LESSONS LEARNED WHILE CRUISING Jamie & Behan Gifford Hello Again, and Then Goodbye Cruiser kid fun at Makemo Atoll,


French Polynesia.


weird that they could always pick up without hesitation as if no time lapsed. Was exposure to the salt air and sea along the margin of society really so good as to create endless friends and vivid memories? It’s often said that two boats


Surprisingly, we’ve found cruising


is very social. Often we share little in common with our neighbors de jour, except the means by which we float in and out of each other’s lives. Yet the pull to share time with fellow travelers known and unknown to us, is real. Meeting people is easy. Even for the hopelessly awkward, namely me, because it’s usually the byproduct of a greater need – exchanging information, expertise, or spare parts. I can’t count the number of times we’ve shared sundowners or dinner with people that we didn’t know existed when the day began. And of course a transient lifestyle means that every “hello, nice to meet you” is closely followed “goodbye for now”. My introduction to living the dream


of a cruising lifestyle, and its social side, was unexpected as I was taking a break to get away from sailing. It was 1989 and I had a backpack, a plane ticket to Europe, and three months off my work as a sailmaker. My meandering led me on Sunday morning stroll along a wharf in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. I was admiring a fine cruising yacht with San Francisco in small letters on the transom and just below the name Nalu IV. Dumbfounded by thought of the places they’d sailed to, I apparently blurted out a geographically factual 48° NORTH, FEBRUARY 2012 PAGE 40


beauty of an icebreaker, “You’re a long way from home.” The captain, for the beard and pipe left no doubt, said, “Ah American, well you’re just in time for a gin fizz, come on aboard.” And so it was, my first gin fizz, in company with my future cruising parents, Jim and Diana Jessie. It’s safe to say that few people


would open the front door to collect the Sunday paper from the front porch, see a stranger passing by and invite them in for brunch with the family. Ridiculous. It may seem equally improbable that after saying goodbye to the Jessies in Dubrovnik, we met again two years later on the Mystic River in Connecticut; then goodbye again until the Sea of Cortez, and then the Gulf Islands, etc. What I didn’t really grasp when


I was with the Jessies aboard Nalu IV is that they knew people everywhere we went. It seemed like we could pick an anchorage anywhere and before the anchor hit the bottom they could spot several familiar boats. Within minutes someone would dinghy over with a big smile and a hearty welcome. Reconnecting always came with fun stories about when they were last together in a windy San Francisco Bay regatta or in an anchorage in Tahiti 10 years before. It seemed downright


sailing in roughly the same direction are racing. Similarly, two boats in a foreign anchorage are friends, even if they don’t yet know it yet. It wasn’t long after sailing south, down the west coast from Bainbridge Island in 2008, that we realized that making an endless number of friends didn’t really require much effort. A few anchorages along and you see fellow cruisers that seem to be on the same migratory path. And they notice you. Curious, this unknown friend blurts out something clever like, “You’re a long way from home.” And without much investment in thought, you invite them over for drinks and dinner around sunset. Befriending strangers with great


regularity seems abnormal at first; but quickly becomes an endearing quality of the cruising community. With time and a tacit sense of traveling through unknowns together, cruisers often are less guarded. A great example is when we first met a Canadian family with three kids aboard their boat, Stray Kitty, in Nuka Hiva. They were in the dinghy headed to town for supplies. They stopped by to say hello on the way in, and suggested getting the children together later to play. After knowing them for 30 seconds, we offered to take the kids now. Offer accepted, the kids spent the afternoon with us on Totem and had a blast. Later that evening we shared the first of many terrific meals with the crew of Stray Kitty. Goodbye came several months later between Stray Kitty and Totem, in Bora Bora. After 18 months apart, we reconnected near Brisbane, Australia. The kids play and adults converse as if no time had lapsed.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74