BOLD JOURNEY: THIRTY-SIX FEET TO TAHITI

[Music] and now here to present the actual films of tonight's bowl journey is jack douglas good evening ladies and gentlemen tonight's journey is the romantic story of jack randall a young scientist from los angeles who sailed across the pacific to continue his studies of marine life and who found both love and adventure on the way mr randall took his 36-foot catch the nani to honolulu and there he met his lovely chinese hawaiian fellow scientist and wife to be helen au they fell in love married made the nanny their home and had a little baby daughter years later the young family sailed to tahiti to probe the mysteries of its coral reefs our story begins in hawaii and takes us 2 300 miles across the blue pacific to the island paradise of tahiti aboard the randall's 36-foot catch the nani but before we set sail here's this message ladies and gentlemen we're here in a lovely home at malibu beach california dr jack randall has been called to the university of miami and the marine laboratories of miami on a special assignment however his lovely wife helen has been staying in los angeles at the home of mr randall's parents and she's graciously invited us here for this interview hello mrs randall welcome to our program series and i should say rather thank you for welcoming us here to malibu you know if your in-laws own this place i don't think that we can call your husband one of these typical struggling young scientists do you no as a matter of fact my in-laws live in beverly hills and this is the malibu beach home of our friends mr mrs frank pearson well it certainly is an appropriate setting mrs randall since most of your very fine adventure film does take place on the white pacific i wonder if you would tell us about yourself about how you met your husband how this voyage came about well i was born in hawaii and jack came out on his yacht to hawaii and he was a graduate assistant at the university of hawaii and i was also graduate assistant so we taught the same laboratory course and eventually we met is this your first visit to the united states i went to boston university where i received a master's degree in entomology that would i think be the study of insects well now it's about 2500 miles from hawaii to tahiti a long voyage for anyone particularly a little daughter such as you have she's what two and a half and a half two and a half well now didn't you have some fears and trepidations about taking her on such a long journey yes i did everyone said we had butterflies in our brains but i just couldn't stand leaving my daughter behind for a whole year so we took the chances surely one final question mrs randall your husband's letter mentioned a friend who was the fourth crew member of the nani would you identify him for us please and tell us how you recruited his services for this long voyage his name is norman baker and he's from new york and he's an engineer he came out to honolulu on a trans-pacific yacht and he wanted to go to tahiti so he came to see us and we liked him so we asked him to join us thank you very much mrs randall and now ladies and gentlemen 36 feet to tahiti with mrs helen randall narrating her husband's actual films of the sea voyage jack this is the part of the sea voice that no sailors liked the scrubbing and painting and making the boat looking nice and you were elected yes i was elected let's be a long boy so we decided to take quite a bit of store with us we had a variety of different type of food lori was the only one that didn't have to do any work she decided she had to help us with the grease on the turnbuckle did she comprehend what was going to happen the long sea voyage ahead mrs randall i don't think she really comprehended that she was going because the mountain had always been her home the day of departure relatives and friends came down to bid as goodbye in the traditional hawaiian styles that's your husband getting all the kisses is it not that's right he loves hawaiian goodbyes as the friends waved goodbye to us we murdered out of our slip at the alawi harbour in honolulu our first objective was the big island of hawaii we thought we'd take a shakedown cruise and get there in case any repairs had to be done we could do it there before we start off for our long voyage and see norman waving from a midship there to all his friends that he has met while he was there and how far away is the island of hawaii proper from oahu 150 miles the small craft warnings were up and we decided to race up sails now and as we go booming along and that's diamond head in the background a friend of ours came out in the helicopter and took these pictures of us and sent it to us later how many knots an hour does she travel bananas we can do as much as seven knots with the good wind norman decided he didn't really like this part between the islands the channel there was quite rough as you can see we had winds of about 30 to 40 knots we're coming into kealakeku bay now on the west side of the island of hawaii the water here is crystal clear and we anchored right off captain cook's monument now he was the discoverer of the hawaiian islands yes and he called it the sandwich islands and from the inscription there we learned that he discovered the islands and that he was also killed here at this particular spot in february 1779. we went around to the other side of the island the east side and came to rainbow falls it's so cold because at the foot of the fall there's usually a rainbow there and you see that dark air in the back jack it's actually a cavern that goes in quite far we took a ride out to see the recent lava flow in the puna district you can see the vast devastation to the forest there it's called the kilauea rift eruption and this was once a fairly good road good grief after our repairs and seeing the island of hawaii we now decide we start on our long voyage to tahiti but first we were to stop at carol natal which is 2 000 miles away from hawaii that would be your first landfall mrs randall yes and it was 500 miles north of tahiti just as a gag our friends thought it would be easier for us to distinguish between starboard and port by putting up different colored bottles nurman and my husband were very insulted on this reflection of their seamanship so the bottles were thrown overboard with a great deal of muttering to record the number of miles that we've gone each day we put over this log as the rotor turned the number of nautical miles is recorded on that scale the night light when it's erect the bulb on the surface with light and the greatest danger and a small boat like this is having a man fall overboard so we had all these precautions you have a very modern galley there don't you yes i do the first week out we had fresh bread and fresh vegetables and fruit but as the voyage went along you made use of our can stores and it's surprising how big your appetite became as you were out and see dishwashing was no problem at all by using a pot scratcher and when the deck is so washed you could just swish off the pots and pans and i suppose any husband wouldn't mind doing dishes in this manner my job during the day was to keep l'oreal mischief and we used to keep this life preserved on her sometimes when it's rough at night she would wear it to bed also i brought along some educational toys so that laurie wouldn't be bored on this long trip and on this little boat did you have to tie her down that all mrs randall when the weather was rough we usually tied her to the missing mask and just long enough so she could get just to the rail but not over jack couldn't wait to go to tahiti to start his scientific work he decided he'd make some plankton toes to collect the minute organism that flowed on the surface of the ocean up comes the plankton net it's a conical shape knit with a bottle at the bottom to collect little organism jack was quite surprised at what he found in there is preserving these little animals with formalin and it's comparing the halls during night and day night you find the organism come up to the surface so you get a greater a richer collection at night we hear these thuds on the deck and when i came up in the morning i'd find these flying fish lying around on the deck norman wanted to do navigating he had done most of that before and sunsets and sunrise were the things that enlighten our day while we were crossing the pacific and i'd often come up and watch as the sun goes down with the brilliant colors of orange and red at what time would laurie go to sleep nights whenever it got dark enough we'd take her down below and said it's betty bye time and she'd have to go down the squalls were quite frequent and this was a fairly big one i thought so i said well i'm gonna get myself a fresh water shampoo norman doesn't really like this you can see it was quite cold but i braised that storm and said that oh it feels so good to be able to wash your hair even in the open ocean it's even better than the vinegar and scissors oh yeah that rain water here comes another squall with a screeching winds and pouring rain but this time i was smart i stayed down below and we left jack at the helm and he doesn't look too happy usually after a squall we have some repairs to be made to the sales norman is fixing up the sales slide taking advantage of the sale when it was done i tried to strengthen some of the seam parts which may tear open as the old saying goes stitching time say he's nine well i use a sail palm and cell needle and sewing through that background was quite tough it really should be a man's job and again i was elected to do it you're winning all the elections aren't you mrs randall i won most of them now that the winds have come up again we'd raise all our sails and up those big jib and the nani although it was only 36 feet long actually carried quite a bit of sail when the sails are filled with wind it's quite a beautiful sight [Music] now here's jack coming up as king neptune as we got to the equator he wore this bowler hat that was given to him by his dad as a joke and then he had this mop oh up this map here that wouldn't stay up really norman was so proud of his long blonde hair so king neptune said off with it so again i was elected to do that job and i was so sorry for normal enough i got through it was really quite a close crop as you can see is this part of his initiation too caught up his initiation to wash out some rags and he is now paying homage to king neptune he was a good sport about it and now he's a shellback and got a certificate [Music] on a little dot in the pacific about 500 miles north into he was at carolinatol jack decided he'd climb up the rigging and see if you could see the atoll as being a low island you really don't have any mountains to point it out jack being up about 44 feet can actually see it and he said land hole so we were quite overjoyed now to see it from the deck just a green blob on the horizon [Music] thank you mrs randall part two of 36 feet to tahiti will continue in just a moment carolyn atoll jacked proved to be only a small island just six miles long completely surrounded by a treacherous 36 foot boat jack and norman take dinghy in to the lagoon and see what they could find came to this first island it was a paradise for wildlife jack norman went in to see what he could find on the island itself and he saw this turn with his egg were those all turned birds we just saw a moment ago there seemed to be thousands of them i'm sure they were all turned now this looks like a tarantula but it's actually a coconut crab these crabs are so called because they can actually huff the coconut with their pincers the natives came out to pay their respects and they brought out this live rooster and coconut drink both drinking and eating type of coconut how many natives were there on the island mrs randall there were seven tahitians living on the island they were working cobra for a company in tahiti they had two shacks there with the coconut patch buildings and a boat comes here only twice a year so that we gave them some of the things they wanted they must have been very happy to have seen you yes that's a friendly bird even in this paradise for wildlife you see that these married couples will also have their squabbles jack here's a close look jack at the treacherous coral so shallow that even at high tide we could walk over it for some 50 yards from the shore even to full tide you can actually walk over it even at high tide you could walk over it the broad view of the coral reef separating us from the nani after dropping norman and jack off i was to roll back to the nani and the surge along this channel here frightened me so but once i got beyond the three while i just rode merrily back to the nanny now where was laurie all this time laurie was to remain in the cabin all the time when we put in the hatchway so she couldn't come up by this time fresh meat was a memory unlike the natives we depended upon the sea for most of our diet it was no trick at all and simply throwing the line over the side was a guarantee of a fish dinner here's our dinner for tonight it's uh carranks and natis had told us that the fish here are all good to eat norman and jack couldn't wait to get into the water for their skin diving they said come on helen you can come in and join us too it's very pretty down below here but i said what's the use because the water was crystal clear and i could practically see everything from where i was standing in the stern of the nani i might not be able to see this fish feeding of course jack and norman can see them feeding what type is that that's an interesting species with the characteristic black spots looks like one of the guided missiles in design this is a close-up of a current among the beautiful corals you see these striped tangs or convict fish schools of them swinging by and the parrotfish with its parrot-like beak which they used to nibble the coral the beautiful butterfly fish the most colorful of them all in the coral reef norman saw a specimen that jack wanted so he spared it and we not only ate some of the fish that were spirit but jack also preserved some of them as part of his collection of fishes now jack and norman are coming back with their catch and they brought up this one little carryings and laurie was quite intrigued with them but when she saw the size of this grouper she actually crawled away from it that was a hasty retreat wasn't it yes after three idyllic days at carolyn that tall it was time for us to pull anchor and make our way for the last 500 miles of our journey we've set our sails and we're off now to tahiti our final destination we're zooming along here at about five or six knots and jack took this from up on mass top about 44 feet above the deck and he said he'd never do that again he got quite dizzy looking down at us as we neared tahiti i saw that jack looked quite shabby so i decided to give him a haircut and we saw the school of purposes swimming around the boat which was indication that land was quite close so jack said well he'll go in and watch the purpose of swim i was quite worried because i've heard tales about sharks in the open ocean but jack assured me that that was nothing to be worried about he was watching these purposes and he said oh they really swim in the spectacular manner and we were not to be afraid because he was sure that the purposes would not hit the nani most of them chased the bow of the boat anyway don't they the purple schools that's right i noticed that after a while that they actually stayed up in front of the boat the coastline of tahiti loomed ahead but although the sky was overcast the vivid colors of the islands were quite visible even from a mile at sea we saw this boat coming out and that must be the pilot boat coming to meet us so we put up our american flag in the missing and in respect to the french government we pulled up the tri-color up the starboard shroud now actually you need this pilot boat do you to get you through the pass or is this more in the form of customs and inspection it's more in the form of customs and in puppy itself they said that the pilot is compulsory to take you in through the past we came into papierty harbor and we had our first glimpse of the town of papierty on the island of tahiti we saw the main street and the cars and people were going by and noticed that there were a lot of bicycles going and it didn't take us long before we got our bicycle too we see them here again the crowd has collected to welcome you to tahiti yes the tahitians are quite accustomed to boats from all parts of the world coming to their south sea paradise but their curiosity was aroused when they heard we had a baby sailor aboard it wasn't long before we got a plank from the key to us turn off our boat and laurie and i went out to see the town while jack was getting official sanction for his scientific work laurie and i decided to take this boat ride to see the various views of the island we came to this part called point venus lighthouse and jack you'd be surprised what they used to light the lighthouse is just a regular gas lantern yeah it's a shame because it does look like a very modern and very beautiful lighthouse they just don't have the electrical facilities to have the bright light this is a monument to the missionaries that came to tahiti driving along the shoreline we saw this particular area where the waves came into the shore and it formed the blowhole effect so we stopped to watch it the view here is spectacular jack you see these high mountains and these quiet pools the tahitians make their living on fish quite a bit and you see them singing for little bait fish here which they were used later to catch bigger fish we came to this mirai a sacrificial and burial area of the ancient tahitians they have a little grass house where they place their tikis and they also have it for their mummies and the sacrificial altar here is all surrounded by this stone wall this tiki is guarding the gate into this area and some of the ancient tikis that the ancient tahitians used to worship here's that mummy that i was talking about jack it didn't take us long to be acclimated to the climate in tahiti laurie and i have heard so much about the rivers in papierte and so we'd had to go and have our swim in this freshwater river i wonder if she was thinking saturday night is going to be every night in this place i don't know what you think but she was really enjoying herself at the head of this river was this waterfall [Music] jack had his own idea about taking a freshwater shower it was very cool and refreshing after a ride around the island they have their ducks there too jack a friend of ours on the right there dr pierre-john troop jack had met said that we should see a tahitian hula so he brought along this friend tomata too mata and i became quite close friends and she wanted to learn to speak english and i wanted to learn to speak french so we had quite a few exchange sessions on board the nani she also took me to the various shopping centers in population so that i'll know where to find various things that i need while staying in pakistan three weeks in proper eighties we made our way to the island of moorea some 15 miles away here we were to spend a full year living as a native stew and almost totally oblivious of the rest of the world but that's another story for another time [Music] foreign