The BOAT is named Ninni. It’s a name traditionally given to girls in Sweden, and applied affectionately to the boat by her Finnish skipper, Mikko, who was just completing his own three-year world sailing tour. She’s a 40-foot glass-fiber cruising sloop, an IS400 designed in Finland by Hans Groop. As an accomplished traveling boat, it’s equipped with the de-salinating watermaker(the water from which doesn’t taste too bad, actually), energy-efficient LED lights(for both navigation and interior), solar panels on the roof of the doghouse, a towing generator(a sort of propeller on a rope that makes electricity) and the crowning piece of equipment, named “Peter” and making our lives tremendously easy: a self-steering wind-pilot, an ingenious sailboat invention which employs secondary rudders, wormgear, and windvane to automatically correct the boat’s course if the wind changes direction. Brilliant.

The CREW consisted of Mikko, a 62 year old retired Finnish photographer; Irek, a 35 year old Polish building-company manager; and me, a 29 year old student of foreign cultures. My first real introduction to international people, and an intense change from all that lonely bike riding.
Mikko is old salt. He enjoys a joke or a beer like the next guy, but he is very set in his ways, and after a few days living on a cramped boat, certain aspects of his personality started to get ugly. He was overly meticulous about his gear, for one; disallowing a plastic scrubbie to be used on a teflon pan, for instance; and for two(something that would eventually prove to be quite distressing) he was rather obsessed with doing everything himself. He’d made the Ninni up as a project boat, carefully crafting every bit of woodwork by hand, and replacing winches, blocks, and lines, adding extra stays to the mast, and various other personal touches he can trust. Then he sailed away from his wife, saying “I’m going sailing for a while.” (He never said “I’m going to sail around the world,” and advised me that it would’ve been wiser for me, too, if I hadn’t declared my intentions to ride my bike around the world. I guess he’s not into point-of-no-return drama.) On the way he’s had various different crews, mostly strangers he met on the internet(like me), and apparently learned not to let anyone touch anything on his boat. I started calling him “DIY Mikko,” watching him handle everything himself, from deckwork and sail reefing, to steering and entering the course, to cleaning… he even cooked almost every meal we ate, leaving Irek and I sitting with nothing to do, in danger of being seen as lazy. Once, I was graciously allowed to cook dinner, and when I innocently asked him how the unlabeled rice is cooked(instant or normal?), he nearly jumped out of his seat to take over, saying, “I can cook it!” instead of answering my question. This epic struggle, just to let me figure out dinner, was plainly visible on his face. Needless to say, the skill-building and sailing practice I had been looking forward to did not include the assistance of a teacher – only rarely, when “absolutely necessary,” did he explain things to us. But many sailors will agree that it’s better to train your crew before that big black cloud hits your boat….
Since we were to be stuck together on a little boat for so long, I thought maybe I’d be able to pick up a little Finnish or Polish. “Since you fly a Finnish flag, technically we’re in Finland, right? And we should speak Finnish?” Nope – English was the official language on the Ninni, despite Mikko admitting that he “can’t English” and Irek having only intermediate command of the language. But he still seemed to expect us to read his mind, despite investing as little time as possible in training. I suppose it would’ve actually been worse if we all tried to talk in Finnish.
Of course I did learn a lot, even without his help. Irek, who flew down for the voyage just to gain experience(in hopes of one day becoming a yachtmaster himself), would go out on deck and simply start doing things he thought needed doing, often drawing blustery criticism from the captain. But at least he was practicing, and eventually I grew comfortable enough to do the same. It was the only way to get our hands dirty – if we were to confer with Mikko first, he’d just end up doing it himself!
I will admit, I should’ve maybe expected such fierce independence. In one of his first emails, Mikko told me “I can do the sailing myself, but another person is nice to get good sleep.” Indeed, Irek and I were only really useful as watchkeepers, and really only at night. On any boat, it’s standard practice that the person coming off watch wakes up the person coming on next, usually early enough to make tea or breakfast. But Mikko would often let me sleep in and take my watches himself. Sounds great, yeah… but in reality it was aggravating. It enforced his apparently pre-determined image of me as a lazy American, and it screwed up the watch schedule. Nevertheless, when I begged him to wake me up on time, he angrily vowed not to!
I think I grew a few new gray hairs that first week, but eventually I got used to feeling useless, and though I was always energetic and willing to help if asked, and learned all I could on my own, the voyage took on a more “on vacation” feeling.
After that it was nice to be lazing about, reading or watching the sea, being served meals(most often described as a “sea mess” – canned fish, beans, and vegetables with garlic and onion; most fresh food only lasted the first week), maybe having a conversation. On occasion someone would spy a passing ship on the horizon or some sort of animal, and we’d all rush up to get an eyeful of something that wasn’t sky or sea. The ocean rolled steadily by beneath us, and each day brought us a tiny bit closer to the rising sun.

Watching the MARINE LIFE was one of the most rewarding diversions. There is an amazing microscopic plankton in the water that produces a small amount of light when agitated. After dusk, the wake behind the boat begins to glitter like the stars, and if you’re staring transfixed over the railing on a dark watch some night, it’s quite exotic and surreal. If the wind is really pushing and the boat is crashing into the waves, their sparkling brings to mind a grinder wheel, spitting out sparks. And when the sea is calm and you’re gliding clean through the water, it’s as though some gentle hand is spreading a carpet of fairy dust below the boat.
There are no mosquitos at sea; it’s nice. In fact we embarked a day earlier than Mikko had originally planned, just to escape the bloodsuckers that had been eating us in the Antigua harbor.
Flying fish are a common sight, exploding out one side of a wave and skimming along the surface, sometimes as far as twenty yards, before splashing back into the sea. Sometimes they land on the deck at night, and in the morning there are little cigar-shaped cartilage-boned breakfasts waiting for us.
By simply running a jelly-fish lure behind the boat as we sailed along, we were able to catch quite a few bigger fish, and stayed in fresh tuna and dorado(mahi-mahi) almost the whole trip. The biggest one we got, an albacore, was about 2.5 feet long and weighed about 13 pounds. Every time, Mikko would reel in the fish, then lean over the side and stab its underside with the gaff, a wicked-looking extendable sharpened hook. As the blood began to flow, he next clubbed it on the head with a big piece of wood he kept, for this express purpose, hanging on the lifeline near the rod. The poor fish would jitter and twitch at each blow, and finally die with one rather sickening and extended convulsion. At this point the dorados, which are normally a beautiful bright opalescent orange-green, would lose their color, and their scales would fade to grey, almost as if marking the passage of their soul. Next, with the cold remorselessness of a lifetime fisherman, he cut them open at the neck and plopped them back into the water to bleed out, while he went to collect his knife and bowl. Then, using a fold-down cutting board mounted to the railing, he would expertly clean the fish, producing chunks of pale boneless fresh fish. Many times, I saw this old fisherman pluck a piece of meat from behind the fish’s head and eat it raw right there in the middle of cleaning it; usually he would also serve a sashimi raw-fish appetizer with soy sauce and wasabi. Mikko let me clean the catch once, a very slimy procedure and quite precarious on a heeled-over jostling boat. I got to cook it once, as well, and (despite almost losing the privilege because I asked a question) produced a delicious blackened mahi mahi over olive-oil-n-oregano spaghetti with crushed tomatoes. The guys were impressed, I think, and I thought maybe I could become the boat’s cook, but the next day we were back to Mikko’s sea mess.
I never saw any sharks, but several times a pod of dolphins would catch up to us and romp around nearby, racing along the bow and obviously playing. Wonderful creatures. There were even baby dolphins once – very cute. Every time, I would welcome the sight of the dolphins; they always made me feel protected, and somehow welcome.
We saw a whale once, about 100 yards off the starboard side. It blew water as it sounded, shooting a geyser into the air, then majestically banked a bit and rolled over as it began to dive, revealing a humongous flipper, then a humongous tail, and then it was gone.
There were Portuguese man-o-wars floating near the Azores islands; little puffy, semi-transparent, purplish-pink blobs with long slimy tails, floating on the surface and being pushed by the wind. Sailing jellyfish!
And finally, there were birds. Frigate birds, petrels, fulmars, gannets, shearwaters, and gulls of many kinds. It’s crazy to think how far they must have flown, to be here in the middle of the Atlantic. But then you realize that they actually sleep while floating on the water – they spend almost their whole lives at sea. Although once I happened to pop up from the hatch one afternoon to the sight of a tiny, cute, intensely yellow canary having a rest in the rigging! I guess we must have helped him make his journey – do they really fly from boat to boat across the ocean?
The fishing birds were soothing to watch; they skim incredibly close to the surface, in a sort of dance with the water: up and down, along a trough and over a crest, following the waves and dipping below the surface for fish. Once, a pair of fulmars were trying to eat the fishing hook, and one of them got caught before we could reel it in. “Oh no…” I thought, “We’ve killed a bird.” Mikko stood back, saying that removing a hook from a bird would surely spell its death. Irek reeled it all the way in and on to the deck, and I realized with relief that it wasn’t hooked, it had only somehow got its wing wrapped up in the line. It didn’t fight me as I gently pinned it down and unwrapped it, and I held my breath as it plopped off the side of the boat back into the water. After a few moments of praying, “Please survive! Please survive!” it took to wing and rejoined its mate in the sky. Whew!

SURVIVAL is often on my mind, as one of my favorite pastimes, but at sea it took on a wholly different context. I had learned a lot about maritime survival during the STCW course in Florida, and was happy to see all the appropriate gear onboard the Ninni: the self-inflating liferaft, emergency water supplies and rations, the EPIRB beacon, dan bouys, flares, life vests and life lines, hand-held VHF radios, and a first aid kit. In my travels on the East coast I spoke to a lot of mariners, and can clearly remember certain phrases, such as “Boats just disappear,” “Any less than five crew on a transAtlantic and you’re playing with your life,” and “Every hour, somewhere, in some ocean, someone is sinking.” Then I started reading some maritime survival and adventure stories someone had left on the boat, and by the time I got a good sense of the pure vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, a constant (exciting!) sense of danger had settled over our little boat. I had my own personal ditch-bag, ready to throw into a liferaft, with full water bottles, CLIF bars, signal mirror, compass, fishing kit, wallet, and passport. Just in case.
I took a swim in the 5-kilometer-deep, royal blue water one day, with nothing but my fingers’ grasp holding me onto the Ninni, and thinking about the sheer magnitude of the ocean left me in humbled awe. There is so much massive force, so much power and energy beneath the waves; not to mention sharks or pissed-off whales, or floating cargo boxes or exploding propane tanks or hurricane-force gales that rip your mast off… it pays to take precautions when you’re a thousand miles from the nearest land.

Way out there in the ocean, the POLLUTION is different as well. It’s no less than on land, perhaps even more, actually(think New Jersey garbage barges), but everything except plastic sinks, so I guess most people are going with “out of sight, out of mind.” But sometimes it’s not out of sight. I’ve seen Coca-Cola bottles floating, I’ve seen BP oil drums floating. There is a place in the Pacific where all the plastic in the ocean collects – they call it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch(http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm). It’s the size of a continent. The plastic absorbs chemicals and interferes with the hormones of marine creatures, among other problems. And so on a boat, appropriately, it is illegal to throw anything made of plastic overboard. MARPOL actually pays people who report boats that break marine pollution laws – half the amount fined. Not that that stops people – it’s much like litter laws on land: ignored when no one is watching. What really frustrated me, though, was that beyond three miles from land, it’s completely legal to throw almost everything else overboard! I was forced to jettison aluminum and tin cans, glass bottles, cardboard and paper – almost all of which could’ve been recycled. I tried to save my beer cans – but Mikko wouldn’t let me. “We don’t have room to keep that” and “What if they don’t have recycling in the Azores?” Bah!
In Antigua I said “I’m using wind power to cross the ocean, instead of gasoline,” to a guy who builds sailing boats, and the response was something like, “Do you know how much waste there is just to build a sailboat? A lot.” Critics love to try and shoot me down, I guess. Actually, though, he had an interesting point – take a minute and think about how much energy is used, not to run, but just to manufacture your car, the siding on your house, even your solar panel, or (eek) your bicycle. But like anything else, it’s a lesser-evil type of situation – out of all the boats in the world that you can fit a bicycle onto, the sailboat is still the most ecological.
One type of pollution that doesn’t exist at sea is light pollution. The stars, the milky way, and the planets were all absolutely amazing. One night I was even lucky enough to witness a meteor shower, where shooting stars streaked across the sky, leaving a trail of light for several savored moments after each precious one. And the moon; aah la luna. I was able to see, for example, a crescent moon, as normal: a perfect sliver of silver, shining over the vast sea, directly illuminated by the sun; but it was so clear out there that I could also see the rest of the moon, darkened in the Earth’s shadow but still catching a few light rays reflected off our atmosphere. It was the most breathtaking celestial view I’ve ever seen, and I’ve looked at the stars from some pretty remote locations.

There is also a RADIO that bounces signals off of the Earth’s atmosphere – the HAM radio. It’s old technology, but still in wide usage. The longest piece of metal on the boat, the backstay(16 meters), which helps hold the mast up, doubled as Mikko’s antenna. The electronic guts of his system were coated in spray-on varnish to protect against corrosive, salty air, and he never had a problem with it despite using it every day, at sea and in harbor.
There is a whole sub-culture of geeks that really get into amateur radio. Some collect callsigns of different countries(each country has different ones), some collect only callsigns from islands, and some collect weird callsigns, like the maritime mobile station on the Ninni. Mikko’s Finnish callsign was OH2NIN/mm: “Oscar Hotel Two November India November stroke Maritime Mobile.” My gawd, I heard that callsign so much – imagine, if you can, the Finnish accent – I was hearing it in my sleep. Most times he would contact random people from across the globe – it really does bounce its signal off the atmosphere, so its range is, well, anywhere on Earth – but there were a few memorable ones.
Once he talked to an Algerian, and since both Mikko and Irek had become quite interested(and skeptical) as to how and why I would cross that particular African country, he took a moment to describe his crazy American crewmember and ask Mohammed’s opinion. Thanks Mikko, but I don’t think Mohammed understood your English – he didn’t respond.
Another time he contacted a bicycle mobile station! Some crazy guy on a bike in Blackpoole, UK was riding down the beach with a tire-rubber generator system, a 3 meter aerial sticking up behind him, and a trailer full of batteries, yapping away into a microphone! I was tickled. The guy had actually tuned his radio to resonate through the steel frame of his bicycle to amplify his signal. Apparently he had the strongest signal in all of Europe, and was very popular on the airwaves that day. Mikko again told him about his cyclist crewmember, and I heard the radio voice, bounced all the way from England to our boat in the middle of the ocean, say in a British accent, “I hope Charles enjoys his cycle trip here in the UK.”
But the most impressive use of the amateur radio was an American organization called Winlink. These guys have set up stand-alone radio stations, connected to computers, in various strategic points around the world. Any radio amateur with the (free) software can contact the station, and have a very reliable way to send or receive email or faxes. For maritime mobile operators, you can also download weather reports. It’s like an indirect sort of internet, without web-surfing, that relies on inexpensive, tried-and-true technology instead of $25,000 satellite uplink systems. Pretty amazing. Except I wasn’t allowed to use it! Oh well – he did actually let me send a few short “I’m still alive” messages to my family during the crossing.
Mikko didn’t like the weather reports he got from Winlink. He had a better source, a personalized, daily weather strategy that all but completely replaced older methods, such as looking at the clouds. This god-send is named Herb. “Southbound Two” is his callsign, and he’s a German mariner living in Canada who decided after a few rough transAtlantic passages that there should be something better than weatherfaxes. He’s not a meteorologist, but he talks directly to any boat(on the Atlantic) that needs his help, for free, every day at 4:00 UCT. He queues everyone up, then goes through the list, from Caribbean to Europe, listening to their position and weather conditions, and then delivering concise tactics and a waypoint to head for during the next 24 hours. I can’t believe he’s allowed to do it – shouldn’t some asshole have sued him already? – but everyone on HerbNet seems to know that his advice is “suggested course only.” Irek and I certainly would have preferred a little more do-it-yourself weather tactics; we were still learning. But this was the one thing Mikko didn’t do himself: he placed complete and utter confidence in Herb, saying “We’ll just see where Herb tells us to go.” Good thing the radio didn’t break!
When we were finally within about 100 miles of Europe, we were able to tune into FM frequencies. The BBC and its warm British accents and prestigious news reports were a welcome sign that we were getting close. But no music – the only music Mikko ever listened to was “The Best of Queen,” more specifically “Bohemian Rhapsody,” though he did play the bicycle song for me once. “Biiiicyle, biiiicyle, I want to ride my bi-see-call, I want to ride my biiiike….”

Indeed, by the time I arrived in Falmouth, I was out of shape, a bit tubby around the waist, and more than eager to get back on the bike. It was a total of 40 days at sea, ten twenty ten. Think about that for a second. Twenty days straight.

I can’t really even believe it myself.

The terra firma was so very, very enjoyable then, after such a long journey over the waves. I savored the act of pitching my tent, surrounded by the intense green of the well-watered English forest, getting soil under my fingernails and listening to the birds… Aaah, the whispering trees, swaying in the wind, yet anchored still to the deepest of roots; poetically balanced in elemental forces, reliable and grounded in the stillness of this Earth.
I have landed in this exotic land with a greater appreciation for everything: for solid ground, for pavement and rubber, for plants; for wind, for boats, and even(especially?) for water. For leaving my comfort zone, for purposefully breaking the routines dictated to me, and trying something so new, so uncertain and unfamiliar, I’ve come to appreciate all of life, more than ever before.
So try something new today! It makes life taste better.

Soon enough I was on the coast again. From Titusville all the way to Fort Lauderdale, I stuck to US Hwy. 1, ready to put it in high gear and burn rubber to Miami to start my investigations. It wasn’t too pleasant. Once you get down that far south, travel on the Federal Highway is just a blur of turn lanes, traffic lights, commercial strip malls, and artificially landscaped Walmart-esque compounds. Even small copses of trees are rare, and when I found them, they were always in the city. I quickly stopped being able to tell when one town stopped and the next began – they’re turning South Florida into one huge metropolis. Everglades, watch out!
Campsites included:
-the overgrown edge of an abandoned lot; broken concrete for a bed and rusty mattress springs my only view, 100 yards from the road and 50 yards from half a dozen homes. I think the police helicopter was looking for my campfire that night, actually…
-several spots between the road and the “” railroad tracks 100 yards away. Though a little too close to the road, I do enjoy the trains in the night, and I found some really beautiful spots. Florida is really gorgeous when you get away from the concrete jungle – even if it’s only eighty feet. One morning I carried a huge wolf spider in my folded-up hoodie for fifteen miles, before we surprised each other and he crawled off to start a new life behind the Citgo. Another time I was scouting around, testing the fields of view at a potential site, and I discovered a rusty bicycle shift cable in the grass, connected to a broken friction-thumby shift lever. I took it as a good omen, stayed the night, and went completely unmolested, despite being about 25 feet from the road.
-some larger forested areas marked for future development with humongous “NO TRESPASSING” signs. I don’t think anyone cares enough to traipse out there and track down the light of my little fire, but they do shoot guns off nearby – trying to scare those pesky teenagers out there, or are they just drunk in their driveway? Either way, I’ll just douse this fire anyway…

Traffic down here is insane. Probably the worst I’ve encountered. Bike lanes are rare, and the only bike paths I’ve seen are actually horse paths in the nearby rodeo town of Davie. I dealt with a zillion motorcycles headed to and from Daytona Bike Week; some riders are cool, some are just more motorists. There are more hummers here than I’ve ever seen, as well – just like “CSI Miami.” Fully half the people driving are also yapping on their cellphones. Disgusting, really. And when people see me on a bicycle, it’s like they assume I’m too poor to have a car; or they’re immediately infuriated upon sighting me, as if cyclists don’t actually have all those rights that the government gives us. “Cars road – bikes garage.” I suppose all the gear does make me look weirder than normal; not to mention my (warm-weather)rain costume of nothing but shorts, sandals, and helmet, pedalling through the horizontal downpour and through all the puddles, cackling maniacally.
Once, someone yelled “Move, bitch!” as they passed me, but had their window rolled up by the time I caught up to their minivan at the stoplight. When they passed me a second time, window open again, the young punk in the passenger side tried to grab something off the back of my rack as the driver cruised my left side about 8″ away, but I’m pretty sure he gave up when he realized I was drying out my rain-soaked boxer shorts back there – hah! I saw him after they passed, trying to wipe my cooties off on the car door. Don’t mess with the crazy guy! Another time I was almost run off the road into the curb – no shoulder, although the right lane is plenty wide for both a bike and a huge black pickup truck; but this guy comes right up on me. I instantly swerved and ate up the tiny bit of space I had left before the curb, and hit the brakes, and he zoomed ahead. Thank you riding experience. I glimpsed the passenger, who was calmly emanating a menacing contempt, as if he wished he had a shotgun pointed out the window. I’ve been pretty damn paranoid about South Florida traffic since then, but it hasn’t stopped me from getting around at all. It’s just made me a little slower, taking sidewalks and being sure to wait for people to make eye contact before I cross in front of them.
Ride your bike everywhere for a while, and you’ll make a WAY better driver – more aware, more respectful, less prone to road-rage… why don’t we conscript everyone at age 18 to ride their bikes for two years, like some governments conscript soldiers? A cyclist draft, for better Florida roadways. (Yeah, right – most of these folks would never give up their precious motor vehicles. Even the vultures are accustomed to the high volume of traffic, and don’t bat a wing.)

I spent a few days telling myself that bike tours don’t necessarily have to be beautiful, they don’t necessarily have to involve natural settings and calm back roads; they can be a traffic-dodging hustle to ones destination. A bike tour doesn’t have to have a view of the sunset, or a quiet place to collect ones thoughts. At least not all the time. And with this in mind, my trip along the coast to Fort Lauderdale was quick and tolerable.

FORT LAUDERDALE
Looking for the library on Sunset Blvd, I passed a rasta on a beach cruiser fat-tire bike, riding on the sidewalk smoking a joint. He tried to sell me some but I just smiled and zoomed on by. When I finally found the library, the bums outside were smoking joints too. Apparently “there’s a guy at the bus depot who gets rid of it.” Hmm, the bus depot is only a block away from here… Heh – naw, I had other things on my mind upon my arrival in Fort Lauderdale.
For instance, finding a place to stay; somewhere to at least stash my gear while I get my bearings. I had sent out a few couchsurfing requests to people in the area already, but had received no replies. I sent them a second “I’m here” message, and also widened my search to Hollywood(yes there’s a Hollywood here too!), as the sun got lower and lower in the sky. With just enough time for one last session in the computer lab before the library closed, I folded up the “Homeless Survival Guide” one of the hobos had given me, and prayed I wouldn’t have to use it.
Luck, or serendipity, or something, was with me. A couchsurfer named Mordechai had been on his computer in Hollywood and had responded immediately with a “sure you can crash here” and a phone number. From a payphone I connected with him, and he agreed to pick me up, rather than making me navigate all the way to Hollywood in the dark. While I waited for him, I stopped by the downtown strip of bars. I struck up a conversation with the bartenders, idly wondering whether there would be potential for employment around here once Spring Break began – Fort Lauderdale is the Spring Break capitol of the USA, complete with raucous crowds of irresponsibles, equestrian cops, Girls Gone Wild vans, and apparently, a frightening amount of sexual misconduct and abuse. Drunk college students are good for tips though, right? Not that I really wanted to get a job, but at that point I had no idea where things would lead. Blessed, cursed uncertainty, my only constant companion.
Mordy picked me up in his stepdad’s truck, and we stayed up long into the night, drinking wine and smoking his hookah in his “luxury” apartment complex. Over the next few days, he showed me around and helped me get the basics covered – a shave and a haircut(what a difference!), a cheap-ass cellphone with a local number for business purposes(I realized how hard it was without a phone back in Norfolk), and a Fedex/Kinko’s next to a Starbucks where I could make a new “Boat Wanted” flier. Mordy continues to be an amazing friend.
He’s a Colombian Jew that’s lived in Colombia, Spain, Israel, and now the US. He’s traveled extensively, and has an impressive memory for seemingly everything he’s ever been exposed to. He got his first degree in Mexico when he was sixteen, and another one here in Florida after moving here to help his sick mother take care of his little sister. He’s very politically aware and liberal – a resonant combination for me – and does a ton of volunteer work, including some semi-secretive work for “indigenous groups” in Colombia and Zapatistas in Mexico. He’s dated the daughter of the most militaristic family out of the three families that pretty much run the entire country of Colombia, and been to dinner at the hacienda, him against her entire family. He’s studied under professors that were also covert government informants, for the USA as well as other countries. He plans to move to Mexico City and start a hookah bar, to bring the true flavor of the Middle East to Mexico. He’s experienced a helluva lot, and he’s got a great perspective on life. We became fast friends. After about two weeks of staying at his place(way longer a couchsurfer is usually offered) I brought up to him the subject of my mooching couch-bum status, to make sure he was cool and to see if there were any issues. “No, it’s totally cool Charlie; you’re accomplishing things every day towards your mission; that’s what is really important.” I feel very lucky – not to generalize too horribly, but after those first two weeks in South Florida, I had already learned that most people down here are materialistic and narrow-minded. “What kind of watch is that? What kind of car do you drive? How much money do you make?” (All three questions of which I fail most satisfactorily) What are the chances that the first friend I made would be so cool?
So we’ve been becoming better and better friends. I’ve helped him in serious ways, and he’s helped me in serious ways. He’s taken me around Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Miami, and we’ve been to a couple of couchsurfing parties in Miami. Some pretty crazy times, but in general I’ve been concentrating on my mission.
My Mission.
Pedal Around the World? Of course. Get Across the Atlantic – there we go, that’s more pertinent right now. South Florida is a great place for boats. Not so much freighters, but as I said, I’m done with that idea. What’s left then? Cruise ships, motor yachts, and sailboats.
Not only is Fort Lauderdale the Spring Break capitol, but it’s also(even more famously) the “megayacht capitol of the world.” A “megayacht” is a pleasure boat, a gas-guzzling multi-million dollar mobile private domain, complete with a professional crew: a gourmet chef cooking gourmet meals in a state-of-the-art galley that would put most kitchens to shame, gourmet cocktails served by a steward(ess) with a Silver Service certification, a qualified and certified engineer onboard, a captain and officers in shoulder stripes, and a schlough of tanned deckhands in matching khakis and navy polo shirts. The linen is luxury, the salon has more electronics than your average mansion. These boats can go all over the world, either with the owner and guests aboard, on a guest-less “delivery,” or chartered out to different rich folks like Pamela Anderson and Puff Daddy. (I keep expecting to see Gloria Estefan or Will Smith step out of a limo on the beach highway A1A – Miami has its complement of celebrities) I heard a story about an owner that wanted to go from Greece to Italy for lunch, and spent 7000 euros on gasoline alone for the trip.
I’m not good at planning ahead, and plans are overrated anyway(“A plan is just a list of things that never happen”). When I got here, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but megayachts are what I found. Sure, there’s a couple of sailboat masts sticking up in the marinas, but this is Power Yacht country. So poweryachts are what I started looking into.
On a normal day, I’d ride at least twenty miles from Mordy’s apartment to 17th street in Ft. Lauderdale, which is the center-of-the-center of the yachting industry – almost every single business on 17th street east of Hwy. 1 is yacht-related. Yacht brokers, yacht builders, yacht equipment and electronics, yacht clubs, yachtie bars, map and chart stores, marinas, condominiums with marinas, hotels with marinas, yacht crew outfitters, yacht crew placement service offices, yacht crew residence dorms, yacht schools, yacht government centers… it’s quite crazy down there. And that’s where I went, up and down, into every one of ‘em, for about a month straight. Most times, just for a point in the right direction or a new avenue to try. Sound familiar? Yes, it reminded me strongly of Norfolk. Except this time I was really putting in the effort. It felt like a job. No, it felt like being out there hustling, trying to get a job. No, wait – okay, say your full-time job is to seek employment every day – on a bicycle. That’s what it felt like. And I learned a LOT. I learned so much that I started feeling disgusted. This industry just isn’t for me – again, it’s too materialistic. Too much gasoline, too little awareness. Zero sustainability. Bit by bit, my heart and soul started slipping away from the idea of crossing the ocean on a motor yacht, and the idea of a sailboat began to blossom in my mind.
I haven’t bought a single gallon of gasoline this entire time, and I don’t plan to. Right now, on the verge of a crucial element of the tour – how I cross the Atlantic – I still have the ability to describe this bike tour as “ecological.” But if I take a megayacht or a cruise ship across(which can drink upwards of 40 gallons of gas per hour), my credibility would be easily picked apart by even the most passive of critics, and certain bridges would go up in flames. This feeling of being on the verge, this sense of gravity, eventually led me to discontinue my attempts at joining a megayacht crew. I do love to make it difficult on myself…. I had my name out there by then, anyway – I had signed up for no less than 14 different on-line crew agencies(most crewfinding happens online), posted my fliers all over the place, and handed out almost all my remaining business cards. I was thinking, “If someone emails me and offers to take me, I may just have to take them up on it.” I was desperate. But I stopped spending effort on megayachts, and shifted my willpower to sailboats, without decreasing my intensity. I re-did the flier to say “Sailboat Wanted” and changed my profiles on the crew websites. I discovered several sailing clubs, and rode comparably insane distances just to make it to the monthly meetings. I met sailors, I started sailing! I met a meticulous physics, math, and sailing instructor named Jerry – he’s a consummate teacher, expounding on any topic for which interest is shown, and always detailing the “why” as well as the “how.” And I am his favorite type of student, I think – voraciously dedicated to actively absorbing everything I can. I also started sailing with an old-salt Brooklyn sailor named John who offered experience on sailboats without the intense instruction – a nice reprieve at times, especially with his wicked tongue, but I’d rather sail with Jerry and his wealth of knowledge than John and his retired-in-Florida antics. I did help John secure a branch in his avocado tree though(“I’ve harvested a lot of good avocados from that branch”), as well as polish some bikes for re-sale, fix a flat, and re-varnish a chair. Hey, he’s old, he just had double knee replacement – and I love to help! Plus he and his wife Carol feed me really well.
I also signed up for one of these certification courses that (especially American) captains and boat owners require before they let you on their boat – the Standards of Training Certification and Watchkeeping(STCW), at the Marine Professional Training school in Fort Lauderdale, which includes four parts(all marine-oriented): basic fire fighting and fire prevention, basic first aid and CPR, personal survival techniques, and personal safety and social responsibilities. I figured that it could only help me get on a boat, and I am trying EVERYTHING that I feasibly can. Besides, I love to learn!

Then, while waiting for the course to begin, I got a hit from one of the crew websites!
There’s an older gentleman named Mikko, a Finnish captain with broken English, who’s recently made it to the Caribbean island of Antigua after circumnavigating nearly the entire globe – all that remain for his tour of the world is the Atlantic crossing. And he needs crew! We emailed back and forth a couple of times, and when his one potential crewmember fell through, he came back at me with an email:

“All is still open with my crew and thank you again for your interest.
Where are you now sailing, what is your age, how long are you, do you
smoke and do you like to take your bike also to cross to Atlantic ?

I do not smoke, only some beers and vine with the food. Drugs are not
allowed, because then I could lose the whole boat.

Then fuel I can take only 300 liters, that makes about 300 USD divided
by 2 or 3, if we use all of it. Harbour fees are expensive in Enhland,
abt 50 USD/ day, but much cheaper on France side and Azores.

We are in Antigua on Sunday evening, hopefully.”

Uhhh… he doesn’t want to know if I can sail? He doesn’t care about my STCW certification?!? Okaayyy… I guess that’s fine! All that matters is the crossing.
But wait… what does he mean by “How long are you?” He’ll take me with him only if I… ahem – “measure up?” He wants to make sure his cabin boy can satisfy him?!? No no no, that can’t be right… he mentioned a wife in a different email. Ah, of course – he’s European. So I told him I was 190 centimeters “long,” I don’t smoke, I’m sailing in South Florida, and YES I want to take my bicycle with me!
The fuel thing hurts – but even sailboats need to have a motor, during rough weather(especially hundreds of miles from land) and for docking purposes. There are those crazy sailors out there that go around the entire globe without a motor, but I wasn’t lucky enough to find them. In fact, just finding Mikko was like a gift from above! I was quite ecstatic, especially when he responded to my reply with
“Hi Charles !
You are welcome on board to Ninni, that is the boats name. Your
attitude looks to be good and that is the most important thing in the boat.
You can learn very soon all the things here and we can make some sailing
before the long trip. I can handle the boat myself very well with
windvane and autopilot, but for safety things and to get good sleep someone
is good to have on board.”
BOOYAH – I am in!!! And hey – maybe he is a little crazy after all; sailing single-handed? Alright!
But he can’t come to Florida to pick me up; it’s way out of his way, and he’d have to cross over the extremely strong Gulfstream ocean current. So my elation was subdued – if I can’t find a way to Antigua(which is well over 1000 miles from Miami), then I can’t take advantage of this stellar opportunity! “You can do it!” I told myself. What is a puny island hop, compared to a transAtlantic crossing? My confidence was bolstered further by the fact that there is a sailing event in Antigua at the end of April, which plenty of boats from Florida will undoubtedly be attending. Antigua Race Week, 4.17 – 4.22; Mikko wants to leave on 4.20, the day after my birthday.
Now my attitude shifted – talk about being on a verge. Every action I took, every sailor I talked to, took on a more crucial delicacy. I didn’t hesitate – I went back to my crew profiles and changed them again, from transAtlantic on a sailboat, to Florida-Antigua on a sailboat. I updated all the sailors I had met in all the sailing clubs and cruising groups, and continued searching for new avenues to investigate. I got a call from an older couple that’s going to go from North Carolina to England in June – I’m the perfect candidate, they said; no job, no itinerary. I kept that option open, just in case, but I honestly told them I was probably going to be long gone by then.
The STCW course started. I was in a class with a bunch of yachties, many of whom already work on different megayachts; mos people were pretty interested in what I was doing, but I just wasn’t interested in going to the yachtie bars with them after class – I would rush back to Mordy’s or the library to work on internet crew websites. I sent dozens of emails and messages, and contacted the most unlikely organizations, such as the various sponsors for Antigua Race Week. On the last day of class, I was in the break room at lunchtime when I noticed a posting on the bulletin board that made my heart leap – crew wanted for a sailboat going to Antigua for Race Week! Exactly what I was looking for. I took a deep breath and mentally prepared myself, then checked the phone number contact. My breath caught, my eyes widened – it was a 414 area code number – this captain is from WISCONSIN!!! Ohmygod ohmygod okay. Calm down, don’t seem too desperate. Don’t mess this up.
I called, and after six or seven nerve-racking rings, the skipper, Richard, answered with an English accent. He’s lived in Milwaukee for 25 years! He said that there was one French guy “ahead of me” for the crew position, but that guy was being delayed by visa issues, and Richard was in a hurry to leave as soon as possible, to get a good spot to anchor off the coast of Antigua. I spun my most charismatic pitch, right there on the fly, mixing as many of my virtues(and my Wisconsin background) with some assurances that my own citizenship would not be questioned, and the fact that I was calling from STCW class. He said to send him a CV and he’d get back to me. Uh-oh… my curriculum vitae is pretty short on sailing experience. So I tailored it up a bit, emphasizing other strengths, and attached it to an email describing myself and my goals and experiences. It felt like the most important thing I had ever written. For the next two days I could think of nothing else – what’s happening with this French guy? Has he responded yet? Has he emailed me yet? Is my phone on? Did I miss his call? I really had to reign in my impatience and excitement – there were just too many coincidences afoot for this to fall through, but the waiting was maddening. Eventually he got back to me and told me to come down to the boat – Yesssssss!
I rode down to “The Asteroid” easily – he’s docked in Hollywood, believe it or not, only five miles from Mordy’s apartment. He invited me aboard and introduced me to the other crewmember, another 60-something Englishman named Peter, and began giving me a tour of the boat, talking about the voyage to Antigua as if I were already in the crew roster. I figured I was in like Flynn, but still, he hadn’t said anything absolutely, so I played it cool. Eventually, though, there could be no mistake – he said he wants to leave in a mere four days, so he told me to get him my passport and other documents for his insurance agent and for immigration purposes, and asked me to let him know soon if there was anything in particular I like to eat. He’s already got Johnsonville brats on board though… what more could I ask for?

Now, on this exciting verge, with less than 48 hours until I leave United States soil, I’m looking back on the experiences that brought me here. There have been many, and thank you all for being a part of them, big or small. Most pertinently, though, I’m thinking back to my time in Norfolk. I spent all that time trying to get on a freighter, and now I’m asking myself what the hell I was thinking. I’m glad I failed to get on a freighter. Since then I heard of people getting on freighters, and it made me feel like a loser. But now I realize I was never meant to do it that way – the Universe was actually looking out for me, even as I failed, even amidst the dark times. It wanted me to come here, it wanted me to meet this guy from Wisconsin, an English guy, and eventually sail to England. SAIL: I’ll cross that ocean using sustainable energy, and all living things will be better for it.
It’s all about perspectives. Thanks Universe!

So that’s it. I’ll tie up a few final things (like writing this travelogue and eating one last hot dog) and finally, oh finally, I’ll be leaving the United States of America. After about two months of sailing and paradisial island hopping, I’ll arrive in England, out of money but FINALLY on foreign soil.
Wish me luck!!!