ACROSS THE PACIFIC

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4232, 17 January 1940, Page 3

ACROSS THE PACIFIC

A VENTURESOME VOYAGE. There have been a number of venturesome voyages in small sailing craft since Captain Joshua Slocum set out single handed in 1895 on a cruise round the world; but none of the single handed exploits has been more foolhardy than the cruise across the .Pacific from Sydney to Los Angeles, which Fred Rebell describes in “Escape to the Sea,” just published in London.

He was born in Latvia, when that country was part of Russia, and left it in order to escape compulsory military service. He roamed about the world as a seaman, chiefly as a stoker, and in 1907 he stowed away on a steamer bound for Australia. He settled in West Australia, and after an unsuccessful effort at farming, he became a timber getter, and subsequently a carpenter and builder . He left Perth for Sydney, and was working in the building trade there when the post war depression reached Australia and threw thousands of people out of work. He decided to go to the United States, but he had not enough money to pay steamer fare. He learned from the American Consul In Sydney that only a very small quota of Immigrants was being allowed into the United States, and that it was unlikely he would be able to obtain a ■permit to stay there. Mi- Rebell was not daunted by these difficulties —for a man of enterprise and resource they existed only to be overcome.

He managed to get a job as carpenter in the erection of a seaside cottage near Sydney and out of his low wages, which were much below the award rate, he managed to save some money.

“For £2O I bought a second hand 18 foot C. B. sloop, of the type that has been perfected for racing in the sheltered waters of Sydney harbour,” he writes. “She was not decked in, of course, and I eould not afford to deck her. Her draught was only 18 inches, and her freeboard 20 inches. In that boat I intended to sail to America. Was ever an ocean voyage projected in a more unsuitable craft? Built for speed and lightness, it was plain that her hull would never stand the battering of big seas. So I strengthened it by doubling the number of her ribs, and by fixing an outside keel. As for shelter, the best I could contrive was a canvas hood amidships.” He thought that the trip across the Pacific might take a year, but as he would be able to get some provisions at the islands at which he called en route, he decided that a six months' supply of provisions would be sufficient to store on board. "I packed it all in paraffin cans, fitted with screw caps; plenty of flour, rice, ■ wheat, pearl barley, peas, beans, sugar, semolina, i-olled oats and powdered skim milk,” he writes. “And dried fruit, potatoes, onions, lime juice, olive oil, treacle and yeast. I also took on board 30 gallons of water, in tins and drums, which I had lined with asphalt (and it kept remarkably well like that). But because I was provisioning her at the minimum cost I could allow myself no luxuries. I took no tinned food, no tea, tobacco, spirits Or medicines. - “My rationing allowed for one and a half pounds of dried food per day, and about one-third of a gallon of water. For cooking purposes I shipped a primus stove, a bottle of methylated spirits, matches and five gallons of paraffin. CRUDE NAUTICAL INSTRUCMENTS. He could not afford to buy nautical Instruments, so he tried his hand at making them. He made a sextant out of pieces Of hoop iron, a small telescope (price Is), an old hacksaw blade, and a table knife of stainless steel. He couldn’t afford a chronometer, and he could not make one, so he bought, for a few shillings, two watches, intending that each should be a check on the other. He made a taffrail log out of a piece of broom stick, some aluminium blades and a small clock.

He knew nothing about sailing a boat, so he read up the subject in books at the Sydney public library, and he practised sailing his boat a few times in Sydney harbour. “As for navigation,” he writes, “I bought a seventy year old manual of that art, and put it on board; time enough to study it when I was at sea. Charts too were things I could not afford to buy, so I copied them from a somewhat ancient atlas in Sydney public library. It was not till later that I found the disadvantages of having

used it, as some of the islands I came to had not been discovered when that atlas was drawn.” He had no passport or ship’s papers and he decided to do without them when he remembered that he would not be able to get them without paying up arrears of taxes and thereby “encourage the Government to waste the hard savings of thrifty men on the lazy and improvident” who were living on the dole. "That,” my conscience would not let me do,” he states.

SINGLE HANDED SAILING. He sailed out of Sydney harbour on the last day of 1931, and as there was a big swell outside he soon felt seasick. But the sickness passed off in about half an hour, and he was never again attacked. When night came he lashed the tiller and turned in to sleep. “People often wonder how a man sailing single handed managed to steer at night,” he writes. “The answer is very simple. The wind steers for him; not only at night, but nearly all the time. Indeed I doubt if during the whole of my voyage I spent more than half an hour a week actually at the helm. You can balance a boat to sail at almost any angle to the wind (except dead into it, of course), which you may determine. This you do by the set of the sails; tightening in this sheet, slackening out that one, putting in reefs or shaking them out till you get the balance you want. For the final minor adjustments you lash the tiller an ino 1 - or two to port or starboard. So long as the wind stays steady you will keep on the same course this way; but if the wind changes either in direction or force, the job has to be done again, if you are to keep the same course by the compass. However, out in the open ocean the winds blow steadily for quite a long time. At night I used to make up onee or twice, flash my torch on the compass to reassure myself, and then turn over to get some more sleep. It happened only a few times in the whole voyage that on waking I found myself going in a totally wrong direction.” Spray soaked through the canvas hood he had placed amidships and his bedding was soon soaked. Nearly a week passed before there was sufficient sun to enable him to dry his blankets. He encountered a long spell of bad weather, and his boat developed a leak in the bows down near the keel. He tried to caulk it from the inside, but the sea kept pushing the caulking out. The leak got worse and water came in so fast that he had to bail it out every two hours. “That was all very well by day, but not so easy at night, with no alarm clock,” he states. “So at night I laid an empty paraffin can in- the bottom of the boat. As the water rose the can would float, and then begin to bang merrily against the sides. I had to trust to that to wake me up in time to bail. It worked all right as an alarm clock. But all the same the thing Began to get on my nerves. So the next fine day that came along I lowered the sails and went over the side with a handful of soft pitch. This I rubbed well into the crack under water, and to my great satisfaction the operation proved effective.” LONG SPELLS ASHORE. He intended to call at Auckland, but was driven north of his course by the weather, and missed New Zealand altogether. He then set a course for the Fiji Islands, and had his first sight of land when forty days out from Sydney. At Suva, the capital of Fiji, he was warmly welcomed, and the editor of the Fiji Times interviewed him, and published an account of his voyage from Sydney. He spent seven weeks among the hospitable people of Suva, where he overhauled his boat, giving her new stays and running gear and repainting her. Kind friends gave him “a spare sail, a a compass, a barometer, and a proper set of charts.” DESTINATION AND DISASTER. On January 3, 1933, he sighted land which turned out to be Saint Nicholas Island, about 80 miles south west of San Pedro, the harbour of Los Angeles. But owing to a calm he did not enter the harbour until January 7. "My boat voyage was complete,” he writes. “My frail craft had brought me more than eight thousand miles across the .Pacific. As I turned in to sleep again that night, I felt like pinching myself to make sure that it was not a dream; that I had in real truth reached my destination.

“A year and a week had passed since I left Sydney. Out of this time I had spent some five months on shore on the Islands, • each day of which had been a pleasure to me. Of the seven months that I had actually spent at sea, maybe I was totally becalmed for a dozen days; maybe I weathered about a dozen gales. I still had four months’ supply of food left when I reached Los Angeles; two months’ supply of water. Boat and gear had cost me all told 125 dollars (£25); food, spares and replacements had cost me 100 dollars (£2O) for the year.”

Three days after entering the harbour of Los Angeles his little boat was wrecked. A severe gale sprang up and about thirty boats in harbour parted from their moorings, and were driven ashore. Mr Rebell was on board his boat when the gale commenced, but ho was unable to do anything to save her. While she was

aground a naval launch winch was unable to face the gale, despite the fact that she was fully manned, and had her engine running, bumped repeatedly into his boat, breaking some of her ribs and straining her bow. The wreck of the little craft which had come safely through the dangers of the Pacific to meet with disaster in harbour, was sold for £7.