CHAPTER 2
In the mid-1970s, there was a rush to buy boats built in Southeast Asia. Most were from Taiwan and of questionable quality. Hong Kong yachts were well built, but with prices to match. A few came from China but let’s not go there.
Lounging in the cockpit of a friend’s boat at Avalon, on Catalina Island, we were watching a gaggle of partygoers aboard a ketch built in China, when, with no warning, the mizzenmast fell over. They had no sails up and there was no wind. The cause was crappy fittings and poor quality stainless steel rigging.
Even so, I too was lured to the Orient by what were often deceptive low prices but high quality teak. George Stadel, an American naval architect, working in Taiwan for the Mayflower Yacht and Trading Company, became my mentor. George had come to Taiwan for recuperation after losing a leg in battle in Vietnam, had fallen in love with his nurse and stayed. George, a handsome muscular Yale graduate, moved better with prosthetic contraptions than most men with God-given legs. I contracted George and the Mayflower gang to build a 48-foot ketch I named Love Story, honoring my affair with my wanderlust dreams.
From laying the first fiberglass resin in the mold, I worked side-by-side with electricians, carpenters and finishers, in the process learning to marry the complexities of a seaworthy, well-built yacht with my responsibilities as owner.
It was tropically hot inside the airplane-hangar-sized shed where Love Story slowly took shape. Torrential rains added humidity to heat, slowing work and causing sloppy errors, always corrected by the ever-present, incredibly strong George, hopping on prosthetics or doing chin-ups to lift himself aboard the yacht that towered above him as it took shape.
One busy day, while sanding and grinding, fiberglass dust blew into my right eye. George rushed me, in considerable pain, to a creepy-looking native medicine man in a small wood and tin shanty in the midst of rice paddies. Black chickens and dogs were on the loose inside and out. Grizzled men sat and smoked in one of the two rooms while women cooked in the other. A live five-foot snake was carried into the room where I sat, nervous, uncomfortable, and with aching eye. George, seeing the startled look in my one good eye and the way I jumped when I saw the snake, said, “Easy, Skip, easy. I’ve seen this before. The snake is for you and they’re gonna fix you. You’re not gonna like it, but it works.”
“What the hell, George?”
Strong arms held me in my chair and tilted my head back. Words I didn’t understand were spoken and answered by a chant.
“Here it comes!” said George, a devilish smile crossing his weathered face.
A tall thin man with a cruel smile and a curved knife held the snake high and slit it down the centerline of its belly and pulled a small, slimy sack from its guts. Poking a small hole in the sack, he squirted the juice from the goiter of the snake into my eye. I erupted in a volley of cursing. Tears flowed like Niagara Falls. I pulled unsuccessfully against the muscular brown arms subduing me – and a minute later the pain was gone. I could see again. Clearly.
“Damn!” I exclaimed to George.
Returning to the boatyard following a tasty black chicken dinner, George told me I was only one of the medicine man’s successes, so I thanked George for the quack but not the bedside manner.
After learning of my affection for dogs, George built into the salon a small doghouse as a refuge at sea for a small puppy—one I didn’t yet own.
“This is for your buddy and shipmate,” George said, proudly pointing to the doghouse. “I think you should name him Bosun.”
With copious effort and considerable bribery, we convinced the government of both Taiwan and The People’s Republic of China to allow us a sea trial in the Formosa Straits. Launching the boat, everything that could go wrong, did. To reach the road, which wasn’t wide enough for the massive truck required to tow Love Story to the water, we had to drag Love Story by hand, on skids through a monsoon muddy field. The police, who had likely never heard of a “Wide Load Follows” sign, provided extra officers at added extra dollars (mine, of course) to guide our course. We eventually made it to Keelung Harbor, where a huge crane dangled the mast above the docks while officials looked for the proper lucky coin to put below the mast step, an ancient tradition about which I knew nothing.
“Calm down, Skip,” George explained. “These folks are superstitious and it’s an old custom. Afraid of dying at sea, they place coins under the mast so they won’t be broke when they enter the netherworld.”
Waiting for a coin before stepping the mast of Love Story in Keelung, Taiwan
Meantime, the hull was bashing against the stone wharf causing scrapes and scratches, so I asked, “George, why can’t they use any damned coin?”
“Do you have any US coins?” George asked. “You may be onto something.”
Problem solved.
The mast was fitted. We celebrated with Hsinchu and Taichung, a gastronomically revolting combination of pork balls and sweet molasses cakes.
Our sea trial followed days of begging and graft in exchange for permits to sail in the Formosa Straits, a sixty-six-mile wide, congested body of water separating Taiwan from The People’s Republic of China—also called The Black Ditch. We kept vigilant lookout for heavy commercial traffic, and all sorts of odd vessels altered course to look at us under sail—an unusual sight in tightly controlled government waters. Our navigation aids were sparse, causing us to sail too close to the People’s Island of Matsu. We were warned away from the Communist island by cannon fire across our bow. Thank you, lucky US coin.
Eventually, I berthed Love Story in front of my home on Naples Island in Long Beach, California, and began fitting her for a world cruise—including mechanical work on a new model Volvo Penta diesel with more problems than a used Edsel.
What happened next I could never have predicted.