AT BARBADOS we were lucky to find a neat little apartment overlooking a white beach and sheltered cove where I anchored Dove and buttoned her up.
My mother flew out from California and stayed with us for three weeks. She and Patti eyed each other a bit cautiously at first but they soon relaxed and enjoyed sharing kitchen chores and shopping. Then Ken MacLeish, son of the poet Archibald MacLeish, flew in from Washington and helped me write up the second part of my three-part series for National Geographic. Like the first article, it was the journal’s cover story, and it brought in, so they told me, a bigger reader response than any other feature in the magazine’s long history. Truthfully I could have done without the publicity, because people on harbor walls and in the yacht clubs recognized me or the name of the boat, and I was always being cornered and asked questions on my voyage.
Most people were nice but there were always name-dropping types around. These pestered me just because I was in the news. One invited us to dinner and when we were seated told us with a smug grin that he’d bet a friend he’d get us to his home. He won his bet but not our friendship. We soon got wise to these types.
We spent a dreamy month in Barbados, water skiing, skin diving, riding horses along the beach. What I enjoyed most were hot water showers and sleeping in a home that held still. After restless catnaps at sea I began to learn what real sleep was like again. My mind unwound because I wasn’t always listening for a change of wind or wave pattern. We toured the island on a motorcycle. There was one spot on a grass hill that we really loved. We took picnics up there and lay around under trees that had been bent by the trade winds. It was all so relaxing and good.
When my nerves no longer felt sandpapered, we flew out to Fort Lauderdale to look for a boat in which to complete the last part of my journey around the world. I had some pretty fixed ideas in my mind about the boat. She had to be more than thirty feet long so that she could take any storm, and she had to have enough headroom below so that I could stand up without cracking my skull. She had to be of fiberglass because a wood boat would require too much maintenance, and she would have to have a diesel engine. The advantage of diesel is that it is less expensive and less explosive than gasoline.
I eventually found just the boat I was looking for in the Cat-skills yard of the Allied Boat Company in New York. They gave us a good discount, and with the advance royalties from my magazine articles we found we could afford her. Shivering in the winter cold, Patti and I watched the new boat being completed in the shipyard. She was a beautifully designed thirty-three-foot fiberglass sloop. I added extra equipment to help me sail her alone, and most importantly a self-steering vane.
The self-steering device which my father and I had designed for little Dove had worked well; but the Hassler gear selected for the new boat was more refined—the same type of rig Sir Francis Chichester had used to make his lone circumnavigation. We named the steering vane Gandalf, for the wizard in the Tolkien books.
To the new boat’s basic layout I added extra storage, a chain plate, a rig for a staysail and roller-furling gear for two headsails.
The Hudson River was still iced up, so we trucked the new boat down to Fort Lauderdale, where we installed a depth-sounder, took aboard spare parts for most emergencies and stocked up with provisions. Then we invited Patti’s father, Allen Ratterree, and her stepmother, Ann, to join us for a short shakedown cruise to the Bahamas.
Patti launched the new boat with a bottle of California champagne and named her the Return of Dove, but whenever we referred to the two boats we always spoke of Little Dove and Big Dove.
There followed wonderful days, then weeks, then months as Patti and I cruised the Bahamas and later the Virgin Islands. In the Fijis, where Patti and I had first met, we had believed we could not again discover such happiness. But in South Africa we had been even happier; and now in the Caribbean we were to discover that happiness has no frontiers, that it’s a state of mind and not a possession, not a set route through life, not a goal to be gained but something that steals in gently like an evening mist or the morning sunlight—something beyond our control.
Our mood might best be understood by quoting directly from the tapes we made as we discovered new islands and unpeopled beaches, or when simply resting through sun-washed hours and starlit nights. Our electronic diary is a running commentary on two young people in love. Here, then, are some more excerpts from our tape recordings:
MARCH 21 [1968]: We anchored Big Dove beside the little lighthouse outside Cat Cays harbor in the Bahamas and immediately went diving for crayfish. Speared five in no time at all. The tri-maran Tahata came over and the couple aboard, Leo and Joy, didn’t know how to spear fish. I showed Leo some pointers, but you can’t learn to spear fish overnight, so we gave them our lobsters.
MARCH 24: Got a whole bunch of lobsters this morning and Patti made a stuffed lobster dinner. I told her I’d only married her for her cooking so she threatened a galley strike. We shared our dinner with two new friends from the yacht Kaelu. In the afternoon I speared a big moray. It wiggled off the spear and chased me. My pulse went up to about 200. But I learned not to attack monsters in their own environment.
MARCH 25: Arrived at Bimini and immediately went diving. It’s an absolutely new world down there under the surface. I was sort of cruising around looking at the fantastic colors when I found myself facing a lot of teeth. It was one of those ordinary sharks you see in an aquarium. While the shark was deciding which of my legs he was going to have for breakfast I leaped onto a rock ledge and yelled to Patti to rescue me in the dinghy. How we laughed. Boy! I still get nervous when sharks are around.
APRIL 13: Glorious sail to Nassau. Big Dove is a dream. She loves light airs and when the wind is up she moves at six to seven knots where Little Dove would sail at only four or five. Saw two whales mating right in front of our bow. Patti saw them first. I released the wind vane and changed course. You don’t argue with whales at any time. I know of four cases of boats being charged by whales. Patti was so fascinated that she didn’t understand the danger. I told her how world-circling sailor Alan Eddy had had a hairy time in the Indian Ocean when his thirty-foot yacht Apogee ran over a sleeping whale. Alan told me how his boat was immediately attacked by twenty whales. They struck low down in the way they would hit a shark in the liver. The fact that the Apogee survived with minor damage gave me more confidence in Dove because she was made by the same company. Anyway, Patti and I just sailed right past the colossal lovers who just lay there spouting and having a good time.
APRIL 20: Glad to be out of Nassau. It’s an awful place, everything so expensive and full of tourist traps. Even parrot fish sell in Nassau for two dollars and more a pound, and conchs, which we eat when we’ve got nothing else, sell for twenty-five cents each. Conchs are as common as coconuts—and it hurts to pay for coconuts.
APRIL 22: Last night was so balmy that we decided to sleep in the cockpit. About two o’clock we were awakened by a weird sound. We had anchored in a narrow cay. Slipping past us was a 150-foot boat with no lights. Suddenly a searchlight swept across the water. The boat stayed there for fifteen minutes. Then it reversed out of the cay and disappeared. The whole scene was like something out of a mystery thriller. Everyone knows there are smugglers here and I’ll bet this was a smuggler’s boat. I wonder how safe we’d have been if they’d known we had watched the operation. One of our friends warned us not to know too much. Weird things are going on all the time. One guy found a beer crate and broke open a bottle. It was filled with hundred-dollar bills. Paradise Island is said to be liked by the Mafia. Okay, let them have it. We’ll find our own.
APRIL 23: Sailed to an unoccupied island and found a citrus grove with oranges rotting on the ground. We helped ourselves. The fruit is very bitter but it makes a terrific drink.
APRIL 26: Arrived Spanish Wells. Many of the islanders have the same name and are fanatically religious. I tried to buy some beer and they looked at me as if I were the devil’s sidekick. As Patti and I walked down a street of small stores we felt a hundred eyes watching us. We had the feeling we were going to be stoned any time, medieval fashion. I kidded Patti that she was going to be burned as a witch and offered to buy her a broomstick. We were glad to be back on Dove. Been trying out Gandalf [the wind vane] and it’s working well. Dove now scooting at six knots in an eighteen-knot wind, and we’re trailing a dinghy. Patti’s in the dinghy, not for punishment but because she’s trying to take photographs. She’s holding on like fun as the dinghy planes over the water. At any minute I’m going to have to rescue her.
APRIL 29: Arrived at Rose island. Went diving and speared a grouper for breakfast. As I was trying to get the fish aboard a shark circled and gave me the once-over.
Patti made some salt water bread. It’s really good. Here’s her recipe.
One tablespoon of dried yeast, one tablespoon of sugar, four cups of flour, one and a half cups of seawater. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the salt water, then mix in the flour. Put the mixture into a well-greased pan. Let it stand for two hours to rise. Cook covered on low flame for half an hour on each side in a heavy pan. Eat when hot.
Now we’ll have bread all the way to Saint Thomas in the Virgins.
Been teaching other yachtsmen around here how to navigate. I’m always amazed how little some people know about sailing. A lot of inexperienced people go cruising before they know what they’re getting into.
APRIL 30: Patti had a bad pain in her stomach. I remembered when my appendix started to explode in Polynesia, and I dashed around trying to find a doctor. Eventually found a nurse who says Patti’s okay. I’ve been teaching Leo and Joy and Bill and the others how to navigate, and Patti too. She’s getting quite good. Just collected another cat and called him Gollum [another Hobbit character]. It’s a strange creature which likes its comforts.
Patti sometimes kept up our tape recorder diary. On May 20 Patti recorded:
This is me, Patti, speaking. Robin is up the mast trying to mend a broken halyard. For the past ten days we’ve been sailing through wretched weather to the Virgins. The Tahata, which sailed out with us from Spanish Wells, was demasted and Dove is really taking a pounding. When one squall hit us Robin thought the wind reached sixty knots. I was really scared especially when the genny halyard broke. I’ve just hoisted Robin up the mast in the bosun’s chair. The first time he went up the mast without my help. I was in the cabin. I called to him and when he didn’t answer I came up on deck. No sign of Robin. Honestly I thought I was going to die of fright. I figured that he could only have fallen overboard and here I was sailing along in Dove at quite a good speed. I was just wondering if I could turn the boat around by myself when I heard Robin shouting down from the spreaders, and asking what was the matter. I told him if he gave me a fright like that again I’d throw him to the sharks.
Anyway, I’m beginning to understand what Robin has been through when he sails alone. We’ve got tons of canned food aboard but it all seems so blah. You look at a can and it just looks like a can. How we long for fresh food again. Robin can work up some enthusiasm when he opens a can of oysters. Not me! Canned oysters in a rough sea—aagh!
It’s good for us to know bad weather and rough sailing. It makes us appreciate the good days when the sea looks so marvelous that you want to drink it. I mean, life would be pretty monotonous if the sky was always blue. That sounds like a cliche, so how else shall I put it? I think both of us are suspicious of having life too easy. You know, everything too pretty. We’ve talked over our future sometimes, and it’s pretty vague, but neither of us wants to spend the rest of our lives in Polynesian fashion—endless days of eating and swimming and parties and laughing. Both of us want to know the seasons—winters as well as springs and summers. I understand why Robin enjoys a storm. He likes the risk and danger.
It’s now slashing with rain. The raindrops are coming in at us like angled needles. We’ve collected a lot of fresh water off the sails and in the upturned dinghy. A gal’s got to have a bath sometime, and it looks as if mine’s coming up pretty soon.
My next entry on the tape was May 16, 1969. I recorded:
We’ve just sighted Saint Thomas in the Virgins. This is our sixteenth day at sea, and it’s sure been a long and tiring trip, in fact one of the worst I’ve ever had. Patti was a bit seasick but she’s better now. The cats are having a ball, though Kili is usually scared of bad weather. Fili doesn’t seem to mind the weather either way. Gollum loves the storms. He comes out on the deck when it’s raining, sticks his nose in the air and sniffs the wind. I hope we’re going to have fun in the Virgins. Patti deserves some fun for the way she’s taken this stormy trip. See you later….
We did not make another tape for several weeks, because when we reached the Virgins I flew off at once to Barbados to sail Little Dove back to Saint Thomas. It was weird sailing the little boat again. She seemed like a toy after Big Dove, and I couldn’t imagine how I had managed to sail her most of the way around the world. The distance from Barbados to the Virgins is about five hundred sea miles and as I’d not brought along my sextant, I had to rely on dead reckoning for navigation. The danger was getting too close to shore. When I was off Montserrat the wind died altogether and I fell asleep at the tiller. When I awoke the wind had picked up and I found I was sailing directly for a reef half a mile ahead. Another few minutes of sleep and Little Dove would have had it—and me too probably.
I brought Little Dove into Saint Thomas on the evening of June 11—two days earlier than I had expected. Patti was busy sewing in the cabin when I jumped aboard. I pushed open the companionway door, and found myself looking right into a pistol. There was a finger on the trigger.
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” said Patti as she lowered the gun.
Patti had had reason to be scared. In the previous months there had been a number of muggings and rapes in this area. She had not been expecting me for at least another day so when she heard someone jump aboard she was sure it was one of the muggers. Patti’s aim looked pretty good to me so I was glad she didn’t shoot at sight.
We spent a month cleaning up Little Dove, stripping off the Atlantic barnacles and then repainting her. With her brightwork polished and her hull and decks glistening once more, she looked prettier than she’d ever been. We tied a red “For Sale” sign to the poop deck rail. I felt like Judas. Here was this little boat which had carried me so far through hell, high water and sometimes close to heaven, and now I was selling her for pieces of silver—or greenbacks, I hoped.
We left Little Dove in Saint Thomas and sailed Big Dove out to explore the Virgins. Here are some more quotes from the tapes:
AUGUST 6: We’ve decided to stay out in the Virgins until the hurricane season is over. In Puerto Rico they have a superstition that if the avocado crop doesn’t do well it will be a bad year for hurricanes. They have had a really bad avocado crop. I don’t go much for superstition—but just in case they’re right we plan to hole up here anyway. Actually there was a warning a week ago, and we scooted into Hurricane Hole off Saint John’s, Big Dove towing Little Dove into good anchorage. I put out all the ground tackle we had, but fortunately Hurricane Anna missed the Virgins and we were okay.
We managed to sell Little Dove for $4,725. I wonder how she will like her new owner. Just hope he’s good to her. Patti and I sailed Big Dove round Little Dove in a last salute. We were really sad, and so we went over to a small hotel and listened to a Calypso singer.
AUGUST 20: Arrived Leinster Bay and went diving. We dove among the reefs and then Patti got her first lobster and a fish with her new spear gun. I bought her the spear gun because she can’t use the hand sling. The hand sling is too hard for her to pull back. Patti absurdly pleased with her shooting, of course, and she claimed the fish tasted much better than anything I’d caught. Two sharks are now snooping around the boat, but they don’t bother us too much. In the evenings we read aloud to each other. We’re very happy.
AUGUST 22: Radio warning about Hurricane Donna coming our way, so we decided to get closer to Hurricane Hole, which is pretty well protected. We eventually pulled into Dead Man’s Bay, arriving just at dark. Whole bay is filled with craft waiting for the storm. I powered around looking for a place to anchor. Most of the places were about forty feet deep and that would mean putting out too much chain. Not many boats carry heavy chain, but I believe in putting money into anchor gear instead of into insurance. I find it close to impossible without an anchor winch to pull up three-eighths-inch chain when it’s forty feet deep. So we anchored in the lee of the point and it was really nice. Storm failed to arrive so we went diving next morning. A huge shark moved up on me with all its teeth showing. It wasn’t after me at all but chasing some silver fish about a foot long in a feeding frenzy. Anyway, I wasn’t going to wait around and see if that brute wanted a change of diet.
AUGUST 24: Some people here at a place called The Bitter End in Gorda Sound are building a resort. They have found a really lovely spot and they’ve hauled in all the material they need. Basil Symonette, one of the resort owners, asked me to help them build the place, so I’ve decided to do that and earn some money while waiting out the hurricane season….
Our taped record stopped for a while because for the next few months I became a landlubber, helping to build the resort at The Bitter End. Just as in Darwin, I found I was quite useful with my hands, and was able to put in walls, windows, tile bathrooms and that sort of thing. Dove was anchored out in the bay, and when Patti’s household chores were done she would join me. She was useful with a paintbrush and she planted a garden. There were no union rules, so when we felt like it we took time off and went fishing or cruised about. I took my work seriously not only because it paid well but because I saw it as experience for the time when I planned to build a home of our own. We would know just how to build our home when the time arrived.
With the hurricane season over, I made plans to sail the thousand miles to Panama. We found a ship, the Lurline, sailing for the Canal on November 20 and after getting Patti aboard and arranging to meet her in Porvenir, one of the San Blas islands, I put to sea again.
Fili and Kili were my only passengers because Gollum had found another owner. When Gollum was missing a few days before we were due to sail, we made inquiries and learned that he had been seen in the house of a millionaire—one of those beautiful, white-walled cliffside places with soft-footed servants and fountained swimming pools—the whole works. Gollum was probably curled up on a tasseled cushion and had no intention of returning to the discomforts of life at sea.
In the Virgins I had installed a freezer which ran off the engine and while I watched the Lurline sail west I made my first iced drink and then told the tape recorder:
Saint Croix now on my beam and I’m making about six knots. At this speed the gunwales of Little Dove would be awash…. I’m really confident about this leg of the voyage. Big Dove’s a good boat and it’s exciting to be sailing once again.
In the late afternoon a small plane swooped low over Dove and the National Geographic man aboard presumably took pictures. Then a heavy rain squall hit and I stood naked on the deck to take a bath. All seemed well until I lit the stove to cook an enchilada TV supper. There must have been a kerosene leak because the flare-up singed my eyelashes. Soot was all over the cabin and there was no Patti to clean it up. A bachelor’s life, I decided, was not for me.
I opened up the ports to get fresh air and was immediately hit by another squall. The genoa had become snarled up, and in the time that it took me to untangle it the cabin was soaked. I’d obviously been too long on land.
Fire and water—what next? I asked the tape, and had hardly put the question when I saw a ship on collision course. I pulled over the tiller, threw some four-letter words across the water and took some comfort in the idea that troubles only come in threes. But not for me. Next day Gandalf broke—the wooden oarlike blade that goes into the water. That would mean a delay at the Canal, for I hate to steer myself and I had no intention of doing so in the long Pacific haul to California.
Big Dove had a useful inboard engine so when the wind dropped I was able to power at four or five knots. By the time I reached the San Blas islands I had used up all my fuel. I anchored Dove off a beach at Porvenir just eight days after leaving Saint Thomas. My taffrail log recorded 1,099 miles. The straight-line distance from Saint Thomas was 139 miles shorter, but you can’t always sail in a straight line. I rowed ashore and looked for Patti. The only hotel seemed the obvious place and I was just climbing the front porch when out she came—flying.
Patti had arrived only a few hours before, because the S.S. Lurline had called at other ports along the route to Panama. She had flown from Panama in a private plane. She had had a wretched sea voyage and had been sick every morning. She had consulted the ship’s doctor and we were still embracing on the hotel steps when Patti told me the medical diagnosis.
“Guess what. Robin—it looks like you might be a father.”
The right thing for me to have done was to have shouted hallelujahs, to have handed out cigars and dashed off to buy a diamond clasp or something. Actually her news felt like a kick in the guts. I was suddenly sick with fear for her. Sure I’d had my biology and hygiene classes at school, but what I thought of was my mother’s story of my own birth.
I had been a Caesarean baby, and when I was quite young my mother had told me how she had nearly died in giving me life. She could hardly have guessed the effect this disclosure would have had on her small son. I was left with a horror of childbirth.
Patti completely misunderstood my alarm. She pushed me away and studied me, her eyes troubled.
“Oh, Robin, I thought you’d be so thrilled with the news. When we talked about having children you always seemed so excited. Oh, honey, I just don’t understand you.”
“No,” I said, “it’s not that at all. It’s hard to explain. I just…”
“You don’t want the baby, do you?” insisted Patti. “Let’s at least be honest.” Tears welled up into her eyes. “Anyway, I don’t know for sure yet.”
Above our heads the wind was swinging a bar sign in about three languages. The sign wheezed like an old man with asthma. I just didn’t know what to say. Thoughts tumbled around my mind. One part of me was jolted by the idea that I could create life—not an unpleasant one at all. But the other thought was that Patti was going to pay a horrible price in pain and sickness. Perhaps she would die, I thought.
How wrong I was! Throughout her pregnancy Patti glowed with health. Her skin took on a fresh childlike bloom and there was a sort of peace about her I hadn’t recognized before. My fear for her simply melted away. She didn’t have to lecture me or anything or tell me I was just being a fool. I began to see that the baby was part of our lives, part of our love.
We spent two months exploring the Panama islands, sometimes staying on Dove, more often in the homes of new friends. The few Cuna Indians who had not come in contact with the tourists were helpful, artistic and friendly. On the tourist tracks, though, we found them infected by the discourtesy and greed of the western world.
Patti had picked up quite a lot of Spanish and was able to bargain successfully for provisions and souvenirs. At Tigre island, just off the mainland, we found whole families of albinos, descendants of the ones the Spaniards had found centuries before, who had given rise to the report that a lost white tribe had settled in the San Blas islands.
Among our new white friends were Tom and Joan Moody, who had sold their business in the United States and built a fascinating resort at Pidertupo. Wisely they had patterned their cottages on the local architecture. They had built a small airstrip on an adjacent island so that tourists could fly in and “go native” a few hours after leaving the concrete jungles to the north.
I sailed Dove to Cristobal in the Canal Zone and there we spent Christmas in an American home. A candlelit tree, carols sung round a piano and the exchange of presents recalled the happiest moments of my boyhood.
On New Year’s Day Patti and I decided to return some of the hospitality we’d received and invited about thirty people to a Hawaiian luau with Polynesian overtones. What our planned party amounted to was a pig feast on the beach, but first we had to find the pig. We went to a small farmhouse in the country, knocked on the door and an enormous black man appeared. He was dressed in full armor like a conquistador. The armor had been beaten out of tin cans, but his sword was real enough and when he drew it from its sheath we beat a fast retreat. Eventually we found a pig of the right size and built an umu (underground oven) in the sand, then pushed the pig between hot rocks to roast. Without a luau recipe book we had to guess the roasting period. Our guesswork was about an hour out, and the pig was so well cooked its head fell off.
We learned, too, never to roast a pig in sand. The noise of about six hundred teeth, real and false, crunching sandy pork was like a heavy truck on a newly graveled driveway. The guests were marvelously polite and assured us that there was no sand at all—in the beer.
Unrelated to this experience was a long session for me at the local dentist. For eighty dollars the dentist extracted two aching molars and filled ten cavities. The surgery was good but one of my gums would not stop bleeding. Back at the yacht club I was being offered Kleenex and sympathy when I suddenly keeled over and passed out. When I came around there were half a dozen uniformed firemen fussing over me.
When I’d fainted a fireman at the next table had caught me and instead of getting a doctor he had summoned the local fire brigade. Presumably because they were short on first aid drill, the firemen forced an oxygen mask over my face. Whether it was the oxygen or a couple of shots of brandy that put me on my feet again was a question noisily debated by the retreating brigade. The upshot was that within the hour I was able to take Patti to a James Bond film. We quite enjoyed it too.
Actually, before we left for the movie a doctor arrived to check me over. By strange coincidence this was the doctor who had flown Patti from Panama to the San Blas islands. He had given Patti a pregnancy test but it had proved negative. But Patti had gone back for a second test two weeks later and had bet the doctor a dollar that she wasn’t going to have a baby. When the doctor saw Patti at the yacht club he wrote out a note, folded it over and handed it to her with a grin. We read it as we drove in a taxi to the theater. The note read “You owe me a dollar!”
Spare parts for Dove’s broken wind vane arrived from England in mid-January and I was at last ready to sail through the Canal. One question to be decided was where to go when Dove had reached the Pacific. I looked forward to journey’s end because I’d been at sea (more or less) for nearly a quarter of my life. But now there was another factor which decided our immediate future.
“What about the baby?” I asked Patti as I signed up the documents to get us through the Canal. “Shouldn’t it be born in California? I mean, you’ll need the best medical care, a hospital and all that.”
“Women have babies in treetops and probably at the North Pole,” she said. “Anyway, I bet he’ll whistle sea chanteys before he talks.”
“He?” I said.
“Fifty-fifty chance.” She laughed. “If it’s a girl she’ll be a tomboy for sure.”
Her eyes were far away when she added, “I wonder if there’s any truth in the theory that a child is prenatally influenced by its mother’s environment. I remember reading somewhere about a pregnant woman spending all her time in art galleries and listening to Beethoven. The child turned out masterpieces and played piano concertos before he was ten.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
“I’d like to. And if it’s true what would you like your child to be? Disc jockey, president or candlestick maker? I could probably fix it. Supposing I looked at the stars all night—do you think he’d be the first man to walk on Jupiter?”
I bent over the top of the chair and kissed her forehead. She looked like a blond madonna. “I’d want him to love nature. I’d want him to love animals, mountains, clean water, sea life. I’d want him to understand all these things,” I said.
“That’s easy. Let’s go to the Galápagos islands,” said Patti lightly.
This wasn’t the only reason why we decided on the Galápagos before turning north for the run to California. Patti had been there five years earlier and had absolutely loved the islands. She knew that I would love them too.
Getting through the Panama Canal in a small boat is not all that simple. When the water level changes in the locks it becomes very turbulent and there is a real risk of crushing a hull or losing a mast. The law forbids you to sail your own boat through the Canal and I was forced to hand over Dove to a pilot and four linesmen. So long as I did not interfere with the navigation, the Canal Company would be responsible for any damage, but it was not easy to keep my hands off the tiller when Dove rolled about in the swirl of water in the Gatún Locks and was threatened by other ships.
With barely a hull scratch we reached Balboa, on the Pacific side, on January 17. Before I sailed for the Galápagos, Patti and I spent a terrific ten days together anchored off Taboga island, a two-hour sail from the Canal. On Taboga we mostly lay around in the sun and read. One thing the long voyage had done for me was to give me a pretty wide taste in literature. I had gone through quite a library in five years and been introduced to authors ranging from Robert Louis Stevenson to Ruark, from Hemingway to Agatha Christie. If I ever returned to school I would have a lot of catching up to do in the math class, but at least I’d have a head start in English literature and geography.
We returned to Balboa to drop off Patti and to arrange for her to travel to the Galápagos islands by steamer and by plane.
“And don’t forget,” I said, as I boarded Dove on January 30, “to bring along my son.”
“No problem,” Patti laughed. “He’s still very attached to me.”