Sailor Woman: The Best Of Cruising

Peter and local Filipino carpenters building the 56-foot Herreshoff Bounty in Cebu, Philippines. Photo: Jill Knight

This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine and forms part of our latest edition of boating features from Sailor Woman Jill Knight. As more Sailor Woman stories are added online, this series will continue to explore the people, places and experiences that shape a life under sail.

In all my decades of cruising under sail, some of the best, most satisfying times have been, and still are, when I’m engaged in a project that involves the locals of the country or town I’m in. But then, perhaps equally, I love my times around beautiful remote islands where there are no locals. In those places satisfaction comes from hunting, fishing and gathering with purpose, as in feeding myself.

In both cases, purpose is the common denominator, along with immersion rather than looking in from outside. But the deep joy of connection with the natural world, without the distractions of people, adds satisfaction on another level.

Building a Boat

When I left Australia on Cooee in 1983 it was with her Kiwi owner. Peter was a boatbuilder and wherever we went, we were around boats and boat equipment that needed repair work; paid or unpaid.

I tagged along on these jobs for fun and learning – and to help out, of course. In Noumea Peter found work in the boatyard, then in PNG he put a wheelhouse on a workboat.

In between, while visiting a boatbuilding village on Malaita, Solomon Islands, he decided we needed a bigger boat for ourselves. Good timber and experienced labour were available, but sails, motor, pumps, quality fastenings and surface coatings would all have to be sourced elsewhere.

With the arrangements agreed and visa applications in, we set off for Hong Kong to buy essential equipment.

We expected to build and sail the basic boat out of the Solomons for fitting-out somewhere more sophisticated. We had reached the Philippines when we received news that our Solomons visas had not been approved: the Minister could see no great advantage in our project.

Nonetheless, we’d had rich experiences in his country, including a chance to return kindness when Peter repaired sawmill machinery for a timber cutting village.

Unexpected Detours

Undeterred by the setback, we roamed far corners of the Philippines on buses, bancas, jeepneys and tuk-tuks and found the possibilities for building Peter’s dreamboat were even more exciting than in the Solomons.

We made a new plan to build in a Manila yard, put a deposit on an initial timber order and continued on to Hong Kong. When Peter flew back to Manila to inspect the quality of the planks supposedly purchased for us, there was no timber and no deposit: rich learning that made us somewhat poorer.

As luck would have it, a fibreglass yacht built in mainland China, a Celestial 48, had just arrived in the Hong Kong marina where we were loading up on materials for the new build.

We met the American entrepreneur who had a joint venture with the Chinese government in a coastal city called Xiamen. The operation shared a government shipyard and its Chinese workers in order to build and launch the sloops that were bound for the US market.

The local workers had many skills but had never seen a yacht or worked with fibreglass. Peter and I were recruited to fill skill gaps. We postponed the Philippines plan and sailed our heavily laden Cooee north.

Deng Xiaoping had opened a narrow crack to the West but there were limits. Cooee was not permitted to remain in the water: perhaps such a freedom machine threatened Chinese decision makers in those days where Mao suits, communal self-criticism sessions and public executions were the norm.

Life in the Philippines

Peter and I spent five months in Xiamen, riding our bikes to work six days a week along with thousands of Chinese workers.

We spent our one day off on the water, having ourselves invited onto the junks moored in the harbour. As we learned about these vessels via sign language from the fishers and cargo men, we hatched a plan to try to buy a junk.

But that’s another story and we ended up leaving China on our faithful Cooee to return to the Philippines, to a small village on the island of Cebu where we’d made friends.

A hurricane had hit while we’d been away and completely destroyed the lovely bamboo and thatch home of our friend Margarita.

“You will build your new boat here,” she announced, waving her arms to encompass the big bare concrete slab beside which she now lived in a tiny shack.

And so it happened. Peter and I employed carpenters and furniture makers, had a tall bamboo shed built and became absorbed into the Po-oc community for the following years.

At one stage I went back to Australia to earn some money for our project and returned to find Peter had created an empire in our little village.

Our boat was a 56-foot Herreshoff and he had taken on the building of another Herreshoff, a 65-foot Mistral. He employed many of the village men, plus men and a few women from other villages.

He had even formed the Wooden Boat Basketball Team and had T-shirts made for the players. We were totally immersed in the life of the village and it was wonderful.

Finding Balance

It sounds as if there was very little of the quiet, remote kind of cruising and it’s true that it was intermittent but by no means absent.

However, while our years together were full of craziness and marvellous experiences, the fact was that I was living Peter’s life. He was easily bored and could change direction on a dime.

I didn’t regret any of it but could see that he would never be happy with the sort of balance of busyness and tranquillity that would suit me.

In any case, he was totally energised by the exoticism and challenges of what he had created in Po-oc and had no plans to leave it behind.

Not that Peter needed a plan to do a sudden U-turn, but I decided to sail on. He set Cooee up for me to handle on my own and sailed south with me for a few days before finding a ferry back to Po-oc.

My sadness was acute. But when I sat alone on my varnished perch above Cooee’s lovely counter stern and surveyed my estate, euphoria made acceptance possible, even welcome.

Since then, there have been many more solitary, tranquil times on gentle seas and in the magnificence of nature than busy, peopled times full of action. Each to his own, as cruising allows.

This feature article originally appeared in AFLOAT Magazine. To explore more stories like this, browse the AFLOAT Magazine archive or view the latest edition of AFLOAT Magazine.