Pan Am Unbuckled: A Very Plane Diary (13 page)

South Seas Trimaran

I saw Dr. David Lewis, his wife and family, several times during the month between our meeting on the Fiji to Sydney flight and when we met in Truk Lagoon. A representative from National Geographic met me, with Dr. Lewis, in Sydney and subsequently offered to fund me joining the group as the French interpreter and part of the sailing crew. Dr. Lewis’s boat the
Ice Bird
was still having repairs completed, so we would be taking our journey on a trimaran procured in Truk Lagoon.

When I got back to San Francisco, I had to get permission from my flight service supervisor to get the time off. Her first response was “Oh, my God, it’s the ‘leave of absence lady’ again!” There were two hurdles to this. First, it was unbelievable that I was being sponsored by NG, so they had to check with National Geographic to see if it was true. And second, was their thought that “Maybe she will end up on the cover of
National Geographic
magazine with a Pan Am logo predominant in the photo of her in a bikini.” When the article appeared in the December 1974 issue, I was NOT, of course, on the cover.

Although I don’t have the letter that I wrote to David Lewis, I have the letter he wrote back to me. There seemed to be a slight difference of opinion as to why I was on the trip, but to Dr. Lewis’s credit, it all got sorted out and he indeed did want me to come and he did need a French translator and yes, he needed a crew member on the sailboat, and yes, no long stints below deck would be required. In addition, I made it clear that I was not the cook. In fact, they were lucky I wasn’t the cook, as I was pretty lousy at it if it wasn’t something preprepared by Pan Am commissary.

Pan Am gave me time off and letters of introduction, so that I rode non-rev (free) stand-by on Air Micronesia. By the time I got to Truk, the other expedition members, seven men, were already there. They had acquired and provisioned the trimaran for our six-weeks at sea.

We established contact with the indigenous people of the Caroline Islands and sailed in tandem with a
Te puke
(a Polynesian outrigger)—as it navigated on the open sea—making land fall by means of predominant wave swells ‘reading of the waters’ as passed along by oral traditions from generation to generation. We spent numerous nights at atolls, or on the open water by day, marveling at the Micronesian ‘navigators’ skills and knowledge.

One evening after a rather long and hot day on the open water, our trimaran was anchored in the lagoon of an uninhabited atoll. Foolishly, Bill Curtsinger, NG’s underwater photographer, and I jumped in for a quick swim at dusk. If we had understood shark behavior better, we would have known that in an area that attracts sea turtles, sharks will be cruising for a meal. We were in the water for less than a minute when Bill was attacked. He had jumped off on the port side and I had jumped off on the starboard side where I didn’t see the attack happen.

My crewmates started frantically yelling at me to get back to the boat. I had already swum a considerable distance from the boat. It took half-a-dozen strokes to get back. When I reached the boat, two of the crew were on their knees and caught my arms and literally jerked me out of the water. Initially, I was upset about the pain in my shoulder, but then I glanced back and saw the fins of not just one but two sharks. Then, I saw Bill. They had pulled him out, but only after a shark had bitten into his neck and right shoulder. He also had deep lacerations all down his back. The first I saw of David, he was coming up from below with the first aide kit, yelling out orders. I went into automatic Pan Am emergency training mode. Dripping wet, I immediately started assisting. Bill was screaming at the top of his lungs. He was scared to death and still processing what had happened. His curly, sandy-blonde hair was matted with blood, and a big chunk of his shoulder seemed to be missing. David said we had to get the shoulder clean-clean-clean, and get the shark teeth out of the wound. The shark bite is rows of bites, as they have rows of teeth—so it isn’t a clean cut.

Cleaning the wound was really painful to Bill. David brought up a bottle of liquor and a couple of the crew set him up and just poured it down his throat. The idea was to get enough liquor down him to anesthetize the pain. There were no other anesthetics on board, so despite the potential dehydration with alcohol, it was the best we had onboard. I trickled what precious clean water we had onboard, over the wound site as David picked out the shark teeth and debris he could find.

Finally, Bill stopped crying and moaning. The alcohol was working and he was getting woozy. David worked even faster, as we were losing daylight. There was amazingly little blood considering how large the area the shark had damaged. The men carried Bill below and positioned him on a bunk so that he was laying pretty much face down. And that was when I lost it. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I sat a little way back on the stern and looked down at my hands—they were curling up. I just stared at them, in a daze, watching them curl. I didn’t know I was going into shock, but David did. He came over to me and slapped me violently and said “You are NOT going into shock. I still need you!” That pulled me right out of it and my hands began to uncurl.

While we were taking care of Bill, one of the crew let off the anchor and we were now out beyond the atoll— trying to make radio contact. On open water, radio waves at dawn and dusk are sometimes better –and sometimes worse. It was a miracle that we got something through to the
James Cook—
which was a cargo ship with a regular route between islands in the Carolines. They were in the area and could rendezvous with us the next morning. By the next morning, it was decided that David would go with him, as they were taking him to Honolulu, and he would need medical attention while in-route.

Bill was still liquored up, which was just as well, as I found out later that he needed a lot of professional care. He did mumble to me that he hope I would bring him his model of a
Te puke
. There was no sense of panic or concern that David was leaving all of us, but I did feel a little strange about it. I didn’t want to go on the
James Cook
, but it was strange losing our captain. There were six of us left and between us we had enough sailing competency to manage the trimaran by ourselves on open water. We eventually made it back to Truk Lagoon, but only after being becalmed at sea for ten days. In addition we had lost our radio and our auxiliary motor couldn’t operate without a rudder—which had been bent when a whale surfaced under us a day before.

I spent the ten days below deck throwing up onto the decking as there were no basins on board. I was so thirsty and dehydrated that I had lots of dry heaves, too. As the only woman on board, I had my own compartment, and it was in the forward of the main hull. So at least there was less motion from the waves. That was good in some ways, but could be horribly stifling when you were becalmed in a tiny room.

We had very little water but we did have a half-dozen coconut palm branches with green coconuts attached which were full of coconut milk. We drank the coconut milk to fight dehydration.

When we got within sight of Truk Lagoon, we were actually becalmed another full day before anyone saw us and came out to us. It was a civilian who first approached us. We yelled out what our problem was and that we were without an auxiliary motor. In an hour a Micronesian Navy motor boat approached us and towed us in. I remember, the sky was completely clear and a Pan Am color of blue.

I remember sleeping the whole flight from Truk to Honolulu bent over, resting on the tray table. I was emaciated and had lost so much weight through the ordeal. I vividly remember being in the San Francisco Marina Safeway store, right after arriving back home, buying green grapes—wonderful green grapes! That was all I wanted to eat.

One of the first things I did when I got back to the US was to mail Bill his
Te puke
model. I never saw David again. We talked on the phone and wrote letters. He was busy getting ready for his upcoming trip to solo circumnavigate Antarctica.

Part 4

Covering the
Bases

Wrapping up this tour through my life with Pan Am, are a few of my perspectives on the unique aspects of each of the six bases I was stationed at during my tenure with Pan Am.
My favorite base was San Francisco, as that is where I spent the most time and where I started a home with my husband Doug and three children: Gabe, Nelle and Kathryn.
We were privileged to migrate to San Francisco’s South Bay community of Palo Alto— where we lived for 25 years —until our recent retirement to Napa Valley.