"Just for the Hell of It" : 325 



that have crossed the Atlantic. Hardly a year goes by but what some 

 small vessel with a small crew or a solitary navigator slips into an 

 American harbor and is duly heralded by the newspapers. Occasion- 

 ally such a vessel comes and goes and is never noticed by the news- 

 papers and yachting magazines. 



Usually, as our title suggests, the motive of the traveler is amuse- 

 ment or adventure or curiosity — to find out what it is like. Some- 

 times it is sheer disgust with the complications of life ashore. In re- 

 cent years the roster of small boats crossing has been increased by a 

 steady stream of refugees fleeing from political tyranny — very often 

 in inadequate or unseaworthy vessels. From time to time a gay 

 adventure winds up in misery and disaster. 



Let us begin with an example of good fun and good sense at sea 

 that happens to be also a personal experience, leaving for later con- 

 sideration the extreme examples and the wild eccentricities. In 1929 

 I sailed my schooner, Kin\ajou, into Gibraltar and found at anchor 

 there a small but beautiful Httle English yawl with the name Day- 

 dream spaced out in letters of bronze across her transom. At the 

 moment I first saw her, a tall, dark-haired young fellow was swing- 

 ing in a boatswain's chair, just under the truck of the mainmast, 

 reeving a new set of halyards. He turned out to be John Campbell, 

 and he and his partner, Phillip Merton, presently came aboard for 

 pink gins and dinner. It would have been hard to find pleasanter 

 company. Campbell was a chemical engineer and Merton had for 

 years been secretary to Rudyard Kipling. With their savings they had 

 bought and equipped the Daydream and started off to see the world. 

 They had had a successful cruise down from the Channel ports and 

 were bound for the West Indies and the American coasts, so we de- 

 cided to sail in company. 



We were together in the ports of Morocco and in the passage to 

 Madeira and the Canaries. We parted company then, for while they 

 sailed to the Cape Verde Islands, I went down the African coast; but 

 we were together again in the West Indies, and so on. From time to 

 time I would sail on the Daydream while one or the other of the 

 boys would join my amateur crew on Kin\ajou. 



Daydream was a small, though not an extreme, vessel for ocean 

 passage. She was well designed, well built, properly sailed and prop- 

 erly navigated. Naturally, in heavy seas she was lively, and being a 

 deep boat with only a few feet of freeboard, she was occasionally 

 wet; but life aboard her was generally pleasant and always safe. In 

 all her many miles of travel she met with only one misadventure. 



