A few days ago, I stuck my nose in our Little Library and discovered a collection of 10 Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels. I hadn’t read any of these books since leaving Coot twenty-five years ago. The three or four books I read in the 1980s and 90s were acquired haphazardly in trades with other boaters and read without order or coherence. I set the stack of books beside my chair, took a look at the top one, started reading, and finished it the next morning. I arranged the books in order, starting with Master and Commander, and I am now on the fifth one.
I delight in the sailing descriptions. O’Brian manages to bring the life and times of the British Navy in the 18th century to life better than any other author I know. I just finished reading his account of a stormy crossing of Biscay Bay in Desolation Island, and it rang true to my own 1984 experience of that body of water. Despite the difference between a 74-gun ship of the line and a 38-foot ketch, extensive repairs were required in both cases.
More from Jim Sollars
Like Kent, Jim is from Sheridan, Wyoming, and became a sailor and a writer. Unlike Kent, Jim is prolific, with books published on Amazon in both October and November this year. Here is his latest thriller:
Friends from the Past
We are following the adventures of Ned and Kate Phillips on Instagram, the same Ned and Kate Pam and Kent met more than thirty years ago in the Chesapeake (October 1994). (See Chapter 11, Going South, pp. 109-11.) They are now sailing from England to the Cape Verde Islands and beyond. Coincidently, if all goes to plan, Kent and Linnea will arrive via the ninety-eight-passenger Corinthian at Santiago Island in the Cape Verde Islands on Christmas morning (one month from today), but we will almost certainly miss Ned and Kate.
Kate at the Helm
Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!
“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
—E.B. White, author
Reflection, Tingley Pond, Albuquerque Bosque, November 24, 2025
While we were in Indonesia in May, I saw a notice on my phone for a 36-foot sailboat for sale in Albuquerque for the ridiculously low asking price of $10,000. “Very odd to find an ocean-going sailboat in Albuquerque,” I thought, and out of curiosity, after we returned home, I wrote a note to the seller asking for more information. She told me that she had recently inherited the boat from her grandfather but not his sailing genes to go with it and wanted to sell it. It was an old boat built in Taiwan in 1977 and stored in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico. She could tell me almost nothing about the boat and said to contact a fellow in San Carlos for more information. I did not know about his connection to the boat, but I wrote asking for more details. I got very little information in response, so I turned to Google and found an old for-sale notice for the boat. It had a few pictures and a partial equipment list. It had at one time been outfitted for blue-water cruising.
I began thinking I could afford it. Wouldn’t having a boat down on the Sea of Cortez, a body of water I had long dreamed of cruising, be fun? I imagined Linnea and I could make quick trips down to San Carlos, then gunk-hole up and down Baja and the mainland. We should not have to upgrade expensive equipment if we didn’t plan on extensive voyaging. So, we made a quick trip to San Carlos to take a look.
We spent a night on the way with our friend Jim in Green Valley, Arizona. Jim had a boat built in Taiwan in 1977 and sailed the Pacific for years before returning to Los Angeles and selling the boat. Then, about the time Pam, the boys, and I sailed through the Atlantic and the Caribbean, he took his wife and family on another voyage through the Pacific.
Jim and I grew up in Sheridan, Wyoming. His older brother was my high school classmate. Jim was interested in the boat, and because he was familiar with boats of that vintage built in Taiwan, I invited him to join us. He would know more about what we were looking at than I would. However, he declined because a back issue limited his walking.
After arriving in San Carlos, I investigated the cost of storing the boat and decided it was more than I wanted to pay. The whole trip had been a fool’s errand; nevertheless, I wanted to see the boat. It seemed to be in good shape for a vessel its age and would be a bargain for a younger person willing to put in a lot of labor (and some money) to bring it up to cruising condition.
On our return trip to Albuquerque, we spent the night with Jim again, and I filled him in on what I had found. Jim had just finished filling quart bottles of his homemade rum when we arrived late afternoon. We had a pizza for dinner and sampled his rum before and after.
“Two old men and a boat would make a good story!” Linnea said, going to bed and leaving us to our boat talk. We drank another glass of rum and imagined two old men getting an old boat and fixing it up. They wouldn’t just for gunk-hole around the sea of Cortez. Oh, no! They’d spend a year or two or three sailing the Pacific. My, that was good rum.
Our talk ignited a dream I thought I had put to rest 25 years ago when Pam and I left our boat for the last time. Our talk of the boat, or perhaps it was the rum, ignited something in Jim, as well, because, after a third glass, we were no longer imaging what a good story it would make; we were talking about how we should proceed to check out the boat more thoroughly and what it would take to prepare it for voyaging in the Pacific.
Hearing about our ideas in the morning, Linnea still thought “Two Old Men and a Boat” would make a great story. Maybe Jim and I could make it happen.
Back home in Albuquerque, all I could think about was the boat and the opportunity, even at my age, to fulfill my long-held dream of sailing the Pacific. I planned to return to the boat for a thorough inspection with my new partner, Jim, who had some medical appointments and a trip planned that would postpone our trip to Mexico for a month and a half.
Yesterday morning, after a couple of weeks of not hearing from Jim, he called to tell me he could not proceed. The medical report on his back was discouraging, and while vacationing with his family, he realized he could no longer keep up.
I should not have been surprised that Jim was not up to it. Nevertheless, I was so gripped by the idea that I couldn’t drop it. Who else did I know who might be footloose and crazy enough to join me sailing the Pacific? Maybe my childhood friend, Dick, a passably healthy, active widower, might be tempted?
“Hi, Dick! Do you want to sail the Pacific with me in an old boat?” I ran out of minutes on my phone as I talked, but I could tell he was excited about getting out and doing something adventuresome. However, he’d never sailed, never had a dream of sailing, and this would probably not be an adventure he would have chosen. Nevertheless, after talking on the phone, I wrote a long e-mail laying out everything I thought would be involved and spelled out my dream.
Where was Linnea in all of this? I knew she would not, and I did not expect her to give up her active and engaged life in Albuquerque to live on a boat for a year or two. I imagined she would fly to places we visited, and we could tour them together. She might accompany us on some of the shorter passages from island to island. We’ve talked about visiting Australia together for years; that is where we’d wait out the typhoon season for several months.
I had not thought about the burden I would be dumping on her—the constant maintenance and repairs our property requires. Nor was I thinking about how my traipsing off to sail the Pacific without her would seem to her. Did I not care for her? Or for the life that we had made together? She knew that my earlier sailing dream had formed when I was anxious to escape the life I was living. Was I doing the same thing again? This morning, as we talked, I realized that I didn’t want to escape anything. I love the life I have now.
So, I wrote Dick to apologize for even bringing up my crazy idea with him—I knew this was not his thing. I was acting on the rebound from losing Jim’s partnership. I wrote to the boat owner and told her I was no longer interested in buying. As Linnea says, I don’t have to sail the Pacific to tell a story about two old men and an old boat. I could make up a good story. Maybe I will.
Below: Kent at home and scenes from San Carlos.
Postscript: I was about to post this when I got a call that there was a goat at our front door! I opened the door, and this is what I saw:
Goat at the door.
Kent says, “Dear, I said I want a BOAT, not a GOAT!
Two old sailors. Will they know when it’s time to quit?
In late July, Kent and I (Linnea) drove from Albuquerque to San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico, to see a 1977 Chung Hwa thirty-six-foot ketch listed at a bargain price.
It was a hot trip, with stops for green chile cheeseburgers at the Owl Bar in San Antonio, NM, and an overnight at the historic Palace Hotel in funky, picturesque Silver City, where Kent got a haircut and we watched karaoke at the friendly Little Toad Creek Brewery. Everybody was friendly in Silver City, including the guy who must have slept somewhere on the street.
Silver City haircut.
Palace Hotel in downtown Silver City. And we sold a book to the bookshop next door!
We bumped along bumper to bumper through downtown Nogales to cross the border into Mexico on Saturday morning. After three or four hours and a few wrong turns, we found our way to Hermosillo and San Carlos.
We had an hour to look at the boat, still filled with the belongings of the deceased owner. When Kent saw the storage fees for the Marina Seca and the amount of work the boat would probably require, he decided to forget it.
Checking out the dreamboat
We spent two days exploring what San Carlos has to offer, visiting a scenic overlook, a couple of beaches, and some funky places beyond the paved road. Our modest motel had good air conditioning and wifi and was within a fifteen-minute walk of the restaurants, shops, and bars along the marina’s waterfront.
Beached sailor Kent in San Carlos, Sonora
But, when we got back to Green Valley, Arizona, after an almost two-hour wait to cross the border into the USA, Jim Sollars, another sailor and native of Sheridan, Wyoming, was excited about the boat. We’d first met Jim in February through his brother Sheldon, Kent’s high school classmate.
Jim had sailed the Pacific twice, once alone and once with his wife and two daughters. His late wife, Ginny, published Windswept, the story of the family’s three years aboard their boat, Holokiki. Jim more recently published A Bachelor’s Paradise, filled with wild tales of his years as a young, single sailor.
After pizza for dinner, Jim and Kent stayed up late, drinking homemade rum, telling stories, and convincing themselves that two old men could take off into the Pacific on an almost fifty-year-old boat that may need considerable work.
“It would make a good story, anyway,” I said as I headed to bed with a good book, leaving the octogenarians to their plans and dreams.
“Maybe I’ll meet you in Puerto Vallarta, Hawaii, or Fiji.”
Kent has an appointment with the Neptune Society this week.
“Ask them,” I said. “If your body is lost at sea, will you get your money back?”
Jacana Press 