Dear Friends:
One of the first articles I wrote was called; People, the Bonus of Cruising. It told about the warm hearted people we kept meeting as we cruised, how we broke the ice and what they added to our lives. Over the past few months we’ve had reason to reflect on this. To escape the New Zealand winter weather, we flew to California for a bit of business but mostly pleasure. We took our pickup truck/ camper combo out of its mothballs, then hit the road toward the northern edge of California to meet with the folks who handle and publish our books. Each stop along the way we seemed to encounter yet another friend we’d made only because we set off in our little 24 foot Seraffyn many, many years ago to see what lay just beyond the next body of water.
Bob Ramirez, had been hitch-hiking across oceans for six years when we met him almost 35 years ago. He was just 24. We sat in Seraffyn’s cockpit discussing how he could fit back into shore side life after six years of amazing adventures ranging from his Involvement in the political chaos of Argentina, to selling his handmade wooden carvings In Durban, South Africa. Now, in 2013 we sat on the porch of the run down house he was redesigning in Santa Monica, as one of his handsome sons cooked us fresh fish tacos. We talked about the older Catalina 30 he used to take his two sons off for a week at a time, so they too can have a small taste of disconnect with the “real” world.
Bob Bitchen, who with his wife Jody created first Latitudes and Attitudes Magazine and more recently have started Cruising Outpost, put on a great cruisers rendevous at their home in central California. Captain Woody, played his guitar. We all ate too much, told too many sea stories and wondered how we could encourage more young people to get “Out There.”
In Half Moon Bay, we had a rendezvous with Peter Legnos. He was in California to meet with scientists doing research into the telemetries of weather gathering bouys. Peter had sailed down to Columbia on a large charter yacht when he was 19. When he reached Cartegena, the skipper changed plans. Larry came back to Seraffyn one day and told me Peter needed a place to bunk down for the night. Seraffynwas only 24 feet long, Peter was six foot plus. But I had enjoyed his company during a shared lunch, so I readily agreed. Well, Peter actually stayed with us for several weeks and we all had a great time together. In fact he came to call me Mom, even though I was only about 7 years older than him. He eventually went home to Connecticut and became a successful boatbuilder. Now he builds amazingly complex floating things such as weather bouys that are dropped from airplanes onto the edges of the Arctic Ice, and in his spare time, wanders around the waters of Connecticut in a cat boat of his own design, a Mystic 30.
When we were voyaging through Polynesia on Taleisin almost three decades ago, Kurt von Braun, then 20 years old, was on board his father’s boat, retracing the voyages of a famous German sea captain, Felix Von Luckner, also known as the Sea Devil. Von Luckner was famous for his First World War exploits when, as captain on a sailing ship, he sank a tremendous number of ships but never killed one sailor. Kurt’s father had sailed with Von Luckner. About five years ago, we again encountered Kurt, sailing on board his own 64 footer with his wife Katie in Polynesia. They were on a very leisurely (10 year) circumnavigation on board Interlude. Now back in Alameda, just across from San Francisco, a three day stay with them introduced us to a new part of this amazing mass of waterways. They are preparing Interlude for a spring departure to points south and west.
The fake lawn at the America’s cup Park has dozens of different bean bags for folks like us to lounge on. The tiny person at the bottom of this bean bag stack is Catherine and Christopher Miller’s daughter Lexi, my god-daughter.
We met Christopher Miller when he and his, soon to be, wife were nearing the two year mark of Pacific cruising on Cee Plus Plus, a Tayana 50. New Zealand captivates them as it has many cruising sailors. With his amazing computer and design skills, Christopher was soon part of Team New Zealand and bought a home not far from our base here on kawau Island. Like all members of the Americas Cup team, he and his family had shifted to San Francisco for the actual regatta. That gave us and extra excuse to take a look at what was happening with the America’s Cup before flying home to get both Taleisin and Felicity ready for spring sailing.
Catherine first took us to the America’s Cup Park to lounge in giant bean bags on the fake grass and watch a Louis Vuitton race. Then we were off to the Team New Zealand base where arrangements soon had us literally camping inside the compound. A tour through the complex computer design and building station Christopher has set up left me amazed. Though the huge cats are crazy, useless, and dangerous and in no way related to anything normal folks will sail on, the technology behind them is truly – to use a favorite Kiwi expression – awesome.
Until you stand right next to one of the massive wing sails driving the AC 72 catamarans, it is difficult to image their size.
The next morning, as we were given a close up view of lifting the huge wing mast (as large as the wing on a 747 airplane) we heard an amazing story. The first time the crane operator was lifting the wing, there was a good breeze blowing. When the wing was well off the ground the crane operator panicked and yelled, “We’ve got a big problem. My weight gauge has just dropped to zero.” Seems the sail had decided to fly. There was no way of getting it down until the breeze let off and it stopped flying. After that the crew rigged up half a dozen one ton blocks of concrete with winches attached on top. The blocks were put onto miniature fork lifts and moved into position so control lines could lead from the wingsail to the winches. So now getting the sail into position requires more than a dozen people just working to make sure the thing doesn’t take off before it is settled onto the boat. Yes, these crazy Cats are definitely at the far edge of the amazingly diverse sailing world we call our own.
You can see the concrete blocks with winches in this photo, crew were carefully easing out the guy lines as the wingmast and sail was lifted into the air.
Our very interesting, far too short California sojourn proved once again, the people we met through our cruising life continue to be a true bonus. All our cruising friends who take a long leisurely voyage say the same, once you’ve been offshore for a few years you find it’s almost like having family spread throughout the whole world.
The whole massive cat and it’s rig only weight a bit more than 6 tons, but they are probably the most expensive sailing tons In the world.
Fair Winds and fine friendships,
Lin and Larry
P.S. We have just finished updating the book that I think may be the most enjoyable one I ever wrote, The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew. the new 4th edition is available on October 5th. You can read more about it by clicking here.
