Tawodi Sailing Adventures

I rode the motorbike up to Marina Del Rey last weekend to see “Wild Eyes” and to show support for Abby Sunderland.  The boat looks great and I was really impressed with their level of preparation and by the people who are involved with her.  Abby sailed out to Catalina and back and was just returned on Saturday morning, but was up and about for a busy day on Saturday.  In the time between cameras, we spoke about the trip and her boat.  I spent the night up at the Sunderland house and gave Zac a ride back to the marina on the back of the motorcycle Sunday morning.  We worked around the boat till mid-afternoon when it began raining.  She has such good people helping that I was no more useful than tits on a boar, so I left on Sunday evening and dropped in on my brother Robert who lives in L.A..  Monday morning was a wet and windy bike ride in the rain back to San Diego on the L.A. freeway, thrilling.  Because of the weather that has moved in for this week, they have delayed Abby’s departure till next weekend, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

Well we’re a week and a half into the New Year.  Fun stuff abounds.  I did the San Diego Christmas bike ride again, a trip I’ve done every year for the last 10, excluding ‘08 when we were off Cape Horn.  The Christmas ride is a 6 day, 420 mile bicycle tour of San Diego county, going over several of our local mountains with a great group of people (usually about a hundred).  I look forward to this ride every year.

I had a real treat last week when I got to meet Abby Sunderland and her father Lawrence.  They came down to San Diego to have a logo put on their mainsail and to pick up another big sponsorship check.  Abby plans to get underway this week and to follow a course similiar to my own.  Of course, she is sponsored and has a huge level of support.  She will have a professional weather routing service recommending her course.  Her boat is awesome, an Open 40′, purpose built for the southern ocean and well equipped.  I was impressed with Abby and think she absolutly has a good chance of achieving her goal.  I found it quite a compliment that she solicited my opinion about her trip.  She has her own website at  abbysunderland.com.  Check it out if you get a chance.  She has lots of support, she also has a huge group of deli-sailors offering their unsolicited opinions about her program (they know about everything).  She has been told that her odds are slim and that my trip doesn’t count for much inspiration because I was double-handing and made some stops.  My boat was called conventional.

I wish I could have sailed like Abby, with financial support.  Having pulled off my trip without sponsorship or insurance, I don’t think most people understand what I really put on the line, or what it cost.  My boat is all that I own in the world and I willingly took it to the harshest enviroment.  No trust fund, no property or house, no car, no storage unit full of stuff.  No safety net, I put everything on the line with a shoe-string budget.  I did have a lot of moral support from friends and some small financial contributions were made, but really it was all up to me.

Of course, I had a partner on board, or at least that is the way it started.  Cape Horn was our first rounding, but our partnership failed before we got there and relations were strained.  We kept it together, but it wasn’t easy.  I sailed all around the whole world, chose my own course, watched the weather, repaired what was broken and paid for everything while sailing with a person who didn’t want to be there and who said so.  She did still stand her watches and prepared the evening meals, but there wasn’t a lot of love onboard.  There were a lot of hard looks and sullen silences.  As many of you already know, relationships can be hard, especially on a small boat offshore for months on end.  Having sailed single-handed myself for many thousands of miles, I can tell you it’s not nearly as hard as sharing space with someone who doesn’t want to share it with you.  Sailing is easy.

Now that I’m back in San Diego I’m still trying to pick up the pieces.  Single again and broke.  I’m working most every day and slowly repairing or replacing all the little pieces that have gotten tired.  Tawodi is intact and able to go sailing, but there are lots of little things requiring attention.  Don’t get me wrong, life is good and I’m glad to have acheived my goal of circumnavigating.  I suppose I just feel defensive when some Deli-sailor tries to diminish our effort.  They were not there, they do not know.

As for Abby, she does not have her personal fortune on the line.  If the boat fails, she’ll get picked up and fly home.  In fact, she has already been named “Sportswomen of the year” by the Los Angeles Daily News, and she hasn’t even left yet.  Single-handing does not mean without assistance, it just means one person on the boat.  Abby has the ability to be in contact with her team as often as she or they desire.  I’m sure she’ll be fine.  If nothing else, she’ll have a great story to tell.  If she succeeds, she’ll be set.  I wish her luck.  She has all the possibility of success.

And Tawodi is far from conventional.

Speedy motorcycle brought me home again.  A quick coast to coast to coast on a motor bike is nothing after sailing around the world, Ha!  Actually there were some moments on the highway with rain and wind and big trucks really nearby that were just as scary as anything in the southern ocean and at 80mph the apparent wind was higher.  Remember apparent wind?   It is mearly the sum of two vectors.  Now that I’m back, I’ll be speaking at West Marine (NOT-W.M. cancelled 10-22) in San Diego for the Baja-Ha-Ha group before they leave, so I can talk about how to sail happily down and up the coast of Mexico, something I’ve done countless times.  After Oct 19th, I can be found during the week at Pacific Offshore Rigging.  If you need rigging work, there is a link to P.O.R. on this site.  One cool thing I saw at the Annapolis Boat Show was a Westsail 32′ rigged by SouthBound Cruising Services entirely with Dynema Dux rigging, including dead-eyes rather than turnbuckles.  This is a heat treated form of Spectra and replaces wire rigging while costing no more but weighing much less.  On the Westsail they claim to have stripped close to 100lbs from the rig.  I love technology that encourages Marlinspike seamanship.  Speaking of Marlinspike seaman, another cool thing was meeting and hanging out with Brian Toss, world famous rigger from Port Townsend.  He is a treat.  Thanks to Mike at SouthBound for putting it all together and a big thanks to his family for their hospitality.

Well I made it across the country on my speedy motorcycle and am here at the Annapolis boat show.  I’ll be speaking at 15:30 on Saturday, Oct 10th at the Maritime museum near the show, in Eastport.  I come on just after Brian Toss, who speaks at 14:30.  After the show I’ll be hopping back on speedy and returning to San Diego during the following week.

Sailing in San Diego-  My good friends Laura and David Scarafone’s daughter Madaline was celebrating her 8th birthday and wanted to go for a sail.  While out on a busy Sunday afternoon we saw all kinds of boats and many friends on the water.  The big BMW/Oracle tri flew past us, triggering memories of last October, as they were the last boat we saw when we left San Diego to sail around the world.  We sailed for a bit alongside Bart Zigler on his lovely schooner “Shine on” and they took some great photos of us.  It is always a treat to get pictures of one’s boat, as you can’t see the outside from the inside.

I am leaving next weekend to go back to the east coast for the Annapolis boat show.  I have bought a motorcycle , a BMW R100RT and will be using it to get there and back again, roughly 7,000 miles.  This is an older model, what they call an “airhead” because of its flat twin boxer engine.  I’ve ridden a bicycle across the U.S. and have driven trucks and cars across the country, but this will be my first long motorcycle trip.  I’m giving myself a week to make the trip and am looking forward to the ride.  If you make it to the show, find me and say hi.  I will be a presenter for Southbound Cruising Services on Saturday, Oct 10th and will be talking about our recent circumnavigation.

Be well, have fun

Well, we made the trip.  No big sponsors ever stepped up so the two of us are back to work.  Kathleen was snatched back by West Marine within 3 days of our arrival and I (Stephen) am back at work with Fritz at Pacific Offshore Rigging.  San Diego is a good place to be and the weather is wonderful.  Tawodi, the little bird boat is floating happily on a mooring in San Diego’s Commercial basin.  We had a nice treat for almost a month when a customer offered the use of his slip while he sailed to the Channel Islands for a few weeks.  The slip was at the Bay club, next to Humphries, which holds a summertime concert series.  I got to hear a concert several times a week at no cost.  Sometimes I listened from the Spa.  All that’s past now, as has Labor day.  I’m out on the mooring and working a day job.

A couple of dates.  September 12th at the Shelter Island Launch ramp, we will be showing slides and talking about the voyage.  On October 10th I will be speaking at the Annapolis boat show, stop by either occasion if you can.

I will be sailing in a schooner race while on the East coast, then returning and gearing up for the Baja-Ha-Ha, which leaves San Diego near the end of October.  In the mean time, I can often be found sailing in my little blue sailing dingy. 

The adventure of dead computers, polluted memory sticks.  A piece of white plastic, metal and electronic bits and no matter how much it’s yelled at, squeezed, cajoled, the photos just won’t come out and, Lord help the easily distracted, but it may take divine intervention to actually remember to buy a new one.

One part of the amusing adventure of being home, swallowed body and soul into the swirl of employment and traffic.  The distraction of this side of life- how lovely and how overwhelming. 

The Captain slowly takes bits of Tawodi apart- solar panels, aft structure.  He discovers condensation still doing its work behind the solar regulator, shakes his head, curses and shakes his head again.  What else is there to do?  Cushions come out, laundry piles up- the beginnings of this new, not so exciting journey; recovery from what the world did to Tawodi.

Jobs come, paychecks and bills follow and everyday there’s a new round of questions.

How long did it take you?  Eight months and five days.

Where did you stop?  Cabo San Lucas, Easter Island, Port Williams, Ushuaia, South Georgia Island, Tristan Da Cunha, Cape Town, Hobart, Dunedin, Pitcairn.

What was the hardest part?  The ice and then the condensation.

And the favorite question of all; Why did you do this? 

To quote Philippe Petit, the crazy, beautiful Frenchman who walked a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center-

“This is a very American, finger snapping question.  I did something magnificent and mysterious and got a practical ‘Why?’ and the beauty of it is that I didn’t have a ‘why’ ”

 A very French answer to the question but as good as any. 

Why did we do it?  Because it was an itch, a need.  Because we were compelled.  Because to not go, not try, not attempt would leave nothing but a wish and a regret.

Life’s too short for that.

And, really, the photos will come- really

Friday June, 26^th, 2009 and that’s a wrap. 

After a night of dodge-boating with the fishing fleet south of the Coronado Islands- what fun having those killing machines plow right for you with their deer stunning deck lights blaring full in the face- we arrived outside of San Diego Bay early Friday morning.

By 7:30 the Captain was at the top of the mast putting up our last flag and our welcoming committee had sent young Carl, in a ponga, out past the Point to find us- make sure we were really arriving. 

By 8am we were inside and greeted by a small flotilla of sailboats and one, Carl driven ponga, and here one must give full respect to all those who dragged their butts and their boats onto the bay at that hour on a Friday morning. Maybe they were all just making sure we couldn’t change our minds, turn around and decide to go to the other end of the globe. There they were, smiling, sailing, snapping photos.  Makes us believe that maybe a few people really do like us, maybe even missed us. 

And then there were the hugging arms on the customs dock.

And then there was the guy from the television station.

And then there was the customs officials.

And then a whitewash flood of humanity coming to shake our hands, smile at us, laugh, congratulate, throw food our way, query us and then shake our hands one more time.

Thus endeth this part of the odyssey.

Next chapter: jobs, laundry and settling back into our own country.

But first, before moving on to anything else we must give a special thanks to our families for helping to make us this crazy, to the Pacific Seafarer’s Ham Radio Net for being with us every day of the voyage, to Guy Stevens for building our website, to Larry Gahagan for throwing our story around at West Marine, to Robert Knight, the Captain’s brother, for maintaining the web postings,  to Steve Cannon, the Bromley family, Grant and Zoetje Maddock, Gordon Caley and the Otago Yacht Club, David Brown and all the others we’re forgetting who worked so hard to make their home country feel like our home country.

An extra special thank you to Marti Cunningham for working to make sure we got media coverage on coming home and to John and Carol Vernon and the Richardson Family for taking care of our stuff, us, our transportation needs, our parties and – Carol – I cannot believe you hand rolled all those coins we left behind in October.

And to Kitty- for everything.

And lastly.  One incredibly large plate of gratitude from me to my Captain.  What I have done I could never have done without him.  He gave me the world.  It was not always fun but it was always one hell of a story.

Thank You Stephen.

And to all of you.  Much love from us.  Thanks for coming along for the ride and, we promise, we’ll get some new photos up real gosh darn soon.

30.41 N 117.45 W 120 miles south of San Diego
Eight months spiced with a handful of days; the time it took us to chase the sun around the bottom of the globe. We left San Diego, California on October 20th, at the tail-end of hurricane season 2008, scurrying after summer in the Southern Oceans and crossing back out of the tropics at the face-end of hurricane season 2009. It’s a heck of a thing to race the seasons, to race the sun all around this planet.

All that rush, all that comedy, tragedy, work and expense allowed by the Southern Hemisphere and there we were, off Guadalupe Island, Mexico, with scant time for one last bit of commotion: participating in an elaborate Abalone relocation program.
The Captain calls it catch and release but that phrase is a smidgeon too terse. What Bob and Stan, the Abalone, went through rivals the machinations of most Witness relocation programs. Catch and release makes it sound, at worst, briefly violent- catch, swim around with, toss, carry, drop, pry, transfer and then release- that’s more the way Bob and Stan’s experience went.

Peeled off whatever slab of ocean they clung to, slapped down into a fading, oil stained Mexican fishing ponga, puttered up to the side of Tawodi, unceremoniously thumped onto our decks, thus began Bob and Stan’s adventure. In exchange for them, the Abalone, two smiling Mexican fishermen were looking for beer or wine. Cerveza o Vino. The Captain explained; inflatable globe- replete with magic-marker tracings of our journey- in one hand, the other gesturing its way through his Spanish vocabulary, that May 3rd had been the last time we’d been remotely near someplace that might sell such liquid refreshment but that we had water- good, home-made, fresh water. Yummy water. They settled for that, the wondrous elixir of life, but wouldn’t take Bob and Stan back- even after we said- No, No thank you, No Gracias, No, really, No, please por favor, no. No, No, No, Bob and Stan stayed on our deck in their puddle of brown ocean ooze. We waved and smiled and off went the fishermen and here stayed the Abalone.
Bob and Stan got scooped off the deck and put into the handiest container available- a dirty saucepan.

From dirty saucepan the were plunked into a soup pot.

They got a little too intimate with the soup-pot- sucky, squishy parts latching on while wavy little feelers poked about- a butter knife was used to convince them they would be much better off squidging about inside a yellow, plastic Tidy Cat clumping kitty litter bucket- let’s be frank here- there just wasn’t enough room for them and all there clinging and squirting in the soup-pot.

It was in that butter knife, prying off, transfer from soup-pot to plastic bucket that the Captain committed the sin of calling them pets.

I would have been forever content thinking of them as things just to one side of extra-terrestrial poop but then he called them pets.

Call a living thing a pet around me and it will, first, be named- hence: Bob and Stan, the Abalone- and, second, no longer be available as a meal item. I mean who would want to sit down and have Fluffy for dinner, that would just be wrong. So it went for Bob and Stan.
They spent an hour or so glued to yellow plastic. At the north end of the island we dropped them back into the water and wished them well.

And there went our last, tiny adventure before calling an end to this globe circling odyssey.
As for other end of days bits of news;we ate the last of the potatoes. It might be a while before either of us have a hankering for either potatoes, beans or rice. We’ll finish off the onions and the one remaining orange today and then Friday morning we’ll be shoving our nose into the waters of San Diego Bay.

We’re aiming to be close to Ballast Point, near the submarine base, around 8am. We welcome, whole-heartedly with open arms and big smiles, anyone wanting to come out and escort us back into our home waters. If you can’t make it onto the water, the good ship Tawodi will be tied up at the San Diego transient docks on Shelter Island, for about a week after our arrival. Come down, say hello, take a tour, swap stories and help us revel a little in the joy of being home.

23.09 N 121.52 W 620 miles southwest of San Diego
Wariness keeps talk of finishing this voyage to a minimum. Like the saying about never asking a woman if she’s pregnant unless you actually see a baby coming out of her, we’re circumspect of calling this journey done until a nice U.S. Customs officer welcomes us back into our country.

So here’s us on Father’s day and summer solstice, paying for these last drops of water slipping under the keel with either fossil fuel or sleep or both. Light and variable is what they call our present conditions. There are other, less pleasant words, that one might use to properly describe the sensation of just enough wind, on one side or the other of Tawodi’s nose, to make going where we want to go feel like we’ve become hapless salmon swimming upstream, but those words are best left mumbled quietly to oneself.
We tack from one side to the other and back and then we do it again. The wind falters and we motor sail. The wind collapses, we put the sails away and motor. The wind resuscitates itself and we reverse the circle; motor sail, sail, tack, tack, tack. We stare at the weather picture and find ourselves weirdly longing for a low pressure system, granted the longing is for a low pressure system confined within a rather demanding set of parameters.

Sleep ships itself off our vessel as the whimsy of our situation demands constant attention, constant fussing. Odd to realize how much simpler it was to work through a 40 knot blow, there’s not much more to do than set your self and your sails and wait it out. 10 to 15 knots shifting about here and there and voila: now you must do more than sponge the water off the floor and hold on, now there’s sail handling, course management, choice.
Fortune gives us all this work in company with mild temperatures, postcard sunsets and enough wisdom to let us realize what our work is purchasing; home and the chance for more than an hours worth of uninterrupted sleep.

Until then we grow punchier by the day and down caffeine as if it were the elixir of life. Until then we note the passage of our eighth month since our beginning, the arrival of summer solstice and, most cogently, Father’s day.

A happy wish to all the Fathers out there, most especially, our very own.