When did you decide to make this trip?
It has been in the back of my mind since I bought my current boat, White Bird (Cheoy Lee 41 Offshore), in November 2015 that I have to bring it with me wherever the wind blows me to after graduating from my doctorate at New York University (NYU), but the actual decision to make this Atlantic crossing was very spontaneous.
Let me explain some of the background preceding my decision. I kept extending my PhD in Economics to be able to learn sailing and to get the boat ready for an ocean crossing by the time I graduate. In July 2018, I got the very last permission to extend my PhD for another year. During the summer holidays I crewed on Jacek Rajch's 36ft sailboat Osprey across the Atlantic. On the way, I realized that my boat is still too much of a project and that since I decided to try my best to get a good job as a professor, I won't have time to get the boat and myself ready for any major offshore sailing – at best I might be able to bring my boat to Mexico ...if I got a job there.
Then I spent half a year selling myself into academia. I had to update my CV, rewrite my working research papers into a somewhat presentable form, and create a website describing myself as a PhD candidate looking for an academic job. At the same time I changed my Facebook name and hid my blog and any other traces of my peculiar life. That my efforts were rather unsuccessful I learned while setting up my job market presentation at a research institute in Prague – after their secretary checked with me that I succeeded in copying the slides into their computer, she asked me full of curiosity: "And what will you do with your boat?"
That silenced me for a second and in a shock I asked: "Err err, ...how do you know about that?"
She replied full of enthusiasm: "We all have listened to your interview in Radio Wave..." While I was remembering all the nonstrategic information I revealed in that interview, she added: "But it's not better here than what you described about NYU, the students also lose their spirit after the first year of the PhD!"
It became a common practice for PhD candidates in Economics to apply to nearly 200 places. My aim was at about half of that number since the demand for economic theoreticians is low and the opportunity cost of submitting applications for a dislexiatician is high. However, I ended up applying even to much less places. The trick was in that the deadline for most applications was November 15, the day on which the first snow storm of that winter arrived to NYC. My wind forecasting application was showing red numbers starting from the afternoon that day. My boat was still off-the-shore on a mooring, and staying in the city was not an option for me since I already promised my boat-couch to two girls who were finishing their round-the-world trip. It would be a shame if the girls sunk after surviving all their adventures around the world, so I planned to leave my office early to increase the chance we get in the boat before the real storm comes.
At 3pm I was still only half done with the applications, but I had to pick up the fellow adventurers and rush to the boat. The snow storm already did its job and the buses from Pelham Bay Park to City Island stopped operating. On foot we would arrive too late, so we had to order an Uber ride despite the peaking price (everyone was trying to get a ride in the traffic chaos). When we finally got to the marina on City Island my dinghy was already full of snow. The change of weather was so sudden, that the docks were still warm and melting the bottom layers of snow. Just imagine how slippery the docks must have been! Throwing the snow away and safely loading the crew with their backpacks into my tiny dinghy was more fun than usually:
Now! Quickly! Let's row to the big boat! The wind kept picking up and my fingers were already freezing. I had to pay extra care to balance the dinghy precisely, as we were just a few inches above the water level. Luckily, the wind was blowing from the North and the waves in that bay don't build up from that side. Honestly, I was surprised how little waves we met despite the raising winds – I was ready for worse. I thought I could submit a few more applications from the boat using my mobile internet, but listening to the adventurous stories of my guests was a way too tempting. The next day my guests admitted that, especially after arriving from the warm Caribbean, visiting my boat in the middle of a snow storm redefined the concept of adventure to them.
Once the job applications were sent, I had to prepare a presentation of my job market paper, and endlessly practice job interviews. I was not interested to get a job in the US despite the fact that the academic conditions are very favorable there. I sent my application all over the world, particularly focusing on Latin America as I've been interested in the culturally rich environment there – I love the people with an open heart who live from day to day, ...especially in contrast with the numb way of life in the US. However, I perhaps did not succeed in convincing any of the Latin American schools that I'm not as bad as I seem, and that I indeed see Latin America as my first choice, not as the last resort.
My situation in the job market was very peculiar. On the one hand, I was graduating from one of the top economic departments in the US, having a strong recommendation letter from my advisor. Thus, many institutions would perhaps disregard my application expecting me to be "too good for them". However, those who gave me a chance and had a second look could also notice that my PhD is going to take entire 8 years (assuming I indeed graduate) instead of the standard 5 or 6, and that I have not published any of my papers since I left Taiwan. And finally, those who went as far as Googling my name and searching for my website would instead come across the NY Post article describing my life aboard a boat with no toilet – doing my business either directly in the water or in the Church across the street. I guess that is how I lost my chance to spread my idealogy in the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Our courting went well until they perhaps conducted a background search on me; at least that is what I guess since the half-an-hour interview extended into an hour long discussion.
Adding all the factors together, I was lucky to get invited to give a job talk at least in some of the very democratic countries: Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. I missed my visit of the Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan since I lost half of my earlobe a few days before my flight and I was afraid to lose the second half due to the extreme cold there. Although I have good memories for my visit of both Turkey and Ukraine, I am very grateful for ending up doing a postdoc in Prague. CERGE-EI is a well recognized research institute and the postdoc I was offered came with great conditions. What is more, as they hired me despite for having abundance of inside information on me being more of a problem maker than a problem solver, I expect to feel well in their environment.
After signing up a job contract in Prague I returned to NYC in the middle of April 2019 being dedicated to make the best out of the last few months at the department of Economics at NYU. In particular, I wanted to use the support of their faculty as a guidance on the way to get my research ready for publishing. My plan was to leave my boat on a mooring in NYC hoping it won't sink during the three years of my postdoc in Prague, and that hopefully I will be able to come for holidays to NYC and do some sailing, or rather emergency repairs over those years. It seemed much more rational to just sell the boat and avoid having a liability on the other side of the big pond. However, as is a curse to every boat owner, the boat was symbolizing my dream, and I did not want to give it up. After returning back on my boat, I first had to do some work on it as I completely neglected it over the past months during which I focused all my energy towards getting an academic job. It took me a week or two to fix the leaks, clean the chimney and make the diesel stove work and wash out all the mildew. Being back on my boat, the feeling of being alive came back to me after losing my soul in the effort to myself look serious. The sparkle returned to my eyes and I realized that the boat means for me more than I thought. The hard work of preparing myself for the job market taught me some discipline and I realized that suddenly I'm also able to finish projects on my boat in a fraction of time. At that point the crazy though appeared, that if I kept going like that and dedicated all my effort to fixing the boat, I might be able to cross the Atlantic this summer and bring the boat to Europe. I was initially skeptical about bringing the boat to Europe as it might be cheaper for me to keep flying to NYC rather than paying for keeping the boat in some of the marinas in the Mediterean and yet having to fly there from Prague. Finally, I got the idea to bring the boat to Szczecin. Szczecin is only 5-6 hours by bus from Prague, I have friends there who can introduce me to the local boating community, and I really like the warmth of the polish people. I started contemplating about the crazy idea of crossing the ocean this summer, and in a few days I came up with the list of things that I need to get done to get the boat ready. I instantly made a schedule for the following 13 weeks, giving me a time frame how I need to progress if I want to be able to depart before the hurricane season starts. In the following four months besides defending my thesis and graduating from NYU, I did more work on the boat than I did over all the past years. I was organized and fully dedicated as never before. I started finding a new face of myself. Being always the man of the hypothetical thought, I was fascinated by discovering the man of the action in myself.
What about the trip were you looking for the most?
Honestly, the thing I was looking for the most before we departed was when all the preparations would be done and I would have a moment to turn off or just to play with something that is not essential for the trip. I couldn't wait for the moment when I would be able to tell myself: "I've done my best preparing everything. We are in the middle of the ocean, if we forgot something, there is nothing we can do about it." On the other hand, the thought that the missing thing could be something essential was what kept me most uneasy during the preparations.
How did you find your crew?
I would usually get crew by accident, typically it would consist of CouchSurfers who I offer to host with the condition that the boat will be moving and they will have to help me to steer the boat. Once I even jumped at opportunity when my Russian colleague got drunk at a school party and found himself on my boat the next morning, curing hangover by seasickness. My methods would work when I needed to get someone to hold my steering wheel for a day or two until the next chance to run away shows up. However, finding captives for all the way from NYC to Europe took more calculation.
Just imagine my situation! I found my way to graduate, I found my way to get a job, but now: Where to find someone who has a month or two of free time, who won't get seasick upon reaching the open ocean, who is willing to crew on a sailboat that has even less experience on the ocean than its captain, and who is not an absolute idiot?!
A serious challenge was that I was requiring a financial contribution towards the boat maintenance. I'm fun of the free culture, but I don't accept being the one who would have to bare all the expenses just because of being the boat owner. I have no problem to accept the risks on my side since I'm the captain, but I want my crew to at least partially share the expected costs of the boat wear. I think that most sailors must have found my demands insane: "This dude with almost no experience makes himself a captain and expects the crew to pay him for having the privilege to steering his old boat, which they have to help him fix first. Why won't I rather crew for free on one of the many luxury boats with self-steering and electric winches and yet get free food?" I offered shared adventure while sharing expenses of it. Finding people interested in it was hard, but it attracted a diverse group of characters.
Initially, I knew Travis from Virginia. I met Travis via CouchSurfing two years ago when I was looking for friends in Deltaville – a little town in the middle of nowhere in the Chesapeake Bay, where I temporarily kept my boat at that time. Travis had a considerable experience sailing, great boat maintenance skills, and we sailed together from Deltaville to New York City a year ago.
When I mentioned my Israeli ex-girlfriend that I plan to cross the Atlantic, she recommended me a Facebook group for finding crew. Soon after posting in the group that I'm looking for mostly inexperienced crew to cross the Atlantic with, I was contacted by a German lady in her fifties who had done all kinds of extreme sports and in particular she got famous for continuing her adventures on a prosthetic leg after she fell while climbing. I thought that she would be the perfect survival buddy, the one that does not give up struggling with any situation until losing all her limbs. Unfortunately, the more we discussed the more I got the feeling that she was too opinionated and it would become a problem on the ocean. She raised a lot of good points and I appreciate her comments, but being a young inexperienced captain I can not effort to take with me anyone too dominant.
Interestingly, the second response was also from a German lady. Esther was a free-diver in her twenties. Her approach was kind of opposite. She was cool with absolutely everything: starting from making a financial contribution towards maintenance of the boat and helping with the preparations, and ending with the risks involved in a trip like this and me being far from being an experienced sailor. I liked her positive and friendly approach, yet I felt that it leaves me with more responsibility than I would wish. In contrast, people who asked me detailed questions could make me insecure about my role as a captain, but the discussions would make me feel that we partially share the responsibility.
Then I posted on Craigslist in the ride sharing section and I kept reposting for over three month. I kept getting responses from all kinds of people, yet finding the right characters among them was nontrivial. Eventually I realized that finding crew members among Greengos would be hard for multiple reasons. Excuse my judgement now, but in the most powerful nation in the world, people who are not self-centered, making absurd claims about their skills and qualities, or being helpless outside of the comfort zone, are somewhat more rare. In fact, I knew one perfect contra-example to this trend, someone I knew shortly and who I will never forget, but being a sensitive person, facing the reality of his own country led him all the way to suicide.
That being said, I think I was quite lucky for my crew. I also appreciate that all of the crew members got actively involved with the preparations for the trip, perhaps thanks to Esther who would never hesitate to learn new skills and get things done and who set up a perfect example to others.
Who taught you yachting?
When I got my first sailboat 5 years ago as a place to live on, I knew absolutely nothing about boats. Engine was the rusted devil's machine under the entrance steps and sails were the bulky moulded bags occupying space under my triangle-bed. Two years later, I took a beginner's course of sailing offered by TASCA, a small club run mostly by retired Americans. Besides that the course was cheap, I liked the sense of community there. I learned some basic principles of the sail trim there, but the course did not really inspire me into sailing. The main pride of the organization was that during the thirty years of its functioning nobody got ever hurt there. The volunteer teachers were extremely precautious about everything and that made sailing to me as exciting as tying shoe-laces.
Nevertheless, I thought I should learn to sail since I had a sailboat. In fact, I already had three sailboats while I still did not know how to hoist a sail. I did not see any inspiration around. I mostly experienced two extreme types of neighbors. Those who had boat wracks for smoking weed on them; and those who had shiny boats to sink money in and maybe sail them once or twice a year. Neither of the two appealed to me. I had a boat to save money, not to spend money. What is more, I had other boats to rent them on Airbnb and make money.
Everything changed for me by meeting the legendary Polish sailor Jacek Rajch in August 2016. When my Polish friends told me about him and that he has just anchored in my marina. I did not hesitate, I grabbed a bottle of wine, and swam over to his boat. His boat was like a treasure land to me – full of ingenious inventions. Almost all he had there was made from parts he found on shipwrecks. He did not even buy any of his towels; he would usually find them wrapped around his anchor as a cause of the anchor dragging. A few days later Jacek sailed from Brooklyn to the yearly American meeting of Polish sailors (Polish Randewo) that was somewhere in Connecticut, so I made arrangements to join him. I had no sailing skills to show off, but I impressed Jacek as a professional hull scraper.
Soon Jacek sailed away and I started teaching as a TA at school, besides renting the two other boats I had. My first opportunity to make a larger sailing trip with Jacek was in January 2017. I hurried my family Christmas holidays in Czech, so that I could take the cheapest flight to Florida over New Years Eve. I was warmly welcomed by Jacek. I thought he would be celebrating as that was the way I remembered him. However, since there were no girls onboard, Jacek's care for NYE did not go far beyond sharing one shot of rum and going to sleep two hours before midnight, while listening to a scrapping radio.
The next morning, we went shopping at the nearby supermarket. Shopping with Jacek is a real experience, maybe even more interesting than the sailing itself. He won't buy much more beyond onion, garlic, wine and beer, but his comments on the other things you might try to buy were remarkable. Just to pick out an example: "Oranges? Apples? Why should we buy fruits? We have plenty of fruits! You did not see all the starfruit I got from Jurek?" The next most memorable moment was having breakfast with Jacek. He did not like my idea of cooking oats for breakfast, so we had bread with onions and tomatoes. Jacek suggested that we should first finish the old bread before opening the bread we just bought. I won't mind the baguette being like a hard rubber, but the smell was strange. I looked at it and noticed some mold. I showed it to Jacek and asked if I could take the fresh bread we bought.
He said: "Nevermind, I'll eat it myself."
-"But it is moulded."
"Where? I don't see anything!"
-"All these spots," I replied.
Jacek took a dirty towel and wiped the surface off the bread, commenting: "Pavel, it's just penicillin."
-"Are you sure?" I questioned.
"Remember! White mold is yeast, green mold is penicillin,..."
-"Jacek, but this mold is black, it's the deadly one!"
"It's green."
-"No, Jacek, this is black!"
"Whatever, I eat it myself. I'm an old man, I only care to die before my wife does."
We took off in the early afternoon, ready for sailing to the Caribbean. However, as much of unreasonable good luck I have for myself, that much of unreasonable bad luck I bring to others. It did not take more than two hours on the Intracoastal Waterway before Jacek's engine suddenly overheated and stopped. All the engine oil was out in the bilge. Jacek instantly stopped the bilge pump and we collected all the oil. Should we keep the oil in bottles to later dispose of it at a gas station? No, we pour it back in the engine. After reading in books on how the oil and fuel has to be completely clean, dry, and multiple times filtered, this practice was quite new to me. However, we were out of luck trying to start the engine. The engine was completely seized as never happened to Jacek before. Finally, there was an opportunity for me to learn! Sailing in the light breeze against the current in the Intracoastal channel and trying to pass under a bridge was one of the lessons. As Jacek expected, the wind died while passing under the bridge that opened just for us and all the traffic was waiting for us to pass. We tried to move the boat by grabbing the wooden piles by the bridge pillars, but the contra current was too strong, and as the bridge operators were progressively losing patience with us, we had to give up. We anchored in front of the bridge waiting for the current to revert, but the anchor started dragging and soon we ended up grounded on the other side of the channel. I was happy to have an opportunity to learn the professional way to get off the ground without using an engine. The boat was sitting too hard, so we did not manage to move it. All we could do was to wait for the high tide. I suggested to cook dinner. "Cook? Why should we cook when we have fresh food?!" Jacek reacted. It was early evening already and we had no lunch at all, I was starving already. “Alright, so we will have salad for lunch and dinner”, I thought. I took initiative to make the salad. I made what I thought would be modest two portions. Jacek looked at it and said: "How much did you make? We will eat it for the whole week! What did you put in? You put in the whole paprika?! Whole Tomato? Two tomatoes?!" Jacek took a handful of the salat, suggested that I also take some, and told me not to worry, that we will leave the rest for the following days. I asked Jacek if he did not mind, I'd like to finish the salad as I was really hungry. This time he responded positively: "Sure, if you really want to eat all of that, it’s the best, at least we'll have no leftovers."
I spent the following three weeks watching as Jacek was fixing the engine under the guidance of his friend Jurek. For the first time of having the boat for over 25 years, he had to take the engine completely apart and replace the cylinder liners. I was really glad to have the opportunity to learn from someone else's misfortunes, although Jacek did not let me touch the engine.
I returned to my boat in New York City at the end of January. After spending three weeks on Jacek's boat only hearing stories about sailing I felt motivated to sail my boat. Since nobody wanted to join me in the freezing weather, I had to learn single-handing a sailboat in the middle of the winter.
I met Jacek a few more times. When I learned that Jacek was docking his boat in Virginia in the end of September 2017, I instantly decided to sail my Cheoy Lee 41 there from New York City despite my engine was broken and I just barely figured out some improvised way to rig the sails. I thought that the opportunity to dock my boat next to Jacek's and learn directly from the guru was worth the challenge. Not even talking about that I had to commute about 10 hours each way between Deltaville, VA to NYC each week to teach at New York University, while being homeless in the city. Jacek spent only a month in Virginia while my boat got locked there over the whole winter. However, even the short time he spent in my company brought him enough luck to break his mast in the Caribbean. Again, it was the first time that such a severe misfortune happen to him. Unfortunately for me though, I was not on the boat with him to learn how he fixes the broken mast by fitting a piece of another mast inside and riveting everything together.
I finally got the opportunity to cross the Atlantic with Jacek in July 2018. Honestly, there is nothing for me to be proud of about crossing the Atlantic this way. Jacek barely let me do some of the sail changes. Besides that, there were only night watches while the windvane self-steering and the wind generator were doing all the job. I was hoping for a storm or at least to have a chance to learn some boat maintenance from Jacek. Alas, no storm came and everything was fixed on the boat already – Jacek spent most of the days trying to fix his one-dollar torch. I was out of luck for any major misfortunes this time. We only ripped two sails, broke one of the two forestays, and cracked the windvane. We fixed everything by the time we reached the Azores and I had to be glad for these very few accidents to learn from.
Which way you plan to do the crossing?
We will follow the Gulf stream as far as we can on the way to the Azores. Then we sail towards the coast of Europe, perhaps North of France. I would like to sail all the way to Szczecin, but I'm not sure if I will have time to go all the way there as we left late and I start a postdoc in Prague in September. Actually, we followed Jacek in tandem using VHF for the first three days, but then we lost connection and continued on our own.
Who is your buddy?
The two people that helped me the most with the preparations of this trip were Esther and Travis. However, my special thank belongs to my Czech friend Jan Anděl, whose help is special by that he did all the work without expecting being rewarded by crossing the Atlantic on the boat. Honza booked his flight to visit me in New York City before I decided that I'm going to make this Atlantic crossing. However, he was flexible about the change of plans and instead of using my boat as base for his NYC explorations, he sailed with us to Virginia and dedicated over ten days of his holidays to hard work on fixing the sails and converting them from the roller-furler tape style to the old fashioned hanked-on style.
The trip would perhaps not happen without the mechanical skills of Travis. He got me lots of boat parts for free, we discussed the technical details of the boat almost every day even before he got onboard. I also learned from him how to do some of the boat work properly instead of relying on luck. I think we mutually inspire each other a lot, I see him as the one who has the technical skills and who knows the standard ways to sail a boat; while I have the courage, flexible mind, and energy to jump and quickly deal with any situation by improvising. The contrast between our approaches and personalities led to arguments that made Honza comment that observing us is like watching “Pat a Mat”.
Finally, the person who is crucial on this trip is Esther. She was really sent to me from the Heaven. Not only that she has done more work that all the others altogether, but mainly she has been the one who would resolve all the social conflicts into smile, whilst I had neither energy nor interest to deal with other people's shit. Esther came with no knowledge of sailing or boat maintenance, but she would always surprise me how fast she learns. I can't forget how I was struggling trying to repack the stuffing box. After one hour of removing the waxed thread from the tight space my hands were all scratched and I was not far from swearing. She asked me if I needed help when she was passing by. Looking at her beautiful delicate hands I was about to say that I have to manage myself somehow. Yet, I gave it a chance and said: "Actually yes. Could you try this?" She spent another three hours removing the waxed thread from even deeper spots. During the whole process she kept smile on her face and her hands got no scratches at all. Then she spent another three hours putting new waxed thread in. I was told to put in at least three loops, one by one, but this stuffing box sunk at least eight loops of thread. Perhaps any other girl would send me to hell upon my arrogant response: "It is still lose? So just add another loop of thread." While adding each loop meant unscrewing the stuffing box all the way, squeezing the new loop inside, and screwing it back,...all of that at a hardly accessible space. When Esther was done, it did not let me ask her how-come she can still be smiling after hours of such a tedious job. She replied: "I had a good time listening to the Greek legends that I found on your phone, and in the meantime, it got done."
