by Rita Pomade
A few yachties shared my interest in other cultures, but I discovered that the yachting world had its own culture and yachties, for the most part, had little interest in the countries they travelled through. Their interest was in exchanging stories about sailing — the mishaps, the technical problems, the expense of repairs, and the camaraderie that came from sharing those experiences. Shoptalk was their identity. The older Frenchman who had sailed with us from Taiwan invited us aboard his yacht one evening to have drinks with him and his silent, smiling wife. He and Bernard immediately fell into a conversation about plotting sea charts.
“Have you been to The Peak or Kowloon?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” he answered in an agitated tone and immediately shifted the conversation back to the sailing route he was planning to take to France. Like Captain Iredell, his only topic of conversation revolved around boat issues. In every port we entered, the pattern repeated itself, always accompanied by a generous supply of alcohol.
When we were ready to leave Hong Kong, Bernard, as usual, handled the boat duties while I took care of those on shore. I bought Jonah’s plane ticket for the States having learned that the price would have jumped considerably had I bought it in Manila. Then I trolled the markets for whatever produce I thought would survive the trip, my main focus being the canned goods at the Chinese Emporium where I picked up tree fungus, grass jelly, canned meats and soups. I had to go by the pictures as the labels were all in Chinese.
My theory was that if the people in Hong Kong could eat it, we could too. Almost anything could be made palatable in a stir fry or as fried rice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring the succulent pork and pressed duck dishes that had become part of our almost daily fare, but I did get some cans of tripe for Stefan, knowing he’d miss the tripe he’d buy off the carts in downtown Hong Kong — a pleasure I didn’t share. Many years later, he still searches for canned tripe in Chinese grocery stores.
The evening before setting sail, we boarded the Elf Chine, with its coterie of young adults, to say good-bye. The junk was to leave a day after us, and we promised to keep in radio contact. Stefan and Jonah ran over to the boat club’s watchman to tell him we were about to leave. He gave them a Chinese checkers set as a parting gift, but he wouldn’t teach them how to play.
“The game is too complex for the western mind,” he told them.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“We just thanked him,” Stefan said. “I thought it would be rude to ask him why he gave it to us if he thought we couldn’t learn how to play.”
“Yeah, that was pretty funny,” Jonah said. “But we’ll probably figure it out on our own. It doesn’t look that hard.”
“Anyway, it’s nice to look at,” I said.
We left Hong Kong for the Philippines on August 9, 1982, hoping to make it to the island of Luzon before a typhoon developed in the China Sea. At seven in the morning on a bleak rainy day, we sat below deck and fortified ourselves with mugs of hot coffee before lifting anchor for Luzon, the largest island in the Philippine archipelago. By noon, the rain stopped and the sea turned dark blue, taking on the muted sheen and texture of rumpled taffeta.
Chapter 12
BRIBES AND ARMS
Autumn 1981: Luzon, Philippines
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been an accomplice to human restlessness.
— JOSEPH CONRAD
Three days at sea since leaving Hong Kong, and we hadn’t seen another craft. I couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding. That night, heaving waves signalled a possible typhoon brewing in the China Sea. It explained why there had been no traffic in a shipping lane, and so few birds.
Meanwhile, a front was building near Luzon, where we were heading. We hoped to reach San Fernando, the nearest port on the island, before a full-fledged typhoon erupted. By late afternoon, it was clear we wouldn’t make it before nightfall.
“I have to slow the yacht,” Bernard said. “There’s too much coral out there. I won’t see it in the dark.”
He turned the bow of the yacht into the wind, and the boys and I lowered the sails. We were now at a standstill except for some min- or drift.
Throughout the night, the four of us took turns on deck keeping an eye out for freighters and flotsam. Intense bursts of light flashed repeatedly overhead. It terrified me. I sat on deck stiff as a statue, with my knees tucked under my chin and my arms wrapped around my shins. For hours, the electrically charged sky opened to illuminate the sea, first from one point and then another, but there was no sound of thunder, nor did the sea move. We were surrounded by an eerie stillness. I waited anxiously for the onslaught of the storm, but nothing happened. The yacht seemed suspended in some alternate universe.
In the morning we discovered the Santa Rita had drifted away from the coast. After some calculations, Bernard brought the yacht back on course. An hour later San Fernando came into view with a welcoming palm tree at its northernmost tip, followed by an old battleship with half its hull, beached. San Fernando was home to Clark Air Base, the largest American military base outside the United States, established in 1848 when Spain lost the Philippines to the Americans. When the Japanese invaded during the Second World War, unspeakable massacres took place here. I wondered if the battleship was a leftover from that war. For the first time I felt a connection with the history I had studied in school.
As we neared the port, three men in a banana-shaped outrigger canoe known as a bangka motored out to meet us.
“Customs and Immigration,” one of the men called out.
We shut down the engine and waited while three scrawny officials in filthy shorts with colourful rags tied around their heads scrambled aboard. I was taken aback by their outfits and a bit shocked that the government didn’t have a dress code for its officials. Each man carried a machete. The most overbearing of the three showed us some official looking papers as proof of their authority and asked for our documents. After returning our passports and having us sign our names in a ledger, he ordered us to stay in the galley while his men searched the boat.
“What are you looking for?” I asked. One of the men smiled at me but didn’t answer. I didn’t insist.
Row after row of provisions I had bought in Hong Kong started to pile up on the galley table as each locker was opened and stripped of its contents. They even pinched the pickled ducks’ feet that I wasn’t too sure about. The “customs officials” studied each label carefully before setting the item on the table. One of them held up a good-sized can of what looked like Spam. He turned it in my direction so that I could participate in his pleasure of discovery.
“Very good,” he said.
“It’s yours,” I replied.
“Thank you,” he answered. He was effusively polite as he went about stealing our goods.
He then searched through our bag of weevil infested flour.
“For you,” he said as he handed me the bag.
I found myself thanking him for his thoughtful generosity. I’d already forced myself to come to terms with the insect life that shared our food supply — all part of the food chain. I had by now started to view weevil as a much needed protein. They nourish themselves on our flour, and we on them. It helped that we couldn’t see them in pancakes. The men stripped us of everything but an open bottle of cooking oil, a sack of rice, and the bag of flour crawling with life.
Bernard, Stefan and I were in the aft part of the galley while Jonah had stationed himself near the companionway leading to the hatch. As the so-called customs officers headed towards the stairs, the one in charge spied Bernard’s pen lying on the chart table.
“Very nice,” he said. He fingered its tortoise shell casing.
“That’s enough,” Jonah snapped as he grabbed the pen from under the thief’s hand.
The man stared hard into Jonah’s face. Jonah didn’t flinch.
I felt a surge of fear through my body. “Give him the pen,” I mumbled under my breath. For God’s sake, you don’t need i
t. Give it to him, you idiot. I hoped my subliminal message would reach his brain. But it became obvious that I had no telepathic control over my son.
Suddenly the head honcho’s body relaxed. He smiled at Jonah and gave him a friendly punch on the arm. He nodded to the men, and they left with their haul, leaving Jonah with the pen.
Giddy with relief, I followed behind the debarking thugs, thanking them profusely for their visit as they boarded their bangka with bags of our provisions. I then raced below deck to where my family was cleaning up the mess the visitors had left behind.
“Why didn’t you give it to him?” I shouted at Jonah. “It’s only a pen. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
Jonah shrugged his shoulders. “It wasn’t his.”
It was a comfort to know that by the end of the summer he would be safely enrolled in Middlebury College. At the same time, I felt a mother’s pride seeing his determination to hold his ground. Still, it could have ended badly, and I didn’t know if or when we’d face the same situation again.
Once anchored in the harbour, we were again boarded by “government officials.” The first to board looked about sixteen years old. “I represent the Health Department,” he told us. We bought our rat clearance for a bribe of six dollars. Later we learned he was actually the doctor’s son, impersonating his father or perhaps sent by his father, who was the official representative of the Health Department.
We sat and waited for other officials to come. It didn’t take long. Two gentlemen, who also said they represented Customs and Immigration, showed up and asked for 5,000 pesos (about $134) for clearing our papers.
“We’ve already been boarded by Customs and Immigration,” Bernard said.
They didn’t seem surprised. It was obvious we weren’t the first to be fleeced before entering the harbour. “Your documents from Hong Kong aren’t in order,” one of them said. They again asked for $134.
“No,” Bernard said.
They quickly dropped their fee to twenty dollars, but Bernard still wasn’t buying. “The health official only charged us six dollars,” he countered.
The more ape-like of the two men claimed that Customs and Immigration was more important. He had an edge of violence about him, so we settled on twelve dollars. They insisted on having some spirits or cigarettes before leaving. When Bernard told them that the first party from Immigration and Customs had cleaned us out of everything, they became agitated. Bernard took out the one bottle of whisky he had managed to hide from our intruders. The men took turns drinking in gulps from the bottle until Bernard insisted on having a shot for himself. Once they had finished the whisky, they went through our lockers and drawers, and discovered for themselves that the cupboards were already bare. The men left with a can of mutton that had been left behind, and promised to bring our clearance papers the next day.
The last government official who said he was from Immigration and Customs was visibly annoyed that others fleeced us first. But he was polite and amiable and didn’t open drawers and lockers. He asked for twenty dollars. We managed to negotiate the fee down to ten dollars. On leaving he asked us for cigarettes.
“For my driver,” he said. “Or maybe some coffee.” He didn’t insist.
It was tricky navigating that fine line between not being completely taken while still giving enough to avoid repercussions. The government was trying to crack down on this type of thievery and wanted it reported, which we did — to the Port Authority. But I suspect not much was done. We were reporting to the very people who were involved in this activity.
Our next “welcome” came from the operator of a tricycle taxi. We needed pesos to restock our provisions. It was Sunday and the banks were closed.
“I’ll take you to a market and get you a good exchange for your dollars,” he said.
Bernard took out twenty dollars.
“One hundred would be better,” he said.
Bernard smiled in reply. He took us to the market, parked his tricycle, asked for our umbrella as it was raining, and said he’d be back with our pesos. When he saw our hesitation, he told us he couldn’t go far with our twenty dollars.
“You can trust me,” he said. “My tricycle is with you.”
He returned in tears and told us he had lost our twenty dollars down an open manhole while trying to close the umbrella.
“I’ll take you to my home for the pesos.” He cried all the way and kept repeating how poor he was. “I’ll have to take the money from my mama’s purse,” he whimpered.
He entered a house that looked neither poor, nor rundown, and came out shortly after with less than half the value of the twenty dollars. “We’ll go to the market to buy what you need, and then to my friend who’ll lend me the rest.”
Bernard asked him take us to the manhole where he claimed the money had fallen. He led us to the middle of a sheltered market where it was impossible for rain to fall.
“Why was the umbrella open in here?” Bernard asked.
The tricycle driver shrugged his shoulders, did a little more crying, and went in search of his friend who couldn’t be found.
“I’m an honest man,” he assured us. “I’ll come seven-thirty, tomorrow morning, to give you the rest of your money.” He asked for two dollars for gas as we’d taken every cent he had in the world.
Bernard gave him the two dollars. He felt the performance was worth the price. At least, this scoundrel provided some entertainment. As expected, at seven-thirty the next morning there was no tricycle taxi driver.
But we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and spotted another yacht anchored in the harbour carrying an American flag. Until now, we’d encountered only one other North American. We’d met a smattering of Europeans, an abundance of Australians, and one eccentric Kiwi; and although we were in the East, no Asians. Asians didn’t do long range sailing. The sea is a fair-weather friend, and the Asians we met were a pragmatic bunch, not dreamers.
Captain Marshall and his girlfriend Dr. Payne, the couple on the other yacht, appeared to be somewhere in their forties and fit. They hadn’t done much sailing, but Captain Marshall believed in technology. He trusted his satellite system and ham radio to fill in the gaps for his lack of knowledge.
“I don’t know how to do the calculations,” he told us. “I radio a friend who does them for me.”
He was shocked to learn we had no satellite system and were sailing with only a sextant, depth sounder, log to measure speed, and a short wave radio. He was impressed that Bernard sailed by the stars, but didn’t have faith in the infallibility of this system — man being liable to mistakes in judgement.
I, on the other hand, thought that, should any of Captain Marshall’s equipment fail, he’d be dead in the water, the cliché seeming apt in this situation. I didn’t understand why Dr. Payne would trust her life on the sea to a man who could read neither wind nor stars. But love makes us do funny things.
Bernard and I spent a day in San Fernando with Captain Marshall and Dr. Payne. Having been subject to so much corruption at the port, I expected to find a seedy, run-down hole. But aside from the beached battleship we saw on entering the harbour, there was no evidence of the scars of war or even that this was a military base. San Fernando, with its clean streets, middle class homes, and sprinkling of Victorian style mansions, was a pleasant, laid-back place.
Captain Marshall told us it had been raining for days, and the weather we had experienced on our sail from Hong Kong was the result of a typhoon to the north of us. We had managed to sail through before the low pressure system gathered enough energy to hit us directly.
Next morning, our yachts set sail for Manila Bay. We stayed close for radio contact, our VHF frequency limited to 40 miles. During the night a squall came up. We took down our sails and drifted, keeping an eye on the light from Captain Marshall’s yacht in case he needed us. Soon after, Captain Marshall sent an SOS saying he was taking in water and didn’t know what to do.
“There’s water all over my floor below deck,”
he radioed.
“Where’s it coming from?” Bernard asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll look.”
After a short while he was back on the radio. “It’s coming through the port hole in my head,” he said.
“Shut it,” Bernard said.
We waited for an up-date on the situation. It only took a minute or two. “Problem solved,” he reported.
We weren’t sure Captain Marshall would make it to Europe. But we knew that sometimes ignorance can work in your favour. In Hong Kong we’d been told of a woman sailing from Taiwan who got caught in a typhoon. She hadn’t a clue what do, so she crawled under her salon table, rolled up into a ball, and didn’t move. Two days later the sea was calm. She went on deck and beheld Hong Kong rising before her out of the sea. The yacht had taken itself into port.
Our sail from San Fernando to Manila Bay took two days. On the evening of the second day, we passed south of Corregidor, where so many American and Filipino soldiers lost their lives during the Second World War. Again I was reminded of a historical event that until that moment didn’t mean much to me. I hadn’t even known Corregidor was in the Philippines, and if I had, until I arrived I couldn’t have placed the Philippines on the map.
Manila Bay was an appalling mess of disgusting pollution and general neglect. We ploughed our way through a cesspool of waste, oil slick, and discarded plastic bags before reaching the Manila Yacht Club. Had one of us fallen overboard, I’m sure we’d have dissolved in that toxic stew within minutes. I didn’t know how the fish managed.
Marshall was full of surprises. He knew his way around the city far better than he knew his way around a sailboat. While serving in the army, he had been stationed in San Fernando and had spent off-duty time in Manila. We discovered he was quite good as a folk singer when he took us to a local bar and performed with a borrowed guitar from a musician he knew there. Before parting, he invited us to a fancy party in a hotel where a daughter of Fernando Marcos was a guest. It was his way of saying thank you to us for looking after him during our joint sail.
