JangadaCat.com

I called my bank and told them to send him the earnest money—we didn’t even have any kind of contract, just a couple emails and phone calls from New Zealand, for crying out loud. But that seems to be the way I usually do things: seat of the pants. That “if it’s meant to happen it will” attitude that has gotten me into so much trouble all my life. And yes, many good things too.

When I returned to the U.S. in early January I went home for a couple days then flew straight to San Diego to do the deal. We went for a sail, I had the boat inspected and surveyed, and within a couple days I was the owner. I stood on the deck, very much alone and totally overwhelmed, and tried to smile. This was, after all, one of the great dreams of my life. The timing was a bit earlier than I had planned but the whole thing was inevitable….. so why not now? Sooner is better. So there I was.

The next day I flew to La Paz (Baja) to check out marinas and talk to people who had sailed down the coast. I spent several days walking the docks, meeting cruisers of all types, and formulating a plan. A week later I was back home, packing up huge piles of gear to bring to the boat. This was, after all, a 4 bedroom, 2-bath house with two motors and more electronics and plumbing systems than Trump Plaza. I flew down again the following week and began work; first doing a three-day thorough inspection, cleaning and inventory, then starting a looong list of projects to get her ready to sail south. Every day included trips to West Marine, Downwind Marine, San Diego Sail Supply, a dozen other stops for everything from insurance to Coast Guard documentation to getting a new bimini (cockpit shade awning) made. My week on board flew by.

Home again for a week, then loading my van to the gills with more stuff, lots of tools, and of course my skis for a detour along the way. A friend from Alaska flew down to help me and soon we were hip deep in boat chores. We bought fishing gear and pillows, weather fax software and dishes, spliced lines and polished chrome. I worked on the boat 14 hours a day for 5 days and was just getting started. And, I loved EVERY minute of it.

A boat. Definition: four letter word for a hole you shovel money into. A boat: a thing on which every possible part will break, usually without warning at the worst possible moment. When you have a boat, your financial thinking takes on an entirely new perspective; at least mine did. I was deep into spending ‘boat bucks’, humorously defined as $1,000. It’s pretty easy to spend a few boat bucks every time you turn around. Waiting until eggs go on sale so that I can save 20¢ suddenly seemed pretty trivial.

Of course everything I bought had to be “marine grade”, meaning it cost ten times as much as it should. A sponge which would sell for $2 in Safeway would cost $4 in an automotive store, and $8 in a marine store. The only happy moment in a marine store is realizing that the $2 sponge would cost $16 if it was for an airplane. Salesman: “Well sure it’s expensive, but it’s your LIFE up there! Your LIFE is certainly worth $16 isn’t it???” Me: “Only if I can clean the past 40 years of sinning off my record….”

I paid $135 for a gallon… A GALLON! of bottom paint which I’m sure would go for $25 at Home Depot. But it’s got all sorts of poisons in it which are supposed to kill anything which comes within five feet so there’s probably a government “tax” of at least 5,000%, like cigarettes and gasoline. Why don’t I just drop a hand grenade in the water next to the boat every few days?

At the same time, on a boat you don’t waste ANYTHING! Old screws, plastic bag twist ties, pieces of plastic and odd bits of rope all become priceless treasures to be squirreled away until needed for some vital project or repair. Plastic bags become gasket material; pieces of hose go around dock lines to prevent chafe; old rusty razor blades can be used to cut your wrists when you realize what you have gotten yourself into.

After a long week of projects I headed to Colorado to ski, then home to pack up and get ready to sail south. The only hold up was the fact that I had neither crew nor Coast Guard documentation (title to the boat). Other than that, things were rosy: I had no legal ownership to the boat and no one to help me sail it. Perfect, just frigging perfect.

I named my boat ‘Jangada’ after a type of Brazilian fishing boat. I had always wanted to name my first boat ‘Tonto’. I thought it had that kind of whimsical connotation which I believe every large toy should possess (although not going as far as naming it ‘Ricky’s Toy’ or ‘Babe Bait’), but then I discovered that Tonto means ‘idiot’ in Spanish and while that fit my irreverent style perfectly, I decided that there might be something not quite proper in sailing around Mexico in a big sailboat named ‘Idiot’. I compromised and named my dinghy ‘Tonto’.

But indeed I am an idiot since I later discovered that Jangada sounds identical to a nasty Spanish swear word (chingara, meaning ‘little fucker’). The first time I told a local Mexican the name of my boat he looked at me quite askance I can tell you. Live and learn. Boat: Jangada. Me: Tonto. After a while I figured out I could pronounce it Yan-gada, thereby saving myself significant embarrassment.

A Brazilian jangada is made from small logs that are lashed together and powered by a Rube Goldberg type of sail arrangement made from mahogany sticks and old pieces of canvas. Two or three fisherman at a time will head out to sea – as much as 40 miles off-shore – and spend 2-3 days out fishing, somehow finding their way back to their departure point with no navigation equipment other than their senses and experience. It is a truly wild contraption and I have been off the north coast of Brazil on a jangada in 25 knots of wind and very aggressive seas. Amazing!

A week before my scheduled departure and still no crew nor papers. Maybe this means I’m just supposed to leave it in San Diego (for $650 a month….). Then everything happened at once. After several frantic calls to the Coast Guard Vessel Documentation Center in Maryland they located my paperwork and agree to FedEx it to me. Seems that two freak (and huge) blizzards had slowed things down a bit in the office, not to mention a nice new war that Bush had just started. My trip to Baja wasn’t their highest priority.

So with all my paperwork in order I started calling my sailing friends and within a couple days had six eager bodies to man the blenders for the 2-3 week adventure down the coast from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, then up the Sea of Cortez to La Paz. Woohoo! I was so busy getting things ready that I didn’t have time to be scared.

Originally I had a commercial 500-ton skipper friend of mine coming along. He’s sailed around the world several times and I was looking forward to 8 hours a day of sailing school along the way. When he had to back out at the last minute I freaked out, then called another skipper friend who had expressed an interest earlier. When he too backed out—along with my final backup backup—I began to stress. I was certainly no captain and I wasn’t sure that the rest of my crew, while somewhat experienced, were fully up to the task of bringing Jangada through a thousand miles of nasty Pacific Ocean.

But there was no stopping the Jangada juggernaut now. I arrived in San Diego on March 12 and immediately began making lists of all the stuff we had to do and get before we could leave. The others dribbled in a couple days later and we quickly spooled up to warp speed in order to keep on our schedule of departing on March 17. The 14-hour workdays flew by. We went out sailing to test all the electronics, watermaker and other systems, practice anchoring, tweak the rig, and get used to each other and the boat. Naturally the typical sunny, warm southern California weather turned nasty, with cold wind and pissing rain. We hardly noticed.

By the evening of the 16th we had almost everything ready and everyone was antsy to get to sea. The weather was forecast to remain nasty, and perhaps get worse. Gale force winds and big seas. Oh great, just frigging great. We went to sleep early as the rain splattered down. Hard.