Crew

By Bob Allen

Every man's dream - to sail around the world. This is the story of one man who did it, sailing as crew on a number of boats. His adventures, misadventures, and insights into exotic cultures and the diverse personalities he meets along the way make for a fascinating read. During his 32,000 mile trip, he survived a collision, two groundings, numerous storms, and one obsessive compulsive captain. Despite the hardships, this book is a celebration of the diversity of our planet and its people. The author succeeds brilliantly in sharing his fascination with the ocean and its creatures, from a manta ray he encountered while diving on the Great Barrier Reef to the school of dolphins numbering in the hundreds in the South Pacific. His insights into the exotic cultures he encounters along the way are equally fascinating; a visit with the Kuna Indians of Panama, a feast in Tonga, tours of Buddhist Temples in Sri Lanka, and the magical majesty of Rhodes. An epic adventure that will leave the reader with a sense of wonder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 31, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469752310

Bob Allen

Bob Allen is a life-long resident of Chicago, mostly on the south side. He is the proud father of two beautiful girls, Lucy and Grace, with his lovely wife, Laura. The beautiful girls have left he and Laura alone with two rescue cats who let them live with them. Bob's past involves making eyeglasses, stand-up comedy, loading airplanes, practicing law, and tending bar, among other things. His play, "Opening Day" was produced to exactly zero reviews, however a friend gave it four stars on the way out, so there's that. Also, just in case you were wondering, Bob likes the Sox over the Cubs, thin crust over deep dish, dry over wet, Stones over the Beatles and Ginger over Mary Ann.

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I was sixteen years old when I decided to sail around the world. I was alone on a beach in Florida; quietly enjoying the sounds, sights, and smells of the sea when I realized that something inside me was trying to be heard. It was a peculiar feeling. I knew that something was different but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then, the idea of sailing around the world popped into my head, followed by a sudden feeling of well being and peace of mind. I don’t know what was unusual about this day, but it was the first time I can recall having this experience. I suppose you could say that I was out of touch with my feelings. Like a lot of boys, I grew up ignoring or suppressing my feelings to the point where I really didn’t have any.

A dream is a wish your heart makes. A line from an old Disney song but I don’t think there’s a better definition anywhere. That’s what distinguishes dreams from plans, ideas, or anything else that we think up. Dreams are not products of the brain. They come from the heart. My dream was to sail around the world.

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I didn’t particularly like discovering that I had a heart and that it had ideas of its own but I recognized that this dream was a special thing. I was in no position at the time to sail around the world. In fact, I was a pretty screwed up kid. My father had died five years earlier and my mother was too bitter at the world to cope with the three teenaged kids she had on her hands. I knew that I wouldn’t be sailing any time soon, but I decided then and there that, someday, I would make it happen.

A couple of years later, my heart spoke up again and the message was that I was in love with the woman who is now my wife. This was even more disturbing than realizing that I had a dream to sail around the world. With that, I could just tuck it away and carry it around until I was ready to do it. This love thing meant that someone had penetrated my shell and I wasn’t used to having someone else inside.

Now, many years later, I still mainly use conscious thought processes but I’m more in touch with my feelings and place great value on these messages from the heart. My wife turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, and my life just got better and better after she came along.

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My dream to sail around the world has never left me. In all the years since I discovered that it was there, it was rarely in the forefront of my thoughts. I must admit that I could never pass by a world map without thinking about my probable route or imagining what things were like on this stretch of blue or that island. But I didn’t talk about it much and put no effort into preparing for it. The people who knew me knew that I said I was going to do it. The people who knew me well knew that I would do it.

The years passed by and my life took some interesting turns. I married when I was 19, graduated college when I was 22, and promptly joined the Navy. My wife, Teresa, and I were blessed with two sons who grew up in various places around the world where my Navy assignments took us. Watching them grow up was one of the most fulfilling experiences I have ever had. My family and the Navy were my life for 22 years.

Finally, at the age of 44, I found that my situation had changed. The boys were off at college so my services as Dad were no longer required. Teresa had been working at a job she dearly loved for the last seven years and her income, combined with what I would make if I retired, would be enough to pay the bills. In addition, there was enough money squirreled away to cover all the remaining college expenses so my services as breadwinner were no longer required. Basically, the only obstacle remaining that would prevent me from going after my dream was my role as husband.

Teresa had known from the beginning that I was going to sail around the world someday. We had talked about it many times. There was no way that she could come with me. She gets seasick more easily than anyone I have ever known. She got sick once on a car ferry that had no perceptible motion.

We knew the amount of separation involved and knew from experience how hard it would be. We didn’t have nearly as much separation as many Navy families but we got enough to know that this would be, far and away, the biggest sacrifice involved.

I seriously considered giving up my dream because the separation was going to be very hard for Teresa. We talked it over and she encouraged me to go, further padding her already impressive resume for sainthood. She knew that a little piece of me would die if I didn’t do it.

I decided to go for it.

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One good thing about having a dream on hold for a number of years is that you have a lot of time to think about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. I was well prepared in many respects. After driving ships in the Navy for four years, I knew navigation (including celestial), rules of the road, engineering, damage control, seamanship, etc. The Navy also sent me to graduate school where I earned a Master’s Degree in Meteorology and Oceanography. I spent the rest of my career working in this field.

Great background for a would-be circumnavigator, right? Yes and no. The one big hole in my background was a lack of experience in offshore sailing. I had done a lot of day sailing and had made a couple of trips, one from Maine to Rhode Island and one from Tampa to north Florida, but it was not enough. My experience aboard a frigate, battleship, and aircraft carrier didn’t count. Time at sea on a ship is not the same as time at sea on a sailboat. I had a great background but clearly it was not enough.

In addition to my lack of offshore sailing experience, I knew I needed shipmates to share the watch rotation. You can sail around the world single-handed. Lots of people have done it. But to me, it involves risks I did not want to take. You have to sleep sometime and the idea of being at sea with nobody on watch does not appeal to me. Bottom line, I needed other people, at least one of whom had some good offshore sailing experience.

No one that I knew had that kind of experience or was willing to commit to this endeavor. A lot of people say that they are going to sail around the world some day, but they never go. A number of people whom I had known over the years had said that they wanted to go with me when I went, some adamantly, but when it came time to go, no one was there.

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Once you reach the conclusion that you need other people and that no one you know wants to go, it makes sense to consider crewing on someone else’s boat. The advantages and drawbacks are obvious. From a financial standpoint, crewing is far cheaper than owning your own boat. Boats are expensive and the purchase price is just the beginning. Maintenance costs for boats are far higher than the cost of maintaining a house or a car. An additional consideration was that I was more likely to end up with someone who had experience if I crewed than if I took my own boat and looked for crew.

Another big consideration for me was that it would be much easier to get home periodically. My wife, like most Navy wives, is very self sufficient but that doesn’t keep me from worrying about her. I wanted to be able to drop everything and head for home if I needed to.

The only drawback to crewing that I could see was that I wouldn’t be the boss. Being the boss is nice but I’ve never had a problem taking orders from someone I trust and respect, and besides, I got to choose the boss, a luxury I never had before.

As I looked further into crewing, I came across a couple of interesting options for circumnavigation as crew through advertisements in Cruising World Magazine. One was a Norwegian freighter being converted to a three-masted barque in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. I was intrigued with the idea of sailing as a member of a large crew on a tall ship. The whole experience would be entirely different from what I had envisioned. My curiosity drove me to investigate further so I visited the ship and talked to the captain.

The ship was undergoing a transformation from coastal freighter to tall ship when I arrived. Her three masts had been stepped (installed for you landlubbers) and work was progressing on rigging her. She was dirty, as most ships are in the yard, with workers tracking dirt as they come and go, and had a tremendous amount of work remaining to make her habitable. The one exception was the captain’s cabin, which was in finished condition.

The captain was most hospitable; put me up for the night, fed me, and gave me a tour of the ship. However, the condition of the ship at the time and my perception that the Captain was not as concerned about weather as I thought he should be bothered me. I ended up deciding not to join the crew. Months later, I saw on the Internet that the ship seemed to be having a successful trip, so perhaps my fears were unfounded.

The other option was PAULINE, a 54-foot ketch which had been lovingly restored by a couple from Maryland, Robert and Josephine. I visited the boat and was very impressed with the quality workmanship throughout. The forward part of the boat had been modified to accommodate two sets of bunk beds for four crewmembers and was beautifully done. The fact that most of the work had been done by Robert was a plus in two respects. It showed that he knew his boat completely and was capable of making most repairs, and the quality of the work spoke volumes to me about what type of man he was.

Robert had gone to sea right out of high school and had spent the last 20 years working on everything from fishing boats to tall ships. He was short, about 5’6", and thin with a genial disposition but took his sailing and the maintenance of his boat very seriously.

Josephine, or Jo as her friends called her, also had a strong background in sailing over the past 10 years. She was also short and a bit overweight, very well organized, and very much into a healthy (almost completely vegetarian) diet.

At any rate, I liked them and they liked me so we agreed to give it a try. A fourth crewmember, Paul, also joined. Paul was in his early fifties with a wife and two kids in high school. He was about Robert’s height and build with blond hair and a full beard. Having just finished a career as a financial consultant, he had opted for this trip while he figured out what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Paul was only going to be with us until Tahiti. The rest of us were planning to make the full circumnavigation over an 18-month period. Our intended route was the Caribbean, South Pacific, North Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean, followed by a return to the states across the tropical North Atlantic.

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I committed to PAULINE several months before our departure date and, in fact, several months before I retired from the Navy. We corresponded

frequently; me with questions like what kind of foul weather gear to get, and them with questions like what effect El Nino would have on us.

Since Robert and Jo were taking care of all preparations for the boat, a truly gargantuan task, my responsibility was simply to bring the right personal gear. Although much simpler than making all the boat preparations, this was still not a trivial undertaking.

Imagine that you are packing for an 18-month trip which will take you through 30 something countries and lots of different climates. Now, add in the fact that storage limitations on the boat will restrict you to bringing only what will fit into one duffel bag. Even the choice of a duffel bag instead of a suitcase is driven by the fact that an empty duffel bag takes up far less room than an empty suitcase. Not an easy task. Every decision you make regarding what to bring and what to leave behind will impact your quality of life for a long time.

In my case, I chose to skimp on clothes to allow room for other things that I considered more important, like a video camera and snorkeling gear. I knew that I would have to do a lot of laundry and that I wouldn’t have the right clothes for getting dressed up but that was a minor sacrifice in my mind. I’ve rarely enjoyed anything I had to dress up for anyway.

As we discussed preparations, it became obvious that Robert and Jo had really done their homework. Medical concerns were a high priority. Jo had checked on recommended immunizations and medications for all the areas we planned to visit. Since I was on active duty at the time, I was current on all my shots. The one problem that I faced in that area was an allergy to cats. Since Robert and Jo planned to bring their cat along, I began an expensive process of weekly injections to rid myself of this allergy. Of course, my cat allergy was of no interest to the Navy so I had to set this up with a private allergist and pay for it out of my own pocket. Fortunately, after a few weeks of this, Robert and Jo decided (for reasons other than my allergy) not to bring the cat. I promptly discontinued my injections since several more weeks and a lot more money would be required to complete the treatment.

The only other medical preparation I had to make was to stock up on malaria pills since the disease was endemic in several of the areas on our route. Some areas had malaria strains that were resistant to conventional medical treatments so I had to get medicines that were especially potent and expensive.

The boat had a superb first aid kit. Jo had gotten advice from several sources and assembled materials which would enable us to take care of just about any medical emergency. She had the tools and the medicine to handle anything short of major surgery.

Insurance was another issue that had to be considered, both medical insurance to cover health care overseas and boat insurance to cover PAULINE. Many health insurance policies do not cover services by foreign providers. Special policies are available which do and must be considered to avoid financially debilitating costs due to illness or injury along the way.

Boat insurance for cruisers is very expensive and many cruisers travel without it. Robert and Jo opted for a policy from Lloyd’s of London that came with lower premiums if there were three people onboard with significant marine experience. I had to furnish information on my background in order to qualify as the third person and get the lower rates.

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Robert had put together an intended route that was perfectly in tune with the expected weather patterns. It was one of the reasons that I chose to go with them. Even though I knew instinctively that it was a good route, I am a great believer in doing your homework, so I spent quite a bit of time looking into the details to ensure that we left no stone unturned.

Our intended route was the most common one used by cruisers and avoids all major weather threats by traveling almost exclusively in the tropics on the winter side of the equator. With this route, the trade winds provide a steady following breeze, you’re too close to the equator for winter storms, and hurricane season is going on in the opposite hemisphere.

Adapting to nature’s rhythms and seasons yields a safe and comfortable route that is referred to in the cruising community as the Milk Run.

The most powerful El Nino ever recorded was in full swing as we got ready to go and this changed weather patterns slightly. In the South Pacific, tropical cyclones are more common in the western parts, from Australia to the Fiji area and become rarer farther east. They are unusual in the Marquesas and unheard of in the Galapagos. Because of this, and the size of the Pacific, cruisers normally enter the eastern South Pacific during cyclone season and get a head start on their transits. Normally, this is perfectly safe and will allow you to transit about 3,000 nm before entering the area where tropical cyclones become a concern.

This is not the case during an El Nino when tropical cyclone activity extends much farther to the east than it normally does. This meant that we would have to delay our South Pacific transit slightly and spend a little extra time in the Caribbean. Not a big deal but one of those little things that you have to consider when you’re taking a small boat out on a big ocean.

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The glorious day when my long suppressed dream finally came to life was a bitterly cold and blustery November afternoon. I had arrived in Maryland a couple of days earlier and had spent the time preparing for sea, mostly organizing and storing charts. Jo had done a superb job in ordering the charts that we would need from Maryland to Tahiti but they were scattered all over the floor of a warehouse at the marina. It took a lot of time to get them all labeled, folded, and sorted. Jo, Robert, and I labored nonstop with last minute items. Paul was smart and showed up just a couple of hours before we departed.

As we got underway, temperatures were in the thirties but the wind chill temperature must have been much lower with the high winds. I was wearing everything I had and was still cold as the cruel northwest wind found its way through my layers of clothes.

We had a fast but not fun trip down the Chesapeake in two section watches pairing Robert and Jo with the two of us novices. Watches aboard a sailboat are similar to watches aboard a ship in many respects. You are responsible for the safety of the boat and everyone aboard.

Navigation is a big part of it, especially in restricted waters like the Chesapeake. You have to take positions from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and transfer them to the chart to see where you are. Of course, this is just the beginning in restricted waters. You also have to spot aids to navigation like lights and buoys, correlate them to the chart, and build a picture in your head of where you are and where you’re going. It’s a continual process in restricted waters because shoals are never far away and the currents constantly alter your track over the ground. A few minutes of inattention or a mental error can put you on the rocks with disastrous consequences. Since I had had a great deal of training and experience in navigation, this part of the job was not new to me.

Another big concern for the watch is avoiding collision. Like navigation, this is a much bigger job in restricted waters since the density of shipping is much higher than in the open ocean. There is much to learn concerning rules of the road (who has right of way), lights, sound signals, radio communications, and understanding what you see. Again, this was an area where my training and experience came in handy.

The third major aspect of standing a watch is monitoring weather and the mechanical condition of the boat. Weather changes sometimes happen very quickly and can have terrible consequences for a sailboat that is caught off guard. A sailboat with too much sail up can be knocked down, capsized, dismasted, and even sunk by sudden gusts or changes in wind direction. The weather must be watched constantly and sails adjusted according to conditions.

Mechanical problems can also do you in pretty quickly. All boats have a number of fittings that penetrate the hull; engine cooling water intake, plumbing connections, and the shaft bearings are the major ones. Any one of these can spring a leak and allow water to enter the boat. Fortunately, leaks usually don’t turn into torrents right away and most boats have pretty good pumping capabilities, so this is not a big threat. However, any new leak is a serious concern which needs to be addressed expeditiously before it turns into something major. Most boats incorporate a regular check of the water levels in the bilge as a part of the watch routine.

Engine problems on sailboats take on a greater sense of urgency than they do in a car. This is particularly true in restricted waters. If your engine dies in your car, you get off the road and call for help. If your engine dies when you’re motoring down a narrow channel with strong currents and contrary winds, you are probably in for a grounding if not a collision. Most boats have an engine check incorporated into the watch routine so that developing problems can be spotted early. Oil pressure and temperature are monitored constantly.

Watches underway vary radically in the demands placed on the person standing the watch. Open ocean trade wind sailing is very easy and leaves lots of free time. Restricted waters are another thing and usually provide more than enough problems to keep you busy. Robert and Jo were smart to start out with only a two-watch rotation. It gave them an opportunity to do whatever training was needed, an extra pair of hands and eyes, and some time to get a feel for what kind of people Paul and I were.

The cold, combined with the many hours of watch made this part of the trip pretty miserable. No surprise though. The weather we were experiencing was not unusual for November in that area.

Conditions improved dramatically on reaching the Atlantic and entering the Gulf Stream, which runs very close to shore off the Virginia coast. Temperatures shot up and morale skyrocketed as we watched whales playing in the distance. I don’t know what kind they were but they leaped so high that only part of the tail was still in the water. As if the warm temperatures and the whales weren’t enough, we had a double hook up on our fishing lines and brought in two 25-pound yellowfin tunas. One was plenty for our needs so we let the other one go. This was more like it! What a glorious day!

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Although we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves, we kept a close eye on the weather. We had a weather fax capability using Single Side Band (SSB) radio connected to a laptop computer. It didn’t work very well even with constant attention and didn’t work at all in the unattended mode.

We supplemented this with daily SSB discussions with Herb, a Canadian who provided a free routing service for sailors in the western North Atlantic. Herb wasn’t always right but he did a superb job and really helped us out. The way it worked was that people who wanted to talk to Herb came up on a certain frequency at a certain time of day. They gave position, course and speed, and a current weather observation. We could tell that Herb kept a plot of all his regular callers because he would always know if you were behind or ahead of track. He had a few peculiarities which made it interesting to listen. He was downright motherly, gently chastising those who didn’t follow his recommendations and praising those who had made good time. His Elmer Fudd style of speech was also good entertainment. He pronounced his Rs as Ws. This was highlighted by his habit of acknowledging your comments with a hearty Woger, Woger!. Speech impediment or not, Herb provided a great service for a large number of people at no cost. We were very grateful.

Storms had been moving through this area with great frequency of late and we wanted to be far away from the Gulf Stream when the next one arrived. Currents have a way of producing steep waves with the right wind direction and the warm waters of the Gulf Stream provide lots of heat to fuel cyclogenesis. A low was expected to develop over Georgia and head our way in the next couple of days. We wanted to be as far to the southeast as possible when that happened. We knew we could not avoid some heavy weather at this time of year because of the speed and frequency of the storms, but we wanted as little as possible.

As expected, the low moved out of Georgia and intensified and we caught the edge of it as it went by to our northwest. We got a very uncomfortable 35 gusting to 50 and 15-foot seas.

I was seasick and cold. A no-win situation. If I went down below, I got seasick and if I stayed in the cockpit, I got cold. I spent most of my time in the cockpit during the rough weather, as did everyone else. Robert showed outstanding judgment in his decisions on sail plan and courses throughout, confirming my confidence in his abilities.

After the seas and winds died down, we started feeling human again. Temperatures rose as did our spirits. In addition to the improved weather, we also enjoyed a change in watch schedules. We had been in two section watches from the beginning so that Paul and I could get some much-needed instruction and to augment the watch during our Chesapeake transit. We had continued this out into the Atlantic because of the likelihood of heavy weather and, now that we were south of the storm track, no longer needed an augmented watch. It was nice to stand watch alone and luxurious to have the extra free time.

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I took my first shower in six days. Not since I was a Boy Scout, hiking for two weeks in the mountains of New Mexico, had I gone this long without a shower. The combination of sweat, body oils, and salt spray had coalesced to produce new chemical combinations unknown to man and I could barely stand my own aroma.

Showers on most sailboats consist of standing on deck and dropping a bucket over the side for salt water which you pull in with a line and pour over yourself. This can turn into a desperate fight between you and the sea for ownership of the bucket if you have a large bucket and the boat is moving fast. Robert had seen so many buckets lost in this way that he asked us to tie the end of the bucket line off to the boat before dipping it. A wise precaution. After a while, you learn that it’s better to get a little water at a time.

There are special soaps you can buy which are designed to dissolve in salt water but most people know from experience which regular brands work well and use them. After lathering and rinsing, we used a small amount of fresh water (one quart) to rinse the salt off.

It’s cold and it’s hard to do on a boat that’s rolling with the seas, but you feel like a million bucks afterward. Many boats now have good water-making capabilities so the bucket shower may be on its way out. Another tradition lost.

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Our normal routine onboard PAULINE was a four day rotation; three days on a three section watch, then one day as cook and maid with no watches. We stood three-hour watches at night and four-hour watches during the day so we always had at least six hours off after each watch, a very easy routine. On our days as cook, we had to run the vacuum around the salon, fix lunch and dinner, and clean up the galley. I dreaded my days as cook and I suspect everyone else did too. My wife is a fabulous cook and has spoiled me rotten. As a result, I have absolutely no culinary skills. I did the best I could, taking advice from Jo and following recipes but it was obvious to me that I had little success.

Cooking underway is not easy. Galleys are small and storage is tight so that you have to do some digging to get the ingredients you need.

The motion of the boat means that you use one hand