When Dr. Reynolds finished the first three years of what was intended to be a
longitudinal study interrupted by a one-year
sabbatical, he and his family (wife
Barbara Leonard Reynolds, second son Ted, 16, daughter Jessica, 10, and three Hiroshima yachtsmen) sailed the
Phoenix around the world. Ted navigated the 30-ton vessel, using calculations from sun shots made with a hand-held
sextant. The trip extended past the one year allotted and for a number of reasons, Reynolds did not resume his job in Hiroshima. wood The first leg of the circumnavigation, from Japan to Hawaii, took 48 days, most of which were rough and stormy. It was followed by ideal sailing weather to and through the
South Seas:
Tahiti,
Moorea,
Raiatea,
Tahaa and
Bora Bora in the
Society Islands;
Rarotonga,
American Samoa,
Fiji. From there they sailed to New Zealand (Auckland and
Wellington); Australia (Sydney, the
Great Barrier Reef,
Cairns);
Indonesia (
Bali,
Java). They weathered a
typhoon off the
Cocos (Keeling) Islands, touched in at
Rodrigues and
Mauritius and changed course to round the tip of South Africa (
Durban,
Cape Town) rather than go through the
Mediterranean during the
Suez Crisis;
Brazil (
Fortaleza); the east coast of the United States from New York, then south to the
West Indies. They went through the
Panama Canal to the
Galapagos Islands, where they traded six packages of instant powdered milk, one can of shortening and two bottles of hot pepper sauce for a
Galapagos tortoise, 11x11 inches across the shell, naming him Jonathan Mushmouth. (They had a legal permit issued in
Ecuador, to take "two of every kind" of animal from the islands.) Years later they gave Jonathan to the
Hanshin Zoo in
Osaka, Japan, the zoo's first Galapagos tortoise. The Reynolds family expected Jonathan to outlive them but he died in the 1980s.
Hijacking of the Valinda In the Galapagos the
Phoenix just missed being hijacked by escaped convicts.
The Historical Chronology of the Galapagos, 1535–2000 records that in February 1958, "The
Phoenix, with Earle Reynolds, his wife Barbara, their children, Jessica and Ted and a Japanese crewmember arrived at
Wreck Bay." They went on to
Academy Bay where they found the French yacht
Cle Du Sol, and just missed a previously arranged meeting with the American yacht
Valinda. Convicts living in the
penal colony on
Isabela Island were asked to prepare a celebration on February 12 but on the 9th they revolted with stolen weapons and took the guards prisoners. The convicts boarded two fishing boats, the
Teresita and the
Ecuador. At Punta Moreno they took possession of the
Viking. They then went to
Santiago Island where they captured the
Valinda belonging to William Rhodes Hervey Jr. They reached the continent on the 17th and abandoned ship at
Esmeraldas but were eventually captured by the police. The
Phoenix and
Valinda had scheduled a rendezvous in James Bay on
San Salvador Island on February 16. The
Phoenix was there and waited all day but the
Valinda never showed up. Months later, Earle read in a back issue of
Life Magazine that the
Valinda had arrived in James Bay the night before ("while we were all asleep aboard the
Phoenix, five miles away around the point") but was then hijacked by the 21 escapees from the penal colony who forced the crew to sail to
Ecuador. Unaware of their close call, the Reynoldses proceeded on to the
Marquesas and back to Hawaii. Two of the three Japanese men flew back to Japan from
Panama. First mate Niichi (Nick) Mikami remained with the
Phoenix. After 645 days, 1222 ports and , the
Phoenix once again sailed into
Honolulu harbor. ==Voyage to protest nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, 1958==