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Capt. Gary's Log

a record of events and memories
sailing along with the Sloop, RED WOLF
transcribed and edited by Wm. Van Ness

“Pong”
by Wm. Van Ness

Log of Sloop RED WOLF
2/5/31

Hanamahina Bay, Moon Island. Stores loaded and last night ashore before returning to sea.

The crowd at “Grinning Jax” grog shop the usual mix of a few merchant seamen but mostly young flyboys.  Somehow the bar talk had gotten onto the subject of Island legends and superstitions.  The majority opinion of the flyers was that maybe some of the old time sailors might have bought that guff, but in this modern age of science and technology you wouldn’t find any of them who’d waste any time on it!

Considering myself the most “old time sailor” in the room, I felt it my duty to point out to these cubs that it was a big ocean out there, with a lot of islands still unexplored, and a lot of things on them that hadn’t maybe made in into their school books yet!  For instance…

It was after my mate had passed away but before I’d returned to the Spontoons. I was ashore in San Francisco and accepted a job piloting a tramp steamer, “Bluefin” into a little visited part of the South Pacific. She’d been hired by some movie producer who claimed to have found a chart to an unknown island where the natives worshiped some kind of giant wild primate called “Pong”.  His idea was to sail there and shoot an adventure movie about trying to capture the beast.  The island was in a part of the ocean known for uncharted reefs and shoals and frequent sea fogs.  A good place for an island to remain undiscovered for a long time. Most sailors had good reason to avoid it, but as I was one of the few who’d been in those waters before, I took the job.

There was a bit of a hitch before setting sail:  The actress hired to play the role of the leading lady got a fit of good sense & bailed out at the last moment!  Still, the producer was able to find some poodle with acting experience somewhere who looked to fit the costumes, so we were able to make our tide. 

The voyage itself was uneventful enough, given the conditions of the area.  We took it slow in the fogs and managed to avoid hitting anything hard, and the Bluefin’s pumps were more-or-less able to keep up with her leaks, so we didn’t sink.  And that old chart actually got us to Pong’s Island, right where it said it would be!

    As for there being a “Giant Primate”, though, well, that was a little different.  We did find a rather large monkey running about the island, but as for it’s being a “giant”?  I suppose to the island natives, who were a type of lizard maybe all of a foot and a half tall or less, it may have been.  Still, I have to say that movie producer fella was nothing if not resourceful!  While his big adventure story may have been a bust, he was still able to make a profitable movie out of the trip. He just hired the islanders as extras, put the poodle in a grass skirt and the islanders into little sheep costumes, and shot that South Seas musical, “The Wonderful Wizard of Baas”!

G-