The Wrangell sentinel., 1926-08-12
Former Wran6eII Man Makes Trip
 Around World


 of the remarkable exploit of Harry Pidgeon, former Wrangell man, in making a voyage around the world by himself in a S4-foot sail boat. The article follows.
 A fean, tan man Wltn Uronzeu sAlu. UuIch, gray nalr aua quI1zIeal Dlue=61ay eyes sal Ill the cdDIn oI d uItie yaWt ancnureu Ill Long lsIanu oounu, hear NeW 1ork. a lew days a5o, ana tod me oI one oI tue most spectacular leaIs on Lne hlgn seas ln tnIs generation. AS ne JalKeu, ne pusneu Dig needle tarougn stout canA as, repairing malnsalL A nanasome bronze meaal presented Lo nm Ine mgnt before lay on a table nearby.
 awarded to Harry Pidgeon.9 the inscription read, @wno competed a voyage ot 35,0OQ mines around the world, single handed, in the yaWl Islander, thirty-tour teet over all, taking three years, efeYen months anu thirteen days Tor the voyage. It was the coveted Blue Water Medal awarded Tor hls remarkable exploit by the Cruising Club Of America, and he had come from California to New York to get it.
 10 tell the 1ull taie, the inserip- tion should have said much more. IL should have told how this man, who all alone had sailed around the world, had started out on his cruise when he was 5Z years old, and in d small boat built by himself; how, q landlubber knowing nothing of the sea, he had learned navigation by reading in the public library. IL mIght have pointed, out, too. that only one other man ill the worlds history had performed similar feat Captain Joseph slocum, in the nineties. But Captain Slocum was an experienced navigator; and his boat, the Spray, was larger, too, than the Islander.
 Il had always wanted to see the. South Sea Islands, Captain Pidgeon was saying T wasn't married, there wasn't any reason why l shouldn't go if 1 wanted to, so l went. When l started out, didn't know I would get round the world, but 1 kept on going, stopping where I liked. and pretty soon it was closer CT to get home by going on than by turning round"
 There was another reason for this extraordinary trip-loYe of adyen- ture.
 T lived on a farm in Iowa until ! was eighteen, he explained. '.Then I decided to go to California. After awhile went to Alaska and British Columbia, and then came back to Iowa to see the folks. Be- ing near the Mississippi, l built house boat and went in it to the Gulf. Returning to California, got a blackboard and horse and drove to Mexico, then up the coast to Canada. Following a stay in the Sierra lumberd camps, I got farm in the San Joaquin valley"
 But the wanderer was not con tented. So on Mormon Island in Los Angeles harbor he began building yawI, after plans which he found in yachting magazine. For a year and a half he worked on it, doing almost everything himself.
 Like a hollow log," some describ- ed his fiye-ton, V-bottom boat of the sea bird class. The cabin ran near 1y two-thirds the length of the boat and served both for living quarters and a storeroom for provisions and water
 In this strange craft, christened the Islander, Harry Pidgeon sailed for Hawaii in 1920 and returned some months later, having proved triumphantly that his homemade boat was seaworthy.
 A year later, on November 21, 1921, with three months provisions and two sets of sails, he started for the South Sea Islands.
 Terrific storms ragged on the Pa cific soon after he had left shore. These he missed miracu1ously, but he ran into trouble in the doldrums, the no mans lanl of the Pacific, a belt of terror for the sailing vessel.
 ''It took me two weeks to go five hundred miles," he said. That kept me from reaching the Mar qusas by Christmas. Ordinarily, I could make one hundred and twenty knots day"
 How did you manage at night?" I asked.
 "0h, I shortened down the sails, lashed the rudder, and went to bed. The Islander made good time at night. one night she did over sev- enty miles. If there were squalls, I would wake up, trim, take down and reef the sail in ten minutes.
 Late in December, after forty two days at sea, woke at dawn and thronph a nOrthO1n saw TTa HuEa