ready to go; the Pacific beckoned. I looked at the darkening horizon, beyond which was my patient wife. In the morning, I thought, in the morning I’ll be on my way.
But when morning came I was interrupted at my breakfast by rapping on the deck, and the cheerful voices men have at dawn. I came up to find a rowboat of soldiers tied alongside. They were from an Army Weather Station in the same bay. They climbed aboard.
No matter what their rank, they took me for what I was—a sailor boy caught in the rush of after-war.
They were greatly interested in my boat and the proposed trip. They evinced a hearty desire to help me “get ready to go.” So I decided to stay another day.
We pitched in early, the six of us; and what a job of work we did. We painted the mast and spars. We did the decks and deckhouse and cockpit in a lurid design consisting of the four colors of paint I had aboard. We oiled the standing rigging, puttied portholes against seepage, and sewed bolt ropes onto all the sails.
One, who was a mechanic, dismantled the little marine engine, and at the end of the day he explained a host of benefits performed. Something about plugs cleaned, carburetor adjusted, feed line cleared, generator overhauled, valves ground, and so on.
Another, electrically minded, wired Pagan so that a flip of this switch or that set her cabin ablaze with light from my engine battery. Even her running lights were wired for emergency use. The same GI by performance of his magic transformed a junk radio I had wanted to “give the deep six” into a useful instrument.
Another boy, exercising a hidden talent awakened by army ingenuity, did me an outstanding service by building a large locker, half the width of the starboard bunk and its full length, from the deck beams down. The value of this, only a boat owner can know. Another lad designed and built in a bumkin for Pagan’s transom to stay the tall mast in case of heavy weather.
Thus, ten days after my arrival in the Perlas, I was ready to go down to sea. From jib tack to mainsail clew my little cutter was at her fighting best. Time to weigh anchor and shove off.
But the soldiers . . . there’s nothing too good for a soldier. By way of thanks for their generous assistance I proposed a trip. I admit I was reluctant to do it. I wanted to be on my way to Mary. But I had to show my appreciation to the isolated soldiers.
We sailed around Del Rey’s southeastern bulge to San Miguel that day. It was the bright spot of Pagan’s life under my hand. We returned at dusk the next day to the little bight around from Punta de Cocos. Pagan’s last service as a pleasure yacht had been rendered. From now till her ill-fated demise, her work was to be serious—and finally grim and relentless.
That night found me outfitted for sea: water breakers filled and bunged, lockers stocked, and gear lashed and tied. There was even a supply of canned fish aboard for the kittens, a gift from the soldiers.
One thing I was convinced of—my boat could take it. Ten days of hard usage had proved that. She had a history that made those ten days possible, and made all that she went through out on the open sea possible.
Pagan was Norwegian designed and built. Her planking, decking, ribs, knees, and timbers were from the weather-tested far northern slopes. She had blunted the challenge of turbulent Scandinavian seas for many years as a supply boat for lonely Baltic lighthouses.
In 1934 Pagan arrived in Panama after an Atlantic passage from Poland. Aboard were four Poles ostensibly headed for Australia as settlers. They had outlived hair-raising escapes and a discouraging series of bruising gales, after which even tropical, rainy Panama looked better than the prospect of sunny Australia.
They promptly sold Dwaja (spirit), as she was then known, and there followed for the little gaff-rigged sloop twelve years of peaceful “harbor circumnavigation.” Light harbor sails, bellied by soft harbor breezes, were bent to her spars. From Colón to Balboa she luxuriated in the peace and quiet of yacht club atmosphere. A yachting pennant swung from her masthead. Gay parties took place in her cabin. She became well known as the “original” Pagan, on both the Atlantic and the Pacific sides.
At some time during her twelve years’ career as a coastwise and harbor playboat her sail plan was redesigned to the Marconi rig, and Pagan became a sharp, fast cutter. She was regarded as one of the fastest little vessels on the Isthmus. Rail down, there were few who could match her.
The boat I was to sail with was fast and sturdy, and after my numerous experiences aboard her I knew her, I had confidence in her, and so I had confidence in myself—what more could I ask?
I stepped out into the cockpit and flashed my light through the rigging and across the decks, and found everything as it should be. I was pleased. I went below, where I lay a long time before I slept, thinking into the low ceiling, glad the time had come to be going.