“There are reefs enough to go around”
A book review of “Sailing All Seas in the Idle Hour”
By Dwight Long, First Published 1938.
I found my copy in a little second hand bookshop in Devonport Auckland about 20 years ago. (C.B. Swallow) Despite being almost 90 years old this the first account in this genre (which includes authors like Tambs, Robinson, Slocum & Gerbault) that modern day sailors can really relate to….. Long is not just some Victorian indestructible super hero, surviving on memories of the empire and hard tack, but a sailor living in a world that is vaguely like the one we inhabit
The theme of the book is best summed up in the preface by legendary mariner and Melburnian Alan Villiers….
“Wandering through the South Seas in these days, one is astonished at the number of small yachts sailing there. …. In frail craft I would have trembled in, they make long and often hazardous voyages with surprising ease….. now and again, of course, one of the vessels may find permanent moorings on some pacific reef. Then the crew go home, and build themselves another boat. There are reefs enough to go around… In all this intrepid band the name of Dwight Long stands out. With most things against him …. he took his little ‘Idle Hour’ from Seattle …… and all those lovely far-off places, and weathered hurricanes and avoided reefs, and paid his bills and pacified his crews, and made friends and sailed his way leisurely and pleasantly along. What a life! Yet it takes courage of a high order and determination rare in these days, and a sea-skill born of long experience; and the ability to suffer much, and find contentment and companionship in one’s own mind… He is the true sea-wanderer, in these hurried days, when the professional seaman sees little but ports…. and the wandering globetrotter has his soft way sped until the whole earth is fast developing-for him-into nothing but a nerve-racking kaleidoscope of which, his voyage made, he remembers little. No, give me a wandering such as Dwight Long’s and a little ship, stout as the IDLE HOUR-though in truth I would have liked at least 40ft added to her length, and I probably would have stayed in the tropics.
She was a stout little craft, well sailed, and Dwight Long’s is a good yarn of her voyaging.”
Long was born and bred in Seattle, on America’s north-west coast, and spent many of his early years messing about in a variety of boats before deciding to sail around the world in a ketch he called Idle Hour.
Dwight Long, dog Hugo and Jack Lowry in October 1934. Photo Saltwater People Historical Society
The 32’6” IDLE HOUR was built in 1921 as a gaff-rigged ketch by boatbuilder Carl Rathfin for his own use as a deep-sea pleasure craft before being bought by Long. With a friend named Jack Lowry he fitted the ketch for a long sea voyage, and accompanied by a dog named Hugo, left Seattle on September 20, 1934 and called in at San Francisco and Los Angeles before arriving in Honolulu on Christmas Day. Lowry left the IDLE HOUR in Honolulu and his place was taken by William Loy.
The IDLE HOUR before her voyage
From Honolulu, Long and Loy sailed an unhurried route through the Marquesas to Tahiti, where Loy left, then on to Bora Bora and Pago Pago in American Samoa. Along the way, Long earned money to find his travels by carrying paying passengers, chartering IDLE HOUR and writing columns for newspapers, some in Australia.
Having just left Pago Pago in Samoa on November 23, 1934, with a young Tahitian boy, Timi Tefaoora, as a travelling companion, a hurricane hit the IDLE HOUR, snapped her masts, and for 25 days the boys, sailed the 1,200 miles to New Zealand under a jury rig, with a blanket for sail. Hugo the dog was washed overboard.
After three months in Auckland and extensive repairs to his boat, Long and his travelling companions set sail for Sydney, arriving in Manly on March 19, 1936. The IDLE HOUR was berthed beside the former cargo wharf at Manly, which by then had been converted to a fun pier.
After 18 months at sea and more than 12,000nm, the IDLE HOUR and its rigging were sorely in need of an overhaul and a new suit of sails was essential.
The Idle Hour berthed at the Manly fun pier at Easter 1936. Picture Northern Beaches Library
Experts at Garden Island repaired the short-wave radio set, a generous Sydney yachtsman donated a new suit of sails and Long was able to make enough money for the overhaul of his boat by briefly berthing it at Fort Macquarie, now the site of the Sydney Opera House, and opening it for inspection by the public.
He also wrote a column for one of the Sydney newspapers. The Apex Club gave Long a border collie-cattle dog cross to replace Hugo but the new dog preferred living at Manly to sailing and jumped ship.
The IDLE HOUR sailed out of Port Jackson on May 8, 1936, after a seven-week stay. with Long, the Tahitian Timi and two New Zealanders, Len Campbell and Ivan Palmer. He stopped at Townsville to take on supplies and several islands off the Queensland coast before reaching Port Moresby, From there it was on to Bali, where the IDLE HOUR ran aground but sustained only minor damage, and then on to Surabaya.
But personal disaster struck in January 1936 in Colombo, where Timi died of malaria. He had five bouts of the disease in three months and was given oxygen 18 hours a day for five days before dying in Longs arms.
From Colombo, Long sailed to Aden and then through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean.
The IDLE HOUR out of the water in Port Said
Long spent some time in France but stopped longer in London, where he paused to write a 120,000-word book about his adventures called “Seven Seas on a Shoestring”, which soon became a best-seller. In June he left Falmouth with Wilbur Thomas, 25 year old American acquaintance who had come from California to sail the last lap. On the 75-day Atlantic crossing they were overhauled in the Bay of Biscay by a Spanish Rightist patrol and jailed overnight as would-be assassins of General Franco. He finally stepped ashore on American soil on September 7, 1938.
But while the IDLE HOUR was lying at anchor at New York, a hurricane blew it ashore and wrecked it. On hearing of the wreck, the people of Seattle paid for the IDLE HOUR to be rebuilt, after which Long sailed into his home port on September 28, 1940 – almost six years to the day since he had left.
Long’s five-year world cruise, made him the youngest person at the time to sail their own boat around the world, and the IDLE HOUR became the smallest craft at the time to sail from America to England via the Pacific.
During World War II, Long served in the US Navy’s aviation photography unit and was stationed aboard the aircraft carrier YORKTOWN II.
The film he shot was turned into a motion picture called The Fighting Lady, for which Long was an Academy Award and received the Legion of Merit from the president of the US.
After the war, Long returned to the Pacific to make a feature-length movie about the people of Tahiti shot, directed and edited by himself. The film, Tanga Tkia, took two years to make and was released in 1954. (I’m unable to find a copy of this film on line)
By 1974 Long was living in Venice, California, and running a string of gift shops, including one on the QUEEN MARY, the passenger liner that was converted to a floating hotel at Long Beach.
He died in 1993, aged 89. As for the IDLE HOUR, it finally sank off Oahu Island in Hawaii in 1974.