James Baldwin has once again pulled out his logs, sharpened his memory, and shared the incredible tale of one of his circumnavigations aboard Atom, his 28-foot Pearson Triton. The first circumnavigation, completed in two years, was made by a youth with few dollars in his pocket who set as a goal to walk across each of the islands where he stopped. James named that book Across Islands and Oceans: A Journey Alone Around the World by Sail and by Foot.
That book was published in 2012 and reviewed by Good Old Boat in our August newsletter. It is an excellent tale. In fact, we noted that sailors awaited the story of James’ second circumnavigation. He completed the book about the first half of his second circumnavigation, this time an 11-year voyage with many stops along the way: Bound for Distant Seas.
His second adventure began not long after James returned from the first voyage and felt something like a fish washed up on a beach. He soon began making plans to sail to China. The time was 1986. The long-forbidden country was just beginning to welcome visitors. His financial situation had not improved much over the previous voyage, so James was compelled to work along the way, visiting the cities he avoided on the first round because of the greater expense of living in towns. The conflict for him was that they were also the places where work was to be found. He stayed several months to several years in some of these locations.
James sums up the life of the penniless sailor after Atom’s old jib halyard chafed and broke early in his voyage: “My lockers held an ample supply of used and very used lines that I had rescued from an early death in the Florida marina dumpsters. The shoestring sailor is a master of recycling, or he is going nowhere.”
His travels took him past the Bahamas, between Haiti and Cuba, through the Panama Canal and on to the Galapagos. From there it was Hawaii, where he had relatives and found work as a house painter. Then it was on to Hong Kong and the Philippines. Both in the Galapagos and Hong Kong, where he attempted to get clearance to visit China, he ran into more red tape than he could tolerate and found creative ways to achieve his goals. His trip to China might happen, he learned, only if he became a crewmember on an expedition known as the Marco Polo Voyage. Unfortunately, this expedition was fraught with troubles, which limited his access to mainland China. Undaunted, he turned his sights to other destinations in Asia.
While in Taiwan, James worked as a manager in the Hans Christian factory and just as important, met the girl of his dreams, Mei Huang, who later became his wife. It’s always nice to have a love story in an adventure tale!
The hassles of a very crowded and civilized world finally became more than he could bear and James and Atomleft for an extended cruise in the Philippines. While cruising there, James makes this observation that is valuable to all who cruise under sail: “Passing to leeward was my only safe option. A big part of navigating a small boat can be summed up thus: stay to windward of your destination, stay to leeward of your dangers.”
Bound for Distant Seas leaves us here with the remainder of the voyage to be told in a third book. In the afterword, James does tell those of us who need to know about the love story that Mei later joined him in Trinidad and they were married there. These days the two live in Brunswick, Georgia, where James and Mei continue to maintain Atom and work refitting boats for other sailors.
One of the benefits of writing one’s memoirs long after they actually happened is that the author has the advantage of maturity and the knowledge of how it all turned out. The insight that does not come until decades have passed adds a very worthwhile perspective.
Now, of course, we look forward to the next half of his long excursion in the hope that there was more cruising and less toiling in the cities. We’re looking forward to the rest of the love story and the wedding in Trinidad. And we’re eager to watch the evolving 20-something mature into the 30-something and beyond since we already know the man James Baldwin has become since then and his voyages served to add so much shape and character to his life.
Bound for Distant Seas by James Baldwin; 2015 Atom Voyages.com 380 pages)
