Six months ago I made the biggest mistake of my life: I bought a neglected and broken boat in a foreign country and thought I could fix it up and sail away.
I didn’t grow up near boats, I didn’t know anything. I never got the boat surveyed, and it wasn’t in any shape to take for a test sail before I bought it. What was I thinking? Every day for six months I put my heart and soul into that hunk of junk, and often it seemed like everything I touched broke.
Being in Mexico didn’t help either. Many of the Mexicans saw a young gringo with a boat and thought about all the money I must have. There were plenty of times I got the pushed around and walked on. What was I supposed to do? I’m not from the country, and who knows what kind of connections these people have? Better to dish out a bit of money than to make enemies. Even some of the other foreign sailors sold me junk that didn’t work, but they assured me I would need it. I was new to the game and had a lot to learn.
I took out my masts and found that my main mast, which is one of the most integral parts of the boat, was littered through and through with termite damage and worthless. Did the sellers of the boat know this? Is this why it came so cheap? Here I was, stuck in 100-plus-degree heat, just trying to get out of Mexico without having to throw my cards in, forget about all the money and time I lost, sink the boat and come back to the states with my tail between my legs.
I stuck to it. My friend on this adventure, Tyler, stuck to it with me. Every week we made a list of the things that had to be done, and every day we crossed things off. We made decisions not knowing if they would be right or wrong. Many times, we did things solely based on hunches, and just messed with things until they worked. We wouldn’t take no for an answer.
On June 14, we loaded the boat with food, water, a bit of fuel and some friends and started out for the ocean. We pulled up the main sail and the boat started tilting a bit to the left, catching wind. I looked at the rigging, the chain plates, the mast, the mast step, all things that Tyler and I had fabricated or installed by ourselves. Everything held.
We put up the fore sail, we put up the mizzen, we shut off the engine. Silence. Waves were slapping against the hull, wind was blowing in our faces. Inside the boat things were moving around – dishes were sliding back and forth, doors were opening and closing. The boat, for the first time in close to 10 years, had come alive. We were cruising at a full 7 knots under sail, which is fast for any cruising sailboat.
I looked at the boat. We had a stove, an oven, a sink, a bathroom, a shower, a water maker hooked to two giant water tanks, beds and couches, an engine that purred when we needed it, three sails raised, a library of sailing books, lines attached all over the place – each with a specific purpose, anchors and chain, solar panels, fishing lines trolling out the back and a giant cockpit to lay out in and watch the clouds pass by. All of these systems I know intimately, and if anything were to break, I know how to fix it, because I already did once.
We sailed from the La Paz harbor to the island Espiritu Santo and anchored for the night. The wind picked up overnight, and we were in an exposed anchorage. I kept thinking I should be worried about the anchor slipping or the rope breaking, pushing us into the rocks, but I wasn’t. I had put the chain and rope together, inspected them myself, and I knew that the size and type of the anchor, with the type of sea bottom and scope I had laid out according to the depth of water, would hold us. I had become a sailor.
In the morning, we sailed around the island, catching tuna and making sushi. We anchored in beautiful coves with white sand beaches and turquoise water and spearfished. We headed back to La Paz and made it back to our mooring around midnight after a successful first voyage.
What for a time I had considered the biggest mistake of my life turned out to be one my greatest accomplishments. Our plan now is to complete a few finishing touches on the boat, install a top-of-the-line monitor wind vane that was generously given to us by the president of the company and sail north on the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas.
From there, I will most likely put the boat in storage for a month or two and return to the San Juan Mountains to clear my head and mentally prepare for the next leg of the journey: down the Central American Coast to Panama and then a Pacific Ocean crossing in the spring.
Kevin Schank graduated from Durango High School in 2004 and Fort Lewis College in 2010. Follow Schank at www.MoreHandsOnDeck.com.
