Electa Johnson, at 95; co-leader of epic global sailing trips

Electa "Exy" (Search) Johnson was a celebrated sailor who introduced many amateurs to the rewards and rigors of life at sea during seven circumnavigations of the globe.

"She had a wonderful sense of humor and believe me, she needed it on those trips," Lydia Jewell, a member of the crew of a 1955 trip, said yesterday of Mrs. Johnson, 95, who died Friday in a nursing home in Holyoke.

Between 1933 and 1958, Mrs. Johnson and her husband, Irving, took paying customers, mainly students but some adults, on 18-month voyages -- first on a ketch named Yankee and later on a brigantine of the same name.

"Irving had the sea skills, but she had the people skills," Jewell said. "She was more than half the team."

Jewell, of San Pedros, Calif., co-wrote the book "Yankee's People and Places" with Mrs. Johnson.

On a typical voyage, the Yankee departed from Gloucester, passed through the Panama Canal to the Galapagos Islands, Pitcairn Island, and Tahiti, and spent several months in the South Sea islands. It would pass through New Guinea, Sumatra, and Singapore, head across the Indian Ocean, down the east coast of Africa, and around the Cape of Good Hope to Rio de Janeiro. From there, the ship traveled through the West Indies and back north to Gloucester.

En route, as the couple and their amateur crew wrestled with the intricacies of keeping a vessel under sail and the intimacies of close quarters, they encountered whales, hurricanes, and indigenous people of many kinds.

"She was not the phenomenal hot-shot sailor my father was. Her abilities were in the linguistics," said her son, Robert P. of Sherborn.

Mrs. Johnson spoke French and German fluently. She also learned how to make her intentions known in Italian, Spanish, Greek, and several other languages.

"She bought all the food and bartered with islanders, sometimes trading clothing, a machete, or a stick of tobacco for a machine part or whatever else we needed," her son said.

He said that when the navigation became tricky -- for instance, when the ship was wending its way through coral near an atoll -- Mr. Johnson would climb to the top of the foremast to navigate by the color of the water.

He shouted instructions to Mrs. Johnson, who manned the helm.

"I think my father got a lot of the credit, but I think it was a joint thing, " her son said. "Neither one could have done it without the other."

After 18 months at sea, the couple usually spent a similar amount of time touring the country, presenting slide lectures and films about their trips. They wrote several books and were featured in articles in National Geographic magazine and in the organization's films and videos.

Mrs. Johnson was born in Rochester, N.Y. She graduated from Smith College in 1929 and attended the University of California at Berkeley the following year. She was returning from a summer in France on the schooner Wanderbird when she met her future husband, who was a member of the crew.

When Mr. Johnson was asked how he talked his wife into joining him on the around-the-world trips, he always said it was her idea. "My mother knew absolutely nothing about sailing at the time," her son said.

"They made a good team. Their skills complimented each other," he continued. "He grew up raising prize corn on a farm in Hadley and she grew up in a socially prominent family in New York."

Jim Gladson, president of the Los Angeles Maritime Institute, said the couple were "the de facto parents of character-building sail-training." Gladson said he found it incredible that during seven circumnavigations, nobody ever got angry and left a trip. "She always played the supportive wife, the mate rather than the skipper -- and she was good at that," he said. "After you spoke to her, it became clear that she was an incredibly competent, self-taught psychologist."

In 1958, the couple built their dream boat, a 50-foot ketch once again named the Yankee. They sailed Europe's canals and inland waterways and up the Nile River before co-writing the books "Yankee Sails Across Europe" and "Yankee Sails the Nile."

The couple sold their ship and retired to Hadley in the late 1970s. Mr. Johnson died in 1991.

In tribute to the Johnsons, Los Angeles Maritime Institute, a sail training program founded by Gladson, named two new 90-foot brigantines built in 2000 after the couple. Mrs. Johnson was on hand for the christening.

"They wanted her to christen the ship named after her husband," said Jewell, "but she preferred to christen the ship named after her . . . so she did."

Besides her son, she leaves four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Dec. 4 at First Congregational Church of Hadley.