Sailing Syzygy: Inspiration from a Legend

By Sailing Syzygy
May 28, 2009

At the top of the stairs, the receptionist interrogated me. "Hi, what kind of boat do you have?"
- "A Valiant 40," I said.
She continued: "Are you a circumnavigator?"
-"Yeah," I said. She reached for a button that said "I've sailed around the world," and I corrected myself.
-"I mean, no, not yet."

Instead of a button, I was given an adhesive paper name tag. It said:

'09 Circumnavigator's Rendezvous
AHOY!
I'm ___[your name]____
of ___[your boat's name]_____

This was at the Oakland Yacht Club, six weeks ago, and I was there partly to see what I'd gotten myself into, and partly to see a presentation by John Guzzwell, a sailor of legendary repute.

In 1957, Guzzwell saved the day (to say the least) when a 46-foot boat called the Tzu Hang pitchpoled (i.e. went ass-over-teakettle) and was dismasted in the Southern Ocean, 1000 miles from Cape Horn. (The story is chronicled in the classic, Once is Enough, by Miles Smeeton.) Two years later, when he was 29, Guzzwell completed a singlehanded circumnavigation on Trekka, a 21-foot wooden yawl that he'd built. It was then the smallest boat ever to have gone around the world. Since then, he's designed custom boats, cruised all over the world with his family, raced from L.A. to Osaka, and twice raced singlehanded to Hawaii in the TransPac, once when he was 71 years old.

The 2nd floor of the Oakland Yacht Club was lined with framed photos of big sailboats, and flags -- lots of flags. There was a large wooden yacht wheel, as obligatory as a horseshoe over the door of a barn. These things I'd expected.

Just past the door, I found a poster-sized document that I didn't expect, and couldn't stop examining. It was the Official West Coast Circumnavigator List, courtesy of Latitude 38, the local SF-Bay-area sailing magazine. It listed all of the boats, from ABV Amro One to Zoom, that had circumnavigated from the west coast. There were 270 of them since 1950 -- about five a year. There were six members of the Valiant cult on the list -- making Valiant 40's the most common boat on the list. There was a 12-footer (that's like sailing a toilet!), a 72-foot Challenger, and a 180-foot barque. A few had done it engineless, and only a few had done it in boats less than 25-feet long. The list included Sohcahtoa (our pals in Seattle), Awahnee (Bob and Nancy Griffith), Dove (Robin Lee Graham), and Seraffyn (Lin and Larry Pardey) -- and it felt sorta funny -- wonderful and crazy -- to be following a path forged by such badasses. Going on a hike with Lewis and Clark, or getting a tour of the Whitehouse from Obama, would compare.

I moved on. A quarter of the room was a bar -- a good sign -- but people milling about were drinking beer out of glasses -- not a good sign. There were lots of good-old-boy chuckles and "nice-to-see-you's." Apparently this was a salty group, but I wouldn't have guessed it. There were about 200 people, more than half with gray hair, and half of those with beards, and thankfully, only one of those sporting a dorky sailor hat. I sat down next to a 49-year-old guy with a 2-year-old toddler, and thought: that makes me the second-youngest person in the room.

I looked around, and saw a guy with the cicumnavigator button on his lapel, and a copy of Guzzwell's book, Trekka Round the World, in his hands. A first edition, signed. I said Hi. His name was Steve. I figured I'd get down to details.

Q: "Do you think the danger of piracy is overhyped, like shark attacks?"
A: "No, it's fucking dangerous." He told me about his trip through the Gulf of Aden in November of 1998. "It's as serious as a heart attack," he said.

Q: "How long did you plan before you sailed?"
A: "I did it many times in my dreams before I did it for real." He continued. "If you wanna be a tourist, buy a plane ticket. If you wanna see the world, don't take a sailboat. It's a lot of responsibility."

Q: "How long did it take you to readjust afterward?"
A: "I didn't. I went to Barcelona and hung out. I haven't worked for 11 years."

The presentation started before I had a chance to continue, and I was drowned out by a round of applause for the circumnavigators, who, it was said, give so much inspiration to the "armchair circumnavigators." That was me.

The emcee then joked about the size of crowd, and blamed the damn singlehanders -- types who just don't RSVP.

To set the scene, we were reminded that we were about to hear a story 50 years old, and that while time passes, some things change, while others never do. The gray hairs and boats on the wall were a reminder of that.

John Guzzwell got up, healthy and humble, charming and spirited, and started telling his story. He had a subtle British accent, from his youth on the Channel Islands. He pronounced sailing as say-ling. He summed up the sport: he said it was mostly "Prepare and deal. Prepare and deal."

Guzzwell reminded us that his adventure was back in the days before GPS, or weather data. All he had was a radio receiver -- for use as a chronometer -- not even a radio transmitter. On board the Tzu Hang, he had a flax mainsail, manilla lines, tallow-coated sheets. There were no winches, no lights, no electrical system. "We were on our own," he said.

He'd met Miles and Beryl Smeeton in Hawaii. They were true adventurers, and had climbed with Tenzing Norgay in the Himalayas. They were on their way to Australia, to see the 1960 Olympics, and invited Guzzwell along. Before leaving Hawaii, Guzzwell helped them replace the rotten main mast. In Sydney, Australia, he replaced the mizzen mast for the same reason. He'd built his own dinghy. His carpentry skills were handy.

Guzzwell showed some footage from the trip -- and the clips looked funny and old-timey, just a hair too fast, so people look goofy, clownish. There were shots of the Tzu Hang, a 46-foot double-ender not too unlike Syzygy, out on the big swells. There were shots of Miles up on deck, slicing through stale bread with a saw, like a two by four, and smiling like a little boy.

Soon, Guzzwell warned us that he was nearing the end of the footage, and noted how big waves never look as big on film, but nevertheless assured us that we were looking at 50 knots of wind and huge seas in the Southern Ocean. An hour after he'd stopped filming, he said, the Tzu Hang pitchpoled, and was nearly destroyed. The doghouse, hatches, mast, rudder, and sails were all washed overboard. Beryl was washed overboard too, and swam back on her own, with a huge gash on her face. She started bailing water immediately.

He reminded us that they were 1000 miles from Cape Horn, and then he paused, and began to glow. He reveled, and the audience was captivated, as he described the decisions and actions that went into their struggle to survive. There was no politics, no finances, no concern with the rest of the world. Just three little mammals on a tiny wooden craft bobbing up and down on a great big ocean. I swear I heard the sound of the sea in that room.

"The great thing about wooden decks," he said, "Is you can drive nails into them. I don't know what you do with fiberglass." He spent the next few days disassembling the cabin, and built an improv mast out of the wood he'd removed. He used a door as a rudder. "We felt very pleased with ourselves," he said.

87 days later, the Tzu Hang showed up at a port in Chile.

There was one more story I really liked. Guzzwell made it back to British Columbia, and sailed around the world on Trekka... and years passed... and Beryl died... and he remarried. Then an old friend, whose own wife had died, invited Guzzwell to sail to Hawaii on the spur of the moment. He was thrilled, and his new wife was game. A few days down the coast, their self-steering wind-vane broke, and they planned to pull into San Francisco to have it repaired. By now it was clear to Guzzwell that his new wife didn't like offshore sailing so much, and he knew that if they stopped in San Francisco there'd be no getting her back on the boat once she hopped off. The audience chuckled knowingly when Guzzwell mentioned a former crewmate who, in the middle of the Pacific, had said, "You know, this ocean thing might not be for me."So in the middle of the night, Guzzwell changed course, and turned west, headed straight for Hawaii. The next morning, when Guzzwell's new wife noticed, she threw a fit, and threatened to throw a Much Bigger Fit if her husband didn't turn the boat around that instant. Guzzwell did what was prudent, and told his old friend that his new wife wasn't too happy, and that she was threatening to make a big scene. "Oh John," his friend said with a sigh. "I've missed those scenes."

--Jonny Waldman

[ More, as always, is at SyzygySailing.com ]

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