Frederic Abildgaard Fenger was a naval architect, Navy officer, and adventurer best known for his solo sailing memoir Alone in the Caribbean. Fenger’s 1911 survey of the volcanic islands stretching northward off the coast of South America is a fascinating tale of discovery, self-reliance, and seamanship. His vivid writing and eye for detail are reminiscent of Joshua Slocum’s earlier classic Sailing Alone Around the World. Except Fenger made his 800-mile passage from Grenada to the Virgin Islands in a rudderless 17-foot sailing canoe named Yakaboo. His only steerage came from the vessel’s two batwing sails and a moveable “drop keel” that slid fore and aft on sheaves to change the center of leverage.
Fenger kept a detailed captain’s log and published an account of the journey in 1917. The story of his adventure is no less inspiring today than when it first appeared more than a century ago. Although the book itself is largely overlooked, Fenger’s Yakaboo (which means “Goodbye”) is still preserved at, oddly enough, the Bruce Mines Museum in Ontario, Canada.
This condensed excerpt from Chapter 1 introduces the sailor, the voyage, and his vessel.—editor
The “Yakaboo”is born and the cruise begins.
“Crab pas mache, li pas gras;
li mache touop, et li tombe nans chodier.”
“If a crab don’t walk, he don’t get fat;
If he walk too much, he gets in a pot.”
—From the Creole.
Is it in the nature of all of us, or is it just my own peculiar make-up which brings, when the wind blows, that queer feeling, mingled longing and dread? A thousand invisible fingers seem to be pulling me, trying to draw me away from the four walls where I have every comfort, into the open where I shall have to use my wits and my strength to fool the sea in its treacherous moods, to take advantage of fair winds and to fight when I am fairly caught—for a man is a fool to think he can conquer nature.
It had been a long time since I had felt the weatherglow on my face, a feeling akin to the numb forehead in the first touch of inebriety. The lure was coming back to me. It was the lure of islands and my thoughts had gone back to a certain room in school where as a boy I used to muse over a huge relief map of the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Goodbye to civilization
We talked it over. After the manner of the Carib, I would sail from island to island alone in a canoe.
Next to the joy of making a cruise is that of the planning and still greater to me was the joy of creating the Yakaboo which should carry me. I should explain that this is an expression use by Ellice Islanders (in the Pacific Ocean just north of the Fiji group) when they throw something overboard and it means “Good-bye.”
“’Good-bye’ to civilization for a while,” I thought, but later there were times when I feared the name might have a more sinister meaning.
So my craft was named before I put her down on paper. She must be large enough to hold me and my outfit and yet light enough so that alone I could drag her up any uninhabited beach where I might land. Most important of all, she must be seaworthy in the real sense of the word, for between the islands I should be at sea with no lee for fifteen hundred miles. I got all this in a length of seventeen feet and a width of thirty-nine inches. From a plan of two dimensions on paper she grew to a form of three dimensions in a little shop in Boothbay and later, as you shall hear, exhibited a fourth dimension as she gyrated in the seas off Kick ’em Jinny. The finished hull weighed less than her skipper—one hundred and forty-seven pounds. From a study of the pilot chart, I found that a prevailing northeast trade wind blows for nine months in the year throughout the Lesser Antilles.
Adventure and peril await the “Yakaboo”
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found that the wind seldom blew less than twenty miles an hour and very often blew a whole gale of sixty-five miles an hour. Moreover, at this season of the year, I found that the “trade” would be inclined to the northward and that my course through the Grenadines—the first seventy miles of my cruise—would be directly into the wind’s eye.
I had been counting on that magical figure (30) in the circle of the wind-rose, which means that for every thirty hours out of a hundred one may here expect “calms, light airs, and variables.” Not only this, but, I was informed that I should encounter a westerly tide current which at times ran as high as six knots an hour. To be sure, this tide current would change every six hours to an easterly set which, though it would be in my favor, would kick up a sea that would shake the wind out of my sails and almost bring my canoe to a standstill.
“The sea was full of sharks and I was told that if the seas did not get me the sharks would.”
Nor was this all. The sea was full of sharks and I was told that if the seas did not get me the sharks would. Seven inches of freeboard is a small obstacle to a fifteen-foot shark. Had the argument stopped with these three I would at this point gladly have presented my canoe to His Excellency the Governor, so that he might plant it on his front lawn and grow geraniums in the cockpit. Three is an evil number if it is against you but a fourth argument came along and the magic triad was broken. If seas, currents, and sharks did not get me, I would be overcome by the heat and be fever-stricken.
I slept but lightly that first night on shore. Instead of being lulled to sleep by the squalls which blew down from the mountains, I would find myself leaning far out over the edge of the bed trying to keep from being capsized by an impending comber. Finally, my imagination having reached the climax of its fiendish trend, I reasoned calmly to myself. If I would sail from island to island after the manner of the Carib, why not seek out the native and learn the truth from him ? The next morning I found my man, with the blood of the Yaribai tribe of Africa in him, who knew the winds, currents, sharks, the heat, and the fever. He brought to me the only Carib on the island, a boy of sixteen who had fled to Grenada after the eruption in Saint Vincent had destroyed his home and family.
From these two I learned the secret of the winds which depend on the phases of the moon. They told me to set sail on the slack of the lee tide and cover my distance before the next lee tide ran strong. They pointed out the fever beaches I should avoid and told me not to bathe during the day, nor to uncover my head—even to wipe my brow. I must never drink my water cold and always put a little rum in it—and a hundred other things which I did not forget. As for the “shyark”—”You no troble him, he no bodder you.” “Troble” was used in the sense of tempt and I should therefore never throw food scraps overboard or troll a line astern. I also learned—this from an Englishman who had served in India—that if I wore a red cloth, under my shirt, covering my spine, the actinic rays of the sun would be stopped and I should not be bothered by the heat. It was with a lighter heart, then, that I set about to rig my canoe—she was yet to be baptized—and to lick my outfit into shape for the long cruise to the northward.
Anatomy of a sailing canoe
She did not look her length of seventeen feet and with her overhangs would scarcely be taken for a boat meant for serious cruising. Upon close examination, however, she showed a powerful midship section that was deceiving and when the natives lifted her off the horses—”O Lard! she light!”—wherein lay the secret of her ability. Her heaviest construction was in the middle third which embodied fully half of her total weight. With her crew and the heavier part of the outfit stowed in this middle third she was surprisingly quick in a seaway. With a breaking sea coming head on, her bow would ride the foamy crest while her stern would drop into the hollow behind, offering little resistance to the rising bow.
She had no rudder, the steering being done entirely by the handling of the main sheet. By a novel construction of the centerboard and the well in which the board rolled forward and aft on sets of sheaves, I could place the center of lateral resistance of the canoe’s underbody exactly below the center of effort of the sails with the result that on a given course she would sail herself. Small deviations such as those caused by waves throwing her bow to leeward or sudden puffs that tended to make her luff were compensated for by easing off or trimming in the mainsheet. In the absence of the rudder-plane aft, which at times is a considerable drag to a swinging stern, this type of canoe eats her way to windward in every squall, executing a “pilot’s luff” without loss of headway, and in puffy weather will actually fetch slightly to windward of her course, having more than overcome her drift.
She was no new or untried freak for I had already cruised more than a thousand miles in her predecessor, the only difference being that the newer boat was nine inches greater in beam. On account of the increased beam it was necessary to use oars instead of the customary double paddle. I made her wider in order to have a stiffer boat and thus lessen the bodily fatigue in sailing the long channel runs.
She was divided into three compartments of nearly equal length—the forward hold, the cockpit, and the afterhold. The two end compartments were accessible through watertight hatches within easy reach of the cockpit. The volume of the cockpit was diminished by one half by means of a watertight floor raised above the waterline—like the main deck of a ship. This floor was fitted with circular metal hatches through which I could stow the heavier parts of my outfit in the hold underneath. The cockpit proper extended for a length of a little over six feet between bulkheads so that when occasion demanded I could sleep in the canoe.
Her rig consisted of two fore and aft sails of the canoe type and a small jib.
An increasing impatience to open the Pandora’s Box which was waiting for me, hurried the work of preparation and in two weeks I was ready to start. The Colonial Treasurer gave me a Bill of Health for the Yakaboo as for any ship and one night I laid out my sea clothes and packed my trunk to follow me as best it could.
Finally underway on an 800-mile sail
On the morning of February ninth I carried my outfit down to the quay in a drizzle. An inauspicious day for starting on a cruise I thought. My Man Friday, who had evidently read my thoughts, hastened to tell me that this was only a little “cocoa shower.” Even as I got the canoe alongside the quay the sun broke through the cloud bank on the hill tops and as the rain ceased the small crowd which had assembled to see me off came out from the protection of doorways as I proceeded to stow the various parts of my nomadic home. Into the forward compartment went the tent like a reluctant green caterpillar, followed by the pegs, sixteen pounds of tropical bacon, my cooking pails and the “butterfly,” a powerful little gasoline stove. Into the after compartment disappeared more food, clothes, two cans of fresh water, fuel for the “butterfly,” films in sealed tins, developing outfit and chemicals, ammunition, and that most sacred of all things—the ditty bag.
Under the cockpit floor I stowed paint, varnish, and a limited supply of tinned food, all of it heavy and excellent ballast in the right place. My blankets, in a double oiled bag, were used in the cockpit as a seat when rowing. Here I also carried two compasses, an axe, my camera, and a chart case with my portfolio and log. I had also a high-powered rifle and a Colt’s thirty-eight-forty.
With all her load, the Yakaboo sat on the water as jaunty as ever. The golden brown of her varnished topsides and deck, her green boot-top and white sails made her as inviting a craft as I had ever stepped into. I bade good-bye to the men I had come to know as friends and with a shove the canoe and I were clear of the quay. The new clean sails hung from their spars for a moment like the unprinted leaves of a book and then a gentle puff came down from the hills, rippled the glassy waters of the carénage and grew into a breeze which caught the canoe and we were sailing northward on the weather tide. I have come into the habit of saying “we,” for next to a dog or a horse there is no companionship like that of a small boat. The smaller a boat the more animation she has and as for a canoe, she is not only a thing of life but is a being of whims and has a sense of humor. Have you ever seen a cranky canoe unburden itself of an awkward novice and then roll from side to side in uncontrollable mirth, having shipped only a bare teacupful of water? Even after one has become the master of his craft there is no dogged servility and she will balk and kick up her heels like a skittish colt. I have often “scended” on the face of a mountainous following sea with an exhilaration that made me whoop for joy, only to have the canoe whisk about in the trough and look me in the face as if to say, “You fool, did you want me to go through the next one ?” Let a canoe feel that you are afraid of her and she will become your master with the same intuition that leads a thoroughbred to take advantage of the tremor he feels through the reins. At every puff she will forget to sail and will heel till her decks are under. Hold her down firmly, speak encouragingly, stroke her smooth sides and she will fly through a squall without giving an inch. We were already acquainted for I had twice had her out on trial spins and we agreed upon friendship as our future status.
After changing ownership several times during the past century, Frederick Fenger’s sailing canoe “Yakaboo” now resides in the care of the Bruce Mines Museum in Ontario, Canada. Courtesy Bruce Mines Museum.