Sailor's passion leaves lasting impression
Richard Van Pham is my hero.
This 62-year-old Vietnamese immigrant recently survived more than three months at sea off the west coasts of the U.S., Mexico and Central America aboard his dismasted and disabled sailboat.
Van Pham was planning a three-day trip to Santa Catalina Island, which lies about the same distance offshore from Long Beach as Nantucket does from New Bedford.
A freak storm came up and caused his mast to snap. When that happens, if your VHF radio antenna is mounted atop your mast, you cannot use the radio to call for assistance. Try it, and you burn out the radio electronics as you find yourself talking to dead air.
As if he weren't in enough trouble already, Van Pham found that his boat's engine would not start. Thus began a 2,500-mile voyage south, as Van Pham's 30-footer floated with the Pacific currents.
With only dry stores on board (rice and beans) and some tomatoes and water, Van Pham settled down to await his fate. Like the Robertson family four decades ago (check out the book Survive the Savage Sea for their story), Van Pham turned to the ocean for sustenance.
He began to catch fish, including some tuna. Then, he found he could entice sea turtles close enough to his boat to impale them, bring them aboard, finish them off and dry their meat for cooking. Van Pham used a makeshift barbecue to heat up the increasingly tasty goodies from the sea. When his supply of fresh water ran out, he rigged up the sails to catch rainwater, and drank that.
Occasionally, getting a whiff of fish or turtle meat, sea birds would alight on his cabin. Some of them became lunch.
So Van Pham passed away day after day for more than 90 days until a U.S. Navy warship came upon him and took him aboard. They say they "rescued" him, but, as they steamed away from his sinking sailboat, Van Pham cried.
He said, in halting English, he cried for his boat, which, unlike him, did not survive the experience.
In 1972, Dougal Robertson wrote the book I referred to above, Survive the Savage Sea, about his family's attempt to circumnavigate the globe aboard a 43-foot schooner, the Lucette. As they sailed in the Pacific towards the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador, their boat was attacked by killer whales and sank in 60 seconds.
The family of five -- plus a friend of one of the Robertson children -- clambered aboard their 9-foot fiberglass dinghy and remained afloat and alive for 38 days. When their boat sank, they had enough emergency rations for three days.
Robertson began this unlikely voyage in something of a depression, convinced he could not care for his family aboard nine feet of flimsy fiberglass in a powerful ocean without any means of contacting the rest of the world.
Robertson soon reached the conclusion that he had to take positive action so his family could survive. He began contriving ingenious ways of catching fresh water, both from the skies above in the form of rainwater and from condensation of vapors aboard the small boat.
They fashioned hooks out of small pieces of metal and needles in their survival kit and began to catch the ever-present (in 1972) sea turtles.
Robertson grew to enjoy carving and drying the meat on every available surface of the dinghy. In this way, time passed, and the six people aboard, including four children, survived and even thrived.
When a Japanese fishing trawler finally "rescued" them, Mr. Robertson at first refused assistance. He was enjoying the new life he had found as the family "breadwinner" and didn't want to go back to the life they had left behind more than a month before.
In my own small way, I can relate.
There is nothing like the sea to provide fresh sustenance in the most unlikely conditions.
A few years ago, four of us set off aboard my 28-foot yawl for a day trip across Buzzards Bay. We brought prepared snacks for lunch, thinking we wouldn't be out all that long. One of us, a teenager, brought a fishing rod. Her uncle thought she might enjoy trolling off the back of my boat and, hey, they might even catch something.
Hey, they did. With help from her uncle, the teenager landed a big bluefish, fully a foot-and-a-half long. Unwilling at that time to allow fish and their entrails (and odor) aboard my sailboat, we opted to throw Big Blue, now deceased, into the dinghy.
When we reached Weepeckit Island, Uncle Joe and his niece took the fish ashore for cutting and cleaning.
In the meanwhile, I and my companion searched for available foodstuffs to prepare lunch. I had no butter or oil aboard to sauté or fry fish, so we filled my camp-kit frying pan with water and decided to poach the fillet instead.
Yummy.
I have only sampled fish as fresh one other time -- at the Red Cat in Menemsha (and everybody knows how fresh the fish are that Menemsha fishermen bring ashore). Poached bluefish is not half bad -- and way better than snack crackers and cheese.
As we return to work or school or just everyday life after a day, a weekend, a week or two, or a summer at sea, I know a little bit how Dougal Robertson felt as the Japanese fishermen hauled him aboard.
And, I'll bet Richard Van Pham felt the same way as he cried and waved good-bye to his precious sinking boat. I am sure when he returns to sea, if he hasn't already, he longs for the days when he floated 2,500 miles south, with only tuna and turtles, rainwater and birds, to keep him company.
LAST CALL
Next Thursday's Sea Notes will be the final one for this season. If you have any news about boating, about things happening at your club or any other item you would like to see addressed in next week's column, please send it to me by e-mail to bveneri@hotmail.com or by fax to 508-997-7491.
If you have news about boating in and around Buzzards Bay, contact Barbara Veneri by e-mail at bveneri@hotmail.com. To join an online discussion of boating issues, enter www.southcoastnavigator.com in your browser, then click the Port of Call link.
This story appeared on Page B5 of The Standard-Times on October 10, 2002.
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