About the Dream
I do
not remember a time when thoughts about a sailing adventure
did not seep from the depths of my sub-conscience whenever
my mind wandered. As a child flicking with Mom through the
pages of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, I
had ideas of "voyaging" just as Max did in the children's
book. My playing and fishing as a youngster around the beaches,
tidal lakes and marshlands of the Charleston's "low country"
also lent itself to daydreaming about chasing birds, fish and shells
on boats. These ideas of voyaging under sail were possibly planted
when my father whispered, "See the boat, Jack?" in my
little ear every time we crossed the Ashley or Cooper River
bridges.
Mom and I moved to
the Ashley House in downtown Charleston when I was 5 and my
living there, next to the Charleston City Marina, and going to its
sailing camp left me permanently imprinted to the water. I
spent afternoons and most Saturdays walking along the docks,
throwing my cast net, selling bait to the sport fishermen or just
fetching seafood for dinner, per mom's request. Up there, from our
12th floor condo, our view spanned from Fort Sumter at the
harbor's entrance all the way up the Ashley River to the Charleston
City Marina. Mom and I kept constant surveillance on the comings
and goings of all the boats along the Ashley River. Over breakfast,
on the balcony before school, we discussed the seasonal movements of
the shrimpers and sailors alike. I have always felt a draw to boats
and sure I often dreamed of them as a boy, but never truly believing
that one day I would sail across every ocean!
My
teens and 20s offered no sailing experiences but I always dreamed of
adventure. The long ago planted seed of a dream lay dormant until I
went out on a triple date, a sailing adventure in a rented sailboat
in the San Diego harbor. That following year, 1998, I found myself
working as a biologist on a Pacific Cod long liner fishing on the
Bering Sea. After 72 continuous days working offshore, on the F/V
Lilli Anne, I returned safely to Seattle. Then I rode south on my
1983 Honda Magna, back home to San Diego. By November, after 4
months working in Alaska, I had a notion of what life at sea was like
and a pocket full of cash. After a week sleeping on my buddy Tom
Zitrides's couch, I bought my first sailboat. She was a sky blue
1971, Cal 27 Sloop. I had paid only 1500 USD and finally, the long
dormant seed of a dream was germinating at the ripe old age of 24.
Mission Impossible: Langkawi, Malaysia Hall-Out
Sailors joke that cruising can be accurately defined as fixing your boat in exotic places. This line of humor does not stray far enough from the truth. My two cents added to this not so humorous reality are working on your boat in exotic places without proper parts, tools or money and usually surrounded by folks who speak a different language than yours. Whenever I am knee deep in a savorier cruising task, I crack out my classic line, “Sunsets and cocktails”, highlighting the irony of the cruising lifestyle. We folks voyaging under sail may be unemployed but do not mistakenly believe we do not work. The often visualized barefooted stoner, propping a beer on his chest with a big hat pulled low and listening to Jimmy Buffet as his home glides aimlessly across oceans is far from typical. A cruiser is more realistically depicted as a naked guy, sweating with grease covering his arms and face as he tries to squeeze his slippery body through the narrow pass beside the motor to get the impeller out of the water pump hoping the small Indonesian lady at the motorcycle shop understood him when he requested a new lip seal.(the guy was sweaty and covered with grease when asking the lady at the motorcycle shop, but not yet naked!) Only in the cruising community, will you find a physician or a lawyer, cleaning the filthy plumbing of a head or scraping barnacles off their props. Varied as cruising budgets may be, we are all unified regardless of tax bracket. Cruisers are bound together because we survive maintaining our rigs in very faraway places and our lives depend on it. Assets aside, if you voyaging under sail, then you are out there on the “front lines” of jury-rigging your boat to get to the next port of call! Time on the Bering Sea: When all moves and stands still
Time on the Bering Sea 2008
It is July and I am here on the Glacier Bay. GB is an awkward blue and beige 148 feet of longling machine equipped with 4 decks, 2 engines and 19 working souls including myself. We are working the edge of the continental shelf where the artic circle meets the dateline. This area is recognized on a globe as the body of water above the words Bering Sea and except for these few months in the summer it is usually totally locked by ice. It is known to most because of silly reality TV but also because here there was a land bridge as we all recall studying in 3rd grade. Up here so long ago where things must have been so desolately bleak and surviving must have been extremely difficult the mammoth, saber tooth tiger, bear, caribou and human all endured this stretch of the planet seeking a new world, or possibly just the next meal. After 10 years working up here I have realized things have not evolved since those first quests across this land/seascape as much as one may think. The crew is a mix of ex military, ex drugo, ex convicts, ex everything you can think of! They are either working to hold on to what they have or working for something better. Each good in his own way and all well proven as of today. Right now we are on day 40 of the “grind” with no fill date ahead. The bait will run out before the freezer hold is full of 42 pound bagged frozen blocks of cod ... this season is painfully dragging on. The pain is revealed by all the faces aboard, life revolves around work, rack time and the next meal.
The days melt into one another living on a factory that works 24/7. As the onboard biologist I randomly sample the vessels catch for composition with no steady sleep shift. I spend several hours a day on the weather deck above the factory where I am exposed to the elements and I cant help but feel I endure the hardships that this area is known for so I can see a new world as well. Only someone with a dream could withstand this for this long. Mine is to circumnavigate the planet in my tiny sailboat DANCYN.
A day in the life fishing offshore
Rum Running in East Africa: Yes We Can!
Rum Running in East Africa
After overstaying my visa and cruising permit in Madagascar, I needed to find a way to revamp my papers. The Madagascar government had been having a “civil war-light” for the last several months leading up to a power sharing agreement. In the villages there were no signs of violence or even awareness of political instability. On the moderately populated island of Nosi Be in the north of Madagascar things had been going on, business as usual unaffected by the news of riots and violence in Anatanarivo, the nations capital. Large flat-bottomed boats still sailed cargo under lateen rigs with home sewn canvas sails into the loading wharf of Hellville. Strong Malgash men with perfect white teeth unloaded rice sacks of sand, dried palm fronds, logs all for construction as well as anything grown or raised for sale at the central market. The bustling indoor vegetable market forming the center of Hellville was packed with Vanilla, Saffron, Peppercorns and Cinnamon just as it had been under previous governments. Brightly colored Renault-4 taxis in varying degrees of dilapidation rushed around the streets competing for position on narrow dirt roads with Zebu pulled Ox-carts. Well-dressed Malgash youth still swarmed out onto the beach every Sunday at Ambatoloaka near Crater bay where Dancyn rested at anchor. All day they drank, played music and danced Sele`ge. Aviator sunglass-wearing men filled the local pubs, drinking the local brew THB and leaving piles of empty brown liter bottles on the floor beneath the tables like fallen soldiers. Even though abnormal in Madagascar would be difficult to define, being there with out papers in light of the political situation was a bad idea! The French naval outpost of Mayotte was the easiest place to acquire an updated ships clearance and a new stamp in my passport. It was an easy couple day motor across a windless stretch of sea; all I needed was some fuel!
Cape Of Africa: The Illusion of Control
The Illusion of Control
When chatting with friends and family a common question reoccurs. “Aren’t you scared?” The easiest answer is “I have been afraid, but mostly just uncomfortable”. The truth is being out there on the wind in Dancyn, independent and self-sufficient, has become, well… “NORMAL” to me. Driving around Atlanta on the highway at 75mph scares me senseless! How do you people do it? And still put on lipstick and text each other? Discomfort, when you have chosen it, is more tolerable if you can remember that you’ve chosen it! There have been only a few moments that I have felt pure fear. It surprised me how calm I felt in retrospect. An overwhelming feeling of acceptance falls over me and I am left dealing with the moment the best I can. On Santo, Vanuatu before cyclone Xavier hit I cried. But only once I had bounced and leveraged Dancyn’s hull over a barrier reef into the safety of a “hurricane hole” and she was prepared deep in the mangroves for a real SMACKDOWN. Sure I cried, but I’m not sure this was fear but just fatigue of 2 days sleepless work and anxiety pre-storm. I knew I had done what I could before impact. Most importantly, I knew I could just step off into the mangrove jungle I was tied amongst and survive. It would suck but I could walk away and having that comforting thought rattling around in the back of my head saved me from true fear and allowed me the “illusion of control”. This year I sailed around the southern Cape of Africa. Down there I had a real taste of mind cleansing fear. The kind of fear that helps put all other things in perspective. The kind of fear that takes discomfort and pushes it to the back of the mind. The comfort and relief allowed by the “illusion” are gone as there is no walking away. There are no tears only the task at hand. I believe the scariest moment on this voyage around our planet was when sailing between Durban and East London, South Africa.
Chasing Volcanoes
Bouncing around the planet onboard Dancyn I have developed a fetish with volcanoes. An active volcano is a window with a view of the ocean that lies beneath the blue and green skin of earth sans the sunsets! Even when extinct or eroded away, volcanoes are reminders that the solid planet we live on is in constant motion and the “terra firma” that we take for granted are only large ships afloat on a sea of red hot ocean.Vanuatu Priorities 2007 What really Maters
Vanuatu Priorities 2007
Only after working in Sydney during the cyclone season for Dancyn’s and my financial needs was Dancyn prepared and well stocked. I left Sydney, Australia early in the winter of the southern hemisphere. It was time for my third round of exploration under sail in the South Pacific. Dancyn rode those frontal lows out of the Tasman Sea northwards for the warmer climes of the French territory New Caledonia. After a few months fishing and diving we left New Cal for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Vanuatu was a place where an ancient people live with wisdom as they did a thousand years ago. It is the first place I spent months immersed in a culture traveling alone. It is where I learned what things are most important.
Underwater Video at end!
Only after working in Sydney during the cyclone season for Dancyn’s and my financial needs was Dancyn prepared and well stocked. I left Sydney, Australia early in the winter of the southern hemisphere. It was time for my third round of exploration under sail in the South Pacific. Dancyn rode those frontal lows out of the Tasman Sea northwards for the warmer climes of the French territory New Caledonia. After a few months fishing and diving we left New Cal for the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Vanuatu was a place where an ancient people live with wisdom as they did a thousand years ago. It is the first place I spent months immersed in a culture traveling alone. It is where I learned what things are most important.
Underwater Video at end!
St Helena, Reconnecting with Good Mates and Naked Whale Shark Rides
Saint Helena, Mid Atlantic Stop and Whale Shark Ride, 2010
- approach to St Helena - Sugarloaf gauntlet - reunion - Whale shark - celebration dinner
14 days blue water sailing from Cape Town, South Africa, relieved, I spotted the black cliffs of Saint Helena. I had slowed Dancyn’s speed over the last 24 hours to avoid approaching Helena’s rock cliffs in the dark of night. Cold wind and rain from the South Atlantic kept me bundled up in foulies, polar fleece and Xtra-Tuf fishing boots. Fatigued, I shivered on the lookout all night for local fishing craft as I approached this solitary spec of land mid South Atlantic. Around 4 am as the darkness began to wither but hours before a pink glow would emerge over the bow to the east a mountainous dark outline faintly developed. LAND HO! Exhausted, cold and wet, I felt the infusion of youth warm my veins again. I was rejuvenated by the idea that I had found Saint Helena but mostly that Africa with her dangerous Cape of Storms and great social injustices were really behind me. Solo sailing around the south cape of Africa was a 5-month saga that tested my endurance, sailing skills and mostly my will to continue. Early that morning as landfall loomed I felt the next chapter had truly begun.
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