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Aboard Te Tiki my baby brother and I lived cozily in our floating home. On deck we wore big dirty kapok life jackets. With our energetic Boston Bull Terrier 'Barnacle' for company the three of us would flip about the deck, 'arf-arf-arfing' in happy imitation of the seals we saw. Other times we hung over the bow tirelessly watching the dolphins cavort, Barney as interested as we were. The weather became stormy and the little yachts were caught up in the big Pacific swells, Mom and Dad were tense with fatigue and worry, but Tim and I gaily jiggled up and down in the companionway yelling 'whee-e' every time Te Tiki took one more crashing wave aboard.
"I trade my horse for your son!"
Most Mexicans had never set eyes of a gringo child. Petted and brought candy wherever we went, the situation nearly got out of hand when a pistol-packing ranchero looking like a bandit rode up on a fine horse whose leathers were studded with bright silver. He soon became obsessed with Tim's blond blue-eyed looks."I trade my horse for your son!" he demanded of my father. The ranchero was obviously a man used to getting what he wanted.
"It is impossible to take your horse on my boat," Dad replied. He quickly hauled up the anchor and set sail.
No shackles on their spirits.
Our mother, Ruthie, who loved her life on Te Tiki, bathed us in seawater, washed our clothes in seawater, and boiled the potatoes, when we had them, in seawater. She even brushed our teeth in seawater! Scarce fresh water was occasionally collected from springs ashore into small wooden barrels in a manner little changed from the times of the square-riggers. This was the B.P. Era, Before Plastic. Dad liked to make a great show of his bath, lathering himself up all over in detergent then diving cleanly into the water so that a ring of bubbles floated to the surface around him. Mom and Dad's attitude to hardship was uncomplicated. They were happy just to be afloat. Though both had enjoyed comfortable upbringings, they felt that an obsession with the need for hot water showers and salt-free living was a shackle on their sprits that they were willing to do without.
A love of untrammeled nature and Indians.
Dad's father was a U.S. Navy Captain. The family had had important positions in Samoa, Shanghai, Charleston and Long Beach in California. At 18 Dad joined the wartime Navy himself where he reveled in the easy-going camaraderie of the non-commissioned officers. An only child raised under the high expectations a debutant mother, a career officer and a famous architect grandfather, (William Hebbard, Father of the California Mission-Style) his youthful navy experience of easy unpretentious friendships subsequently marked his attitude for life. Mother was the somewhat spoiled younger daughter of an Irish-German business couple in Los Angeles. Each holiday time, in a new model car, the family had set out for the wilderness areas of the West, bumping over unsealed roads to explore reservations, mountains, lakes and deserts. One year they even reached New York where their California license plates caused a sensation. Mom loved untrammeled nature and Indians; she had the gift of relating unselfconsciously to every sort of person. Her brother Ed Fabian, seven years her senior, taught her to sail. Ed owned the beautiful ketch Resolute on which generations of L.A. Mariner Scouts have spent an exhilarating holiday, that even today, under his son Mike Fabian's hand, still charters back and forth to Catalina Island.
After only three weeks of acquaintance they married.
Jack and Ruthie, met in San Diego on Dad's leave. When he realized that Ruthie, who worked at a bank at the time, not only didn't get seasick but actually liked to sail, he immediately proposed. After only three weeks of acquaintance they married on father's 21st birthday. Mom was just 19. For a wedding present the couple was given a small house. But Dad infuriated the new In-law's when months later, they sold what had been intended to give them security to buy Te Tiki. By the time of my father's discharge at war's end I believe that my parents were both surprised to discover that they had gained the responsibility of two children, but they refused to let that fact discourage them. After a stint working for the Catalina Harbor Patrol, they emptied their bank account, stocked the boat and optimistically set sail for Panama.
Why are we heading to sea, Daddy?
I am told that after the war, my brother and I were the first kids to have sailed from California to Panama. It was considered very risky. And it is true that yachts of that time were primitive in some aspects. They were much more work to sail and of course navigation was certainly a totally different kettle of fish! If more than a day or so passed without a good sun sight we were lost. In between fixes Dad estimated his position with dead reckoning based on the reading from the trailing taffrail log, guessing at how the currents were affecting the course. Later, when I was ten and we were on our second voyage to Panama, I remember he abruptly turned the boat west.
"Why are we heading to sea, Daddy," I asked?
"To put as much distance between us and the coast as possible," was his terse reply. "There are reefs
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