...and nearly

an escape to paradise

Fed up with conditions in the Cook Islands—his home for 25 years—Jim Price set sail for Honolulu in Novem ber in his gaff-rigged cutter Escape from Paradise and almost landed in the next world.

Injured by a blow from the swing ing boom, he lay helpless for several days as the cutter, manned only by a novice yachtsman, was battered by a heavy storm. Then the rudder broke.

“I was very tired,” Jim told PlM’s man later. “I had even thought about jumping overboard, but there was a little thread which kept me hooked to life.”

Rescued in Bora Bora passage and taken to Vaitape on Bora Bora, Jim told his story to Jim Boyack.

An American, with a Rarotongan wife and family now living in Hono lulu, Jim Price had failed to “make a go” with his cutter as a refrigerated fish-transport vessel, so he decided to get out.

He was fed up with the political set-up in the Cooks and felt his per sonal ambitions were thwarted by general attitudes to life there.

His cutter was his only means of escape. Its name was Tally Ho. He changed it to Escape from Paradise and left on November 26 with Cook Islander Taua Tua as crew. His de parture was a hasty one. There was a $2 a day harbour charge and the hurricane season was upon them.

“Everything seemed to have a deadline, so everything was slap-banged together—including the rudder which had been poorly welded,” he said.

They were seven days out of Rarotonga and only three degrees south of the equator when a storm struck, The very heavy boom was jibed by Taua just as Jim was mounting the gangway and he took the full shock of the swinging boom on the top of his head. He was hurled down the stairs to the cabin floor and there he lay for several days, at times hardly conscious.

He decided to head back to Penrhyn Island in the Cooks for medical attention.

“There was blood all over the place. I thought I had cracked my skull.”

Rough seas and a sky completely

blanketed by cloud prevented a land fall, and Jim was unable to navigate for four days because of dizziness and a headache.

He was in latitude six or seven and decided that, as he couldn’t find Penrhyn, he would make for Bora Bora. Then the poorly-welded rudder broke. He hooked a spare boom to the stern, but heavy seas prevented it from functioning as a makeshift rudder and threatened to toss it back on to the deck or drive it through the stern.

The only chance was to tie two ropes to it and manoeuvre it as con ditions allowed, but this required con stant effort and Jim was often on deck for 48 hours at a time. Decem ber 16 came at this stage and with it his birthday. He and Taua cele brated—with a can of peaches, one

man holding the makeshift rudder while the other ate; then vice-versa.

On Christmas Day they were still fighting for survival but they had another celebration.

“We opened a can of peas, or something. Maybe it was carrots.”

Three days later, in Bora Bora pass, a Bonito fishing boat belonging to Guy Winchester spotted Escape and the ordeal was over. Winchester towed the cutter to Vaitape and Jim spent New Year’s Day in the comfort of the Hotel Bora Bora as guest, with Taua, of the hotel management.

The French Navy also came to the rescue. The matelots heard of Jim’s exploits and that repairs were needed to the Escape from Paradise, includ ing the replacement of a brass part.

They were the only people on Bora Bora capable of doing the work.

They volunteered, without pay to demonstrate their admiration and res pect of Jim. They also planned to build him a new rudder.

Now in Tahiti, Jim hopes to leave within a month. He will have a new rudder by then and determination un dimmed to make a new life for him self in America.

“I might go back to the Cooks some day, especially if they have a change of government,” he said.

His current plan is to find work in Honolulu and spend his free time with Escape. And there’ll be plenty

of time to think about the past which, for Jim, extends from his birth in Seoul, Korea, 71 years ago.

Taua Tua isn’t sure what he wants to do. He’s content for the present to luxuriate in safe surroundings on dry land.

He admits he was worried when they were fighting the storm with Escape. It was the first time he’d been on a sailing vessel!

French Navy engineers lend a hand while Jim Price, with pipe in mouth, directs opera tions. And they didn't present him with a bill when the job was done. They worked for nothing, glad, they said, to help a fellow sailor whose courage they admired so much. Below, close-up of a smiling Jim.