The following is an except of a memoir written by Charles Howard Duffy while sailing on the “LADY JO” in the Honolulu Classic, a yacht race between San Pedro and Honolulu, Jan 14,1939.
I think a storm is brewing or has brewed. It rained all last night and is still drizzling. We are running before a brisk east wind with only a squaresail up, but we are clicking off the knots. We took down the mainsail at midnight last night at the end of my watch. It was chafing on a top spreader, and a good sized hole had developed. We didn’t lose an appreciable amount of speed, and the steering became far easier. The seas have become quite large, and some are breaking. Sam estimated the height of a few at forty feet. Every so often if looks like a big one is going to crash down on the cockpit, but the stern always seems to rise over them. Once in a while, then the boat yaws around, a green one comes over the stern quarter. Ed tied himself in the cockpit this morning. At times the boat rolls both rails under, and the noise of lose things rolling back and forth in the galley is terrific. Yesterday I was very energetic. I removed part of the chafing gear from my face and washed down with a couple of cups of fresh water.
January 15, 1939