Sail on: Le Mars native tells sea tales before final leg of voyage

(Photo contributed) After making a stop in San Francisco, the Princess Tai Ping, loaded with fresh food for the journey back, headed west. They arrived in Hawaii this month, and will catch the trade winds to make it back to China by about April. Morrow says the return trip will be less treacherous. [Click to enlarge]

Editor's Note: This is a follow up story on Hugh Morrow, the Le Mars native who is crossing the Pacific Ocean in a boat designed after the ancient Chinese junk. We caught up with him via email during his stopover in Hawaii.

Hugh Morrow's feet are wet.

He's falling asleep to the sound of 9,500 pounds of stones rolling around in the bottom of a wooden ship.

(Photo contributed) Hugh Morrow, a Le Mars native, is now on the return trip to China aboard the Princess Tai Ping, a wooden sailing ship designed from ancient plans for the Chinese junk. Morrow, the lone American on the crew, reported their progress from Hawaii, where they are stopping to wait for trade winds to finish their voyage. [Click to enlarge]

And he's living his dream.

Last spring, the 1998 Le Mars Community School graduate joined a crew of Chinese sailors aboard the Princess Tai Ping, a ship built from 600-year-old plans for the Chinese junk sailing ship.

Their mission was to cross the Pacific to the United States then sail back to China, reviving the lore of China's naval history and giving weight to the idea that Chinese might have landed on American shores decades before Christopher Columbus lived.

(Photo contributed) A catch of squid meant the crew would have fresh seafood, not canned eel or tuna, to eat with their rice. Living conditions aboard the Princess Tai Ping are sparse, Morrow said. Sometimes they waited days for a catch of fresh fish. [Click to enlarge]

They made it to San Francisco in October and are on their return trip, taking a stopover in Hawaii to wait for the trade winds.

"The rest of the voyage is downwind," Morrow wrote in an email to the Daily Sentinel from Hawaii. "We are taking the old Spanish Galleon route home."

They will have to weather a few stormy spots, but compared to their trip to the U.S., those won't seem like much.

Morrow's word for their route through the north Pacific to America was "treacherous."

"We cannot outmaneuver storms like modern ships," he said. "We go through them."

Winds reaching more than 50 mph reared up giant waves and slammed them into the wooden ship. The crew members constantly braced themselves for impact. Sometimes the ship capsized, and the crew had to bail it out.

"We have to strap ourselves to the ship. If you fall, you are lost," Morrow said. "It would be near impossible to recover you."

It's actually the calm days and the quiet nights, not the storms, that get to Morrow the most.

"As long as I have something to do, to stay focused on, I don't get so scared," Morrow said. "But when it's time for me to sleep, I have trouble because my mind starts to idle and worry. Doubt breaches me."

Even when the seas are calm, the trip has been no leisure voyage. Morrow calls it "spartan."

Breakfast, lunch or supper meant rice and canned eel or tuna. If they were lucky, they caught a fish or squid to eat from the sea.

Sleeping is tough. Morrow's bamboo bed is about 5 feet long. He's about 6'4."

"There is no room to sit up or turn over," he said. "Water is constantly coming in at my feet and head; it is impossible to stay dry except on the calmest of days."

Add to those conditions the fact that you're in close quarters with the same seven people for months on end.

"We have to learn to live with each other, talk things out," Morrow said of his seven Chinese crewmates. "We are in this together and we can't have people upset because our lives are in each other's hands."

They address any issues immediately.

"We are a team, so we must always behave like one," he said. "We may be from different places but we have common ideas and needs. We have been through a lot; that brings us closer together."

They have about four more months together at sea.

Morrow said there will probably be some kind of party to welcome the sailors back to China as they finish their Pacific journey.

But that's not his reward.

When Morrow was a boy, he would go to the shelf and pull out a book from his family's encyclopedia.

He would turn the pages, finding faraway lands, tracing their coastlines with his finger.

"What do their languages sound like?" he would think. "And what does their food smell like?"

He imagined the first people arriving on the shores of these places and how they would feel.

"I thought, 'When I grow up if I ever have a son, I will take him to these places," Morrow said.

He dreamed of showing his son Peru and Jerusalem and the Taj Mahal and telling him of the passion that building represents.

"I hoped that when he saw the statue of Christ Redeemer (in Brazil) he saw not just a statue but openness," Morrow said. "I would not only want my boy to study geography. I would want him to live it, too."

And that, Morrow said, is why he signed up to be on the crew of the Princess Tai Ping.

"I made this decision because when I do have children I can inspire them, tell them real adventure stories when I tuck them in at night," he said.

But it's not just for his own children. As the lone American aboard the ship, Morrow hopes to inspire more Americans to travel outside the U.S.

"I have been so many places, and rarely do I come across another American," he said.

This journey has made Morrow not only teacher, but also student.

"The most valuable lessons I have learned on this trip are appreciation and patience," he said.

Before the trip, he though he needed more possessions to be happy.

"I thought I had to fill my home with all these things to be happy, when really I don't need much to achieve happiness. I had a hole in me that kept wanting more, more than I could afford," Morrow said. "I didn't appreciate things that I should have. I overlooked what was really important."

This revelation has changed the way he views everything -- even a can of pop.

"When I do have a cola, I don't just open it right away and drink," he said. "I will really enjoy it; smell it, drink it slowly, put more thought into the cost and how much work went into getting this cola into my hand. I think how lucky I am to be able to have something so sweet. I say, 'Thank God.'"

He says the same thing when he sits in a comfortable chair (those are a rare luxury after being at sea) or when he turns on the faucet and clean drinkable warm water comes out: Thank God.

"I must thank God over a thousand times a day now," he said.

Along with that, Morrow learned patience. He wryly recalled his days of being an impatient driver, getting annoyed and honking his horn at a driver that was slow at a turning stoplight.

"After waiting days for a fresh fish or waiting a week for the wind, I have learned to slow down," he said. "To just be comfortable being."