Chapter 1: Getting Ready

Harold (Hank) Myers was slow getting up this morning. The first thing he thought about as he woke was that there was no movement. "That's right" he remembered, the boat was anchored just offshore and it was early enough there was no wind. No wind meant no waves or rollers. After many months of sailing with only a few short breaks he was so used to movement that sitting still made him uncomfortable and walking on land made him feel clumsy, almost like he would stumble and fall. You got used to the steady motion of a ship or boat. It's absence was disconcerting.

As he ducked down the short tiny passage from his stateroom aft to the main cabin in the middle of the sailboat he looked back at the lump under the covers. Dianne, his gal-pal for the past few days looked like she would sleep till sundown. She needed to get moving so he could leave.

Today starts the longest leg of his around the world single handed cruise. He was doing something very few people ever dared and even fewer completed. It took knowledge, skill, guts and a lot of luck. Mostly it was hard work and boredom interspersed with an occasional dash of adventure... or terror. Luckily for Hank, he was comfortable in his own mind.

Hank remembered getting back late last night with Dianne and the two of them continuing the party here. They were not too drunk when they paddled out to his boat. His boat tender was an open style kayak made of plastic. It was light, cheap and he could go miles and miles in it without using a motor. The Twin Otter kayak by Old Town had proven it's worth many times.

He had owned his sloop "At Last!" for a couple years now. It was a 1997 Hunter 310. The 31 feet long sailboat was light and a good size for one person to handle and he had picked it up used in Ft. Lauderdale. Her previous owner, a "Rich Guy," had gotten tired of sailing it twice a year and decided to sell the boat. Truth be told, serious sailing was more than the owner could handle.

Hank had picked At Last! up for $45,000, a steal actually. She was worth every bit of 70K. She had all the options and had heavy duty everything. Yacht prices were pretty low in Ft. Lauderdale which helped him get this one modestly priced. The Rich Guy just wanted out from under the docking fees and hassles of ownership.

Usually a deep water boat would be a Morgan or one of the Scandinavian brands. United States made boats made great weekender's, but you wouldn't necessarily want to go through a serious blow in one. Ordinarily a Hunter would not make a good deep water boat but this one was exceptional in how she was outfitted thanks to Rich Guy.

After bumming around in the Caribbean a while he had had decided to sail around the world. He felt that comfortable in his Hunter. The biggest change he made was to switch the two blade prop for a three blade. She had vibrated a bit when he had it at high RPM. The new prop toned it down.

The forward stateroom was used for bulk storage of food and water. When he had started out, there was plastic bags of food from the floor to the ceiling. On each bag he had carefully written the contents with a large marking pen. The water jugs were on the floor. Mesh nets were used to make sure things stayed where they should with little movement.

Hank had bought the boat not long after the Navy had given him a medical discharge. His leg had been fractured pretty badly and his left knee would never be good enough for the Navy again. He thought back to Seaman Herndon that had not secured the fork lift that rolled on him and busted his leg. Herndon had been busted two ranks for his neglect. It wasn't the first or last time Herndon would be in trouble. He wasn't really suited for the service. Too bad it ruined a good career by forcing Hank out of the Navy.

Ships underway needed to be secured, that meant chaining or tying down everything that could move. Most furniture is bolted to the deck. It was an inexcusable accident because everyone was trained on how important it was to properly stow everything. Even in calm seas you can never tell if the ship is going to make a radical turn or take a rogue wave. Being secured for sea should have been as common as breathing for Herndon. Nobody could tell HIM anything. He was just a bad egg. He thought everyone else was idiots. His own peers didn't like him.

Strange, Hank's knee didn't seem to bother him much any more. That was probably because it had been allowed to rest now that he was retired. While he was in the Navy he was stuck between the requirements to jog so he could pass his P.T. tests or flunk the P.T.'s and get discharged because he couldn't train enough to pass the P.T. with his bum leg. His knee didn't get enough time to heal.

It was a standard government Catch-22 deal. After getting the run around for a while it took the intervention of his congressman to push the doctors into giving him a medical discharge. He would rather have stayed in, but the P.T. tests were only allowed to be waived two times, and he had ran out of waivers. His C.O. had done all he could and the medical folk were being remote and difficult as usual.

He had received a 90% disability which along with a sizable nest-egg had allowed him to buy the At Last! He had paid 60 percent of the price of the boat from his savings. His retirement was enough for one guy to live on. That and a few thou in various funds and he was doing OK. He could have bought the boat outright, but didn't want to. This way he had a low interest loan that was a tax deduction and it left him with a decent, if modest portfolio of over 50 thousand and building.

He had been married for two years during his first hitch and it had not worked out. The anguish and self doubt following the breakup had stung him enough that he had stayed single ever since. He would date but didn't get serious again with any woman. It wasn't that he didn't like women, he just had not found the right one yet.

He noticed after reaching his mid 20's, good single women all seemed to come with kids or problems. Career women had become fixed in their ways and were so goal oriented you couldn't work with them. The rough around the edges and the easy ones didn't appeal to him. He liked kids but it was hard to start a relationship with a divorced or single mother. They generally couldn't afford babysitters. Excluding the kids seemed wrong, but you can't make out with a kid there.

Many women today expected you to go to church every Sunday. He believed in God and everything, but it took no brain surgeon to see that 90 percent of any money given went to pay the minister's wages. The preachers all talked about the good works being done but the reality was that most preachers made an awful lot of money for working a couple days a week. He never wanted to hear another canned sermon. It seemed many of them got their stuff off the Internet.

The problem with his ex. had been her big tits and little brain. He was no Einstein, but it's hard to carry an intelligent conversation with someone of banal thinking ability and no ambition. Ultimately it was her selfishness that ruined everything.

She viewed everything in the world only as it related to her. She never had a thought for anyone else. Every perceived slight caused a screaming argument with her that lasted hours.

He made plans for the future, she lived in the moment. He bought groceries for a week, she bought for the next meal. It just wasn't working. The divorce had been bloody, but they had not been married long enough for her to clean him out. She did run up his credit cards, but he survived that. He had avoided large chested women ever since. In the back of his mind he was probably avoiding her.

Lets see, looking for a woman with a normal size chest, reasonable intelligence, not mean, nasty or selfish, late 20's or early 30's and has no kids. Yep. He was a confirmed bachelor and it may be a permanent affliction. It certainly was going to be difficult finding Ms. Right when he lived a vagabond life the way he did now. Few women would entertain a sailboat as a permanent nest.

Being single really enabled him to own the boat. He had been socking his Chiefs pay away for several years. Living and eating on board ship had allowed him to save most of his pay for years. He drove an old T-bird in those days. It didn't pay to keep a new car near the piers, they rusted out too quick. He just kept putting the bucks in the bank and investing it all.

He filled his small percolator with water and grounds and placed it on the burner and turned the gas on. He had one of those reusable mesh filters that lasted seemingly forever. It didn't make the best coffee, but it was better than what he drank in the service. He made up for it by using the best grounds he could get.

Three cups of water went into a small saucepan so he could make some oatmeal for breakfast. Eggs didn't keep in an icebox long so when he had outfitted for this cruise he had laid in a big supply of different oatmeal flavors as well as ramen noodles, canned soups, crackers and all the other foods that kept well on a small boat. He ate as much fresh food and vegetables as he could find when import.

As he drank his first cup of coffee he thought back to how he had got the boat and how he got here to Auckland New Zealand. Hank had chosen the At Last! because she had several features he found important in a sailboat. One unique feature was she had no back stay - the wire that commonly connects the top of the mast to the stern. Most sloops had 4 stays holding the mast up, one connected at the bow, one to the stern and two on either side of the mast.

Instead of a back stay her unique design had two cross braces and wires angled to run aft of the mast on each side. Having the stays running aft just a little did the job a typical back stay would normally do, thus her main mast was anchored at three points rather than the traditional 4 points.

Because the wires and mounting points were heavy duty and reinforced it was every bit as secure as traditional four point rigging. By not having a back stay, he had a cockpit that was not split in two by a back stay. That was particularly important because the cockpit on the Hunter 31 was on the small size. Perfect size for sailing, but crowded for entertaining a bunch of people.

The At Last! had a fractional rig. That meant the Genoa or jib sail was on the small size. This made tacking and jibeing easier as the sail was smaller and easier to deal with. To compensate, the mast was a tiny bit taller than what you would normally see on most boats her size.

At Last!'s sailplan worked better in light winds anyway. Taller sail plans did better in light wind because they went higher and could catch wind that shorter sail plans would miss.

At Last! would sail fine with just the main, but the jenny (genoa jib sail) helped her tack quicker and gave her an few several knots. Running without a foresail also made the boat steer eccentrically as all the force of the wind was centered on the main sail and the force was felt at the base of the mast. This was slightly unbalanced. Most sloop rigged boats behaved like this.