Not For Sissies

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
—William Arthur Ward

There were challenges and danger and discovery and freedom and the sea and sunsets and hard work and the people.

Water? Look, they have fresh water! It was the days before water makers, so whenever we got to a place where there was fresh water we went ashore in the dinghy, filled our collapsible jerry jugs, hauled them back to the boat, lifted the jugs up onto the deck, and emptied them into our tanks. Then we made another trip or more until the tanks were full. Cruising Mexico, there were small marinas in La Paz and Acapulco, but other than that you were on your own. I’m sure that lifting those heavy 40-to 45-pound water jugs out of the dinghy and onto the deck is the reason I had to have my right shoulder replaced some years later. In our early cruises, sailing in Mexico was anything but luxurious.

Eat out? No restaurants. We cooked three meals a day. Need some groceries, maybe some fresh fruit, and veggies? There were very few grocery stores except in the major ports. Hard to believe? Even Puerto Vallarta only had one grocery. To get groceries, we took the dinghy ashore to a road and then hitchhiked, catching a ride in the back of a pickup truck with maybe 5 or 6 locals, to a village where, if we were lucky, we bought a few vegetables, and, if we were really lucky, we might find paper towels. I remember paper towels were a very precious commodity.

Sailing of the type we were doing was not a sport for sissies, and it wasn’t that good on marriages. I can’t tell you how many people we met who had left California—one couple without charts, just a road map—with their dream of sailing off into the sunset forever. By the time they had reached Cabo or La Paz, many of them weren’t speaking and boats were for sale at bargain prices because the couple had broken up. In some ways it was like a little Peyton Place in that they were also switching partners.

The ones who stuck it out were special and we met many wonderful people who became great friends. Chuck and Doris Mace, retired schoolteachers, sailed for eight years that I know of, in the heat of Baja without refrigeration. Suzanne and Jim Austin, wonderful sailors on Whisper, could always find dinner with a spear gun. Steve and Nancy Loye had their first baby in San Carlos so she could be a Mexican citizen and then made the long trip to the South Pacific with her before she was old enough to walk. Carlos and Magaly Caprioglio (she a Chilean, and he an Argentinian) were always great fun and such a help whenever things went wrong mechanically. Doc and Jeannie, another older couple, were great sailors. He was the retired physician for the San Francisco 49ers. The list goes on and on of incredibly interesting, adventurous, and romantic couples that we met along the way.

The initial voyage from San Diego to Puerto Vallarta is described in my essay “The Maiden Voyage.” In the following years our cruising life, while considered pretty adventurous by our landlubber friends, actually got into a familiar routine. We would pick up Expectation in San Carlos, where we had left her the previous spring. The normal routine would be to pick up the boat in San Carlos in November and head south as far as Acapulco or Zihuatanejo and slowly work our way back up the coast, hitting many anchorages along the way, finally arriving in Puerto Vallarta in February or early March. From there we’d go up into the Sea of Cortes. We’d cruise until May, leaving the boat at San Carlos.

The Peterson 44 had lots of britework (varnish). It made the boat beautiful but was a heap of work to keep up. For the first couple of years, Betty and I did it by ourselves. We found that we were spending an awful lot of time sanding and varnishing that we would much rather have spent cruising and snorkeling. One time when we were in La Paz and had a mechanical problem, we got on the radio and asked if anyone knew someone who could help us. By good fortune, we were introduced to Lynn Bolkan, one of the most remarkable men I have ever met (see my essay on Lynn Bolkan). This changed our sailing life.

Lynn and his wife, Deloris, had built the biggest sailboat ever built in the state of Oregon, from scratch! The wonderful thing about it was that they didn’t know how to sail at the time. Lynn had worked as a logger and decided that the logging life was not for him. He wanted to immigrate with his family to Australia. They thought the best way to get there was to build a boat and sail there, although they had never sailed.

It took Lynn and Deloris 10 years to build and rig Endless Summer, a 72-foot Ferro cement boat. Lynn had to get a special permit from the U.S. Forrest Service to cut the tree for the mast. Their work included making the sails, which were beautiful. When I asked Lynn how he learned to make sails, he replied, “I read a book.” I have the greatest admiration for him because I could read every book ever published on sail making and wouldn’t be able to do that job. I think Lynn could build a computer from scratch if there was a book on it.

By the time Endless Summer was finished, their kids were grown and had left home so they never made it to Australia. Instead, they headed for Mexico with $25 in their pockets.

That year, Lynn helped us out with a couple of problems, and we became great friends. Eventually a pattern developed: Lynn would meet us in the spring to help put the boat away, and before we headed out in the fall, he would arrive for two weeks to a month early to take care of a list of repairs and additions, do the varnish work, and get the boat in first-class shape. I was getting busier with work, and it was harder and harder to take time off; Lynn and Deloris’s help prolonged our sailing days by several years.

In 1987, Betty and I decided to head for Panama. We sailed from Acapulco to Puerto Escondido with our good friend Mary Ann Rivas, where we were met by Patty and Jack Ferguson (Patty is Betty’s niece), who were going to sail with us to Costa Rica.

For several years, we’d been hearing horror tales of the Gulf of Tehuantepec, which is the narrowest point of land in Mexico. Storms build up in the Gulf of Mexico and funnel west across the isthmus, building up huge winds. Because the Gulf of Tehuantepec is shallow, the waves can be tremendous. We kept meeting boats that had come all the way from California but were turning back because they had taken such a beating in the gulf.

On one boat, the skipper had gone nuts and had to be locked in his cabin by the crew. Another boat we met had been sandblasted by sand coming off the beach, and there wasn’t a bit of varnish or paint left on her. In Panama, we heard of a boat that was swamped in the Gulf and the crew of three had to abandon ship in a life raft. After several days in the raft in the blazing sun without water, they were about to die when some dolphins approached them one night and pushed the boat south. It was maybe only a few yards but the next day they were rescued by a Mexican fishing boat. To this day they’ll swear that the dolphins were trying to push them to where they would intercept with their rescuers.

You can cross the Gulf in one of two ways: either right next to shore—as sailors say, “with one foot on the beach”—so if the wind comes up, the waves won’t have too much of a chance to build before hitting you; or far out to sea where it’s deeper and the wind is somewhat dispersed.

It was with no small amount of trepidation that we approached the Gulf. The night before, we had anchored in the Bay of Huatulco (which was just a sleepy little village then but later became a major Mexican resort).

On the day we started out it was calm, and we were following the beach, knowing that a Tehuantepecer, as the wind gusts were called, could come up at any moment. Halfway across, I decided that we were safe, and we should cut the corner and head directly for Puerto Madero. Not only was the sea flat, but there were turtles lying on the surface everywhere, resting, we assumed, from the last Tehuantepecer. Almost every turtle had a bird on its back. As we would approach within 30 or 40 feet, the turtle would dive, and the bird would fly away and look for a new landing spot.

Our crossing on the glassy sea was absolutely uneventful.

The excitement on the trip came when we were crossing from Mexico to Costa Rica off the coast of Nicaragua, which, because of the war going on, was a definite no-no for cruisers. As usual I was taking the daylight watch and also as usual, we were trailing a fishing line, hoping to pick up a Dorado or something else for dinner.

I was alone when I caught a brilliant 40-pounder. I got him on deck and was preparing to remove the lure when he flopped and threw the other hook from the lure into my leg, all the way in one side and out the other—did that hurt! I thought I had been stabbed with a red-hot poker.

I yelled for Jack because the struggling fish was pulling at the hook in my leg and making matters worse. Jack got on deck and got the fish off the lure, so I just had a lure sticking out of my leg. Fortunately, the barb had gone all the way in and out, so Jack was eventually able to cut the barb off and we removed the hook without trouble. Everyone thought I was going to die from infection as the hook was a little rusty, but we proceeded on to Costa Rica without problem. The Dorado was delicious! And we sailed on.