We had already been on Amami Oshima for a week waiting for Typhoon No. 21 to pass. But the typhoon was meandering around the Pacific like a drunken sailor, zigzagging a path north-west, once making a U-turn then righting itself, and another time its path taking a complete pirouette.
The typhoon was large but not fast. It was travelling so slowly that sometimes it would be stationary for periods of 24 hours or more before gaining the strength to move onward at a leisurely 5-10 km per hour. But one thing was for sure — it was going to eventually slam right into us. All we could do was wait for it before sailing onward to Okinawa.
So many things had already happened during that one week on Amami Oshima that it seemed more like one month. One of our three Japanese crew members returned to Okayama, I turned 50, and we had shacked up with the locals on the island.