BCA Pioneer Interviews: Graham Darby, Part 2

The following is Part 2 of my interview with Pioneer BCA member Graham Darby. This is the first of a series of interviews I am doing with Pioneer Members of the BCA.

Last month, in Part 1, Graham and I discussed his early Bluewater experience from the 1970s, when he sailed a Nicholson 35 from England to French Polynesia and then up to Victoria. After more than 10 years back in BC, Graham set off again in 1991, sailing from his home in Kitimat down to San Francisco, and then on to French Polynesia. The transcriber of this interview, Donna Sassaman, sailed with Graham at this time, in Mexico, French Polynesia, and Hawaii. Donna sailed her boat home in 1993, while Graham and Linda remained in the tropics.

Part 1 left off in early 1995, when Graham and his wife, Linda, had just arrived in Hawaii to become crew on the Kamahali, a steel sailboat that served as escort ship for the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s expeditions in traditional Polynesian canoes. Read on for Graham’s stories from this adventure, and some discussion of the early years of the BCA.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and accuracy.

Interview with Graham Darby (cont’d)

Sailing the Escort Ship, Kamahali

Barrie (B): Oh, [the Kamahali] was the big steel boat, with the Ukrainian [captain known as Russian Bill].

Graham (G): Yes, we crewed for him. Because I was Canadian and it was an American boat, I couldn’t officially be an officer. But I was sail-master and, basically, navigator. We had installed Linda’s ham radio, and she was the radio operator. We followed these guys for four months. And this wasn’t the original boat. [The first boat] was a modern boat, cold-moulded. So, they actually said, “What we need to do is to build a dugout double canoe.” They looked all over Hawaii for trees to build a dugout and they couldn’t find any trees big enough. So, the west coast natives here – the Tsimshian and Haida – in Alaska donated logs to build a closer replica called Hawaiʻi Loa.

And that’s the vessel we followed, and when they needed towing, we’d tow them. We had such an exciting time. There were three Hawaiian canoes, the Makolei from the Big Island, the Hōkūleʻa, and the Hawaiʻi Loa.And then a canoe came from New Zealand with Maori people on board. There was a Cook Islands boat, and there were even people from Easter Island – they didn’t have a big voyaging canoe. They all gathered in a sacred place on Raiatea and did some kind of ceremony. Everywhere we went was just fabulous celebration.

Well, the sailing was interesting. We ended up towing two canoes from Tahiti to the Marquesas.

B: That’s quite a distance.

G: 750 miles or something like that. It was a powerful boat. We call it a sailboat but it actually had a propeller that the guy had got off a tugboat. So it was good for towing! It was lots of fun.

We had left our boat in Hawaii, and when we got back [from French Polynesia], then we sailed our boat back here. It was pretty much destroyed again and has been around here ever since. Oh, I remember…we actually cleared for Alaska, but it just got too cold – we’d been in the tropics for too long. I think we’d been in the tropics four or five years. We ended up coming here, [to Victoria]. On the way in we talked about finding work. My wife was a teacher, and by that time, I had refrigeration mechanic papers. And we said that we’ll look for work and wherever we find work, we’ll go there. We were in Victoria for two weeks and looked at each other and said, “We’re not going anywhere else!”

B: This is the best place in Canada!

G: With all that cruising, I would say… Well, I’ve lived in this house longer than anywhere else I’ve lived on the planet. This is the most pleasant place; the weather’s lovely and I just saw a couple hundred starlings fly by. The place is alive with birds, and you can wander anywhere. You can strike up a conversation with anybody on the street and you’ll have a pleasant reaction. This is a very happy place.

B: I agree. This is the longest place I’ve lived in my life in one place. We’ve been in our house 32 years now.

G: I do think the cruising up north – and I lived in Kitimat and we sailed all around there – it’s absolutely gorgeous up there. I kind of kept the boat thinking I’d do that again, but never got around to it.

And actually, I worked as a refrigeration mechanic off and on – I didn’t make much money at it – and then they advertised a job at the Base working on refrigeration on the ships. I applied for that but they said I wasn’t experienced enough. What?! I had ten years! While I was there, there was an ad for a deckhand with the auxiliary fleet, so I applied for that and got hired pretty quickly. I worked for ten years at the Base for the auxiliary fleet, which is the tugboats and barges and things that support the Navy ships. And I ended up working for Environmental Protection, or something like that. Most of the time was spent hauling around those oil containment booms.

Oh, and people had told me, “Oh yeah, you want to be a deckhand. You just do what you’re told on the ship and don’t have to make any decisions.” Well, of course, that lasted about six months and then someone said to me, “You know how to drive a boat, don’t you?” They were pretty amazing boats; [the Navy] had these landing craft that had jet drives. You cannot believe what you can do with those boats. It was quite different than driving anything else.

Oh, I forgot to say when I was in Kitimat – terrible joiner – I ended up working with the Coast Guard Auxiliary Fleet, and while I was with them, they sent me down to Bamfield for a one-week course on driving Zodiacs – can’t remember the specific name. It was the most fun, just terrific! I was doing it with Coast Guard personnel. I ended up being the leader of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. We had a Zodiac and we ended up saving a life or two; towed a lot of boats. And at that time, there was no VHF radio coverage off Kitimat. I really leaned on the Coast Guard, and they ended up putting in a repeater there.

But my sailing was basically pre-electronics. I never had radar on my boat; no chart-plotter. The people in the Polynesian Voyaging Society were all about learning how to sail without any [electronics] – they didn’t even use a compass. It was brilliant to follow. We were following the boat; they were never off-course, never ever; it’s bizarre. (Graham notes that there are a number of books on the topic and then shows Barrie a book called Hawaiki Rising.) So, a whole different philosophy of being at sea. Really, my experience, too, I had described how I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and really, not knowing where I was. I would get within 50 miles; we made a point of going to places that had international airports because they had radio frequencies, and I had a radio frequency detector. It didn’t tell you much but it was good enough to give you a cross-reference.

This guy I know at NOAA talks about getting to a point where you could just feel which direction you need to go and what’s happening next. My sailing experience is much closer to that than [sailing with a lot of electronics.] I watch a lot of videos of people sailing and it seems that they’re always looking at their screens.

B: I must confess that I started out with paper charts, but we had LORAN-C for coastal sailing. I learned how to use a sextant academically but never used it practically.

Early Years of the BCA

B: Let’s talk a bit about BCA.

G: We were in Vancouver; I can’t remember where we were living. It might have been False Creek. There was a marina on the north side that isn’t there anymore. Anyway, there was a whole group of people who had done offshore sailing and were going again. At that time there was the Ocean Cruising Club – I think it was British. Anyway, we all called it the “Ocean Crazy Club”. I don’t really know who decided that it was a good idea to form the Bluewater Cruising Club, but it was definitely needed. We did then pretty much what we do now: we had monthly meetings during the winter and people talked about their experiences, and monthly places where we collected – mostly in the Gulf Islands – in the summer.

B: At the beginning, were courses and that kind of thing started right away or did they develop over time?

G: I don’t really know. The other thing that happened was I moved up to Kitimat so I was only around there for a couple of years, I think.

B: You kept your membership up but you weren’t able to go to the meetings, of course.

G: Well, occasionally. I was down in Vancouver for a few meetings; I think I was actually going to school for awhile every year. (Pause) I couldn’t even tell you the names of people. I kind of vaguely remember their boats. (Laughter)

B: I’m like you. My wife, thank heavens, remembers people’s names. I remember people’s boat’s names.

G: So it’s difficult for me to remember. We were an enthusiastic lot.

B: Everyone likes to hear about weather adventures. Did you have any exciting weather adventures on your travels?

G: Well, I’ve had gales. When I left England, about three days out in the Bay of Biscay, famous for gales, we had a full-on – it was definitely a gale, probably more. But [the Nicholson 35 is] a good strong boat. That’s part of the reason that I bought the boat.

B: Was she rigged as a cutter?

G: No, just a sloop. And at that time, everything was hanked on so when it was time to change the sail, you had to go up to the bow, drop the sail down, and hank on another sail. So sail changing wasn’t very often! And I had put a trysail on. Looking at my log – I haven’t looked at it for many years – basically, I flew it quite a bit.

When I crossed the Atlantic, it was one of those years when the trades weren’t there – they were in a different place than we were, anyway. The Hiscocks did the same trip at about the same time. The Hiscocks were a famous couple from Britain. They said it was the slowest Atlantic crossing.

Basically, I never had really strong wind in the tropics. Had a gale when leaving England and had a gale when we left here for San Francisco. Back then, you didn’t even get weather forecasts. We had a funny little single side band and four times a day they would broadcast the weather. Actually, it was a short-wave radio; you could get a general weather forecast for the whole of the North Pacific.

We did have a bad experience coming back from Hawaii.

B: Most of the time you’re bashing, doing that.

G: I had quite a lot of strong winds, really. Sailing up north, when we left Kitimat to cross to Haida Gwaii, it took three days just to cross Hecate Strait. I remember it was the first kind of offshore sailing that I did with Linda. We ended up doing a painting together. She sat in the cockpit with the windvane steering – we only had the headsail up – and we’re doing hull speed. The waves were terrible and I was throwing up like crazy. And she did the whole trip sitting in the cockpit, loving it! And I thought, “This is all right! I’ve got myself a crewmate!”

B: Similar. My wife is far better. I get terribly seasick. With Sturgeron, I’m fine; it’s a cancer drug, anti-nausea. You have to take it at least twelve hours before you leave.

G: I didn’t often get seasick. It was kind of extreme that time. I guess I did a lot of work by changing sails…just felt under the weather. I think I’m really competent in the boat. If I were to do it again, I think I would have some boat that would stay afloat, whether it was full of water or not.

B: Not many keel boats that can take that. Did you ever consider doing anything other than a keel boat?

G: Oh, yes. My dream boat is a multihull. I don’t have enough money together to do something like that.

B: It’s that elusive 6/49 win.