Historic Golden Rule sailboat heading to Iowa

Michaele Niehaus

Burlington Hawk Eye | USA TODAY NETWORK

The Golden Rule sailboat has taken its mission of worldwide nuclear disarmament to the Mississippi River for the fifirst time in its 64-year history as it travels from Minnesota to Louisiana, with plenty of stops, including in Burlington and Keokuk, scheduled along the way.

The Mississippi River is but a portion of the Golden Rule’s 11,000-mile Great Loop Voyage that began in the St. Croix River in Minnesota after it arrived by truck last month in Hudson, Wisconsin, and was reassembled, according to Helen Jaccard, project manager of the Golden Rule.

“I said 'no' three times to even doing this part of it,” Jaccard told The Hawk Eye last week while she and the Golden Rule were at a stop in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “You don’t do the whole Mississippi River, especially in a sailboat, but we’re going to.”

The Golden Rule typically sails ocean waters, having traveled from Vancouver to the northern Mexico city of Ensenada before heading to the Hawaiian islands, where it remained for 22 months while its plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hawaii was meant to be but one stop along the Golden Rule’s journey to Okinawa for the 75th anniversary of when the U.S. dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons have not been used in war since, but production and testing of the weapons continued, and an estimated 13,080 nuclear warheads exist today.

Along the way to Japan, the Golden Rule was meant to stop at the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. nuclear testing program dropped 67 nuclear bombs between 1946 and 1958, displacing Indigenous residents and spreading radiation.

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The Marshall Islands also had been the intended destination of the Golden Rule in 1958, when “four Quaker peace activists sailed the Golden Rule, the same boat, toward the Marshall Islands to try to stop nuclear testing,” Jaccard said. “They sailed out of Los Angeles, got to Honolulu, where they resupplied, and they were headed to the Marshall Islands when the Coast Guard brought them back and arrested them.”

Among those arrested were the skipper of the boat, Albert Bigelow. He was sailing into Pearl Harbor on Aug. 6,1945, when he heard news of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. He resigned from the U.S. Naval reserve a month before becoming eligible for his pension and began peacefully advocating for the elimination of the testing and use of nuclear weapons.

“(The arrests of Bigelow and his crew) sparked an international outcry against nuclear testing that gave the U.S., USSR and UK the political cover they needed to sign the limited test treaty in 1963,” Jaccard said.

The boat was sold to a private owner, who sailed her through the Panama Canal and around the Pacific, but little else was heard about the Golden Rule until 2010, when the sailboat was blown over and bashed against a dock in Northern California's Humbolt Bay. She was underwater for about a day before she was recovered and brought ashore to reveal damaged planks and large holes.

The sinking, while brief, spurred the boat’s rebirth.

“Veterans for Peace and Quakers and wooden boat lovers got together and decided not just to restore the boat, but to restore her anti-nuclear mission, so that’s what we’re accomplishing now,” Jaccard said.

Restoration of the 34-foot wooden ketch took fifive years, with those working to restore it using pictures and drawings from 1958 to complete the work.

Jaccard said it had been the restoration crew’s dream for the Golden Rule to sail the navigable waterways of the U.S. The four-person crew is led by captain Kiko Johnston-Kitazawa.

Once in the Gulf, the Golden Rule will travel around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast to Maine, then back down to New York, where it will enter the Hudson River en route to the Erie Canal and Great Lakes, “then down a difffferent emblem waterway back to the Gulf of Mexico,” Jaccard said.

The boat travels at speeds of 6-7 mph, and its full journey is expected to take 15 months.

What to expect during Golden Rule stops

During its stops, members of the public are invited to tour the sailboat, hear a presentation, learn about Veterans for Peace, the group’s mission and current nuclear issues; and see a fifilm, “Making Waves: Rebirth of the Golden Rule.”

There is no cost to see the boat, but donations are encouraged.

The Golden Rule will arrive in Burlington the evening of Oct. 19, and boat tours will be available from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 20.

Jaccard said stops were chosen after consideration of town size and distance downstream.

“We are trying to stop every night and not be on the Mississippi at night when those big barges are going past to make sure that we can be seen,” Jaccard said.

Burlington will be the boat’s second-to-last stop in Iowa before heading to Missouri.

Golden Rule schedule in Iowa

● Dubuque: Arrives evening of Sunday, Oct. 9; leaves the morning of Oct. 11

● Clinton: Arrives the evening of Oct. 12; leaves the morning of Oct. 14

● Quad Cities: Arrives the evening of Oct. 14; leaves the morning of Oct. 17

● Muscatine: Arrives the afternoon or evening of Oct 17; leaves the morning of Oct. 19

● Burlington: Arrives the morning of Oct. 19; leaves the morning of Oct 21

● Keokuk: Arrives the evening of Oct 21; leaves the morning of Oct. 23.

For more information about the Golden Rule Project and its Great Loop Voyage, visit vfpgoldenrule.org. You can follow the boat’s progress on a map that updates every 10 minutes at share.garmin.com/goldenrule.

Groups can schedule an educational presentation by Jaccard at vfpgoldenruleproject@gmail.com or (206) 992-6364.