Latitudes and Attitudes, Feb. ’07
I met Tony and Susanne in the Windward Islands in 2000. Susanne was about to single-hand their new boat, So Long, across the North Atlantic to Portugal for a refit. Tony would single-hand Galenaia across to England to sell. So Long is a Rhodes 41, a beautiful yacht from days when they built beautiful yachts. Galenaia is a 27-foot plywood cutter, among the most one-of-a-kind boats that I have had the pleasure to meet. Single-handing the North Atlantic is adventure, which is part of why they do it. But it is only one such adventure, a passage in the middle of their story. Both Tony and Susanne are seasoned solo sailors
I got out the flags for their departure and signalled UW, “Pleasant Voyage”.
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Born to a long line of Scottish ship captains and raised in the south of England, Tony Curphey came naturally to the sea. He’d spent most of the ‘60s as an AB in the merchant navy aboard ships in the order of 12,000 tons. He’d been around the world at least eight times. New Zealand was his favourite stop.
Then came his adventurous trucking career, driving from England across the Netherlands and Germany, down through Soviet Block Europe, across the Bosporus, across Turkey, and out into the desert, Teheran, Iran being a typical destination. Back then the trucks were 14 wheelers and physical to drive. They carried 20 tons of cargo, which was loaded and unloaded by the driver. It was typically a three-week trip crossing many borders. Dangers included being arrested, robbed, or killed, along with accidents and breakdowns. His wife of the time didn’t like the partings. Tony relished the adventure. He owned his own truck, carried all the tools and spares he might need, and kept his papers in order. Here we see the world cruiser. He didn’t like “buddy-driving” (trucks travelling together) he went on his own. Here we see the solo sailor.
Back problems ended Tony’s driving adventure for a time. He spent five years as a telephone operator outnumbered by women ten to one. That’s another story, maybe not the one you think.
Meanwhile, he had moved aboard a converted lifeboat in a boatyard. Thus began his live aboard days, which continue still. In ‘93, he bought Storm Petrel, a 25-foot Folkboat. He learned celestial navigation on his way to the Azores, and went through the Panama Canal to the Pacific in ‘94.
Tony already knew he was headed for New Zealand.
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Susanne Huber’s mother was into sailing before getting married. Her father got into it too. There was always a family yacht, 6.5 metre Liesl for German lakes and a 30 foot Seadog, Glory, on the coast of Yugoslavia.
In ‘86, Susanne single-handed Liesl down the Danube River, from Bavaria, through Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia, into the Black Sea. 1986, recall, was still Cold War years. The countries below Austria were in the Soviet Block, where the mood was suspicion and fear. Liesl was frequently searched for stowaways – one was not allowed to escape, even in the wrong direction. The Danube flowed more than a thousand miles behind the Iron Curtain into a stronghold of the Soviet Navy, the Black Sea. During the trip, the Chernobyl accident happened, further increasing safety and security concerns. The imagery is a bit like a hobbit travelling from the Shire to the stark gloom of Mordor in "Lord of the Rings". But Susanne was not a hobbit. She was already a sailor and had been single-handing in Yugoslavia. Her wilderness test, her forty days and forty nights on the Danube, had been by choice. She passed out of the Soviet gloom through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. She later cruised Turkey and Greece and eventually closed the loop to Yugoslavia.
That was all vacation sailing. Susanne was an architect. Five years into her career, opportunity called: She could take over the firm for which she worked. But it would surely curtail her sailing. Susanne chose the sailing, beginning with a two-year cruise to the Caribbean.
Susanne’s father Franz, at age 79, still cruises in the Med, usually solo, aboard the current family yacht, his dream boat, Niña, a Nicholson 32. Franz encourages his daughter’s adventures. He thought Liesl not seaworthy enough. So he gave her the family flagship, the 30 foot Seadog, Glory.
Susanne single-handed from Turkey to Gibraltar where, it happened, she took on crew for her Atlantic crossing. “That didn’t work at all.”
For five years she cruised the Caribbean from Venezuela to the Bahamas, Central America, and the East Coast of the US. Family flew in for vacations, and Susanne’s two nephews were conceived aboard. Glory became Susanne’s home.
Susanne decided to circumnavigate. Glory passed through the Panama Canal into the Pacific in ‘95.
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Tony’s passage to the Marquesas took 51 days. Chichester said that 35 days alone was powerful medicine. Susanne had a dog and stopped at the Galapagos Islands. Ellen MacArthur was never alone. So much, and more, is the range of single-handed sailing. Tony and Susanne made their way across the Pacific with the flow of wind and sea, each on their own schedule, each unaware of the other’s existence, each living the life of their choice. Storm Petrel was already in New Zealand when Glory arrived, but Tony was off earning more cruising money, another driving adventure.
German friends, Günter and Dagmar aboard Guste, told Susanne about this wonderful single-hander they wanted her to meet. Susanne responded as one might expect of a female solo-sailor: “Not another male single-hander!” Females cruising solo meet a lot of them – in particular, the ones who would rather have a mate. But don’t worry about Tony. Unlike many male single-handers, Tony was solo because he wanted to be. And like most female single-handers, Susanne was solo because she wanted to be. Nevertheless, it was instant romance.Glory and StormPetrel cruised the South Pacific in company for a year, New Zealand, Fiji, Tuvalu, and the Solomons, several passages and many anchorages. To their mutual surprise, they got engaged in Fiji and married in a cruiser-style ceremony in the Solomons. Then, as man and wife, each aboard their own yacht, they sailed over Australia via the Torres Strait, across the Indian Ocean, around Good Hope and up the South Atlantic and North Atlantic via St. Helena and the Azores, to England, with several stops along the way. The customs officer on St. Helena commented that he had cleared many yachts with unmarried couples but that Tony and Susanne were the first married couple he had cleared on separate yachts.
Susanne was not actually sailing alone. Lucky, a small, black, terrier-type mongrel, had come aboard in Gibraltar. She had been a puppy, but became a sea dog. Lucky’s whole life was cruising the world aboard Glory with Susanne. At age nine, bound from St. Helena for the Azores, having finished her circumnavigation eleven days earlier when Glory crossed her outward track, Lucky died, peacefully. Glory and Storm Petrel had parallel tracks from St. Helena, but had been out of sight for 39 days – for a while at a significant distance, sailing independent strategies. They had been converging, but had been becalmed. When Lucky died, Storm Petrel was within outboard distance. With Storm Petrel trailing astern Glory, Susanne and Tony gave Lucky a proper sailor’s burial in 2000 fathoms. The calm continued for a week.
In England, they sold their boats and fitted out Galenaia, a 27-foot plywood boat that hadn’t been in the water for a quarter century, which Tony happened to already own, and sailed across the Atlantic – their first passage together on the same boat – to the Caribbean where they would search out a boat for the two of them. In Bequia, when I met them in 2000, I wrote in their memories book, “Years ago I decided the perfect relationship: he’s got his boat, she’s got hers. Well, you had it, now you’ve blown it.” They had finally crossed an ocean together and now had a big boat for the two of them. “No, wait, now you’ve restored it!” my entry continues. Having found their boat, it was now time for each to single-hand an ocean again, Galenaia to be sold in England, So Long for a refit in Portugal. “Damn, now I’m all confused,” I concluded, and wished them Fair Winds.
From Portugal, together aboard So Long, they would cross oceans to New Zealand and beyond.
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I met them in the Windward Islands again nearly six years later. So Long came into the bay and anchored. Then in came Galenaia. They were still together. I mean, they were still solo. Damn, confused again.
Tony, Susanne and I have each lived aboard for quite a while. Mostly, we have been single-handers, a tendency that seems to reach back to childhood. We love freedom, adventure, sailing, self-sufficiency and the sense of accomplishment it brings. For the most part, we don’t mind being different, though we are more like you than not. Our differences mostly lie in the choices we make... in the context of opportunities available. And there is a matter of degree: my cruising ground is a small part of a single sea, they cross oceans.
Susanne and Tony rescued Honey in Portugal. Honey joined the crew in Lucky’s capacity. Honey, because of severe pet laws along the way, also changed their cruising plans. So they went to Cape Horn via Brazil, instead of New Zealand via Good Hope, and spent a year cruising the Pacific side of South America as far north as the Juan Fernandez Archipelago (Robinson Crusoe Island), 33.5º South. They then crossed from Cape Horn to Cape Town. It was a 41-day passage in which So Long took a serious knockdown, well past horizontal, shipping some two tonnes of water, with damage aloft. They’d been under staysail alone, which was torn from its clew, perhaps saving the rig. They ran bare poles for the next 41 hours streaming a series drogue. Honey has become a sea dog and has sea legs to prove it.
Far more might be said of their southern latitudes adventures, of the Beagle Channel, Cape Horn, their wintering grounds, and of tight, hazard bound anchorages hammered by gusts from all directions in which lines ashore were the only way to stay off the rocks... kind of like hurricane mooring without mangroves in frigid temperatures (sometimes in a blow) as a regular routine. They showed me their Patagonia photos. What one struggles to see in such pictures is the vastness. Patagonia’s vastness seems to specialize in massiveness. It is a favourite of mountaineers. Incredible vistas were a reward, not Susanne and Tony’s reason for going. Was seeing to the survival of their boat (and therefore themselves) part of the reason? Or part of the price? Surely, part of the reward. Cruising writers Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger aboard Hawk, estimated two dozen yachts cruising those waters at the time, about half of which Hawk kept track of... one of which was lost with all hands. Leonard takes the two-dozen yachts as an indication how common such cruising has become. That brings a smile to us crowd-bound tropical yachties.
“The Pacific... so vast...” Tony trails off. More might be said of their other adventures, as well.
From Cape Town, Tony returned to England. Susanne (and Honey) single-handed So Long to the Azores, where Tony met her with a rose between his teeth. Then the three, aboard So Long, sailed to Spain.
Susanne likes sharing the experience. Aboard Glory, her letters to the Seadog Association had made her a bit of a celebrity. She was among the few out there doing it. And as a female single-hander, no less. She has also contributed to Trans-Ocean, a German cruising network’s quarterly publication. She decided she wanted to help more women get involved in offshore sailing. Encouraged by Tony, she offered a series of passages aboard So Long for women only. The three offered berths were filled on each leg: Spain to Madeira, Canaries, Azores, Madeira, and Canaries. The cumulative total was 3100 nautical miles. Tony soloed the route with them, single-handing Galenaia. Compared to the many major ocean passages they had now done solo and together, this was mere island hopping on the scale of their South Seas romp after meeting in New Zealand.
From the Canaries, Susanne, with Honey and a seasick but determined woman as crew, and Tony, solo aboard Galenaia, crossed to Antigua. They cruised Venezuela for most of the North Atlantic’s awesome ‘05 hurricane season (which finished with Zeta, the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, in January ‘06 (whatever its cause, global warming is real). Then they sailed to Carriacou in the Windwards to haul out and prepare their two yachts for whatever is next.
Northbound from Carriacou, they stopped in Bequia to visit Tom Hopman and Sally Erdle, previous owners who had done a six year circumnavigation aboard So Long before retiring from cruising to publish the Caribbean Compass, “The Caribbean’s Monthly Look at Sea & Shore”. Then Susanne sailed So Long over St. Vincent, Tony sailed Galenaia under St. Vincent, and they met again in St. Lucia.
There are no records being set or broken here, this is adventure for adventure’s sake. And it is a tale of romance.
Designed and built by her first owner, Galenaia has homemade blocks, cleats, and winches, whip staff steering, a stove built to fit the tea kettle, and the biggest barometer I’ve ever seen. Formerly a ketch, her truncated mizzenmast is now dedicated to the solar panels. She is among the most one-of-a-kind boats that I’ve had the pleasure to meet. And she sails real good.