It's the journey that counts

IN AN IDLE MOMENT I wondered if there were one particular book I would recommend as a Christmas present for someone interested in sailing. I hit immediately upon Tom Neale’s famous book, An Island to Oneself, the story of how the author spent six years on a desert island in the Pacific, mostly alone.

I thought that book would resonate with anyone who sails. Somewhere in the back of our minds there is a picture of the perfect tropical island, peaceful and serene with its white beaches, turquoise waters, coconut palms and glistening reefs. Tom Neale shows us that this is not just a dream. It’s real. It’s Anchorage Island in Suvarov Atoll, 200 miles from the nearest inhabited island.

But then I glanced around at the boating books lining my little office and I thought, “No, not Neale. Hiscock, for goodness’ sake.” Eric Hiscock, the humble circumnavigator. It’s not a name you hear much of these days, but his beautifully written book, Cruising Under Sail, must have attracted many landlubbers to the wonderful sport of deep-sea cruising.

After a moment or two, reality set it. “How can you possibly mention Hiscock,” I wondered, “if you don’t also mention Tom Day? And, good lord, what about Frank Wightman and Roth, and the Pardeys, and Moitessier and Bardiaux and Slocum and . . .”

I concluded that it’s simply impossible to pick out one book that would fascinate everybody interested in sailing; which is reason enough to go back to my first instinctive choice, Tom Neale, and  the story of how he spent six years alone on an uninhabited coral atoll half a mile long and three hundred yards wide in the South Pacific.

He first went there in October 1952 and remained alone (with only two yachts calling) until June, 1954 when he was taken off ill after a dramatic rescue. He went back in April 1960 and remained alone again until December 1963.

An Island to Oneself (Collins) is a well written and well illustrated peek into the mind of an unusual man, a man with the guts to experience a life that most of us dream about but don’t dare to try. It’s out of print now, I believe, but it’s still available occasionally on the used-book market from sources such as  www.alibris.com and www.abebooks.com

There is another reason for sticking with Tom Neale, one that brings at least a glimmer of relief and satisfaction to those of us who  seek, but do not find, paradise. In the end, his perfect island proved not to be perfect after all. He left for two reasons. First, he was afraid of dying a lonely death. “I wasn’t being sentimental about it,” he wrote, “but the time had come to wake up from an exquisite dream before it turned into a nightmare.”

The second reason was more prosaic. “A party of eleven pearl divers descended on Suvarov — and, frankly, turned my heaven into hell . . . I didn’t dislike them, but their untidiness, noise, and close proximity were enough to dispel any wavering doubts I may have had.”

I guess it’s what I’ve always said: Every silver lining has a cloud. Nevertheless, it will do your soul good to read this book. Man can strive for perfection and even achieve it for a time, but most of us eventually learn that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. So enjoy the sailing when you can.

Today’s Thought

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

— R. L. Stevenson

Tailpiece

A local junior-school teacher was trying to teach the concept of distance. She asked whether her pupils throught they lived close to school, or far away.

Nobody was willing to hazard a guess except little Susan, who was quite adamant that she lived very, very close to school.

“How are you certain?” asked the teacher.

“Well, every time I come home my mother says: ‘Hell, are you home already?’”

A fantasy dispelled

MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT has brought me back to my senses. Like many amateur sailors, I have dreamed for most of my life about living on a desert island — an uninhabited tropical atoll in the South Pacific, with softly rustling palm trees fringing a white powder beach lapped by warm turquoise wavelets.

My present was a book called An lsland to Oneself, written by Tom Neale, a New Zealander who stopped dreaming a dream he'd had for 30 years, and finally acted it out.  I had heard of Tom, of course. His name comes up frequently on the cruising grapevine, but I had never read his book.

In 1952, when he was 50, Tom settled on tiny Anchorage Island, in the remote Suvarov Atoll of the northern Cook Islands. It was absolutely the island of his dreams. His book describes how he caught fish and crayfish with little effort. Coconuts grew in profusion. He established a garden where vegetables flourished so well that he got three crops a year.

Once in a blue moon a small yacht would call, and he'd spend a couple of days showing off his island and the improvements he had made.  It must have looked and sounded idyllic to his visitors.
 But no matter how much he loved his island and his way of life, you get the feeling that something was missing from his little paradise, or, rather, that something was incomplete.  It wasn't that he didn't know the physical risks he was taking.  He accepted them quite philosophically, and in fact he nearly died from a back injury.  By some miracle, two American men sailed into the lagoon on a yacht and found him immobilized in bed, unable to move, even to sit up to eat or drink. He had been there four days. They fed him, massaged him, and nursed him back to health.

He was finally driven off his island when a group of pearl fishers moved in and spoiled his solitude.  He went back later, though, and spent most of his senior years there until he was forced to make a final move because of cancer.

What comes across very forcibly is that this idea of living on an uninhabited island is fantasy, nothing more. It's true that some people will be able to live out a fantasy far longer than others, but in the end, it seems to me, human beings need change. Even paradise becomes boring if you have  no contrast, nothing to which to compare it.  Tom Neale actually experienced the pipe dream that so many of us fantasized about for so many years.  But in the end his book has done me the favor of  demonstrating that, as a long-term experience,  this desert island business is simply impractical. It will bother me no more.  A visit would be wonderful. Two weeks, even two months, knowing that there would be a change at the end of that time, but certainly not a lifetime.

I have sat under the rustling palms on a gorgeous deserted beach on a tropical island called Fernando de Noronha, but my time there was limited because I was on my way to greater adventures.  Now, in place of a fantasy, I have concrete memories of that limited episode. Those memories are enough to keep me warm in the cold wet winter of the Pacific Northwest. Thanks to Tom Neale,  I no longer need the Tom Neale dream.

Today's Thought
There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.
— Barbara Lazear Ascher, Playing after Dark

Tailpiece
Two homeless men helped a limping nun across the street.
"What happened to your leg?" asked one.
"I twisted my ankle in the bath," said the nun.
After she'd gone, one man asked:  "What's a bath, then?"
"Don't ask me," said the other. "I'm not a Catholic."

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)