Dear Friends:
Coincidence and sailing seem to go hand-in-hand. In our August newsletter I wrote about the Los Angeles Chapter of the Adventurers Club, the amazing exhibits, reminders of the sometimes wondrous, sometimes crazy adventures made by relatively unknown Southern Californian’s. One in particular captured my imagination, the 16 foot long canvas kayak/sailboat built in 1933 by a young couple to voyage from Southern California to the Panama canal. I read the short biography posted with the boat and thought about folks saying Larry and I sailed in such a minimalist fashion. Then of course, life moved on and I forgot about Ginger and Dana Lamb.
Summer is here, the water’s warm. The camp across the cove from us is in full swing.
A few weeks ago a couple in their early 30’s, Daniel Bramwell and his wife Michelle White sailed into our cove on board Evangeline their 1968 Westsail 32. Daniel, a Kiwi, ended up in Hawaii a dozen years ago, became a diving instructor and married Michelle who had grown up in Hawaii. Together they bought Evangelineas a fixer-upper and after four years of hard work, set off cruising. For the past two years they have been exploring the islands to the north of New Zealand. Now they were looking for some work while they waited out the South Pacific cyclone season. They found plenty around our cove (including helping me look like a far better gardener than I really am.) Over the two months they’ve been on a mooring just off our jetty, we began sharing books.
Just before Christmas, when we had invited them and another couple to come ashore for a shared evening, Daniel arrived with a carefully wrapped parcel. “This is absolutely the best, my very favorite sailing adventure book,” Daniel said. I opened the package and found there it was; a well-thumbed, 1938 copy of Dana Lamb’s tale, Enchanted Vagabonds, complete with 30 pages of photos. Now I learned how, during the height of the great depression, two newlyweds set off with no money, only about 100 pounds of food, 50 pounds of equipment including a rifle and a dream. They lived rough, camping in some of the most isolated parts of Baja California, foraging, hunting even distilling their own drinking water over a fire on the beach. An amazingly eclectic mix of people entered their lives, rum-runners, fishermen, native people in villages so far from main centers the inhabitants had no contact with the outside world. Of course the hunting Dana describes comes from a far different ethic than todays, the paucity of officials and paperwork speaks of a far different time. Still there is a wonderful adventure here and some important lessons to be learned.
Due to bad weather, we didn’t get Taleisin’s spring refit done until mid-summer. She’s been on her tidal grid for the past three weeks getting lots of attention. But for fun we’ve been out sailing in Felicity, the Bullseye Sloop Larry imported from Cape Cod for my 68th birthday
In the introduction there is a tale of how a newspaper reporter caught wind of their excursion. Soon after his story appeared, a group of five women came down and tried to have the officials put an injunction against the couple setting sail, stating – “the whole idea is ridiculous, endangering this young bride”. Among the other visitors attracted by the newspaper article were two warm hearted men, one of whom tried to give them his dog. They of course turned him down citing the problems of taking care of an animal in their circumstances, “But man, you can’t go adventuring without a dog. You’ve got to have one!” The other man wanted to give them an automatic pistol. Dana then goes on to say, “A funny business…the women who wanted to stop us; the men who wanted to aid us. Perhaps, in both cases, transference of their own hopes and fears. The women’s fears of the unknown rationalized into fear for my wife’s safety. They represented Woman, the eternal conservator, who has most to lose through Man’s restless spirit.” The man who had offered them the firearm confirmed this by saying, “You two are doing what I’ve always wanted and never had the chance to do.” Dana writes, “He was a symbol to us, for he represented all those romantic spirits who, hiding beneath the dress coats of their routine days, had the souls of Captain Kidd and Richard Coeur de Lion. What circumstances had chained him we never knew. Perhaps adventure to him had been a shining dream, not meant to be literally translated. And now he was too old.”
Some things never change. Though far more women are setting off on their own sailing adventures today, it is still more likely to be other women who foresee potential catastrophe when you talk of your cruising plans and, once you actually go, you will meet literally dozens of people who waited too long to seek their own adventures. Reading Enchanted Vagabonds reinforced our life-long motto, Go Small, Go Simple, but go now. Take a look at Dana Lambs Wikipedia page, we all did and it lead to even more interesting conversation.
That’s Daniel, helping us get Taleisin glowing in time for the Mahurangi Regatta and some late summer cruising.
The other couple with us that evening were Karen Sullivan and Jim Heumann from Sockdolager a Dana 24. We’d met in Port Townsend before they set sail and kept in touch as they sailed southward. Daniel and Michelle shared an anchorage with Sockdolager in Tonga. Karen and Jim are both entering their 60’s. As the six of us shared drinks,nibbles and tales of special times in the islands they’d just been through, I asked both couples, what do you think you are missing by having a small boat – the answer was immediate – long repair lists. Among the advantages they relished, lower costs, easier maintenance, better choice of anchorages and more easily available marina berths. Of course both couples said learning to live in a small space during inclement weather had taken time. “But we’re out cruising, that’s what matters,” one said. My favorite comment of the whole evening – Daniel got all thoughtful looking then said, “Ya know, I’ve joined in lots of evenings with other cruising sailors along the way, but this is the first time ever we’ve been the youngest couple on the biggest boat.”
Karen and Jim have sailed Sockdolager over 12,000 miles now, from Alaskan waters then down to New Zealand.
That brought us full circle, back to Dana Lamb and his Enchanted Vagabond story and the lack of amentities they put up with to be out adventuring. Larry ended the evening by saying, “A lady came up to me at a boatshow and said, ‘whenever people on cruising boats start complaining that they don’t have this or that, I get out Lin’s Care and feeding book to remind them of how luxurious most of our galleys and boats are.’ When I told Lin she laughed at being cited as the lowest common denominator. Now we can point to Ginger Lamb, compared to her we lived in the lap of luxury.”
Hope 2013 has gotten off to a good start for all of you,
Lin and Larry Pardey
P.S. As the photo shows, our Storm Tactics handbook has now been translated into two more languages, Italian and Russian. It has been almost four years since we introduced the third edition of this book. Within the next four or five months the publisher needs to reprint this book. So we have decided to do an update as there are some addresses and websites that have changed and we have a few notes we want to add. We’d like imput if any of you have questions that weren’t fully answered in this book, please let us know so we can incorporate them in the next edition which we hope to have ready for December 2013. You can email by clicking on the small mail icon at the top of our homepage.
The Russian and Italian editions of Storm Tactics Handbook
This is the kind of dream like tradewind sailing we all talked about over drinks, yes you can get lots of days like this on the Pacific crossing. This was taken during our voyage on board Taleisin from the Marquesas Islands to the big island of Hawaii – a wonderful 12 day, 1900 mile passage.
P.S.S – The archive of Cruising Tips from 1999 to 2009 have been reinstated on this website. There are almost 100 separate tips waiting here that might be useful. Click on this link to access them
