The soon to step down as editor of Practical Sailor— “I never wanted to be in the business of selling comfort. I mostly strove for the opposite. By nudging people out to sea, I hoped to guide them toward a rewarding degree of misery.”
Friday April 26th brought our 900-mile passage from La Paz to Ensenada to its end. Two other boats and crew coming north had arrived days earlier and invited us to join them at the brew pub Cervecería Transpeninsular, where we could drink ale, eat food, make laughter and bond as friends.
This was just the second time in 11 days that either Martin or I had even set foot on land. We wobbled like drunks for our showers. The night before our anchorage was cursed by a current putting the beam of our boat in line with the oceans swell rocking us awake again and again. Fools that we were instead of hoisting anchor and sailing on we gutted unrelenting rocking out awake in our bunks until dawn. That was hardly what I’d signed up for.
The veteran circumnavigation Tom Deasy put grist to my gripe by explaining he’d rocked to death in the same anchorage but as the wind was blowing 30 knots out at sea, he was more than happy to put up with the nettlesome surge of swell in the anchorage. As he reminded, “discomfort is relative—”
Deasy is sailing his 1983 Amel 46— home to Santa Cruz after a romp in Mexico for the winter. His sailboat is a famous French boat he has named Aphrodite, built by Henry Amel & J. Carteau the yacht is specifically designed for ocean passages. Deasy has by his count 100,000 ocean miles to his credit and another 50,000 coastal miles. The pleasure of his company was all mine, for contrast and clarity you would like to know I am in another range of experience altogether.
Things I know something about include Santa Cruz, California. I know the scene, have been booked as the opening juggling act at The Catalyst for Leon Redbone and Leo Kottke. I have surfed Pleasure Point, spent the night on anchor off the pier, and have as a child risked my life riding The Big Dipper on her boardwalk. Deasy is not an enigma, he is a salty kindhearted character, soft spoken, easy to make laugh, not the kind to boast or brag, more or less an intuitive type, with an appetite only quenched by wander.
Mike LaVelle also from Santa Cruz was presented as Tom’s most excellent crew. Thin of frame, puckish of smile, mischief at every turn, when we met, I’d offered I was not Martin’s crew, that I was my skipper’s— rail meat— meaning I was mere ballast aboard, the slang I’d used inferring I was no help at all. Tom’s second was having none of it laughing and wagging his finger at me— I don’t think so. I think you’ve got more sailor to you than that, I can tell, I know who you are, you’re not fooling anyone here— I know con artist when I see one—
Peter Fuller skipper of Mazu had brought this lot of gadabout mariners together. His work as a member of the American Bar Pilot’s Association had him on duty at the wheel for some three decades guiding ships into and out of the San Francisco Bay. Since the end of his duty working as a bar pilot to scratch his wanderlust the veteran seaman is sailing his Carl Schumacher designed Outbound 46’, this is the well maintained Mazu, reigns in his life as the mistress of his curiosity. For those unfamiliar a bar pilot in San Francisco goes 12 miles offshore aboard a steel motor craft in all manner of weather, be it in flat calm or storm tossed seas pulls alongside tankers, container ships, ore haulers and the like and when close enough to the bigger ships gangway, the bar pilot leaves the safety of his pilot boat and leaps with his one precious life climbing aboard the ship to take command of the helm and steer the vessel across one of the world’s most treacherous bars while guiding these behemoths safely into the San Francisco Bay. A bar pilots local knowledge is vital to the safe piloting of these monster ships.
Peter’s crewman is Rob Fyfe, partner and co-proprietor of San Pablo Harbor sited on this seldom visited jewel in the north bay, his partner Yaella Frankel describes this ornament of maritime commerce from her hearts eyes as a harbor setting here along the shores of the Richmond Riviera. Rob maintains his Mexican getaway, sailing vessel- Aventura on a mooring ball, built by Camper & Nicholson, this is a Lloyd’s of London certified craft kept safe from foul weather in Puerto Escondido a well protected bay in the Sea of Cortez. What is to know about Rob is that he is a crafty fella’, easy to laughter, cautiously friendly, fearless of the problems that mortal enemy of happy sailing that mud may wreak upon a boat stuck in San Pablo Harbor’s claggy bottom.
I’m working my way back to my home in Northern California now and will aim to attend several May weekend events at his harbor’s club where on tap are several Brazilian bands booked to entertain.
Rather than sail in for the show I’d judge first to travel by car to ferret out from the other sailors that are stuck or unstuck there if, when and how to enter this bohemian otherworld.
Martin Eggenberger, my skipper has plenty of water beneath his keel, the two of us, even when all our sea time is rolled up as one remains only a fraction of the men, we stood watch among while draining our hazy pale ales. To be sure there are many bonds shared, like all our same inclination to wander, to want to go over the horizon to witness what our curiosity has yet to be quenched by seeing what we’ve not seen for the first time or next.
I’ll borrow Darrell Nicholson’s characterization of the worthwhile purpose a sailor may hold in his heart out there on the sea— we slip our lines from the dock and head out to sea to have another chance to sail close to what he termed as “delightfully uncomfortable truth.”—
