❖ Early Reminiscences from Miles McCoy ❖ Part I

Miles McCoy and his SHARON L.
At home, West Sound, WA.
Photo by Donna Morrison, San Francisco.

"In the early 1940s I was absorbed in rowing and sailing boats. 
      Dwight Long [1913-2001] had completed a 'round the world adventure; he had filmed portions of it and was billed to appear and narrate the movie. He was also scheduled to sell and autograph his published books at the Neptune Theater in the UW district in Seattle, not far from the house where we lived. My parents took me to see the film and purchased a copy of the book Seven Seas on a Shoestring*. With those days behind me, I never looked back. Anything to do with boats and sailing has been my consuming interest for over seventy years.
      Dwight Long joined the Navy early in WWII and became an aerial photographer. Occasionally the Seattle newspapers would have articles about Dwight; mother usually saved the clippings. As I became aware of other sailors and their published books, I was hooked. There were not a lot of books by small boat circumnavigators before WWII. During the war years there was very little boating and sailing activity around Seattle. 
      Right after the war ended my dad and I found a good 'not too old' wood catboat for sale. She was some shabby but mostly sound. My father made an offer on SHARON L. [blt 1933] and our boating and sailing experience began in earnest.

SHARON L. sailing the San Juan Islands.
Photograph by Joanne Fraser

      The next several years found us learning to sail and refurbish the big catboat. I managed to finish high school and garner some experience crewing and maintaining larger sailing vessels. 
       By 1950 Uncle Sam was looking over my shoulder. War in Korea was heating up; I joined a US Marine Corps Reserve Squadron at Sand Point Naval Air Station, Seattle. I became a weekend warrior maintaining and fueling airplanes. It turned out to be an excellent choice because it was close to home. I did not want some Navy dude from Kansas showing me how to tie a bowline. Within a year I found myself stationed at Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe, Hawaii. This was about half an hour out of Honolulu and the Ali Wai Yacht Harbor and Waikiki Beach. 
       On my first weekend of liberty I was dock-walking and exploring the haunts of the sailing crowd when I found an acquaintance from Seattle living on his boat, a fine 55' Alden ketch named NONAME. The couple had been living aboard for a couple of years and were preparing to sail back to Seattle. They had a car they wanted to sell; I bought it and became the best equipped PFC on Oahu.
      While wandering the docks some more, I walked right up to IDLE HOUR and touched her transom. 

Dwight Long's IDLE HOUR, home to Seattle, WA.
Original photo taken by L. Hockett, 1940.
Donated to the S. P. H. S. archives by Miles McCoy 2012.

There was Dwight Long's old vessel. Her main had been restored to gaff rig and she obviously had been ridden hard and put away wet, for a number of years. She was deteriorating under the rigors of a harsh tropical climate and minimal maintenance. I never met the owner but I saw her sailing a couple of more times around Honolulu. She seemed well suited for sailing the Hawaiian Islands. IDLE HOUR was stout, beamy, fairly deep for her size, and very heavily built with full two-inch plank on heavy double-sawn frames. 
      Well--I spent many contented hours contemplating voyages to far off places while examining IDLE HOUR with the warm Hawaiian trade wind caressing me into boundless daydreaming. I have not heard anything about IDLE HOUR for well over sixty years. I would be surprised if she or her remains exist to this day.
      The end result of years of imagining and dreaming of voyaging to far off places in my own vessel never happened. However, by staying active and elbowing among the sailing community, I was able to complete a variety of ocean racing and cruising trips on several wonderful, wooden vessels to meet and sail with some very able and experienced voyagers.
       There was a gaff rigged ketch named IDLE HOUR sailing in the San Juan Islands in the 1950s. They were employed in the charter business taking out passengers on pleasure trips in local waters. This was not the same IDLE HOUR of which I spoke earlier, owned by Dwight Long. This was larger and better suited to the charter trade. She belonged to Chris Wilkins, a longtime charter skipper. Wilkins went on to have a 45' ketch ORCAS BELLE, designed by Bill Garden and built in Deer Harbor by boatbuilder Chet North. Another Orcas Islander, Tony Lee, was skipper for several years on ORCAS BELLE. 
      In the early 1960s Wilkins' IDLE HOUR was purchased by Carl and Patty MacBrayer who ran her in the summer charter business for several years out of West Sound. MacBrayers sold IDLE HOUR and built a new boat a little larger than IDLE HOUR that had more creature comforts and luxuries for guests. They sailed BONNIE LASSIE for several years, then moved ashore.
     I hope that this is of some interest to you, I enjoyed reminiscing and recalling some of my youth."
Above text by Miles McCoy, West Sound, WA. *  Capt. Long had sailed 30,000 miles, after leaving Seattle, when he sailed up the Thames River. To have IDLE HOUR in first class condition, he decided to winter over and write his book before sailing the Atlantic, homebound. Dwight Long's book was first published in England in 1938 under the title of Sailing All Seas in the IDLE HOUR with a preface by Alan Villiers. Rupert Hart-Davis of London,  picked it up in 1950 and published it as No. 11 in his wonderful Mariners Library series. 
      In the US the book title was changed to Seven Seas on a Shoestring, published by Harper and Bros., 1938. As noted elsewhere on this site, Miles McCoy donated his special volume to the S.P.H.S. complete with notes from his mother that it was his first nautical book, gifted to him in 1941.     
In August 2012 there is another log entry to honor IDLE HOUR; she arrived home to Seattle in 1940. Click here.

     Thanks Miles-- Encore!
      
      

❖ SEATTLE SAILOR DWIGHT LONG (1913-2001) ❖ (Updated.)

Verso inscription reads, "Miles, Mother, Daddy 
saw a Dwight Long presentation 3 Oct. 1941 
when Miles bought this picture
and Long autographed it."
Miles McCoy, Orcas Island, kindly donated 
his childhood memento to the S.P.H.S., Aug. 2012 

"Some years ago a young man named Dwight Long got the idea that he would like to sail around the world. This is not an unusual idea, thousands of young men have had it before and since, but the difference was that Dwight Long, who was then 20, and in his junior year at the U. of WA, wanted to sail around the world and to sail in his own boat. Somehow, the young man raised enough money to purchase a second-hand ketch. He reconditioned her, bought provisions, and one autumn day, despite the fact that he had no sea experience, he set sail across the open Pacific bound for Hawaii.

IDLE HOUR
Dwight Long
Leaving Seattle, WA.

Dwight Long on 32' IDLE HOUR
getting advice from berthing master
Capt. Thompson at Southend-on-Sea, England.
Original photo dated 30 August 1937 
from the archives of
 the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

Dwight Long's 32-ft ketch IDLE HOUR
home safely to Seattle, WA, 1940.
Photo by Capt. Leiter Hockett
who inscribed the reverse
"Taken from my boatshop at the west side of the canal."
The original photo is a gift to the archives of 
the Saltwater People Historical Society©
from Capt. Miles McCoy, August 2012.

      For four years the IDLE HOUR with Long at the helm sailed the world's seven oceans. Some of the time he carried with him an extra passenger or crewman. One night when the IDLE HOUR was caught in a storm that carried away the mainmast and was nearly wrecked, his dog 'Hugo' was washed overboard and Long sailed on alone.
      By the time the IDLE HOUR and her captain dropped anchor in the Thames, news of Long and his incredible adventures was widespread.

      In London, he paused for a time to write a book of his adventures for Harper & Brothers Publishers. Seven Seas On a Shoestring, by Dwight Long, became one of the best sellers of seafaring stories.
      

Dwight Long, 1953.
Home after working for two years
on his film "TANGA TIKA."
The wood carving in profile was one of the
 trademarks for the film.

      Come WWII, Long found himself in a US Naval Aviation photography unit, assigned to an aircraft carrier. The pictures he took of the ship grew into the motion picture The Fighting Lady, which won the Motion Picture Academy Award in 1946. For his work in editing, photographing, and directing the film, he received the Legion of Merit award from the President of the US. When peace came to the islands of the Pacific, Long, like many a Navy man, yearned to go back. He dreamed of returning to Tahiti and making a motion picture that would show these islands and their people as they actually are. He went to Hollywood but found no picture company which could fulfill all of his wishes. With the same spirit that led him to start around the world in a 32-ft boat, Long once again sailed to Tahiti. His object was to make a feature-length motion picture to be directed, edited, and photographed by no one but himself. His bankroll was so small that the experts who knew the business said he could never do it, and some who didn't know the man they were dealing with ventured the option that his picture-making was only an excuse for a Tahitian vacation.

L-R: Dwight Long, age 21,
Hugo, and Jack Lowry.
This after their first leg, Seattle to San Francisco,
back stamped, 5 and 6 October 1934.
Original photo from the archives of Saltwater People Log©

      The difficulties that Long encountered in finding people for his cast, in shipping and processing his film, would make a book. But he persevered and finally parts of his film began to arrive in the US––some of the sequences so primitive and rare that they had never before been photographed. For two years, Long worked on his picture in Tahiti without ever seeing a foot of it, since it could only be processed in the US. But finally the job was done and Long, who had been working 18 hours a day and who had lost 30 pounds, came home jubilant. He had his movie.
      But two more years of work in cutting, scoring, and dubbing lay ahead before Tanga Tika was ready to be shown in American theaters. And because he was short of funds, Long had to do most of this himself.
      Tanga Tika, the movie that Hollywood said was 'impossible' to make is currently playing at the Blue Mouse Theatre, and is the latest in a long list of 'impossible' things that Dwight Long has done."

Endpaper art by Joyce Stephenson from 
Seven Seas on a Shoestring, 
Dwight Long, Harper & Brothers, 1938.
 Miles McCoy donated his book to
 the library of Saltwater People History Society, Aug. 2012.

Global Adventures

Above text by Bonnie Thornburg for The Seattle Times, 18 February 1954

IDLE HOUR

1922, November:  launched in Tacoma, WA., by professional boatbuilder Carl Rathfin for his own use.
IDLE HOUR was sold to two partners who used her briefly for fur trading in the Arctic.

1932: Dwight Long purchased her for $1,600.
32' L with 2" fir planking on 2" x 3" oak frames on 8" centers.

1934, 20 September: the date set by Long as the departure for his world cruise.
The tow out to the straits from Seattle, with tug ANDREW FOSS, was a gift from the Foss Tug Co.

The backside of a litho postcard published
and signed by circumnavigator Dwight Long.
From the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

1940: after 50,000 miles Long sailed IDLE HOUR home to be met by a boat full of photographers and TV cameramen.

1944:

IDLE HOUR
Maritime historian John Kelly, Seattle, reports:
"I took this photo of Lewis' boat in the Ala Moana 
Yacht Anchorage in Honolulu during 1944,
when my ship was in Pearl Harbor for repairs.
We met several times after the war when he 
was giving lectures and at his shop aboard the 
QUEEN MARY in CA. In 1972, we were 
shipmates aboard the Hudson's Bay Co 
NONSUCH along with the YANKEE CLIPPER 
Sea Scouts, out for a sail on the Sound."
J.K. Nov. 2015.

1992: The Seattle Yacht Club honored Dwight Long with a full page in their fine book.
Warren, James R. The Centennial History of the Seattle Yacht Club, 1892-1992. Published by The Seattle Yacht Club.