to the editor of Latitude 38 and the people of the San Francisco Bay Area sailing community. Here’s how it went: Ahoy! We’re sailing off into the sunset. We arrived here in the Bay Area a little more than 4 years ago on a journey that we knew would take us around the world in no great hurry. As a matter of fact, 15 years is what we originally thought. Now we think that sounds a little fast. We started in Seattle, WA, on 9/9/99 in a 50 foot Wm. Garden Seawolf ketch appropriately named the Sovereign Nation. He was a lovely old wooden sailboat that laughed at us while trying to sink while we sailed up into B.C. and all the way down the coast. We learned a lot about sailing and sailors from that boat and from 48 North. In Eureka, CA, our sovereign nation was hit by a 42 foot Magnum. The owner was headed north to dodge the California luxury tax. He was close to the deadline and tried to warp off a lee pier into a wind that had the entire Eureka fishing fleet staying put that day. He plowed into us with the throttle full on, tearing our taftrail, mizzen boom, and dinghy davits off. The best part is that he tried to get away – just leave pieces of our boat hanging off and floating in the water – but a marina worker saw the whole thing and shamed him into stopping! We had to sail our boat with a jerry-rigged mizzen and towing our 1924 Herreschoff lapstrake dory in 40 foot seas around Cape Mendecino. (Yes, we should have stood off farther – we can take that much credit for the mess that we got ourselves into.) We lost that dory and[…]
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