EVANSVILLE COURIER
Excerpts reprinted from the August 20, 21, 22, 1984 issues
ABSURD DREAM, DREAD, PORPOISE SHOW
FORESHADOWED BATTLE THAT LOOMED
POSSUM RIDGE, Ill. - It was on the morning of the sixty-second day,
becalmed in the glassy waters of the Philippine Sea with the deck of the
Semangat scarcely trembling beneath his feet, that the thought first came to
Bill Carr that he might die.
It had caught him in a sudden, unreasoning panic, after he
awakened from a silly dream that left him chuckling, and he lay there in the
early morning twilight as scared as he had ever been in his life.
HE HAD TIME, and he took full advantage of it, to wonder at his
presumptuousness, his towering gall.
And it was later that same morning that the porpoises came -
dozens and scores of them, leaping and cavorting and clowning around his
sailboat in a marine display that almost a quarter of a century at sea had not
prepared him for.
To this day he wonders if they were trying, somehow, to warn
him of what lay ahead.
He lay there for a long time, trying to get back to sleep.
Singapore lay 3,000 miles behind him across the South China
Sea and Guam, his destination, was 1,000 miles to the east.
He was a man alone on a 35-foot ketch, untried in any but
short hauls, and now he was pitting his abilities against the majestic powers of
the sea -- and, he soon was to learn, against even greater odds than that.
BUT AT THAT time he did not know that he was tacking smack into the terrible open mouth of a Typhoon Olga, or that before he was through the Semangat would be wallowing in the troughs of waves 30 feet high, snarling water with the impact of a berserk locomotive lunging against it.
HE HAD SAILED for many years from the ports of Southeast Asia, most
often as third mate on the larger vessels and sometimes as master on smaller
craft.
He had married a charming Vietnamese named Chi and by then
had two children -- a son, Jimmy, and a daughter, Lilia.
They lived in Saigon and he flew often from his home port of
Singapore to be with them.
When it became obvious that South Vietnam would fall to the
Communists -- that there was no way it could be prevented -- he flew to Saigon
to bring them away from there, but by then the only exit was my military
transport plane.
They were briefly refugees in the Philippines, then on Guam,
and finally he brought them to Singapore.
But Singapore, not unlike much of the rest of the
"civilized" world, wanted no part of Vietnamese refugees, even the
families of American seamen, so he flew them back to Guam.
He would meet them there, he decided casually, by sailing his
double-masted ketch 4,200 miles across the South China Sea and Philippine Sea.
He had no radio transmitter; his experience as the master of
a one-man sailing craft was by no means all-inclusive, and he was sailing
against the prevailing winds and currents -- to the extent, indeed, that he was
occasionally pushed backward over the hard earned way he had come.
(August 21, 1984)
AFTER LONG BECALMING, PACIFIC
belied its name by serving up a typhoon
POSSUM RIDGE, Ill. - ...Carr, watched the squall line with a seaman's
practiced eye.
Ominous clouds gathered on the horizon and swept toward him.
The wind, so frustratingly non-existent on earlier days,
whipped up irritably, then to a banshee shriek.
THE WATERS OF the Philippine Sea, so still before that he could see the
boat's clear reflection in its surface, began to chop and spray and roll.
The Semangat ...began to leap forward as if she were a
thoroughbred -- as the passing hours would prove her to be.
Carr felt good that morning. He was, as he expresses it in
his journal, "making easting." He was now on a good, fast sprint
toward the east, where Guam lay.
He was making up for the frustrating days when the becalmed
sea held him captive.
But ...he was tacking smack into the battering ram of a
typhoon.
Later, ...he calculated that he had come within 17 miles of
the very eye of the storm - which, even for an intensely curious man, is plenty
close enough.
FOR MORE THAN 48 hours, often with "bare poles" -- that is,
with all sails furled against the screaming wind - the Semangat bucked and
tossed and wallowed and bounced in the troughs of enormous waves, some of them
arising like watery dragons 30 feet above the deck.
Crushing water -- tons of it -- battered her leaving her, I
believe we sailors say, awash.
And what, you may wish to know, was Carr himself doing all
this time that his boat was taking such a broadside pasting?
Well, he was, as editorial writers sometimes say, viewing
with alarm. He was viewing, for that matter, with more alarm than you could fit
into an oil drum.
And he was manning the bilge pump. He was being tossed hither
and yon in his sleepless, sodden bunk.
When there was no typhoon to fret about, life aboard the
Semangat -- an Indonesian word, by the way, meaning "inner spirit" --
was idyllic.
Carr read. He took pictures of sunsets, of waterspouts and
sea turtles.
He cooked some of the most godawful concoctions... every one
of them, including breakfast, containing onion and garlic.
On the evening of June 10, 1976, three months and three days
after Singapore faded from his view, Carr steered the Semangat into the harbor
at Guam, where his family awaited him.
His voyage had ended. He was a sailor home from the sea.
But the memories are his to keep. The dream which his father
had handed down to him had come true, as few dreams ever do.
(August 22, 1984)
SAILOR HOME FROM THE SEA
is at the helm of 'The Springhouse' magazine
HEROD, Ill. - We have talked for the past two days about
the seagoing adventures of Bill Carr of Possum Ridge, Ill., who sailed alone in
a ketch from Singapore to Guam -- and passed smack through a typhoon on the way.
You may wish to know what has since happened to him. The
telling of it is our project for today.
What has happened to him is that, far inland from the
bounding main with no misbehaving mizzen mast to trouble his sleep, he has
become a magazine editor.
IT IS HIS intent, before it slips from memory, to record the
tasts and texture and character of the Illinois Ozarks.
...Carr (circa 1984) is the editor of "The
Springhouse"... along with co-owner Gary DeNeal, most easily recognizable
as the author of "A Knight of Another Sort," a definitive biography of
gangster Charlie Birger, he has all manner of ambitious publishing plans for
future times.
"The Springhouse" was begun by the two men, friends
since school days, (and neighbor, Ken Mitchell) because they felt that the very
essence of southeastern Illinois was being largely overlooked... (I)n the dreams
of both owners, "The Springhouse" is simply the beginning. They have
other fish to fry that are just as important to them.
Carr, for example, has written a book about his sailing
experiences, and it is his hope that it will be printed one day not so long from
now by Springhouse Inc.
A final word about Carr, the sailor home from the sea is now
more concerned about verbs that glow in the dark than sails that flap in the
breeze. He seems somehow to march to a different drumbeat.
Consider his house, for example, there on Possum Ridge. Part
of it is a log house that has stood for a century or more. The rest is an
addition that be built, without help, by felling the logs on his own land,
hand-hewing them with a broadax and lifting them into place one by one and
daubing the chinks with cement.
And the, ah, facilities are not down the hall. They are down
the path. When I asked if he'd ever built a house before, of logs hewed by hand,
with a broadax, he said no, he hadn't but he knew of no reason why he couldn't.
And while trying to see if he could, he did.