VENTURA : Student Returns From Long Voyage

Eric Rigney, sunburned and peeling, arrived home in Ventura last week, having logged 10,000 miles and a few adventures at sea.

Last Feb. 9, Rigney, 30, sailed off for the Marquesas in French Polynesia to survey the effect on native culture of television, which is beginning to be broadcast to the six populated islands of the archipelago.

“I tried to measure their attitudes, their way of life . . . before TV comes,” Rigney said. The results will be part of his thesis work for a master’s degree in mass communications at Cal State Northridge.

In five years, he hopes to return and, as a doctoral project, study how Marquesan society will have changed since television’s arrival.

At age 15, Rigney made the same trip with his uncle, Bill Kohut of Ventura, in the same boat, a 32-foot cutter named Getel that Kohut built.

But this was Rigney’s first time as captain. “It was a fairly ideal trip. We had few rough days with only minor mishaps,” he said, recalling how the 18-year-old mainsail had ripped on the way to Hawaii. Kohut came to their rescue by ordering a new sail through a sail maker in Hong Kong and having it shipped to Honolulu.

The sailors radioed home twice a week via the Pacific Maritime Network of ham radio operators. Their contact, George Tauxe of Pacific Palisades, picked up their signals and transmitted them by telephone to Rigney’s family or to his professors.

“We were just a wine-bottle cork floating on the ocean and with the network you have some contact, and you can talk to your mom and other people who are a little worried--let them know that everything’s fine,” Rigney said.

The Getel was also equipped with a VHF radio that enabled Rigney to talk to nearby ships.

“A tanker would came by and we’d ask for a position check and if our navigation was correct. Then we’d ask for ice cream,” he said with a laugh. “It never worked. They always said, ‘Negative on the ice cream.’ But it was worth a try.”

The boat had no radar but an antenna on the stern picked up communications satellite signals that their computer translated into longitudinal and latitudinal estimates, their average speed and direction, and the compass course desired.

Such satellite navigation allowed the Getel to sail through the Tuamotus, known as the Dangerous Archipelago because of coral reefs. While Rigney was safely cruising through those atolls, another boat was shipwrecked.