Adrift: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea

“Thanks, babe.”

Ah, so the Tangaroa was a sailing vessel. Not having a VHF radio to hail Tangaroa, I walked to the beach and studied the many sailboats at anchor. As they swung with the current I could read their names, and soon I spotted Tangaroa. Its dinghy was tied to the stern, so I knew its owner was still on board. I kicked back on the warm sand and waited for someone to row ashore. After some time had passed, I saw an older man get into the dinghy and row in.

After he had secured the skiff on the beach, I approached him.

“Are you Fred?”

“Yes,” he said, quickly looking me over.

“I saw your want ad for crew and I’m interested.”

He invited me to have a cold cerveza up at the Muy Hambre cabana. Over the cerveza I told Fred the only boat I had ever sailed was my dad’s Hobie Cat in San Diego Bay, so I didn’t know a thing about sailing, let alone sailing across the ocean to a foreign port. Fred told me his boat was a custom-built Dreadnought 32. We discussed what my responsibilities would be on board, namely cooking and taking watches. I said that if what he really wanted was a “partner” I wasn’t interested. He told me he was recovering from a Tabasco-laden divorce and the last thing in the world he wanted or needed right then was a partner. All I would need to do was cook and stand watch.

With all the cards on the table, we agreed to go on a shakedown cruise—a trip to see how I took to sailing. We sailed to La Paz, 170 miles away.

It was a fabulous, two-day trip. Fred was the gentleman he promised to be and I took to sailing like a fish to water. I signed on the Tangaroa. My mom was more apprehensive about my sailing off into the wild blue yonder than my dad, but she knew she couldn’t stop me, just like she hadn’t been able to stop me from coming to Mexico nine months earlier.

When I returned to Todos Santos, the Jimenezes said it would be okay for me to leave my bus parked there. Years later I learned it had become a livestock feeder. They’d dump food into the sunroof and open the side doors so it could spill out, conveniently feeding the pigs.

Fred and I left Cabo in March 1979. The passage down to the Marquesas was a wonderful learning experience for me. I spent a lot of time at the wheel learning the feel of maneuvering a vessel through the dense sea. The only bummer was that Fred and I were like oil and water. He, in his mid-fifties, liked classical music. I, nineteen, liked rock ’n’ roll. He liked gourmet cuisine, I liked vegetarian meals. He was disciplined. I was carefree. He was an impressive man—posture perfect, body perfect, tan perfect. But all that was way too perfect for me.

One day, the horizon gave birth to volcanic peaks. I was breathless, seeing land after being surrounded for thirty-two days by nothing but blue seas and blue sky. Dense peaks split what had been a monotonous horizon line. It was a mystical sight that brought tears to my eyes. I wondered if this was how Christopher Columbus felt when he first saw land. Fred and I were barely speaking to each other by this time. I could hardly wait to get off Tangaroa, although I knew my desire to sail and explore had just begun.

Fred had told me we’d need to post an $850 bond upon checking into customs at Nuku Hiva, one of the Marquesan Islands of French Polynesia. But, being a novice traveler, I never dreamed my money, which was in pesos, was something the Marquesans wouldn’t recognize as a trading currency. Fred posted the bond for me, but it meant I had to keep crewing and cooking for him. I mailed all my pesos to my mom in San Diego, who said via telephone that she’d convert them to American dollars and mail the exchange back to me in care of General Delivery, Papeete, Tahiti.

During that time, I met Darla and Joey, who were also crewing on a yacht. We became fast friends. A small group of us crewmates, all about the same age, ended up fraternizing, and to keep us from committing mutiny, our captains decided to buddy-boat together through the Marquesan Island group.

Fred and I were the first boat in our group to leave the Marquesas and head for the Tuamotu Archipelago. It would be a three-day trip, and we deliberately timed it to arrive on a full moon, which would give us the most available light at night to navigate the atolls in case we arrived later than planned. Atolls are low-lying, ring-shaped coral reefs enclosing a lagoon. Because atolls are not easily seen and are surrounded by underwater coral reefs, they are dangerous to the mariner. Going aground on one can ravage the underside of a hull and sink a boat in minutes. The highest points on an atoll are the forty-foot palm trees swaying in the tradewinds. Due to the curvature of the earth and the fact that you are in a boat rolling with the sea, forty feet is not as obvious as a four-story building. Palm trees are the first indication to a mariner that solid ground is near.

It had been suggested that Fred and I look for certain ships and boats that had gone aground on these atolls, and to use the old hulks as points of navigation. Sailing past the wrecks on the reefs made me realize how important it is that everyone on board a boat be aware of the dangers and know how to navigate through hazardous areas. This was something I thought Fred knew.

Our first port of call was to be Manihi. Fred calculated it would be early morning before we spotted the atoll, giving us plenty of time and good light to find the lagoon entrance. When late morning came and we still hadn’t seen anything, I started to get worried. It wasn’t until one o’clock in the afternoon—when we saw the tips of palm trees blowing in the distance—that I could finally sigh in relief. Before long we were close enough to try to locate the entrance shown on the chart. We looked for a lull in the streams of white water, but all we saw was one long breaker. Fred explained that often waves break on either side of a lagoon’s channel, making it hard to distinguish the cut in the coral polyps.

Fred and I took turns looking through the binoculars, voraciously scanning the breakers along the shoreline. Finally I climbed up the mast steps to the spreaders—the crossbars on the mast—and wrapped my legs and one arm around the mast, surveying the tropical isle through the binoculars. The land appeared continuous, with no cut. We sailed completely around the atoll and still did not find an entrance. My nerves were taut and Fred refused to admit we were lost. The sun was quickly setting.

Through heated words we both conceded that we must have been set—that is, pushed—to the west, and that we had circumnavigated the atoll Ahe instead of Manihi. So we agreed to sail on through the night to Rangiroa.

Both of us were on edge that night. We stayed awake, watching and listening for any waves that might be breaking across a reef. It was that night, in my fear, that I realized I never wanted to be in such a position again. I needed to learn to navigate.

At first light we saw our destination. It was like the palms were waving a special hello to me. Around midmorning, we located the pass. This time it was easy to see where the white water petered out and then churned up again. The shift in color along the shoreline made the channel obvious. We could see a yacht flying an American flag tied to the village loading dock. We maneuvered into the dock, with help from the couple off the other boat. I jumped onto the dock and exhaustedly said to the woman: “Man, am I glad to be here in Rangiroa.”

“Rangiroa? You’re not in Rangiroa. You’re in Apataki!”

I was shocked. I leaped back on Tangaroa and went below to look at the chart. We had been set over a hundred miles southeast. What we had thought was the atoll of Ahe had actually been the atoll Takapoto, one of the atolls with no entrance.

I had now lost all confidence in Fred. I endured the five-day passage to Tahiti seething with anger toward him. My bags were packed two days before we arrived. I was eager to jump ship and leave the Tangaroa far behind me.

In Tahiti, I saw my friend Joey at an outside café; he told me he had signed on the schooner Sofia as a cook. I asked about Sofia. She wasn’t a luxury liner by any means, he said, having been built in 1921, but she was awesome: a 123-foot, three-masted topsail schooner that was cooperatively owned. He added that the accommodations were rugged: The head, for example, was a toilet seat mounted on a metal bowl located on the aft deck, rigged to dump overboard. The galley had four kerosene burners and one large diesel stove, and the sink pumped only saltwater. Fresh water was allowed for drinking and cooking only, not to be wasted on such frivolous things as rinsing saltwater off the dishes.

The membership fee to join the sailing cooperative was three thousand dollars. The cooks had to pay only fifteen hundred dollars. Joey set the hook when he told me the crew of Sofia was looking for someone to fill the other part-time cook’s position. The next day I went to the schooner, applied, and got the position, becoming a permanent crewmember.

Though primitive, Sofia did have character. She carried a crew of ten to sixteen people. Her ribs creaked of history and adventure. She was heading for New Zealand via all the South Pacific island groups. Those days on Sofia were some of the best imaginable. The freedom of being on crystal blue water while sailing a square-rigger in glorious sunshine was magic. The camaraderie of the crew was well balanced. I was able to learn my sailing and boson skills and the basics of navigation, as well as cooking and how to help organize and instruct people on the art of sailing. It was like being in one of Southern California’s greatest colleges: Sofia—U.S. “Sea.”

Once in New Zealand we headed for a little town called Nelson, located on the northern tip of the South Island in Cook Strait.

While our Sofia was set to stay in Nelson for more than a year for repair work, I was offered a fishing job on a boat named Pandora. She was owned and operated by a former Sofia crewmember who stopped by the ship looking for crew. I signed on for an albacore season and ended up fishing two albacore seasons and a grouper season. The money was good, and I loved the challenging life of fishing—the sea popping like popcorn, with fish on every line.

While I was fishing, Sofia received a movie offer and the producer wanted the ship in Auckland for the filming. I had left most of my things—photos, letters, and clothes—on board, as I planned to reunite with Sofia in Auckland when the albacore season was over.

Sofia never made it. She sank in a bad storm off the northernmost tip of the North Island of New Zealand—Cape Reinga. One woman drowned when the ship went down. The sixteen survivors were at sea in two life rafts for five days. They were finally rescued by a passing Russian freighter, which located them thanks to their last flare.

I was at sea fishing when notified of the sinking. The boat I was on took me back to shore, and I flew to meet the Sofia crew in Wellington. All my plans had just sunk, along with an innocent young woman and a beautiful ship, with the snap of a finger. I wasn’t sure what to do next. My visa, along with other Sofia crewmembers’, had expired. I had nothing left but the clothes I had taken fishing and a few odds and ends. Even then my roots reached back to San Diego—only way back then, I had been out of the country for three years, not a mere six months, like now.

Richard poked his head out from below and said, “ETA thirty days, love.”

I smiled broadly, for after having looked back on my inauspicious beginnings as a professional sailor, I was comforted by the faith I felt in Richard. Richard made it worthwhile being anywhere, even in the midst of this churning sea.

On the fifth day out of Tahiti, Hazana plowed the seas under genny and mizzen, making six knots. A deck fitting came loose and saltwater leaked onto the single-side band radio, shorting it out. The constant rolling from the northeast winds robbed us of our sleep. Our bodies were tense from deck gear clattering, the sails snapping and the rough ride.

The next day brought a reprieve. The wind came around to our beam and pushed us easterly, which is exactly what we needed. Richard wrote “Bliss” in the logbook. We decided to ease the sails and run off a little.

Basking in the sun, I twirled the lover’s knot ring Richard had made me. Looking across the cockpit, I let my eyes wander over his muscular body. I admired his topaz-colored hair, wavy like the sea, and his short-cropped, full beard, bleached gold from the sun.

Richard wrote in Hazana’s logbook the next day: “I have now given up any illusions that the SE trades will ever do better than E! Now under 2nd reefed main, staysail, rolled up genny (½) & mizzen—flying 6 kts.”

The Brooks & Gatehouse wind indicator gave out on Day Eight.

“I hope no more of this bloody equipment breaks down,” Richard exclaimed to me.

“Could it be corrosion, or . . . ?”

“Sod corrosion. It’s bloody high-tech electronics. The sun may not shine every day, but when it does, at least it will tell you exactly where you are.”

“Then sod bloody high-tech electronics!” I teased, slapping my palm on the seat locker.

For the next three days Hazana flew. The full sails reflected the salmon-colored sun, and we enjoyed reading and relaxing, and getting some much-needed sleep.

* * *

Sunday, October 2, Day Eleven on Hazana, was special for Richard and me. At dusk, phosphorescence sparkled in the turquoise sea. We opened a bottle of wine and toasted our crossing the equator that day and entering the northern hemisphere.

Ahead of us shot a geyser of silver and translucent green spray: A large pod of pilot whales was coming to play with Hazana. We connected the self-steering vane and went to the bow to watch them leap and sing their high-pitched greeting. Grasping the stainless steel pulpit, Richard leaned against my back, his bearded cheek next to mine as the whales created beautiful crisscrossing streamers of chartreuse in front of us.

“Aren’t the whales magical, love?” he asked, fascinated.

“Look how they surface and dive,” he said as he slowly started undulating against my backside. As Hazana rose over the next swell, he whispered in my ear, “Surface . . .” And as the bow plunged into the trough, he said, “Dive.”

“You could be a whale, Richard,” I teased.