About Me

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Sacramento, California, United States
so salty pieces of coral from surfing Hawaii in the 60's and 70's getting reef pounded living in my body fall through my skin from time to time!

sailing to Oahu

Jimi Hendrix was playing on Oahu. I had never sailed. Surfed Mexico, California, Hawaii! Aw, how hard could it be to sail 90-110 miles from Kauai to Oahu? Piece of cake, right? Remember it was the 60's! This is so bad. We thought we were looking at Kaiena Point,Ohau, knowing we weren't going to make the concert! But at least we were in site of Oahu-wrong! Coy, who had never sailed before, me,who had never sailed before, jeff and Abbott etc. We were looking at the sleeping giant on Kauai! We had done three-sixty's in the night! We sailed on the only tri-marran I've ever sailed on ( except later ) in my life, missed the concert! It was at the Waikiki Shell Ampitheater ( Moon eclipsed . We finally made Nawilwili Harbor! The Skipper tried to give us his boat saying, " It's trying to kill me"! We watched him go stark raving mad not even realising that had we got caught in the channel current we were on our way to Japan! Remember it was the 60's and we were going to see Hendrix. I left out some of the good stuff but I will make up for it later!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Carvings, frogs, Kiwi.s and a skipper-missed

I want to talk with you about a friend of mine, Dave Laurie. He was born in South Africa but was raised by his parents in New Zealand from the age of 14. He thought he was a KIWI. But knowwwww! When he sailed his boat with his wife and children ( who were kiwi's )he found out his parents had never changed his citizenship!! How much fun is it to try and clear customs when your skipper is a South African? I'll tell you. Because the politics ( at the time ) are so fucked up with arpartied and the " Kiwi rugby All Blacks " are dominating the world! And because the frogs ( french people ) had bombed " Rainbow Warrior " in N.Z. And hadn't been brought to court even though they were all caught! Oh hell! I love Dave Laurie and his wife Leslie ( legsly) and son, Andrew, and daughter Amanda. When I begged Dave not to sell " Guinevere " he laid one of the greatest thought/ideas of which I have kept a few! Dave said " Robbie this is not my first boat, which I loved, nor will it be my last boat, which I loved, but all of the boats I was allowed to sail led me to the next boat!" I understood! That's why I sail other people's boats. They are to expensive to maintain. People who own boats work very hard to maintain them. They bring one or two people aboard, share a cocktail and on a clear day swear they will sail to Catalina Island and yet never do. Dave sailed and I sailed with him. He's dead now but I swear to you the carvings that his wife, my friend Leslie, has and was with Dave when he traded for them in the South-South Seas are priceless and I hope she has held on to them. I couldn't believe they kept the master/owner of the vessel aboard at Port Villa, Vanuatu-New Hebrides.Dave was pissed!! I laughed for a month-no two!!!Ha! He was pissed mainly because he was out of cigarettes and figian rope does not cut it! Either does their kava. The ceremony is way cool but there is no punch to kava ( ava ) until you try Vanuatuan kava. Whew!!! I loved Dave, Mark

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