Sea Bird
Atlas Obscura Releases Podcast About My Time in the Doldrums
What’s it like to float alone for a week in the Doldrums, one of the remotest stretches of ocean on planet Earth? This week Atlas Obscura released an interview I did with co-founder Dylan Thuras about my experience exploring the Doldrums in my sailboat Sea Bird. You can listen to the interview here.
Becalmed in the Doldrums: Sailing the Atlantic Alone
This week, I had a great chat with Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras about what it’s like to be stuck in the Doldrums. When I say the Doldrums, I don’t mean depression, a funk or a case of the mid-winter blues. I’m talking about the capital D Doldrums, the windless stretch of the Atlantic Ocean on either side of the equator that’s known for trapping sailors for weeks at a time.
Sailing Back to Horses
I have not always traveled by mule. When I was thirty, I decided that sailing around the world would be more interesting than sticking with my office job. I bought an old boat named Sea Bird and notified my employer that I was going sailing. I had just enough money saved to get going but not enough to make the whole trip without working along the way. I went anyway.
How to Rebuild a Katadyn Survivor 35 Desalinator
The email came from the Falkland Islands. “Do you have advice and information about watermakers?” It was from my friends, sailors Thies Matzen and Kicki Ericson aboard Wanderer III. A new Katadyn Survivor 35, the one they were interested in, costs around $2,400. In this post, I show you how I rebuilt a surplus Katadyn Survivor 35 Desalinator I bought on eBay for $150. It worked fine.
Droving Cattle in New Zealand: Old Slide Film Photos from My Circumnavigation
January 5 was my birthday and it got me looking back through my old slides. Funny how life changes. Thirteen years ago I was living in New Zealand chasing cows with Allan Crawford. These days I live on my farm in western North Carolina. I chase mules instead of cows. When I run to town, it’s for diesel, memory cards and wifi, not shark oil, scones and slide film.
How to Stow Away on a Sailboat
So you want to stow away on a sailboat, eh? Blend in somewhere on something like that salty sailboat I built 20 years ago. See where it takes you.
Damn. Unless you could shape shift into a seat cushion, brass lantern or bronze port, I’d rate the odds of remaining undetected on a 18 1/2 footer as slim to delusional. If you still insist, though, I would suggest seeking shelter in a cockpit locker. Don’t try to hide under the… Continue reading
How I Quit My Office Job to Sail Around the World
Until my late twenties, my life went like this.
Boats, horses, something else, boats, horses, something else, boats, horses…
There was the jockey phase, the Alfa Romeo mechanic phase, the running-out-of-money-in-Tuscany-and-spending-a-year-to-earn-a-plane-ticket-home phase, and then at age twenty-five I went to NC State University. I got a degree in Wood and Paper Science and a few years later started the phase most folks had a head start on. That was the Office Phase.
Control-Z
I went to work for a German… Continue reading
Over Under Over: Splicing Lead Ropes on the Atlantic to Pacific Ride
One of the finer things in life is splicing fresh rope.
Ross Pease back in Oriental, NC showed me how to splice twenty-five feet of 3/8″ anchor chain to Sea Bird’s anchor rode.
I promptly forgot how to do it and spent the next four and a half years sailing around the world trying to remember — was it “over under over” or “under over under?” And… Continue reading
Anchoring a Mule Is Like Anchoring a Sailboat. In Theory.
I only ever dragged Sea Bird’s anchor once in five years of sailing. But man did I have a tough time judging her swing at anchor.
It seems the same old problem is cropping up again with mule Woody.
The good thing now is the stakes are lower. See that’s one of the things that got to me banging around on the Bird. People anchored around me wondered if I had insurance. Insurance? Hey buddy, my insurance is my chain… Continue reading
Slower Than a Ripple: A Mule Rider Thinks of the Doldrums
As I was walking up through Fort Bragg, I noticed the sand patterns and thought of Sea Bird.
The sand in these regions is almost white, sort of like the powdery stuff you see at the beach between the high tide mark and the dunes.
But it’s a long way from the ocean here. It’s rolling land where the Long Leaf pines reign supreme. It’s like the heaving swells I used to plow with my sailboat Sea Bird had been… Continue reading
The Idea Germinated in a Gale: How Woody and I Came to Be
The idea of riding a mule across North Carolina germinated in a gale. I was off Madagascar in my sailboat Sea Bird, the sailboat that I sailed alone around the world. That night things blew up so nasty the mast hit the broken ocean and the portholes swirled with brine. I thought “Next time I’m home I’ll stick to the dry a while.”
Caribbean Christmas Under Sail: Aboard Sea Bird in Antigua
Merry floating Christmas (Melinda Penkava photo)
Oriental, NC
Traveling the Texas High Plains by wagon this holiday season, I think back to Christmas on the high seas. Click here for the nautical nativity scene….
