Good News!

Lately, I’ve been discouraged—by world events, by the fact that my teeth are falling out, at the sight of my lifesavings—all twenty bucks of it—sinking faster than the Titanic. Thus, I intentionally look at the bright side of life—at the plethora of things I’m grateful for. 

Family is first, of course. Next is freedom of movement. Only a few clumps of dirt are off-limits to an experienced sailor—even if the sailor only has a pocketful of pennies. And another thing that I’m grateful for is that seaworthy boats exist. Back in the day, not a single production boat was intended to—nor capable of—sailing around the world without extensive modification. Now there are plenty. Thus, if you’ve worked hard and earned the money—or been given the money by someone who has gotten their hands dirty—then you’re fortunate. You can buy one.

Lucky you!

Even if you can’t afford to buy one—you can use these spare-no-expense craft as life-sized yardsticks to bring your cheap production vessel up to spec. (Yes, replacing the main bulkhead, engine mounts, and the chainplate webs are a hassle—but the rest is relatively easy, if a tad time-consuming.)

And, although I wish no one ill, some of these ‘offshore-ready’ boats will be purchased by folks with more money than sense. They’ll bump them into rocks. They’ll blissfully sail them under non-opening bridges. Or they’ll forget to check their engine oil—and run the engine ‘only for a minute or two’ without lubrication to fetch the dock. 

Ultimately, these goldplaters can be purchased by sea gypsies with a fistful of ‘gimmee’ and a mouthful of ‘thank you much.’

Let’s put it another way—there are many coins of the realm, and money is just one. Another is luck. But the most dependable coin for the penniless is sweat equity. 

…old-fashioned hard work, especially sustained over a long, difficult span of time. 

My Canadian-built Hughes 38 was designed by Olin Stephens—one of the best designers to ever put pen to drawing paper. I paid $3,000 for it (holed & awash after Hurricane Hugo), smeared it with dry snot (aka fiberglass), then sailed it twice around the world over the course of 23 blissful years.  

…not bad for an initial cost of 3 cents a mile. (Why not divide your dollars-spent by nautical miles sailed—there’s no law against it!)

The replacement cost of my current vessel (Wauquiez) is $850,000. I paid $56K for a battered 40-year-old model—then hit it with a grinder and tossed in a M92B diesel. We’ve since circumnavigated 1.5 times over the course of 14 equally blissful years. She’s old and hard-used, true; but, need be, I could sail her back to the States without touching land. 

…even better, I could keep headquarter’ing out of S’pore—perhaps the safest, calmest, most sane place left on the planet. 

I’m also proud that I’ve never had air-conditioning—neither needed heat nor an automobile in the last five decades. Also, that I’ve visited a hundred countries and never been arrested in a single one. (I know, I know—amazing!)

Even better, as a cruising sailor I’m able to view the watery world like a delightful restaurant menu—and confidently order from it as wind and whim dictates. If I’m in Thailand for the food, France for the art, or Britain for the ballet—and their government turns sour or a strong man seizes control—I merely untie my dock lines, shed a tear, shrug, and move onto where the tropical palms still wave welcome. 

This is what we cruising sailors do. We’re one-trick-ponies. We leave. That’s our centuries-old M.O. We leave because the sea is always bluer outside our next port-of-call. 

And because we can—we have the skills and the nav equipment required. 

Freedom! My boat is my country, my nationality is my hailing port. I’m king. Carolyn, my wife of 55 watery years, is my queen. And Roma Orion, our daughter, is our Chief Minister—with our grands serving (occasionally, while on school break) as loyal subjects. 

Guess what? Regardless of what country you’re reading this in—if you go to the coast and look to seaward… what you’ll see is almost exactly what Leif Ericson, Chris Columbus, and Joshua Slocum saw. Empty ocean—well, not empty of promise and adventure, just empty of the vexation of mankind and his pettiness. And if you sail there in a dinghy or a megayacht, you’ll be sailing through similar sea conditions as Ulysses. 

Who has the larger swimming pool—Bill Gates or I? The most private estate—Larry Ellison or I? Who is surrounded by natural sounds more often—Bill, Ellison, or I?

In San Blas, Micronesia, and the Indian ocean there are hundreds and thousands of deserted isles—many of which you could live upon for months or years before anyone in a uniform would even know you’re there. 

I’m serious, dude. If we don’t grab our own tiller, someone else will. Everyone alive today has two options: passive victim or active adventurer?

In Tonga, a passing yachtie started teaching locals how to build fishing boats. When the central government found out about it, they didn’t throw the guy in jail for not clearing in—they gave him the entire island until further notice. (In a previous life, he’d been a Jaguar mechanic and regularly broadcast on Sundays as the Right Reverend Jim on marine SSB—odd, yes; but if you’re altruistic and hardworking enough, wise chiefs will not only give you a gold star; they’ll toss in an entire island as lagniappe!) 

Yes, there are still places in the world that are sans ATMs—most of Micronesia, for example. In Madagascar, a fisherman will happily trade a lobster for a fishhook—and turn down a one-hundred-dollar (US) bill to do so. 

In Fiji two islands were announced for sale by a Kava’d up chief—one was sold for a million dollars to an Aussie and the other for 100K (plus a whale’s tooth) to a Kiwi—and we’re happy to report that the chief didn’t go back on his word to the Kiwi (because of his sacred, traditional Polynesian payment method). 

We have choices. Other people’s rules don’t have to be your own—only if we allow them to be. We still have freedom of global movement—for the next few months at least. If you own a sailboat, inertia is your problem because endless aquatic opportunities abound.

…never has fortune favored the bold more. 

Where you live—and how you suffer or enjoy your immediate surroundings—is still your choice. The wind is still free. When we were in St. Helena, we had to keep mum about the World Cup because their BBC news came on a VCR tape once a month aboard their supply vessel—and was played sequentially over the local radio station.  

…sounds like a dream? It is. And you can join in. 

Boats in the 20K range that are capable of being fixed up enough to sail around the world abound—check out the boneyard in nearly any shipyard. 

Of course, each country thinks their culture is the best. Once, in the jungles of primitive Borneo, speaking with a group of (barely, barely reformed) Dyak head-hunters on their tribal lands, I unintentionally offended them by hinting that, well, maybe I didn’t think that headhunting was such a great idea. 

They were outraged. 

“That’s because, Fatty, you don’t even know the rules!”

Rules? For head-hunting? 

“Yes,” explained their largest, most ferocious warrior. “We don’t headhunt people who are sleeping! Nor pregnant women! And never crazy people either! We’re not, like, savages!”

So, there I was, in a village filled with ancient skulls and protected by warriors proud of their head-hunting heritage—picturing in my mind’s eye a sleeping person surrounded by eager Dyak Indians with their clubs raised while glancing at their Apple wristwatches… as I attempted to decide if they were more (or less) crazy than our western MAD (Mutually-Assured Destruction) theory. 

…hard to say, really. 

Here’s what happens when you sail around the world multi-times. You automatically and smugly hold up your cultural yardstick wherever you go. Until you arrive back home. And discover you can’t turn that damn yardstick off—that you’re forever changed; that paradise, once tasted, is forever desired. 

But here’s the good news—as Jimmy says, “…changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes.”

…nobody cares about your bankbook in Borneo, Chagos, or Madagascar. Many of them don’t know what a bankbook is! But if you can fix modern outboards (by that I mean drain the water out of the carb), then you can write your own ticket.

While I would never tell anyone in Silicon Valley that I know anything about computers—I can delete all the porn clogging an island resort’s computer and then defrag its hard drive to quadruple its speed—which causes them to throw money at me and think I’m Steve Jobs reincarnated. 

Yes, it is different out here—strangely and delightfully so. 

Hell, in Vanuatu the locals still row out with radios, TVs, and washing machines—and resolutely put them on my deck while stubbornly telling me to fix them because “…it’s from your tribe, Fatty, not ours… so fix the damn thing!”

Makes sense! (With the portable radios, installing new AA batteries will usually do the trick—but then, alas, the entire tribe will then bring you lord-knows-what-else to fix!)

…and be careful giving them batteries—an imaginative fisherman in Madagascar pierced his ears and shoved his AA’s in the bleeding holes… the very definition of a fashion victim!

On certain corners of my native Chicago, tiny crack vials abound. If you’re planning to circumnavigate, pick these up, fill them with cheap ‘full stink’ perfume, and eventually the fisherman of Malaysia/Thailand will trade their entire day’s catch for two of ‘em. (One for the wife; the other for their nitnoy—literal translation ‘little wife’). 

In Madagascar, old music cassettes are highly prized. The whole family digs up their dead relatives every so often, decorates their bones with bows made from the cassette tape, and then smugly reburies them. This assures the family of another four or five years of good luck. (What did they do before cassette tapes? I dunno—I was too scared to ask!)

I dig the religious culture of Polynesia—how their gods are always getting drunk and whoring around. Hell, two of their gods were stoned and sailing soooooo fast that their canoe split an entire island into two, I kid you not. (Since I’m not a geologist, I didn’t see fit to question this—especially after they showed the impact marks from where the canoe bow split the isle in half… pretty convincing forensic evidence.)

There are a lot of islands off the African coast. One day I was in the cockpit combing my sole remaining hair—when a young lady rowed up and politely said she was looking for a ‘clear-skinned’ baby. I was confused—until my wife Carolyn shouted up from the galley, “…she needs help making a clear-skinned baby, Fatty—are you an idiot?”

I guess I was—and still am.

At least in northern Tonga I figured out the situation without Carolyn’s help. It was rough and windy. I watched a mother row a long way out to windward towards us with her three daughters. All of them dressed oddly—as if from a bizzarro rummage sale—and smeared (almost clown-like) with make-up. 

“…it sure would be easier to row back with only two,” the mother said. 

Many Tongans appear to be lazy yet claim not to be. “You see, Fatty, back in the day, our ancestors had magic and thus could move heavy stones merely by wishing. We’ve lost that magic—and, hey, those stones are freak’n heavy! So, we’re waiting—waiting until we rediscover the magic. Would you like to share a bowl of kava with us while we wait?”

I would. I did. And, the more kava I drank, the easier I was to convince. 

Take, for example, the 400-pound virgin princess that initially prepared our kava. At first, I thought she was butt ugly—but by the fourth bowl, hey, I realized that she was kinda a looker, if the light was right. 

My wife Carolyn noticed that I was getting really, really wacked on the kava, so she whispered reassuringly to me, “Don’t worry, Fatty, I’ve called a taxi.” 

“…order a van,” I croaked back, “You’re taking the princess with us!”

So, yeah, everyone on Planet Earth has gone temporarily mad with greed, more greed, and absolute greed—but this, too, shall pass. Back in the ‘60s we had these power-tripper’s number—same game, just different tie-dye colors, so to speak. 

The deck of a small sailboat is an ideal place from which to watch Rome burn—with or without a fiddle. 

Yes, I have a mobile phone—no, it is not currently charged. 

As a sailor who built a 20,000-pound bluewater ketch from scratch, I’m fairly handy with tools. And the first rule of tool use is that the tool serves its master, the master doesn’t serve the tool. Just because we have the shore-tech to drive ourselves insane—doesn’t mean we have to allow it to. 

(Fatty and Carolyn just arrived back in Changi Village—after celebrating CNY [Chinese New Year] in a deserted anchorage between Pulau Ketam and Pulau Ubin with Singaporean friends.)

 

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