Authored by Darrin Bergman and Eli Bieri
This story was written for friends, family, and everyone who supported us on our crazy boat journey. We’ve all heard a fair share of sea stories; this is ours.
On Decision Making
December 2020 - March 2022
Eli’s Version
Like most good stories, this one starts in Mexico. In my experience, it’s rare that you can trace an idea back to the moment it was conceived. Ideas usually appear out of nowhere, and you don’t know where they came from. This idea, however, was born out of nothing but tired legs and tequila. Darrin, Teddy, Andre, and I had just finished a bikepacking surf trip around Southern Baja. Our ‘surf trip’ consisted of too much pedaling through the scorching expanse known as the Baja California Desert. We barely surfed. This fact brought us to the inevitable conclusion that the same trip would’ve been more fun if we had done it by boat. From my journal:
Dec 2020. Today was a sandy, uphill slog. We worked hard and we sweat a lot… Darrin and I talked about living on a sailboat in the South Pacific with spearguns and surfboards.
A dream is born
Months passed before I saw Darrin again, yet a seed had been planted in our minds. With no concrete plan, the idea remained just that – an idea. At least until I started texting with our friend Kyle. I explained that Darrin and I planned to move to Australia together. I was going to grad school and Darrin was going to find a job teaching. His reply hinted they were thinking about selling their boat, Macushla, in the South Pacific. Then he made an offhand joke, casually asking if I wanted to buy a sailboat in Fiji. Armed with a screenshot of the conversation, I texted Darrin. Still unsure if Kyle was serious, we started scheming. The idea was sprouting into a dream.
Our connection with Kyle and Missy had a fitting origin: lake surfing. A couple years earlier, I met Kyle in a snow covered Wisconsin parking lot after my friend Andre and I drove the five hours down from Marquette to surf Lake Michigan. He let us crash in his basement. I vaguely remember mention of a sailboat he was fixing up. I had no idea, and neither did Kyle, that he and Missy would sail it halfway around the world. Kyle is a commercial airline pilot, and with COVID slowing down and the world reopening, the airline wanted him back at work. He and Missy needed to sell the boat. When they realized Darrin and I were serious about this dream, they wanted to help us pick up where they left off. What they didn’t realize though, is how truly unprepared we were. We had no sailing experience. I had never even set foot on a sailboat.
A season came and went. Darrin spent the summer fitting out a van in Michigan, with plans to drive it down to Mexico. I was working in a poison frog lab in North Carolina. Our plan to move to Australia together seemed to be fading. Out of the blue, my lab supervisor decided to send me down to Peru to collect data in the field. Gradually, the adjective ‘pipe’ seemed to be attaching itself to our dream. I found myself living in the remote Amazon. Surprisingly, sailing opportunities were hard to come by in the Peruvian jungle. The idea of buying a boat, though, was too enticing to let slip away. My audible library began to fill with sailing audiobooks.
Kyle and Missy needed a definitive answer. The deadline kept creeping closer. What if the task of learning to sail a 40 foot boat in Fiji was too ambitious? How was Darrin going to get a visa to live in Australia? What if we couldn’t get a loan? How were we going to make enough money in Australia to pay said-loan back? What if we sink the fucking boat? We talked about all of these questions on almost daily phone calls. We made excel sheets, as if we would miraculously remember long-forgotten money in the empty spreadsheet cells. We went in circles. Every hypothetical was turned upside down and inside out and then argued about ad nauseum. Throw in the wrench that it’s illegal to live on a sailboat in Sydney and suddenly I couldn’t blame Darrin for being doubtful about the whole thing. This all culminated with a phone call one night in October. I was dripping sweat in the sauna that doubled as my hotel room in Peru. Our deadline to decide on the boat was the end of the week. Darrin, ever the realist, decided there were too many moving parts to commit. I couldn’t blame him, and truthfully, I shared all of his doubts. I was ready to give up on the entire thing too, but the promise of adventure kept me from saying so. In fact, I told almost no one about our far-flung dream because I didn’t want uninvited scrutiny to wither my enthusiasm. As such, I had to play the role of optimist. With jungle sounds - screeching monkeys and parrots - as my backdrop, I spoke calmly through the phone, trying to remind Darrin why we wanted to buy a boat in the first place. Adventure and risk. That’s what we were about, right? Of course, I wasn’t anywhere close to certain the risk/reward calculation tipped the scale to the positive side. Darrin reminded me we had no business doing what we planned. Before we hung up, we agreed that we would at least call Kyle in the morning and tell him why we were backing out. I went to sleep with a pit in my stomach.
The next one was an equally sweltering, ambition-melting day in the Amazon. I found a cafe to do a zoom call with Kyle and Darrin. As we relayed our apprehensions to Kyle, it was difficult to ignore the dreamy turquoise water in the background of his screen. Kyle brushed off our concerns. He seemed more interested in recounting the last swell that hit Fiji. “You boys will be fine, there’s less to it than you think. If you met some of the morons sailing around here, you’d know what I mean.” Predictably, my screen froze as I lost internet connection. For the next half hour, I ran around the village asking every shop owner if they had wifi. Nobody did. I had no idea how the rest of the conversation went or what Darrin was thinking. Defeated, I started walking home. I began consoling myself with comforting thoughts: I probably wouldn’t make much of a sailor anyway. I think I’ll buy an apple orchard somewhere. My thoughts continued to traverse dry land. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a cowboy than a pirate. Traveling on horseback could be cool. It was then that I got a text from Darrin: “I’m in.”
We made a down payment on the boat the next week. Our dream blossomed into something that resembled a plan. A rendezvous at my parents apartment in Hawaii ensued. We had two or three months in Hawaii to prepare for Fiji. In our first week together, we made grand pronouncements that included something about sobriety, daily nautical studying, and weekly trips to the marina to find sailing practice opportunities. I think our readers will be surprised to learn that in reality, all we did was drink beer and surf.
Macushla - painted by Gail
On Decision Making
Darrin’s Version
For me, this story begins on a beach overlooking the Sea of Cortez and has become a bit of lore in my head. As I remember, Eli and I were on a sand dune, it was half past dark, and we were having the type of conversation that only happens amid a good adventure. This adventure included a 700-mile loop of Baja Sur on fat tire bikes. Eli, Teddy, Andre, and I had never been on a bike trip, knew very little about bike mechanics, and certainly could not find the Spanish word for ‘derailleur’. Overall, we kind of threw ourselves into this trip with very little planning and the brash confidence of a half-drunk NMU undergrad. If life is made up of patterns, this was the beginning of a sequence of decisions filled with false confidences.
The conversation we had on the Mexican sand was probably centered around what we wanted out of life. For us, adventure, connection, and a sense of satisfaction through struggle. The idea certainly didn’t come from my mouth, but someone mentioned buying a sailboat in the South Pacific and going on a Barbarian Days-esque surf mission. I remember saying we’d need to do it while we were young; before life got too complicated with money and love. I didn’t take the idea seriously. We knew nothing about sailing. I probably couldn’t have listed more than two Pacific islands outside of Hawaii. In every sense, the initial boat idea was a pipe dream; something fun to think about while biking through the desert.
From here the timeline gets hazy. We returned from Baja to a cold Michigan winter feeling pretty stoked about human-powered transportation methods. That spring we all left Marquette. I went home to make money and finish building out my van with plans to drive back down to Mexico in December. Eli was in North Carolina. We’d said we would spend time learning to sail that summer. We didn’t.
Conversing like old men, we talked a lot over the phone and kept up with the intricacies of each other’s daily existence. During one call, Eli mentioned a text from Kyle, saying their boat was going up for sale later in the year; maybe in Fiji, maybe Australia. Immediately, the idea stuck in my mind. Still inconceivable, but less so than a few months prior. I started mentioning to friends that we were thinking about buying a boat. The idea was too enticing to ignore. The amount of aspects for consideration kept me busy for weeks.
I’d promised Eli years earlier, probably when we first met during our freshman year at NMU, that if he moved to Australia for his post-grad work, I’d come with him. That summer, the Aus plan was probably on the back burner. My plans included a three-month Baja loop in my newly built van and a month’s vacation at Mount Hood. I told Eli I’d meet him down under the following summer. When the boat came onto the scene, we weren’t talking about our South Pacific surf send, we were thinking in terms of housing in Australia.
“We’ll just buy the boat and live on it in Sydney. It’ll be our floating apartment.”
“Think of how much money we’ll save!” (All boat owners will laugh at this piece of ignorance).
As that summer progressed, we kept talking about the boat. We Facetimed Kyle and Missy to get the basic information about the contents of the vessel. We ballparked sale prices, consulted our bank accounts, and thought of ways to realize this dream (coincidentally, Eli and I had almost the same amount of money to our names). As summer turned into fall, I became fully involved with my student teaching placement and Eli was contracting malaria in Peru. The discussion was difficult at best. We would talk about the boat in the afternoons when the sun was low over the equator and Eli had reception. It was gradual, but eventually, we decided, with unfounded confidence in ourselves, to take the plunge.
What’s funny about this life-altering decision, is the more serious we became about the whole plan, the less I would mention it to people. Rightfully, most people acknowledged the objective facts of the situation; the lack of any meaningful sailing experience was brought up. It became increasingly difficult to share this hair-brained idea because it was too easy to dissect from a critical viewpoint. I cried one night, stressed over the decision. I spent more time lost in my thoughts than ever before. It was easy to see the reward, but because of pure ignorance, it was hard to see and assess the risks.
At the time of writing, I’ve just finished a boat delivery from New Zealand to Australia. The owner didn’t sail with us, but we spent an hour driving from the marina to the airport together talking about sailing. He’s never sailed before and purchased this boat to take his family on a year-long island loop in the Pacific. He shared a familiar feeling with me and said he’d stopped telling friends about his plan; they all told him he was crazy. He couldn’t learn to sail a boat safely with his family on board. He had no business becoming a captain. Just over a year removed from the same feelings of doubt, I laughed knowing his situation all too well.
Throughout it all, we found support from our families. Kyle and Missy were there for us the whole time. Perhaps using advanced sales techniques, made us feel sane and able to take on the challenge ahead. I wasn’t resentful of the friends who didn’t understand our plan.
I was resentful of Eli; always so fucking optimistic. I felt like there was a disconnect between us. He only saw the good side of things. I didn’t think he was realistic. This is the typical dynamic between us; highlighted throughout this story.
Stories From Fiji
Fiji, March - May 2022
Eli’s Version
Six days after arriving in Fiji we found ourselves anchored off a little island called Yanuca (pronounced Yeh-Noo-Theh). Kyle and Missy explained the Fijian ceremony of sevusevu. In order to be welcomed into a village, it is respectful to first visit the chief and ask for permission to visit the area. It is customary to state your intentions (in our case, surfing and spearfishing). The most important part is to offer a gift of kava root, a mildly psychoactive drug traditionally consumed throughout the Pacific. A villager grinds the kava in a stone bowl, mixes the powder with water, and the drink is shared between the guests and the village elders. By the end of our time in Fiji, Daz and I were well acquainted with sevusevu, knowing exactly how many times to clap after taking the kava bowl, even learning the regional variations to the ceremony between island chains. Here on Yanuca, the chief was a giggly, blind old man. He asked if we had any anti-itch cream on the boat. We did. In a show of gratitude, he lifted his shirt and showed us his itchy belly. After sevusevu, a group of young guys visited Macushla in a longboat and invited us to come spearfishing on the nearby reef. Touting homemade pole spears made from recycled rubber bands, the guys would shoot several reef fish on a single breath. My Hawaiian sling spear looked fancy by comparison, and the guys laughed at us as we scared away most of the fish, jerking around underwater like epileptic dolphins. Despite our meager contribution, our new friends invited us to the beach for an afternoon fish fry. We ate our fill of fried reef fish and breadfruit. Our first brush with the Fijian generosity that would become a theme during our time there. As we walked back to our dinghy, I was surprised to see a cane toad hop across the path. I picked him up and smiled.
Breadfruit and reef fish
That evening, we enjoyed a sunset on Macushla with fellow cruisers: Kieran & Isabelle (SV Mereweather), and Chris (SV SeaGlub). We felt like celebrating. Only a week into our Fijian adventure, the poison sold as Bounty rum had already become our trusted companion, probably the only thing we had in common with real sailors. Chris was also intimately versed in the ways of Bounty, and he proved it that night. Despite our inhibitions, Darrin and I wanted to continue Kyle and Missy’s nightly habit of raising the dingy above the water to prevent theft. We drunkenly struggled to lift the outboard engine onto the boat, and as we stumbled around the back of the boat it turned into a full-blown argument that ended with lots of yelling and and ‘fuck you’s’. In the morning, I laid in my violently rocking berth, sweaty and hungover. I had my first real run-in with doubt since arriving in Fiji. Every insecurity I had about my lack of mechanical knowledge and practical skills came to the forefront. I seriously wondered if buying a boat was a terrible idea. What gave us the dumb confidence to ever think we could pull this off? In my journal, I fantasized about signing a lease on an apartment in Sydney and how easy everything would be.
I thought about the cane toad again. I was used to seeing them in Peru and Hawaii, so encountering them here was like running into an old friend in an unfamiliar city. Originally from South and Central America, cane toads were introduced to Hawaii and later brought to Australia (and apparently Fiji) in a misguided attempt to control cane beetles. It occurred to me that I was tracing the exact journey of the cane toad, crossing the Pacific from South America to Australia, with some unlikely stops along the way. Much like the cane toad, I was thousands of miles from home, in a place I didn’t belong.
The day before, Kyle had asked our spearfishing friends if we could pay them to take us to a wave that broke miles offshore the next day. Apparently there was great spearfishing on that reef, so they were more than happy to oblige. As promised, they picked us up after breakfast. Within an hour, we were looking at well-overhead, peeling sheets of glass – miles from any land – it seemed as if this wave was breaking in the middle of the ocean. Until now, waves like this only existed in my imagination and adventure books. I suddenly remembered what we were doing here. Maybe we had taken a shortcut to this dream, but here we were, nonetheless. This wasn’t going to be easy, but we were going to get this boat to Australia.
Our friends from Yanuca had a good day on the reef as well. On the boat ride back to the island, they showed us the fruit of their labors: parrotfish, batfish, blue trevali, green jobfish, and even a green sea turtle. For dinner, Chris seared fresh tuna steaks over a beach fire. It was one of those few days in life that stop time. Darrin and I apologized to each other for fighting. That evening, Darrin made a vow to stop drinking. We all had a good laugh at that one.
Playing pirate
After Yanuca, we sailed south to Kadavu. Despite its relative size, Kadavu has no modern infrastructure, and most of the villages are only accessible by boat. We anchored in front of some villages where we were greeted enthusiastically, with the villagers telling us we were the first outsiders to visit since the beginning of COVID. It was a triumphant reception. After donning traditional sulus to attend church, we were treated to a colorful lunch of dahl soup, taro, spinach, red snapper, roasted pork and taro leaves. Darrin and I took the ‘LisaGail,’ our dinghy, on some exploratory freediving missions. The neon yellow, blue, purple and pink tones of the soft coral are permanently seared into my memory. I’d never seen a reef that looked so healthy and vibrant, and probably never will again.
One of Kyle’s friends had sailed the south coast of Kadavu. He hinted at amazing, uncharted waves in the reef passes but was understandably reluctant to give exact coordinates. We pulled into one such reef pass to see a perfectly shaped little right hander grinding over the reef. We anchored in the protected bay. It felt like we had discovered something great. We wanted to get as much surf in before sunset, so we immediately loaded up the dingy and zipped out to the reef. Kyle, Darrin, and I were trading waves, hooting and hollering as Chris navigated SeaGlub through the reef pass to get a perfect view of Kyle pumping down the line of a runner. For reasons I now can’t remember, we called the wave Abdelkader’s after the former Detroit Red Wings player. I remember returning to Macushla to find a flustered Missy. She had been visited by a longboat full of villagers who weren’t happy that we neglected to present sevusevu to the chief. Of course we were planning to, but we figured it could wait until after the surf. Apparently not. It was already dark, so we decided we would go in the morning.
I felt like we were on trial while we sat in the community center with the village spokesman. As we waited for the seven elders of each clan to assemble, the spokesman told us that he understood our mistake, but that he hoped “the elders see it that way too.” Visions entered my mind of a South Pacific remake of Deliverance. The chief’s daughter put her hand on my shoulder and leaned over to whisper “I hope you’re a fast runner.” She waited for my expression to change before bursting into laughter. Any perceived tension dissolved completely after sevusevu. After we shared kava, we all became friends.
The one who got away - Toby Dick - the enormous marlin
Eventually, it was time for Kyle and Missy to go home. We helped unload their stuff and dropped them off at Nadi Marina. It felt like saying goodbye to your parents on your first day of Kindergarten (If your parents were flying halfway across the world and Kindergarten was on a small boat in the middle of the Pacific). As we sailed away from Nadi, we both felt alone and unsure. Darrin and I sat on the deck as we bobbed into the sunset. We had tears in our eyes. Still, there was nobody else on the planet I’d rather do this with.
Kyle and Missy had been phenomenal teachers, but we made plenty of mistakes without them. Anchoring took us an embarrassingly long time. We second-guessed and argued over every decision, sometimes literally skimming through sections of a sailing handbook as we sailed. We had shared this romantic idea of co-captaining Macushla, but as time passed, Darrin started taking on more of the captaining responsibilities. Not only was he more confident, but he was more capable. More and more, I began to grapple with a feeling of guilt. I wasn’t sharing an equal load with Darrin in terms of responsibility. I was afraid of making a costly decision. This led to some difficult conversations. Our ability to communicate candidly was our only saving grace.
We were still afraid of winds over 20 knots. During nights at Musket Cove island bar, we regularly received unsolicited advice from the other sailors. On one of these nights, the other guys convinced us that we should go sailing in the morning. A big wind was forecasted, and it would be good for us to practice. Before we left Musket Cove at daybreak, we were picking up sustained winds of 15-20 knots. As we zagged through the first reef pass, the wind picked up. By the time we had decided it was a good idea to furl the jib, a squall of 35 knots swept over and overpowered us. With too much wind in the sail to furl it, we were out of control and barreling towards the reef. Screaming, we barely managed to get the sail in and regain control with mere seconds to spare. When we pulled back into Musket, already beaten and still shaking, the wind was still howling. As I strained to pick up our mooring, I dropped our only boat hook overboard and genuine panic set in as we tried to recover it in the heavy wind. Finally, our friend Ollie (SV Little Pickle), darted over in his dinghy, both recovering the boat hook and helping us get back on our mooring. Any illusion of our sailing capability dissolved that day.
Of all people, it was actually Ollie who seemed to have the most faith in us. He had seen our worst mistakes, but when we told him we were considering hiring a professional captain to help us make the passage, he looked genuinely taken aback. He reassured us that every new sailor makes these mistakes. We were learning the same way everyone else here had learned. He told us to ignore the older guys and to just fucking do it.
Despite the discomfort of navigating the seemingly intimidating, prestige-filled world of sailing, there was an odd satisfaction about infiltrating a world in which we didn’t belong. To me, sailing always epitomized exclusivity. So before we got to Fiji, I relished the thought of us, two clueless dirtbags, showing highbrow trust fund kids that even imbeciles like us could cross oceans. However, the reality was different. Most of the cruisers we met in Fiji were not your stereotypical sailing elite; they were no different than us. People in pursuit of a dream, often on a shoestring, and they genuinely wanted to see us succeed.
We decided we needed a bit of a practice run. We had been eyeing the Yasawas, a chain of islands northeast of the main island of Viti Levu. We didn’t know much about the islands other than the fact that Tom Hank’s Cast Away was filmed on one of them. Before we left, we took a bus to the market in Nadi and loaded Macushla with fruit. As we sailed North, we drank the last of our Fiji Gold beers, and soon, islands appeared on the horizon. I couldn’t believe the rugged beauty of this island chain. Lushly vegetated jagged peaks rose straight out of the milky turquoise water. We stopped Macushla right in front of Cast Away island. Reef sharks and turtles crisscrossed under Macushla. I tried to resist, but I couldn’t stop myself from screaming “Wilsooooon!”
Colors from the Market in Nadi
Life was slow in the Yasawas. Our language became more vulgar. We finished every book onboard. I resorted to reading a comprehensive history of Australia’s serial killers. Our lack of reading material situation turned desperate, and at one point we ripped a book in half so we could both read it at the same time. I recounted interesting facts over dinner,
“Did you know Australia has proportionately more female serial killers than any other country?” Darrin answers, “Did you know that I don’t give a fuck?”
Our kava supply was shrinking, and we were forced to split bundles to stretch it out. As our kava dwindled, so did our food. Most of the fruit had rotted in the tropical heat, so we started eating mostly rice and harvested coconuts, sometimes swimming from the boat to shore and massacring coconuts with our machete until we were stuffed.
We spent the evening of Easter Vigil anchored off a village on Yalobi island. We fell asleep to the comforting sounds of a man loudly preaching damnation in Fijian (new sleep tape idea?). Our next anchorage on Yalobi was my favorite. We brought our remaining kava to shore. The chief’s clan invited us to a colorful feast of chicken curry. Over dinner, I mentioned one of my goals in the Yasawas was to see a Fiji banded iguana, an endemic and critically endangered lizard. I was directed to a man named Max. Max was powerfully built, and even while sitting, I could tell he was easily 6’5. He cheerfully offered to help me find an iguana the next day. When he found out we were from Michigan, he asked us if we knew his friend. A Peace Corps volunteer had lived with him and his wife almost a decade ago. Apparently she was from Michigan. He rushed back to his little shack to retrieve a photo. Sure enough, she stood smiling between them wearing a Detroit Tigers hat. They named their five year-old daughter after the volunteer’s mom. I had to laugh when I met little Janet.
Our anchorage on Yalobi Island
We spent the next day hiking around the island and trying to spearfish with Max’s son, Little Max. No iguanas, but still a good day. We took both Max’s aboard Macushla. In return, they invited us to dinner outside their shack. Our only contribution being lamb sausages, we were humbled to see the exquisite meal awaiting us, taro leaves delicately cooked in fresh coconut milk, yams, and curried papaya. While we ate, various cousins and relatives dropped by. Nobody was denied a plate. After the meal, we sat on the ground and sipped tea. Darrin and Big Max took turns strumming the guitar and I played the harmonica softly. Big Max looked up from the guitar and, with pain in his voice, insisted that our families must really miss us. He continued by saying if his kids leave Yalobi island for even a day or two, his heart hurts. I’ve never met a family as tight as a Fijian clan. While I drank my coffee on the deck of Macushla the next morning, I noticed a young kid, maybe 8 or 9, staring at me from shore. I imagined he was yearning to have even a slice of the freedom and wealth the western world had afforded Darrin and I. For my part, somewhat guiltily, it occurred to me that I would’ve happily swapped places with him at that moment. I tried to capture this feeling in my journal:
April 12 2022. I think it’s interesting that we – young people from the industrialized world – leave our families for adventure, only to end up searching for any kind of genuine family connection.
At least in Cast Away, Tom Hanks could find solace in the fact that he didn’t choose to be cast away from everyone he loved. Our exile, though, was self-inflicted.
Days rolled on with lethargy. We still carried a feeling of doubt, but good moments were no longer punctuated by overwhelming stress. In other words, we were having fun. Devoid of booze, our daily captain’s hour transitioned to shelf stable milk and our emergency stash of oreos. We played pirate, exploring resorts that had been abandoned since the start of COVID, and we were struck by how the jungle had reclaimed the islands. We saw manta rays while spearfishing one day. I finally speared a decent sized fish. Back on the dinghy, I demanded Darrin take a photo in celebration, and I fumbled the fish over the side. Reef sharks immediately snapped it up. I thought Darrin was going overboard himself with laughter.
We spent the majority of our time in Fiji anchored around the famous breaks surrounding Tavarua and Nomotu islands. Usually we surfed Cloudbreak, Restaurants, Namotu lefts, Swimming pools, or Wilke’s Pass. Although most of these days meld together in my memory, every surf session stands out with vivid clarity. When we learned how much it cost to stay at the famous surf resorts on Tavarua and Namotu islands, we calculated how much we would’ve paid to stay on the Tavarua Island resort for the amount of time we anchored there. It would’ve cost more than what we paid for Macushla, making us wonder if our boat journey had already paid for itself.
As time passed, our confidence in Macushla and each other grew. Our newfound bravado reached its peak on a day we spent island-hopping. In 25-30 knots of wind, we threaded through tight reef passes, tacking back and forth like experienced sailors. We communicated well. We were sailing. Leaving the Yasawas, we knew we still had a lot to learn, but we finally felt like we were ready to make the passage to Australia. We were on a mission from God.
Stories from Fiji
Darrin’s Version
Our trek toward the Pacific Ocean began on December 10, 2021, the day I officially graduated from college. An old head from the Marquette surf scene texted me asking if I was in town for graduation; there was a solid north wind making waves on Superior. I laughed at the text as I boarded a plane bound for Oahu.
Eli’s parents met my parents and me at the airport and I introduced them for the first time. Eli was still a few days out, flying in from Peru, and I had to tell some untruths to his sweet mother, Gail, regarding his health. He was decently sure he’d actually contracted Malaria and didn’t want to put a damper on the mood.. He finally arrived a few days later and we undertook the massive task of drinking Costco out of liquor.
We spent the better half of our first month in Hawaii partying and getting our asses kicked on the north shore, a far cry from our intentions which were to make money and educate ourselves on seamanship. Sometime after Christmas, we reluctantly went searching for employment and through a funny series of instances, landed jobs at a beach stand renting umbrellas and surfboards. As far as sailing was concerned, we ordered some training charts and charting tools, promising ourselves we would spend a significant amount of time each week learning to read the mysteries of the nautical world. We also walked by the marina looking at boats we knew nothing about (“We should get surf racks like that!”).
Our time on the island slipped away quickly and we lived at a fast pace, often coming home from work with just enough time to eat and grab a bag of wine for the night. When it finally became time to leave, the most we’d done to prepare together was surf a bunch of reef breaks. Talk of the boat to others still stressed me out. We didn’t even mention it to our coworkers who became close friends.
I can’t do justice to an overview of our time in Fiji so I’m just going to tell a few stories to the best of my abilities. A notable moment was Eli admitting to me for the first time, thathe’d never actually been on a sailboat. His first time was literally in the Vunda boatyard, on a boat we’d just bought in full. Final price: every dollar we had. The boat wasn’t even in the water yet. We crawled aboard Macushla for the first time on a characteristically hot day in the boatyard and Kyle handed us a bottle of rum at 9 a.m. to say “Congrats boys!” I may have thought we were fucked.
Proud as fuck boat owners
Easily, the coolest part of this whole experience were the people we met in the cruising community. To say it broadened my horizons would be a huge understatement. It felt like meeting characters in a movie. There was Brett and Tess, a young Australian couple we met on our first day in Fiji. They met on Tinder and Brett wooed her into his dream of sailing around the world. They had just bought an absolute project of a boat, Complicite, and were living full-time on the hard, sweating bullets day in and day out preparing their vessel for full-time cruising. Their third crew member was a wild cat named Coco who roamed the yard daily. Months later, I’d come back to Fiji and see their boat sailing into Musket Cove, a dream realized. They’re still out there sailing and living life at ¾ speed (@seafaringproject).
There was Mick on Superb who when asked where he would be surfing the following day looked at us like complete morons and replied in a raspy, seafaring, tone “Cloudy, obviously.” We didn’t know what to make of him for a long time, but after a few island bar sessions, came to like and respect him. He proudly surfed twinnies only.
Kieran and Isabelle on SV Merewether (@sailingmerewether), named after Kieran’s hometown in Australia. Like us, Kieran bought a boat with limited experience in Greece and learned to sail in a similar, uninformed fashion. He met Isabelle while cruising through the Mediterranean and took on a full-time crew member. Our first time meeting Kieran happened to be the best surfing day of my life, and we shared a dream session. We were drawn to them because, well, there aren’t many young people sailing around Fiji.
We met the Pu family; Ben, Cass, and their three awesome sons. They live full-time on their beautiful Outremer catamaran while homeschooling the boys. When Ben and Cass bought their first boat, they capsized while sailing between Aus and New Zealand, losing all electronics and narrowly escaping with their lives. They finished the passage. Despite a rocky start, they’d obviously seen the dream through. Ben became one of our biggest supporters and instilled a confidence in me that I badly needed. Besides Kyle, he was the first person to tell us we weren’t crazy; lots of people start sailing before they can distinguish their weenier from a winch handle. They also gave us a package of lamb sausages when we’d eaten Macushla out of reserves.
There was Ben on Slippery Gypsy who, in my eyes, is the definition of a modern surf explorer. He’d built his badass, man cave of a catamaran on his own and used it to sail around the South Pacific in search of waves. He didn’t have a dinghy, instead opting for a ski-doo with a tow pad. I asked him if he thought he’d ever been the first person to ever surf a wave, and in the most humble way imaginably, he replied “no doubt.” For our non-surfing reader, this is a pretty badass claim. Before we sailed for Australia, he dropped us pins to a bunch of breaks we’d pass on the way.
On my second trip to Fiji, helping to deliver SV Seaglub (don’t worry Chris, I’ll talk about you later) I met the Wild Thing crew; a family of Kiwis that had been best friends with Kyle and Missy, sailing with them from the Caribbean to Fiji during COVID. I sent them a message on Instagram, knowing they were in port, asking for a ride out to Seaglub. In the short month I spent hanging with them in Fiji and then visiting them in NZ, they would become like family to me. They are the blueprint for a family I may hope to create one day. Their teenage sons also pack barrels like no one's business.
Honorable mentions include Dan, the English / kiwi dude who demanded we carry LSD with us in case we hit bad weather (“you won’t go to sleep for hours and you’ll be scared of nothing”). The Brazilian Butt Pirates we befriended in Fiji who we saw roll right into New Caledonia, tie up to the first open slip, and head straight to the bar, completely avoiding customs and generally living life by their own rule book. Abi, is the badass mate of a badass boat owned by a man with many, many nice boats. And of course, Mitcha, our first Australian friend and my nomination for Aussie of the Century and Most Fun Dude to Sink Piss With.
There were many others we met in our relatively short time living the cruising life who told stories on stories, some believable, many suspiciously smelling like bullshit. We learned to carefully filter advice, and there was much advice given. Going to a bar filled with yachties who have a vague idea of your naivete feels like being the only fish in a tank full of sharks. They love to tell you their opinion on your exploits, experience level, and their overall penis length.
Most were genuine and eccentric. Regardless of whether or not their sea stories held any weight, I adopted the mindset that any person who’d sailed halfway around the world or more couldn’t be a complete dumbass. I enjoyed being engulfed in a community of people living an authentic existence. And in that time, I felt like our experience was as genuine and meaningful as anything I’d done up to that point in life.
Our time in Fiji was kind of unbelievable in hindsight. An inspired surf odyssey with my best friend. Maybe the culmination of restlessness, dreams, and a sense of adventure.
On the other hand, it was sailing school. And I cannot emphasize this enough; we started with almost no skill base. Our first day on the boat with Kyle and Missy they taught us how to raise the main sail and wrap the sheet lines around the winches.
We had a goal once we started sailing around on our own; tack and jibe 300 times before leaving. The non-sailing reader may be unfamiliar with these terms, but they are the very basic maneuvers needed to sail. We did make an honest effort, but I’m sure we didn’t come close to our number. We spent more than a few days dropping a triangle of pins on the chart plotter and manuevering around within the reef learning to control our new toy boat. You’ve never seen a more beautiful vessel, helmed by two captains so pleased with themselves after completing some of sailing’s most basic moves. Although we really did intend on sailing triangles every day, we normally got bored, set anchor, and went for a surf.
We had a book, recommended to us by Kyle, called The Voyager’s Handbook: A Bluewater Guide to Cruising. He said it was the bible for yachties, a complete guide for how to live on your sailboat. In short, it talked about everything. I’d read the entire book, cover to cover, back in Michigan, leaving notes and earmarks on pages I deemed important. We consulted this book regularly on our training missions.
On our trip up the Yasawa island chain, our entire goal was to learn more about sailing the boat together. One day, we were sailing up the west side of the islands and just starting to navigate, fully under sail, through the various reefs. At the same time, the wind really started kicking up. We quickly found ourselves a bit above our pay grade with no bail option. So, in the height of the situation, the reef uncomfortably close to all sides, we consulted our book. Or more so, screamed directions at each other from our holy bible of sailing. This memory, although poorly recalled, really exemplifies our ignorance, in my mind. I think we both had the same thought, “are we really reading the fucking book right now?”
The cultural experiences were some of the most unforgettable parts. Participating in sevusevu ceremonies was objectively really cool. I’ll go on record and say kava tastes like shit, but drinking it out of a half coconut mug and chanting a religiously significant phrase after each cup was something I’d never done before. There were more than a few days where we just got to kick it in the village with some new Fijian friends. We got to genuinely interact with people so different from ourselves whenever we threw anchor off a new island. And that, to me, is the best part of traveling on a sailboat.
Emotionally, our time in the islands was intense in many ways. I guess Eli and I remember it differently, but the day we dropped Kyle and Missy off for the last time, we left the marina and I started crying (and drinking Fiji Gold beers). I remember that moment clearly. I felt excited, overwhelmed, and filled with a huge amount of pride for the situation we’d found ourselves in. There were nights I barely slept after setting three anchor alarms and still stressing over the improbable chance of dragging. I caught waves I had no business surfing.
And I would be remiss not to speak on the surfing. I also have a sneaking suspicion that many of my dirtbag friends may be reading this only to hear about the waves. Long story short, the waves in Fiji are really fucking good. I am completely ruined and my surfing career will be filled with lackluster comparisons as long as people keep asking me what Cloudbreak was like.
Our quiver was pretty comical. We both brought boards from Hawaii; Eli had some strange egg shaped thruster and I had an Al Merick Biscuit, better suited for groveling point breaks than hollow reefs. Eli snapped his board a week in and bought a heavily used step-up from our friend Chris. That board ended up suiting him pretty well in the bigger surf. And I enjoyed mine for the extra volume under the chest which made the drops a bit less intense.
The best surfing day of my life happened at Frigates, a left hand reef that seems to rise out of the ocean and dump curved shaped walls on the reef. It was overhead and perfect. I don’t have the adjectives or writing skill to give a William Finnegan-esque description of the wave, but I loved it. For most of the day, it was just Eli, Kyle, our new friend Kieran, and myself. I was shitting myself a little bit on each drop, but actually made most of them. We barely had to compete for waves and a few times throughout the morning I actually had the chance to hand-pick the best wave of the set and casually paddle toward the peak.
And I am not proud to admit that I ran so far away from every barrel while surfing these reef passes, I would have made @barreldodgersanonomys had a camera been pointed my way. Something significantly more scary than sailing in 35 knot wind in the middle of the ocean is seeing the water suck up off the reef in front of you on a wave at Cloudy. I did eventually get properly barreled in Fiji, but it wasn’t until I returned months later.
Nifty anchorage
On Passage Making
May 2022
Eli’s Version
Well I was born in the sign of water, and it’s there that I feel my best
The albatross and the whales, they are my brothers
It’s kind of a special feeling, when you’re out on the sea alone
Staring at the full moon like a lover
-Cool Change, Little River Band
I wish I could give a day-by-day breakdown of the passage, but our 3 hour watch rotation made the days blur together. Still, much of the passage feels like a dream. I feel that I never really slept on the passage, yet at the same time, I was sleeping all the time. I was having extremely vivid, sometimes disturbing dreams. My hyper-realistic dreams seem to blend with reality in my memory. It was an almost psychedelic experience. My journal offers little clarity. What I can tell you, dear reader, is that for the first three days out of Fiji, we battled sustained winds of 30 knots and very mean seas. Nobody had an appetite. Darrin spent much of the time spewing over the side. Chris lost his satellite phone after taking countless waves into the cockpit. He also spent some of his time curled in the fetal position, supposedly the first time he’d been seasick in 30 years of sailing (doubtful). The seas became too heavy to even send an email or download weather files using the SSB radio. I felt as if we were on a weightless toy boat as we were tossed around in the towering swells. I barely saw Chris or Darrin for the first few days, only exchanging words when necessary. A few sentences about the wind when we changed watches, and then we'd bury ourselves in our berths and sleep, we were sailing zombies. As such, I barely noticed that the drinking water began to taste increasingly salty. I double checked the Y-valves that separated the scuppers from the drinking water were in fact closed. Maybe I was imagining it, but no, it definitely tasted saltier than the day before… shit. Somehow, sea water was getting into our drinking water tank. Probably from our rain collection system.
Then the wind lessened, followed by the swells. Almost all at once, we were sailing comfortably, and remarkably, we were only 45 miles away from the French Territory of New Caledonia. We made the decision to stop in New Caledonia, both to figure out the drinking water situation (important), and to dodge some serious weather that was heading our way (doubly important). Initially, I was vying to illegally stop on the Isle of Pines, without officially checking into New Caledonia in the port of Noumea. That way, we could avoid fees, bureaucratic hassle, and hopefully save time. Most of our conversations were consumed by this topic. Then, while I was reading in the cockpit, a massive plane appeared on the horizon, and it seemed to be heading right for us. Soon, the plane buzzed right by Macushla’s mast and skimmed over the water. I legitimately thought they were going to crash next to us, maybe so we could pick up the survivors. I screamed for Chris and Darrin. They rushed up to the cockpit before we heard a French accent come through on the radio, “SV Mah-cush-lah, SV Mah-cush-lah, SV Mah-cush-lah, Zis is ze French Navy. Please state your intentions in French vaters. Do you have any drugs on boar?” Ah. This must be the French version of sevusevu. Sadly, we didn’t have any drugs to offer to the Chief of France. Worse, now the snail-eaters knew our whereabouts. So much for sneaking into the Isle of Pines...
Visiting the American Embassy, stitching a courtesy flag, biosecurity inspection...
Our time in Noumea was also a blur, but for other reasons. Highlights included a harrowing visit to McDonald’s, where we struggled to order anything in French, reaffirming our American identities for anyone who harbored doubts. When we left New Caledonia the next day, we were all miraculously more sleep deprived than when we arrived. Somehow, I had visited one of the most herpetologically unique places on earth and I hadn’t managed to see as much as a cane toad. I was severely disappointed in myself. C’est la vie. At least Chris and Darrin managed to fix what we discovered was a broken Y-valve that was leaking saltwater from the deck scuppers directly into our fresh water tank. Now Chris’ claim about getting sick at sea for the first time was starting to hold some weight (or water). Especially when we realized that each of us had vomited and partially peed on the deck, and that was all being funneled into our drinking water to create a briney mixture of puke, sea water, and traces of piss… touché, Chris.
The decision to take Chris aboard was a contested, but ultimately good one. Two days before our departure, Chris’ visiting friend injured his back and Chris became single, effectively freeing him up for the foreseeable future. He offered to join us as a crew member, with Darrin and I still as captains. I reasoned that taking Chris with us somehow took away from the adventure, as I believed we were capable of making the passage on our own. For Darrin’s part, he saw bringing Chris as an extra safety measure. Since Darrin had assumed the bulk of the captaining responsibilities, I deferred to him on this decision. I could tell that once we agreed to take Chris, a load had been instantly lifted from his shoulders. For that, I was grateful. Chris made a great crew member and an even better drinking buddy.
Aside from some small hiccups, the rest of the passage to Australia was smooth. The intense dreams continued, but I found myself really enjoying the night watches. It was a fantastic opportunity for unfettered thinking. Lying in the very rear of the cockpit, with a universe of stars above me, the endless black of the ocean was interrupted only by our little Macushla gliding on her surface and a trail of bioluminescent algae in our wake. On several occasions, I watched the depth sounder change from a blank reading (i.e. deep as fuck) to ‘50, 40, 35 feet.’ Of course, there were thousands of feet of water beneath us, and it was possibly an error with our transducer picking up erratic reflections, but I preferred to imagine enormous blue whales cruising beneath us as we sailed through the night.
Soon, we started seeing seabirds. An albatross signaled that we were close to Australia’s Gold Coast. Before our land ho in Oz, Darrin asked to talk to me in the cockpit. He opened a container of Tim Tams. This must be serious, I thought to myself. In Fiji, we had inherited a stowaway crew member from Kyle and Missy’s time. They had been sailing with a little gecko who must’ve found his way aboard in a box of produce. They had affectionately named him Yoshi. We knew it was bad luck to rename a boat, but to my knowledge, Poseidon had no qualms about renaming a gecko. In honor of a friend who we missed dearly, we rechristened our stowaway pet as ‘Teddy.’ In our time in Fiji, we saw little Teddy frequently, and I often bid him good morning and goodnight. We intended to catch Teddy the week before we departed Fiji, to grant him freedom on some gecko paradise. Weeks before our departure, however, Teddy mysteriously vanished. Maybe he jumped ship. Now, hundreds of miles from land, Darrin had news to share. Apparently he had found Teddy during one of his watches between New Cal and Aus and captured him. Bringing Teddy into Australia could spell disaster for us (if you’re doubtful, google Australia’s biosecurity laws), or for Australia’s native wildlife (he could be carrying some new lizard leprosy). Unsure of what to do, and not wanting to upset me, Darrin secretly flicked him overboard. I want to believe that Teddy didn’t end up in Davy Jones’ locker, that he found a floating log that carried him to a gecko’s green oasis somewhere, where he recounts his grand adventure on the high seas to unbelieving gecko audiences. In any event, we shared a cigarette in our fallen crew member’s honor when we reached Australia.
We arrived in Australia to a hero’s welcome. A friend of a sailing friend had gotten word of our adventure, and he was keen to meet us. Before we even cleared the quarantine dock with our biosecurity inspection and immigration interview, our new friend Mitcha had climbed over the 5 meter locked fence with a 30 pack of XXXX beer. We had arrived.
Mission completo
On Passage Making
Darrin’s Version
We waited a long time for the right weather to make our passage. As they say, a sailor's plans are always written in the sand at low tide. Ideally, the push from Fiji to Aus is pretty straightforward. You wait for the trade winds to kick in and ride a beautiful 20-knot tailwind all the way. We waited for this ‘bread run’ wind pretty much the whole time we were in Fiji. Eli had to be in Australia by June 1st for his scholarship to begin which gave us a deadline. You never want a deadline for making a passage.
We thought we had the right forecast a few different times and it always fell through; a very common occurrence I came to learn. Toward the end, the prospects were looking slim. If we didn’t sail by the begining-ish of May, Eli would have to fly to Aus leaving me alone with the boat. That would have been awesome for me if I had more than $1,500, but… So, after a month of conversations centered mostly on global weather patterns, we took a window that was decent, but not exactly what we’d hoped for; a bit windier.
Enter Chris, aka Seaglub, one of the first dudes we met in Fiji, a bachelor’s bachelor and full-time yachtie. From the beginning, I wanted a third crew member to make shifts easier and to give us some peace of mind. Eli wanted to do it with just the two of us, and it was one of the only decisions we didn’t come to a full agreement on. But, when we chose our weather window, we had no prospects for crew and decided we’d do it alone. From what I remember, it wasn’t until we were rolling out of the anchorage headed for final resupply, Chris yelled off the stern of his boat “Boys! I’m coming with you!” So we took on our first crew member and sailed with SeaGlub.
The first night after checking out of customs we sailed inside the reef toward the sunset. Eli made a huge curry down below and we enjoyed our meal in calm waters. We exited the reef, narrowly tacking between the reefs near Namotu, said goodbye to it’s beautiful waves, and entered the the real ocean just in time for nightfall. We had the engine on as we tacked through the pass for back up, but in the end, we sailed right on through; something we could never have done only months earlier.
I will never forget waking up for my morning shift, coming out of the cabin, and thinking “what the fuck.” Most of our sailing was done inside the reef in Fiji, aka no swell, small waves. Our first few days out at sea, we were looking at waves the size of large houses, some bigger. I realized that even if we wanted to turn around, we couldn’t. Right out of the gate, we were seeing 20-30 knot wind. For the first week, we didn’t see anything less than 20 knots. And I do not want to sound like a hard ass here, but whenever I get the question, “weren’t you guys scared?” the honest answer is no. I didn’t believe our lives were in danger at any point, and the reality of sailing is that if you lose your cool, shit goes bad. So at no point during this journey would I consider us scared. Completely unsure of ourselves? Yes. Thinking we’d sink our boat? Possibly. A better descriptor for the feeling would be ‘intense’.
I got super seasick. As in many pukes and no food for days. You know the idyllic dream of sailing the sea, reading a nice novel, maybe reflecting in a journal? I’m calling bullshit. There were times I didn’t even want to listen to music on my headphones. And numerous days in a row where if I wasn’t on shift watching over the boat, I was laying in the fetal position somewhere with my eyes closed. But, I am very proud of the way my crew and I battled the sickness. Because no one feels one hundred percent out at sea. But when sails needed to be changed and we had to actually use our brains, we did! It completely sucked and a few times I swore I’d never make another passage. I think most, if not all, sailors have felt this before.
We’d debated from the beginning whether or not we’d stop in New Caledonia to rest on our way. The French colony is the halfway point between Fiji and Aus. After four or five days at sea, the decision to stop was made for us. For one, we had a contaminated water tank, and two, Kyle, our personal weather router, sent us an email essentially saying, ‘if you don’t stop sailing like old ladies, you’re gonna get your ass kicked a day out of NewCal.’
So with a few hundred nautical miles to go, we let out some sail and started hauling ass. We sailed 170 nautical miles in 24 hours. In that stretch, we had a magical night that I could best describe as riding an arctic bullet train with no breaks. We were consistently hitting 10 knots surfing down the backside of the swell (for nonsailing readers, Macushla was not meant to go that fast). It was the only night of the whole passage I used my harness to clip into the cockpit while on watch. It was an exhilarating feeling.
New Caledonia was a blur and the closest we’ll ever get to feeling like pirates. We barely slept and partied hard. We somehow managed to take a few hours to fix our water tank. I don’t believe we broke any laws, but Eli tried his best to go to French jail.
Leaving the bar the first night, I bumped in to the lad pictured below, affectionately known as ‘The Mad Hatter’. He heard me speak american-ly and came up to talk, saying “I’m trying to meet up with these two American sailor guys my friend told me were coming, do you know them?”
“Dude, it’s gotta be us.”
Friendship.
Partying with our French friends, you guys rock
Our second half of the passage began with brutal hangovers. I barely had the will to motor us out of the marina and through the reef. Overall, it was a completely different type of sailing with varying wind speeds and directions. Chris was invaluable in his help with navigating relative to weather and we learned much from him. We had one night that was so perfect, we all drank a beer on the bow together and watched the sunset over the horizon. That’s how seasick I got; only one beer for the entire passage.
At one point we rigged our spinnaker for a downwind run in light conditions. It was wonderful. Our spinnaker was old and full of character; all black with a yellow stripe. Ignoring very sound advice from numerous experienced sailors, we decided to leave her flying through the night. We were moving so well, why not? When I came up to relieve Eli of watch that night, we had the usual rundown; how’s the wind, changes in heading, boats in the area? He said everything was sweet and went to sleep. In my attempt at being a captain, I checked over the boat and admired our beautiful spinnaker, when I noticed it had stars where there used to be black fabric. Upon further investigation, I realized our lovely headsail was split in two, horizontally. This wasn’t a super serious situation, but I still think it’s hilarious. I went below and told Eli to get up, asked him if he was sure everything was alright. He replied groggily and probably annoyed. I asked him to look at the head sail and he said it checked out. I then pointed out the issue and we had a good laugh. We knew the spinnaker was old so we weren’t super bummed. Actually, we decided she was still doing an alright job and just left her up! That lasted a whole fifteen minutes before she was completely in tatters and we had to figure out a way to get her back on board without wrapping the rudder.
Our spinnaker, before we happened
The rest of the passage was pretty uneventful until we got within eyesight of Australia, when I wrapped our sheets around the lifelines while trying to furl the jib, essentially destroying one of the sheets, causing significant damage to the jib, and almost killing Chris.
Getting to Sydney
June 2022
Eli’s Version
Well, Dory and I need to get to Sydney
-Marlin, Finding Nemo
After a bender of a debut week in Australia, it was time to sail Macushla to her new home, Sydney Harbour. I was on a tight deadline to start school, and I was unsure if I’d even be able to join the final leg of the journey. Darrin started looking for another crew member in case I couldn't join. While surfing and sailing with our friend Mitcha, Darrin met Roxy. I didn't know it then, but this was positively the most fortitious chance meeting of my life. We had our crew member, who had literal years more experience than either of us. I met Roxy aboard Macushla on the evening before we set sail for Sydney. That night, the two of us went to the grocery store to provision for the voyage. It started with a shared disdain for green apples and preference for 85% cocoa chocolate, and a year and a half later, we're still finding things to agree on.
We didn’t find a good weather window, but we went anyway, which left us mostly motoring into a stiff headwind. Remember Crush’s advice from Finding Nemo?, “What you wanna do is follow the EAC, that’s the uh, East Australian Current.” Yeah, we didn’t find that either.
In spite of the unfavorable sailing conditions, Roxy and I found the journey, well, ‘pleasurable,’ but that’s a story for another time
Our final day of sailing down the East Coast is one I’ll never forget. Migrating whales breached around us in every direction. Dolphins danced. Albotrosses albatrossed. As we passed through Sydney Harbour’s famed ‘heads’, Darrin and I hugged, Roxy and I held hands on the bow. The look in Darrin’s eyes replaced the need for words. We got Macushla home. We completed our mission from God.
When Australians hear that we learned to surf on a lake, they understandably assume we learned to sail on one too. When we tell them that we learned in Fiji, on a boat we bought sight unseen, and then sailed it to Australia, they usually think we’re taking the piss. Unfortunately, the only piss we were taking was from our drinking water supply.
Lots of things were working towards our disadvantage, namely, our idiocracy. Still, somehow, through plenty of help from our friends and family (many questioned our sanity, but supported us anyway – thank you), fortuitous luck, and some things that will remain off the record until their statute of limitations runs out, we managed. If there’s any takeaway from this story, it’s that this wasn’t an adventure in spite of our unpreparedness, but instead, it was an adventure precisely because of our lack of any meaningful skills. We could have practiced sailing for years, taken courses and gotten certifications until we were ‘competent,’ but where is the thrill in playing it safe? Adventure and risk are like an old married couple, one just doesn’t feel right without the other. It’s the relationship that makes any journey worthwhile. If willingness to embrace risk marks an adventurer, Darrin is the finest adventure buddy I’ve encountered, or at least the craziest. I’ll borrow a quote from my friend Sara Dykman’s Bicycling with Butterflies, as she shares my philosophy of adventure and risk. In fact, she helped impart this philosophy on me:
This wing-it philosophy has been both a blessing and a curse throughout my travels… these challenging moments were likely avoidable, but the truth was, I did not want to avoid them. I wanted to invite them, and by not overplanning, I did just that. I tried to give space to that which I couldn’t yet imagine, to encourage just enough discomfort for an adventure to unfold.
An adventure it was.
Getting to Sydney
Darrin’s Version
Despite rolling into Australia with a few hundred dollars to my name, the party had to continue. And the Gold Coast is a great place to party. Upon arrival, we had to go through a dreaded check-in process with customs agents. We’d heard horror stories of Australian customs processes, but luckily, the agents assigned to us were pretty mindless.
The check-in ended around dusk and it was then we realized we were locked on the customs dock, unable to open the security gate, and hit the town. That was until our new friend Mitcha showed up with 30 fine-tasting brews, jumped the fence (beer in hand), and said “fuck those cunts, we’re going out.”
Mitcha lived on his boat full time in this marina and was the local knowledge we needed. Under the cover of darkness, we threw the lines and navigated to the main dock of the Southport Yacht Club where we tied up right in front of the bar and went out to find libations.
The next morning, with a small hangover, we started the boat and prepared to get the fuck out of the marina we’d illegally tied up in. Just as Eli was about to toss lines and climb aboard for our getaway, the manager came down with a fiery assertion that because we’d stayed the night in the marina, we owed them money? Feeling very sure of myself, I told her where to go and we departed for the anchorage across the river where we’d spend the next week and a half.
And our crew member Chris? He was satisfied with our journey and probably had his fill of Eli and I. He hopped off the boat at the timeliest convenience and got himself a hotel room. We didn’t get invited over. (For clarification, we became great friends with Chris and I got the chance to sail Seaglub from Fiji to New Zealand the following November)
Adjusting back to a country so similar to the United States was weird after a few months in Fiji. The lights of the shopping center were off putting. A few days after arrival, Eli had to fly down to Sydney to start school. This left me on the boat, solo, and looking for crew to sail down to Sydney. I thought about single-handing it down the coast, but I’d read enough about the difficulties on this coastline and decided against it. I was putting the word out to anyone with a connection to sailing but coming up empty. Eventually, Mitcha said he had a friend who’d sailed around the world with her family as a youngster and was eager to get back into sailing. One afternoon, we took Mitcha’s boat to surf, and upon getting back on board, I was introduced to Roxy.
I quickly gave Roxy a rundown of Macushla, a very honest take on my sailing abilities and experience, and asked her what she thought. The next day she texted me; she was in. I spent a few hours going over a crew checklist in the hopes of providing our newest crew member with some confidence in her captain. I decided she must be crazy to agree to this passage; a few hundred miles down the east coast of Australia with limited bail options if the weather went bad. Eli was still out of town and I was set to leave on the first weather window, with or without him.
As fate would have it, our weather showed on a Friday afternoon and Eli was able to fly up from Sydney and climb aboard the night before departure. The morning we left was a mixture of excitement and nerves. Nerves because the wind honestly didn’t look amazing and we had an additional life to be responsible for. Then, not an hour after pulling anchor, Eli took a COVID test that came back positive. Great start.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and after we made it to Sydney (spoiler), I realized my navigational decisions could have been better. We took a gentle downwind heading leaving the Goldy that put us about 50 nautical miles offshore. We’d end up fighting this decision for the rest of the trip.
Anyway, it took about 24 hours for me to start feeling like a bit of a lonely sailor; my two crew members canoodling at all hours. Yes, Eli owes me a huge thank you for setting him up with a girl, forever our crew member, Roxy.
Sailing-wise, the whole trip down the coast was pretty difficult. We motor sailed into the wind for many hours, and at one point had to stop for a whole twelve-hour period to throw anchor and wait out the 45-knot gusts. It wasn’t until the last morning, when we could see the Sydney skyline, that things started to look up. The wind was beautiful, the vibes were high, and I decided to sail in my pajama pants. This would prove to be a fatal mistake after a wave filled the cockpit and soaked my britches.
Arriving in to Sydney harbor was very memorable; the first look at a place we’d thought of for so long. We dodged commercial boat traffic and tried to make it toward our future home in Middle Harbour. I kept thinking, “I can’t believe it’s legal for us to be driving this thing.” Sailing next to the Opera House in a 17-ton vessel put things into perspective. Even after sailing 1,300+ miles, I still knew we were ignorant.
We grabbed the mooring line sometime in the afternoon and could barely believe we’d done it. Easily one of the best celebrations we’ll ever have. I was, and still am, so proud of us for accomplishing our mission. And it did feel like a mission at that point. We were yearning for some stability and order, also a professionally installed mooring ball..
Conclusion
From Darrin
Our time with Macushla was life-changing in many ways. It was a perfect storm of timing, youthful ignorance, and an unclear dream of living a life full of rich experiences. Overall, it gave me a sense of inner peace I never thought achievable. The peace came from putting myself in a position, quite literally ‘sink or swim’, to fail miserably or achieve a personal quest for fulfillment. I guess we passed the test we signed up for.
The entire ordeal would never have happened without my best friend. When times were tough, he’d be singing Jack Johnson tunes, horribly off-key and without a taste for rhythm. He’s the epitome of a ‘way too chill’ surfer dude mixed with academic weapon; unbelievably stupid, ignorantly positive, aggressively unaggressive. He can only see the bright side of things. This is a great attribute when times are tough, but not so much when looking at weather forecasts or setting an anchor. We could probably write a dumb book together, but it would be banned in multiple states upon release. Without planning, we both omitted a few sea stories from this account. A few will be taken to the grave.
I also want to throw this thought out into the world. After sailing 3000+ nautical miles last year, I still don’t love to sail. As the saying goes, “It’s the most expensive and slow way to get somewhere for free.” Couldn’t agree more. But! There’s a reason so many songwriters sing of time spent at sea. There’s something very special about the solitude you find when your world is a 40-foot piece of fiberglass surrounded by purple water. I hope all my friends get the chance to experience that feeling someday.
Yeah, I dunno. Huge shoutout to our parents for trusting us to come home safe. Big thanks to Teddy for making us the famed ‘BOFA’ flag. To Kyle and Missy, you guys are two of the most badass people on this planet; thank you for thinking of us. And to all the haters at the bureaucratic hell hole of the Australian Border Force: fuck you.
If you read this far, we love you. There were many days and nights spent in paradise where we missed our home in Michigan. Eli and I are two of the luckiest people I’ve ever heard of. Our biggest blessing in this life is the people we share our time with. Thank you for giving us the love we need.