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August 15, 2016

Sailing Big Bird to Tokyo

How many people is too many on a 40′ boat? Six? Eight? For reference, I crossed the Pacific with two other guys on a 46′ boat, and at the end I’m positive that we all seriously considered the implications of the other two having an ‘accident’ at sea. Considered, and considered again…

So this past weekend when I packed a day bag and headed to the Atami marina with a dozen friendly Japanese sailors, I was admittedly having trouble imagining where exactly on board 40′ of boat you stash 13 bodies.  Not to worry; we managed admirably.

How did I end up on a boat with a dozen garrulous and charming Japanese sailors, you ask? A very fair question indeed, considering that until this weekend I didn’t know a soul in this country. Chalk it up to sailing serendipity…

I was tapping away on my computer in the abandoned rec room at the hostel I’m staying at, sitting on the floor as usual. Visitors (the vast majority of which are local) would occasionally stick their head in, but no one seemed interested in sharing the sizable space with the hairy floor-sitter. No one, that is, until two red-flushed older guys poked their head in, saw me, and beamed two huge smiles.

Hiro, Yuki and Rusty

Konnichiwa!” they chimed in chorus, bodily flopping onto a pair of bean bag chairs.

Konnichiwa,” I smiled. After two weeks in the country, I appreciated the extreme politeness of the locals but it had been a while since anyone seemed actually friendly.

Quickly establishing that they had reached the functional limits of my Japanese, they switched to solid English and began grilling me on what I was doing alone in a little tourist town like Atami. I told them about leaving the bank and finding a boat from Panama to Polynesia. Sailing doesn’t seem to be a common interest here, and most often when I tell that story I’m positive that the audience hasn’t quite comprehended the fact that I was on a little sailboat in the middle of the ocean for a month. I usually get blank stares but friendly smiles, and an “oooh, yes that is great, I love Tahiti!”

These lads though, their eyes lit up. “You’re a sailor?!”

“Yup. At least, I think so. I have a beard – that qualifies me, right?” Humour doesn’t translate, unfortunately.

Joke-fail aside, they ploughed onward. “We just sailed here from Tokyo and we’re sailing back tomorrow. Do you want to come with us?”

No fucking way, I thought. I’d been meaning to get down to the dock in town to see if I could sweet-talk anyone into taking me along for a sail, but the 35 degree heat, lack of wind, and 100 meters of intervening elevation change have really curtailed my adventurous spirit (funny, that after Central America, the Equator and Polynesia, it’s in Japan that I find my heat limit). I guess Neptune takes care of his own though, because he sent these old salty dogs along to fetch me back to the blue. Obviously I was going with them.

So the next morning I met up with Yuki and Hiro, and their 10-strong crowd of sailing friends, and headed down to the marina to pile onto Yuki’s Beneteau First 40 (named Big Bird). We brought snacks and supplies, including a lot of beer and a mystery bottle of Chablis, and loaded the boat up. Yuki’s crew worked together like clockwork, and Big Bird was rigged and launched painlessly in a few minutes, despite the chaos of so many people trying to find space for bodies and bags on the relatively small boat.

Downtown Atami, on the Izu Peninsula

The weather channel had threatened a typhoon (I was later told) but just before dawn it had diverted south and we were clear for seven or so hours of blue skies and 12 knot winds. Big Bird was a… well-used boat, we’ll say. Her canvas was a little blown out, but she was spotless from top to bottom, and she sailed like a dream. The wheel on a First 40 is so big that the deck of the cockpit is cut away to allow it to rotate below your feet (the point being to let you sit on either side of the boat and still have a hand comfortably on the wheel).

Yuki encouraged me to take the wheel and watched attentively as I asked for a bit of sail trim to set her balance to neutral. Turns out that Japanese sailors use all the same English words for important sailing terms, so even though not everyone spoke English, we could all follow the tacking and trim instructions seamlessly.  Hiro was, I gather, the real helm of the boat and we compared notes a few times. The main sheet rigging was unlike I had ever seen before (it ran to side winches in a complicated box pattern) but the functional crew of the boat, say four guys, were sharp on trim and attentive with instructions from the helm.  Big Bird really was a joy to sail.  She sat up straight to do 6.5 knots in 14 of wind, and that’s with the bakers’-dozen bodies on board.

Yugo helming Big Bird

And on top of that, sailing on Big Bird was simply a joy. The weather was perfect, with fair winds a bit off our nose, and clear blue skies. I had the wheel for maybe an hour of our seven at sea, and the rest of the time I hiked up onto the rail and took turns chatting with the crew as they rotated around the boat. They were a diverse crowd, mixed men and women aged thirty to sixty or so, and most spoke enough English to appreciate a good sailing story. I found out that this big group regularly went for day trips together, but the over-nighter to Atami was a once-a-year expedition that they had all been looking forward to. Again, I couldn’t believe my luck.

The mountainous coastline of the Izu Peninsula gave way to lower geography as we approached the brown smudge of Tokyo. Boat traffic increased around us, eventually succumbing to an endless line of freighters entering and exiting Tokyo Bay. Yuki called for the engine, which started on the first punch, and I watched as the crew efficiently furled the jib and dropped the main into its faded lazyjacks. We stopped a bit short of Tokyo in Velasis Marina, at Uraga. Again, the crew worked smoothly to strip Big Bird and put her to bed, including giving the deck a thorough fresh-water scrub.

It was 4:30 pm, and after a lot of pictures were taken on the dock, it was announced that we’d be having Chinese food for dinner nearby.

Crew of Big Bird

“You can come, of course??” Yasuko asked, politely making sure that I didn’t have better plans in Uraga than to spend time with this incredible group of characters.

Of course I could come. Dinner was a joking, raucous affair, with Yuki obviously enjoying being skipper to such a lively crowd of sailors. Most of the conversation was in Japanese, which made me feel more comfortable since I wasn’t impugning on their evening. Yasuko, Yugo, Yuki and Fujiko were at my end of the table, and made sure to include me often enough to leave me feeling engaged. For the most part though, it was a treat to watch this tight circle of friends laugh and tease each other like after any other day of sailing and beering, anywhere around the world.

So once again the sailing gods smiled on me, for what has been the highlight of my trip to Japan thus far. Two continents down, four to go.