THE PRESIDENCY: To the East’ard

“Nothing pleases my husband more, in Hyde Park or Warm Springs,” wrote Mrs. Roosevelt in her column My Day last week, “than to lose the Secret Service car which always follows him when he drives his own little car. It must be even more fun to be able to do it m a ship.”

At the wheel of the trim little schooner Sewanna, the best yachtsman the nation ever had for President put out from Pulpit Harbor, Me. early last week with Sons James, John and Franklin Jr. for shipmates, a crew of two. “I haven’t the faintest idea where I’m going, except to work to the east’ard,” he told newshawks before casting off. “I’m just going to loaf and have a good time.”

In the Sewanna’s wake trailed the destroyer Hopkins, for Secret Service and wireless men; the Presidential yacht Potomac, for secretaries, emergencies and fishing jaunts; the schooner Liberty, for newshawks. First day’s run brought the President to Bucks Harbor, off South Brooksville, Me. Next noon he put in at Mount Desert Island’s Seal Cove for a visit from Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, wife, son and three daughters. Dressed in old pants, blue sweater and floppy white hat, Franklin Roosevelt received them with a day’s growth of stubble on his chin, kept the Admiral for lunch. That afternoon he played his favorite game, tacking into shallow water, dodging among rocky islands where his deep-draft escorts could not follow. Vastly relieved were his guardians when the Sewanna hove back in sight after half-an-hour and they heard the President’s great laugh ringing across the waters.

Off Maine’s northeastern tip late next afternoon Yachtsman Roosevelt suddenly changed his northerly course, struck eastward across the choppy waters of the Bay of Fundy on the longest open-water sail he had taken since boyhood. Thirty hours later he had covered 125 miles, dropped anchor off Cape Sable on Nova Scotia’s southern tip. As the flotilla headed north next day the President’s prayer for fog was answered (TIME, July 20), but it was not heavy enough to let him escape the stream of dispatches convoyed from the Hopkins at every stop. Off the tiny fishing village of Shelburne on Sunday he woke to a cold drizzle, decided to stay put for the day. Late that afternoon, looking healthier than he had since he arrived from his West Indies cruise last spring, the President was ferried over to the Potomac for a bath, a rubdown and his first shave since leaving Pulpit Harbor five days before.