Page 172 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

The remainder of the voyage was uneventful, in part, one supposes, because
we stopped at no ports before arrival in London. This may sound a bit dull, but
there was a good mix of both crew and passengers and the days and evenings
passed quite enjoyably; it was a calm, prosperous and socially satisfactory voyage.

While on leave I saw Karen for a few very pleasant days, and on November
6th, David, Tina and I saw her leave on Cunard’s Carmania for Canada. Ours
had been a good relationship; whether it had substance was a question that
much exercised me.

The voyage that then commenced was at first without incident, other than

the quick stop in Djibouti for bunkering (and a good number of crestfallen
Djiboutis must have seen us steam away with much regret; we did not discharge
one ounce of cargo). Just as importantly, I later enjoyed my first taste of sweet and
sour crab at a delightful open-air restaurant in Singapore with the Hammonds.
Unquestionably, the Chinese could cook.

Transit of the South China Sea towards and beyond Hong Kong was
accompanied by poor weather (it was in mid-December, so it was not unexpected,
but approaching Japan it further deteriorated, visibility being poor, the winds
force six to eight, and with heavy rain; in fact, a minor typhoon). This was so
much the case that eventually the Captain decided to take the ship further out
into the Pacific than was normal, simply because we frankly did not know where
we were! Before long we were pitching and rolling uncomfortably (the ship had
no stabilisers), and I recall a time when all of the watch-keepers were on the
bridge seeking some guidance from the gods. But the only viable system was
Radio Direction Finding (RDF), which I had never seen utilised before (and I
found out why – it was completely inaccurate unless prior to use it had been
carefully calibrated, and ours had never received any attention at all.) The dense
cloud precluded sights, so we simply headed West and watched the radar;
fortunately, the water was very deep, and the only land anywhere near us was
Japan; all we needed to do was find it! And eventually we did, but precisely
where we were located was not easy to discover. So strong had the wind been
that the dead-reckoning position was of little assistance; it took half an hour of
poring over suitable charts to correlate these to the radar image. Eventually we
found ourselves, but a very considerable way north of where we expected to be.
Passengers were not informed of this minor drama.

This time I altered things about a bit and took some extra watch time in Tokyo,
thereby giving me a little more flexibility in Kobe. Like Osaka, Kobe was known
primarily for industry and commerce. Therefore, I elected to see something
more of historical Japan, namely Kyoto, about which the pilot book was quite
informative. A previous capital of the country (I did not discover if the use of all
the same letters in both names had any significance) and a short distance from

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