Slow Baja - Christian Beamish The Voyage Of The Cormorant: A Memoir of the Changeable Sea

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

“The wind still hurled us down the coast, the occasional tendril of kelp wrapping the rudder blade like a tentacle and then breaking free with the inexorable force of our momentum. Though my hands, arms, and shoulders were knotted with fatigue, I was prevailing in the fight to keep the boat steering in line with the waves. I even got the hang of riding out the bigger ones, and actually hooted once with the fun of linking one wave with a second and then a third steep swell for a shooshing toboggan slide of more than 100 yards. I recognized that Cormorant was handling herself and that her pointed stern split the waves like cordwood, allowing them to roll off to either side. I had only to maintain my course, and if I managed to avoid running up on a reef, I would eventually make the sheltering cliffs of Punta Colonet. It was an absurd situation nonetheless – the roaring wind and desolate shore, this long winter night and the ghostly moonglow illuminating the whitecaps off into the distance – completely alone in my open boat, 250 miles down the coast. Then I sang. For the ridiculous peril I faced, for my folly, for grace, and for a prayer. I sang the old Anglican hymn “Praise for Creation,” and the wind became almost funny at that point – the absolute opposite, the utter rejection of morning and calm. The fact that no one in the world had a clue as to my predicament, or even, precisely where I was and, even more so, that I had put myself here struck me somehow as humorous. “Blackbird has spo-ken,” I belted out in the rage, “like the first bhir-hi-hi-hirrrd!” I had come in close now, spray blowing back off the crashing surf just a few hundred yards in, and the high cliffs of Colonet loomed ahead. As I had hoped, when I sailed to the base of the sheer walls, the wind passed overhead, 300 feet off the mesa, and left the water calm and strangely still, even as the ocean went ragged not 100 yards outside. I could have scrambled up the boulders to kiss that old cliff face for the shelter it provided. I set anchor and then put booties over my wet wool socks, slaked my thirst with deep draughts of fresh water, and mashed handfuls of trail mix into my mouth. My body shook with fear, exaltation, and relief. I wrapped myself in the mainsail, too exhausted to arrange the boat tent and sleeping bag. The moon and stars had burned into my irises, and light patterns swirled hypnotically behind my lids. With these strange points of light in my vision, I wondered if this was what dying might be like.” From Voyage of The Cormorant by Christian Beamish. For more about Christian Beamish, check out his website here. Buy The Voyage of The Cormorant: A Memoir of the Changeable Sea from Patagonia here. Follow Christian Beamish on Instagram here.

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Slow Baja is brought to you by the Baja XL rally. The Baja XL is the largest and longest amateur off-road rally on the Baja Peninsula. It's 10 Epic Days, L.A. to Cabo to L.A. check it out at BajaxL.org.

Okay, I'm going to have a sip of Natasha's rum drink. How's that sitting with you? Lovely. All right, we're starting over. I'm delighted to be in Carpentaria, California, with Christian Beamish, and we're in his garage. Garage doors open, side doors open. We are recording in crazy COVID times, but we're being safe. I have a mask on.

Christian has a mask on. We're 10 feet away, and we're just. going to jump into it. Christian Beamish, I'm delighted to be here. Take it away. Tell me how, we're going to talk about your book. Great. Voyage of the Cormoran. Published in 2012. Am I right on that? Yes. Yep. Patagonia Books. And just released on Audible as an audio book. Yes. Which is excellent, which you read. I do indeed. Yep. That's got to be an interesting experience. All right. Well, we're going to start with how you built the boat before we talk about how you made the audiobooks. Okay. All right. Fair now.

Let's just jump into it. You did it. Great. You did it. People talk about building a boat. You actually did it. So tell me about how that came about where you were in your life. If you'd had any experience building things before.

And tell me a little bit about your childhood. Sure. Well, I grew up in Newport Beach, which is a very boaty place. And in fact, has quite a history of boat building, it turns out, none of which I was, except sort of glancingly, I wasn't really attached to the boat building history or much of the boating life. I mean, you can't really grow up in Newport Beach without being thrown into a Sabbath or a laser at some point, both of which I was and sailed on friends, families, boats and stuff. But it wasn't really a big part of my life. Surfing was my big thing.

My dad is, well, he passed away. Bob Beamish was a Newport guy, a great skier and body surfer and former L.A. County Lifeguard in the 1950s. And so he's of that kind of that golden generation, that golden era, I should say, pioneer generation of, you know, Mickey Mignos and he knew grubby. Just kind of the list goes on. whole, buzzy trend, you know, the guys who sort of started figuring out Hawaii,

not to, you know, of course, by befriending and getting to know, the Hawaiian surfers as well, you know, which is very important. And Hawaii is such a,

such a magnificent place. But I digress. As I said, we're all digression here. It's all sidetrack on slow ballhouse. So feel free. As my friend Kurt Putnam says, the beige martini for the tecate is, you know. Anyway, so, you know, fast forward, you know, mid-30s, a hitch in the Navy C-Bs behind me and

graduate writing program ahead of me. I landed at Pigeon Point Lighthouse, got a handyman gig so I could live there and be close to San Francisco State, but still sort of surfing. And it's this amazing stretch of coastline, rocky and forbidding and beautiful. And that's where the germ of this idea, the seed of this idea really sprouted was at Pigeon Point. And historically, the coastal schooners would run up and down the coast and they would stop in there. and there would be small boats and whalers that would run and work out of this cove on the south side of the point at Pigeon Point.

So all that sort of maritime history kind of got into my blood. But you're right, Michael, I didn't grow up, you know, with a shop full of tools by any means. You know, we built some, you know, slapped together some plywood for skateboard ramps and things. But I was in no way really a builder except, of course, that I did. do a hitch with the Navy Seabees. And I did know how to, the CBs are the construction arm of the United States Navy.

And there I learned how to read plants. I was a steel worker. So I knew how to, I learned welding and things. But, you know. Which serves you well with a wooden boat. Yeah, right. But, you know, once you learn the general concepts of how things work and, you know,

on a job site, you know, deployed in Saudi Arabia, say, it's not a strict delineation. If, you know, if a form needs to be knocked together to pour concrete and you happen to be there, but you're a steel worker, you don't, you know, you grab a hammer and knock the form together. So I knew how to work and I knew how to build from being with the CBs. And I had also started shaping surfboards, which is not the same. take a block of foam that already has the rocker in it and you you know it's all about controlling your dimensions and and controlling the tools but still i suppose in the notion of of curves and and how the interplay of craft and water flow and things like that all all of these are kind of

threads in in the in the construction of a boat you know or at least in my experience um i'm going to stop you right there because i can i can see it in your eyes and of course i've i've read your and I know that your father's family descends from Ireland. Yes. And I'm seeing right now just a little bit of an Irish poet in you. Yeah, I'm going to build a boat. Now, you join the Navy right out of high school because your parents were basically worried about you becoming a stoner surfer

hanging out in Newport, right? Yeah. And becoming less than zero at Newport with a lot of other kids on trust funds and such. occupational hazard amongst teenagers of the middle class of Newport Beach, unfortunately. And I have a few of my friends who

went down that powdery way. So you got away. You joined the CBEs and you managed to get out of that experience. And I think it was Gulf War era, right? Yes. Yeah. So you got out of that experience

and then decided that college and graduate school and literature would would be your your field of study, which leads naturally to boat building. Of course. Can't you see it? Tell us how you got to that.

Listen, I would say the whole thing is in fact of a piece. I suppose I am unorthodox, but it's always a yearning for that pure, that purer, more pure line that a certain way of being and certainly experience a way of being in the world. And so I joined the Navy thinking of Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac. And I joined the Navy hoping that I would that I would be on a frigate with a pea coat on watch late at night drinking coffee from a tin cup. Like I just thought it kind of had that like United States Navy War and the Pacific sort of thing.

And I was desperate for that coming up in 1980s Newport Beach, which was trying so desperately to be in the future, you know, and do away with anything before. And, you know, the houses were quickly being bought up and the little cottages knocked down and Mick, mansions thrown up in their place. And I think if I didn't have an intellectual sense of what was happening, I certainly had a visceral sense. And in my naive way, I thought the United States Navy would at least be real. At least that's tradition. That's, you know, no, you're not posturing.

You are what you either make it or you don't. You can or you cannot. you know so in that way uh navy now how do you then make the leap to to studying literature and and creative writing um well i've always been a reader and i read a lot in the navy and i um you know my my mother's scholarly uh and and academic and artistic as well and um so it was important to me. It was a value of it. It was in your DNA. It was in your DNA. Yeah, I suppose so, yes. Gentleman surfer and scholar. I hope so. That's what I'm, that's what I'm gleaning here. You know, I'm probably like, there's a, there's a thing I read something and I came across a literary

journal, you know, very critical of the sort of the middle, the aspirations of the middle class. and how in England, but I think it's just the same in America, you know, how they would have the right books on the shelf, you know, even if they never read them, just, you know, to have the appearance. And I know I'm guilty of that. Like, I want, you know, I want to be more than the, frankly, the suburban, dumbass that I am, you know. And, you know, I'm all right.

I've done a few things. I'm cool. It's good. I don't mean to be so, like, hard on myself. I suppose I'm trying to be deprecating, you know, self-deprecating. But, you know, there's this ickiness somehow of American culture. I love the United States and I love American culture, but God damn it, if you'll excuse my language,

the hyper-commercialism, the trophy way, the just the gross excess. So the antithesis of the people down in Baja. And now we can romanticize the out of our excess in America. We can romanticize the cool people down in Baja. They're not trying to be cool. They're trying to survive, right? And so they don't have the luxury to have this sort of evaluation of the way they would like to live.

That's the way they live. And it's refreshing to us because we're in a miasma, if I'm even using that word, correctly of, you know, aspiration versus appearance versus impressions. It's a tight little web, you know, and maybe it's even particular to white people. Well, we're getting off on an interesting jag here right away. I was going to ask you how you got to San Clemente to work for Surfers Journal and build that boat. But, you know, you brought something up really, I think beautiful and important how we romanticize, how I romanticize the lives of the folks in Baja, the folks that you came into their lives intimately, quietly with your boat, maybe crashing on the beach or having them help you in a situation, get you out of a situation.

Yeah, more than once, definitely. But we'll circle around to how you built the boat. Sure. But let's jump right into the kindness of strangers in Baja, folks that you met that have, in comparison to your life, to my life, to our lives, and to our neighbor's lives here, so much less material goods. Yes. But they have the luxury of time, and they have this bond of, well, I was in need last time,

you're in need this time I'm helping you you helped me we're helping together collectively we're helping each other yeah yeah what do you what was your takeaway from all the people in all the places that had a cup of coffee for you a bowl of beans a a toe a help a ride into town take you take your car move it down the you know a hundred miles down the right the coast and leave it there and wash it we've got guests here we are on the slow Baja, Christian's daughters come in to say hello. Here's Josephine. Freezing, you want to say hello?

We're live. We are recording. We're recording. Say hello. Okay. Well, let me get on with it, sweetheart. I'm glad you came out. Why don't you go inside?

Okay. It's all very real. Yeah. It's a different phase of life than sleeping under the canvas on, you know, forgotten shores and Baja. what you were saying, Michael, about, you know, the, I suppose the nature of the way in Baja, I guess it has to do, again, with circumstances. I think in the remote quarters, you know, they're still kind of living a vicaro, you know, life.

Like they live on, there's the Ihido system, right, of ranches. And there are, you know, connections of relations between ranches in certain zones. And you're not alone. You know, you think you're out in the middle of nowhere. But if you blow a tire or whatever and you sit there long enough, someone will come by generally. I mean, I suppose people do get lost, but the land has eyes, right? People see who's moving through their territory.

It's not as wide. I mean, it is wide open, but. Well, all dirt roads lead somewhere in Bahamas. Yeah, you know, there's a reason they're there, right? Right. And so, you know, as, you know, I think, it's in my experience there's a

graciousness to Mexican culture in general that that is just lovely you know it's just there's a I don't know a generosity of spirit

and a tendency to have fun you know and And that makes Baja, with its natural splendor, is such a wonderful place to be, you know. And obviously, you know, maybe here I go,

idealizing Mexican people. I don't want to, I mean, I live my life in a kind of continual cultural critique, which is not always the happiest place to be. And I don't know that I'm right. I'm not necessarily right, you know, in these like statements that I'm throwing down about, quote, and quote white people. But I want to I want to also be careful not to make broad statements about quote unquote Mexican people, right? But we were just talking about if you spend any time down in

Baja, you've come across really friendly, wonderful people. And that's not to, you know, sort of make the snow globe of the nice little Mexican people waiting for you to have your Baja vacation, you know, they're people with their own concerns and, you know, and as we know, that's, I guess, what I was alluding to. As we know, life in Mexico is not always, you know, one margarita after the next. Well, it can be, but in other words, there's, there can be real troubles. Yeah. And I, I think that the point that you made in your book is when you had a need, you found a solution, often with the help of a local fishermen, a local, you know, person out in the middle of nowhere, honestly,

who is happy to give you what little they had to help you. Yes, indeed. And there is no one like a rancher in Baja, California, to fix a car, you know, to figure out how to how to keep things going, you know, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when I bought my, my 1971 Toyota Land Cruiser and was making my first Baja trip

back in 2012, noted Land Cruiser specialist, you know, we were fixing this and we were fixing this and we were fixing that. And as we were modifying the truck, he said, well, how far are you going and how deep are going and, you know, what things, you know, where are we going to do on this? And I said, let me tell you, wherever I'm going. the local farmer's going to come by me in a Dotson B-2-10 on three bald tires with the rear hatch taken off and he's using it as a pickup truck and it's going to be down on one cylinder. So those are the dirt roads that I'm going to be on.

So if I have four-wheel drive and I'm in four-wheel drive, it's because I'm scared, not because I need it. Right, right. Yeah. All right. So we're going to circle back around to how a guy who freshly graduated from San Francisco. in a literature program graduate school literature decides that he's editing at surfers journal he's got an actual job in literature surfer's journal i'm saying not journalism that's literature in my in my book yeah as good as it gets if you're a surfer yeah um and so you have a job there you're

living in san clemente and you decide that you're going to build the dang boat well it was It was sort of now was the time, you know, or that was the time, I should say. I, you know, I had been up at Pigeon Point, got the, the idea. The thunderstruck idea. And then got the studio with the garage, which I immediately, the landlord, as an afterthought, I was like, oh, okay, I can kip out here, I can Lou. You know, there's the stove, whatever, this will work down by the beach. And he said, oh, yeah, as an afterthought, this garage.

comes with it and comes around and clatters the keys jangles the keys and opens the garage and it was like rays of light that's the boat shop and I saw it all all come together it was perfect um I did have to knock a hole in the wall into the kitchen to make room for the stern section of the boat but nothing that a little dry wall thank you United States Navy CBs uh you know and uh Spackle couldn't couldn't I don't know if you can see me smiling under my mask but I'm grinning ear to ear. You got to make it work. Yeah.

And so the plans was at like a downloaded thing? So you're you're building the plans off of this fellow who who builds these boats in the Isla Sky in Scotland. It's pretty romantic. Yes. You're drinking like a fish at this stage or had you quit drinking by that? Yeah. No. You did.

Yeah, I guess I suppose I'd mention it in the book. Yeah, I've had my little wrestles with alcohol. But you're building. You're not drinking. This is an endeavor. You know, actually, I think in the midst of the building, I began to taper off the drinking because I didn't, I, you know, as fond as I am of my beers, I like my fingers even better. So skill saw fingers, bad combination, and I'm not such a lush that I can't. And I'm going to report.

Keep the beers for later, you know. For those who aren't able to see Christian in front of me, he has all of his fingers and both thumbs. Yes. I intend to keep them. All right. So you're in San Clemente. You've got a day job and you're building this boat at night on the weekends. Yeah, night and weekends.

And it was funny. Are you obsessed? Is it crazy? Well, you know, like the best obsessions, it didn't feel like an obsession. There's no problem. I don't have a problem. No problem here. I'm building a boat, damn it?

I want to build a boat. Quiclan. And it was funny, you know, I guess it was just a time of life thing. I'm pretty sociable. I like company, but I don't know. I mean, I guess I am also the guy who sailed off for, you know, three months by himself. Yeah, you're comfortable solitude. I'm cool.

I can, I can, I like my own company. So my point is that I wasn't fighting against anything. If anything, I was hungry for the time to spend on. building the boat. It really is such a wonderful process, you know, and especially if you build one, I mean, 18 feet, an 18 foot open boat is a small boat, but it's big enough as the planks and especially once the hole, you know, you finish the hole, you're not quite even halfway, you know, that's a huge step. But with the hole finished, you can really kind of begin. to dream, you know, you see the run of the planks and the shape of the hole. And it's, it's

something that's, you know, going to take you someplace and it's clear that it can. I suppose I had seen the possibility or registered the possibility of the boat just based on the photograph. But then as I, as I mentioned, once the hull came into existence, it really, there's was just something, obviously, that's what I was trying to express. An 18 foot boat is always only going to be 18 feet, but there was something in the nature of the curve of the hull that gave it substance. I just, I could see, and it's not exactly a one-to-one thing with surfboards, but every now, but it's a lot like this. Every now and then you see a surfboard under someone's arm and you go, oh, I like that.

outline. I just like what that suggests. And that's what it was with Cormorant. And that's that, that vision. It's just strengthening. At first I thought, oh, this would be something fun to have up and down the California coast day sail or maybe, you know, sail into the, you know, remote stretches of coast to go surfing. And little by little building on that, I started realizing, no, maybe this is longer range, in fact, than you might think at first glance for an 18-foot boat. As nutty as that sounds.

It's not as, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I guess the frog doesn't feel the water boiling. You know, you kind of, you know, little by little. But people in another era used the tools that they had

to explore. So, you know, 1920s, 1930s, people drove great distances in these, you know, rickety little cars. People in those times of the 18, 19, 20th centuries had their little double-end workboats and went out. In fact, another thing that motivated me for this was the boat that I built, the Cormorant, is called a Shetland Isle Beachboat. And as the name suggests, it's a boat that can both land and be launched off the beach.

and traditionally the Shetland Islanders would use that boat to fish banks 40 miles off shore. And so there would be two men and they would go out and they would fish all night and sail back. And they did it for hundreds of years. Sail and ore. And or just like you. Yes. Well, me just like them. And so my thought process in choosing the boat was, well, if it's good enough for the North Atlantic,

then it can handle the Pacific, not that the Pacific's no slouch either, but North Atlantic is as wild and woolly as any place in the world, right? So I'm really interested also in, like the lineage of the Shetland Isle beach boat, as a matter of fact, goes directly to the Vikings. And in fact, they would have boat builders from Norway.

As the crow flies, it's not that far, would cross the North Sea, or guess whatever see that is, across to the Shetland Isles. And you could hire a builder who would come with the timbers from Norway and build the boats because there wasn't the forestry on the Shetland Isles that you would need for a boat building industry. Yeah. And so when did sailing it to Baja become the goal? after I realized that it was feasible to camp and fish and surf and navigate.

And you had tested this out to the Channel Islands and locally out of Southern California, out of St. Clemente. Yeah, in basically what we call the Southern California bite from Point Conception to the border. and I guess I was looking for that you know those remote stretches of coasts that are down there that are less so here and surf yes yeah so that's a natural yeah which is in abundance here but also there did you ever look into the sailing part of it did you ever just think was that just an afterthought like of course you're going to be able to sail but you were were you thinking like, okay, the weather's going to be better, the surf's going to be good, the water's not going to be cold, but then you never really figured out like, oh, the sailing's going to be hard and terrible. I counted on the sailing being manageable because our trade winds here are the Northwesternies. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruisers out of the border.

When we go, we'll be going with Baja bound insurance. Your website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajabound.com. That's Bajaubound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, Baja tourism is picking up, and our friends at the Animal Pad and TAP Act want to remind you when you're crossing the border, just say no to puppy peddlers. I know they're cute, but the sooner we can end the demand, we can end the supply. For more information, check out theanimalpad.org and TAP Act on Instagram and Facebook. We're jumping right back into it.

We're taking a quick break. I'm back with Christian Beamish. I'm in his garage. We're bundled up and we've got masks on. We're sitting 10 feet apart from each other in these crazy COVID times in Carpentaria, California to get the full alliteration. And Christian was just telling me about getting on to the idea of this little boat that was built in your humble garage is going to go to Baja. And just to recap. about two years to build it, a couple years to figure out how to sail it.

Yeah. And then do we want to jump right into the change of the economy? You're trying to figure out how to tell your boss that, hey, I'm going to take off on this great trip and I don't want to leave you in the lurch. And your boss takes you out to lunch and says, hey, we're eliminating your position. Yeah. So that that's it in a nutshell. Was that a relief? Was it a problem?

them? I said I said to Pezman, we all call him Pez. Steve Pezman is a patron saint of surfing. Yeah. Certainly Southern California is surfing. He's such a great man.

And I have learned a lot from him. And yeah. So, you know, so I was in my kind of roundabout way. I don't want to leave the thing, but, you know, the company in the lurch, but I want to go do this mission and I'm trying to explain. I can do work ahead of time. And he says, stop, stop, where we got to eliminate the position because the economy's coming down, coming apart. It's 2008.

He sees the writing on the wall. And glib, I just said, well, that makes it. I said, that's convenient, isn't it? I honestly, you know, that's just kind of. make the best of it. It was a little daunting, but I had indeed already made my decision as unorthodox as it was. But then again, I'm the guy, you know, who decides to get a creative writing degree and build a boat and do this anyway. So that's kind of the, those are the dice I'm rolling. If that makes any sense, I don't know. Those are the cards. I don't know.

My cards, I'm playing them, you know. And so it made it easy for you to, you know, put the boat on the trailer, head down. to San Diego. Yeah. And you launched it. And splash it on, yeah, the night on New Year's Eve. That's just so. So.

So it's great timing. December 31st, 2008. And I stayed on the anchor at Point Loma there, just outside the entrance of the harbor, watch the fireworks over San Diego. And it crashed out under the boat tent. And I was off the next day. I think what struck me is just the fall. of these things.

You know, when you made a reference, and I'm sorry I didn't make a note or have it to read aloud here, but basically, you know, you're three nights in and you realize, oh, this would have been like a 35-minute drive from the border. Yeah, right. You know, and here you are three nights under sale and, you know. Yeah. You know, I didn't have, I mean, I did note that,

and I note that in the book, right, that I was aware of it, But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, I don't know, it wasn't the, you know, the horse trying to beat the automobile or whatever. You know, oh, I'm keeping up with 21st century life even though I'm in a, you know, 18th century. It's just as good. That wasn't the point. The point was to go take it as it comes and go with it or, you know, and sometimes going with it means going backwards or not going at all. Yeah, and so there is a lot of that. You purposely went without a watch, which is, I think, interesting.

So we're starting with, I don't care what time it is. I'm in the now, in the now. You're in the now all the time, whether you want to be or not. Right. And you've got oars. That's your mode of transportation. It's your power if it's not blowing. Yeah.

And, you know, but a note on the oars, though, it's not like if it happened to be, if my intention was to say, get somewhere 20 miles down the coast and the winds weren't favorable, it's not like I was, you know, going to put the knife in my teeth and just row there, damn it anyway. I just, you know, if it wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to work. Rowing gets you onto the beach or getting you a mile, moving across the acreage or whatever. I know I get it. Although, as you did read in the book, a couple of times I would be well out to sea and the wind fell away. And I still had 15 miles or whatever to go to East La San Martin. And I had ample opportunity to explore my rowing stroke for some seven hours or so. Yeah.

So I was going to get to how long did it take you to just take a deep breath? and realize, like, wait for the tide to change, wait for the wind to come back, not get the oars and the locks and say, God damn it, I'm going to row it. And then realize how futile that is. Well, was that a week into the trip? Was that, you know, I don't think, Michael, there was probably, it wasn't so such a, it wasn't maybe a cut and dried sort of realization. I spent those two years, you know, arguably it's like surfing. You still, I'm still learning how to sail that boat.

And just what's appropriate and what the, it really comes down to the scale of the vessel in the, in the midst of the water at hand. And so, yeah, sometimes, indeed, sailing back from the Channel Islands. I was coming back, I guess, not this fall, but the fall before. And there's a line of oil derricks

three miles off the coast here. And then I think it's maybe four miles past those is one other oil derrick, so that's seven miles offshore. the wind died on me about five miles past further out than that outermost one so do the math wet 12 miles 12 miles offshore a little more than halfway across the channel it just went mill pond just sheet glass and I'm a drift out there but as I had done in Baja getting to San Martin, I knew I was 10 miles off San Martín. I knew I was 12 miles from home.

And so you're not going to go row, row, row really fast. But I mean, you could walk to Washington, D.C. You know, you could walk to San Francisco. It'll take you a month or whatever. But you can proceed in your desired direction. And when it comes to rowing, it's not much more difficult than riding a bike that's kidded out for bicycle travel, you know, with your paniers and things. It's about using your upper body weight and I'm pantomiming here, and kind of falling back on the oars. And you do the finishing stroke.

You do the sort of Jack La Lane, you know, pull through and then, you know, put the oars in. but you can get into the nicest rhythm in which your mind is free to think and you breathe and row. And you breathe and row. And in that moment, in that Channel Islands crossing, in that Santa Barbara Channel crossing, you know, when you're 12 miles offshore on a sheet glass beaming sunny day, the water, just the shafts of light just disappear. it's bottomless and I knew I had a golden opportunity so I stripped my clothes off and I dove straight off the boat. The boat wasn't going anywhere. It was just a pond. And I dove in and then took three big, big long gliding strokes straight down underwater and then turned around in that big open blue channel water and saw my little boat way up.

They opened my eyes and saw the little boat way up there on the, on the surface and then slowly swam back up and then, well, what do you know? You're invigorated by that cold, clean salt water, the bright sun. You put your boardies on and get to Rowan. And it's cool. It's just, you know, it's about getting your mind right for it. Right. Right.

So let's take us down the coast of Baja, bring us through some of the highlights, the low lights, the scary bits, the boring bits. The people you met and the impressions they made on you. Let's wrap this up. Yeah. In the next 10 minutes. People are great. Business is fantastic. Couldn't be better.

You know, which is kind of like if you've got 12 knots of northwesternly wind and a good fishing kit and enough water and a boat that you're comfortable with, you know, life's pretty good on the Pacific coast of Baja, California. Of course, comes sunset, that 12 knots of wind can quickly dissipate and you can get a moment of stillness before it comes roaring off the desert at 40 knots to drive you in the general direction of Tahiti with nothing in between. and horrifying, horrifying, short, steep ocean swells. Fortunately, that Shetland Isle beach boat is a double ender and it's kind of pulled in at the stern

and it can run with some seas. And I have indeed had to run through the night ahead of those winds. And, you know, I never, I never felt like I was going to die on this check.

Let's take that in for a second that that's not hyperbole. No, no, especially in retrospect. I'm like really sitting here with you saying oh, he's just kidding, but you're not kidding. And that's part of what happens when you take on something like this. You're not in the 30-foot sailboat that you picked up cheap in Southern California and sailing it down.

It's the perfect vessel for this. plastic fantastic. You're in an 18-foot vessel that you made. Yeah. Sailing in open seas without, you know, electronic navigation, without being able to just set your rudder and button up the hatches and let it ride it out. Right it out. No, you definitely have to be engaged. You have to pilot the thing. You're actively involved in every minute of every day. Yeah. Do you know what I did, though, as possibly foolhardy as this whole undertaking, might appear, and maybe actually it is. I did not do so without, first of all, without a plan.

Secondly, without some layers of safety that I really thought through. And I worked my way from what I call the worst case scenario back. And I don't have a good answer for the worst case scenario. But I'll get to that in a moment. Yeah, well, you're not an idiot. And you, you, when maybe somebody thought, is this your way of trying to go out gallantly, you, you were pretty blunt to say no. Yeah, no, no, no. I am not interested.

I mean, I did not have a family or a wife at the time. But the fact that I do now and still consider it a good time to sail alone in this same boat out to the Channel Islands, where you can very well. drown very quite possibly there's horrendous water there's potato patch zones out on the islands and you know tide current and swell um large vessels get the best yeah can get the best of one but what i did uh for this baha voyage was um first of all i built in buoyancy in in the boat so in the event of a capsize um it's not just going to be swamped to the gunnels. I would have the possibility of once I righted the boat, and I have tested the boat and capsized it. I only ever capsized once in all the sailing. When I was learning how to sail it,

I had the daggerboard in running downwind and learned the lesson that when you run down wind, you take the dagger board out because if you don't, you can broach. You turn, you know, if you turn basically before the wind, you trip over that center fin, the dagger board, and it knocked the boat over. And so I learned two things. you've got to, you know, got to have the daggerboard up and out of the water running downwind. And secondly, I learned I needed more buoyancy. So I added buoyancy as a result of that. And then took it back down to the harbor, capsized it and saw that indeed I did have enough that I could bail it out.

Secondly, I always, always, always, always wear a life jacket. Always in the harbor rowing, I wear a life jacket. My thinking on that being, well, it's just that's, if you're a sailor, you should, you know that. You wear a life jacket. Because if you go over, it's not like, oh, I slipped and fell in the water. If something dramatic enough happens that sends the sailor into the water, he's just as likely to hit his head on the way over, you know. And so then you're in the water face down or whatever, at least in the life jacket, you're going to, you know, you're, you're, you're, knocked out body is going to be floating around. Someone can grab you.

Thirdly, I wore a lifeline. I kept myself tied to the boat. And then I mentioned there's one, the worst case scenario that I don't have a good answer for is, it's a cold ocean off this coast, right? Even this summer. It's not Hawaii. You would succumb to hypothermia within a couple of hours in the summer even probably or go in go hypothermic and then you're in no position to help yourself so what do you do when you're in challenging conditions do you just anticipate that you're going to go over and wear your wetsuit and then you're sailing in a

wetsuit and you just like you're surfing and you got to pee but that's not comfortable and you're going to be sailing for what 10 hours or you know so i didn't like to wear a wetsuit. So the compromise was I would just head to toe in layers of wool under foul weather gear and my jackets. And so my thinking, well, if I do capsize at night in the winter in this frigid sea, at least I'll have wool sweater, wool long underwear, or wool, trousers, you know,

I might still get hypothermia. Right. You know, because it's just not realistic to wear a wetsuit, you know. Right. And that was part of your writing

about your plan. You're going to wear a wetsuit, which I thought, I didn't like wearing a wetsuit when I surfed. Yeah, right. But so let's get on to, Christian, I hate to put in fast forward here,

but let's get on to some of the highlights and some of the low lights and the solitude and the joyous moments. Yeah. I was just, thinking about, you met some interesting folks. You ran into pro surfers that you knew. I mean, what a crazy thing that is. Yeah, the Long brothers. I ran into them and we served a magical set of reefs that they know of. And golly, we, yeah, we got into some really, really good waves, like the

kind of stuff that you would travel for, you know, and I happened to travel in this 18th century mode. So that was a real highlight. How about Arellio? Meeting my friend Arellio, he's such a gentleman, such a good man. And Caterino Burquez and his family on Isla Cedros, his daughter, Paula, and her husband Diego were still friends. Our children are friends. And we've been back to visit them.

on Cedros. They took me in on Cedros. If you read the book, I'll, it's, well, there's a story there. There's a story there. I end up with them and very much in their good graces and eternally in their debt as a matter of fact. So yeah, I'd say Isla Cedros was a highlight. And just those moments of pristine conditions, you know, I love that sun on the water, the sparkle factor my wife and I call it. And, you know, it's sort of the wind in the willows, you know, being on a boat, messing about is simply messing about in boats, you know. It's just a lovely darn thing to have some time on the water in quietude.

And you were reading some beautiful literature fitting of the period of the vessel that you were traveling. Yeah, my man Walt Whitman. Right? Leaves of grass. Yeah. And who else were you reading? How did you keep your mind occupied?

I mean, today we're on our phones all the time, screens, what have you. You're singing to yourself out there. Yeah, yeah. Reading aloud. A bit, yes. You know, the phones, I've got my face in the damn thing just like everybody else. The phones are so new that when you get back into. the old ways, they really don't matter. It's not like, oh, I wish I had my phone, you know, when you're,

you know, we are still, we are formed as I, as I attempt to explore in my boat. We are formed, aren't we? These contemporary bodies that we inhabit in this moment, in this 21st century moment, these bodies are ancient. And they are formed. And they are full. by this magnificent planet. And the moments in which we can give ourselves time to simply be on the planet, on its terms, we find that, in fact, there are terms. We're built for this.

And so I don't like to be cold. So as long as I'm warm and have something interesting to look at in a beach to walk on or a trail to stroll or whatever the equivalent, I think it's all just great. I don't need anything. Did you know that the voyage was over when it was ending? I mean, was it clear to you like, this is, I've done it? Or did you just think, where am I? I going next. How much further can I go? You know, as, you know, the voyage that is depicted, that I depict in the book, the voyage of the cormorant is. What's the title of the book? Let's say it

one more time here, Christian. Voyage of the cormorant. The voyage of the cormorant. Patagonia Press, 2012. There's still books available from Patagonia on their website. It's available where you buy better books, all those online places, and on Audible. I downloaded it this morning and listened to it on the drive down here. Oh, right. Hey, how was it? So I'm going to put you on the spot. You know, you have to say it was wonderful.

But how was it? Well, listen, I mean, after you told me that it just was just released, just released on audible, I just downloaded Audible because I'm not listening to books on tape, so to speak, unless I was getting them from my local library. So I'm listening to podcasts all the time, but I hadn't gone down this path of audio books since I was physically sticking in a CD or a cassette tape into my car.

And so listening to it on the drive down here, I got four solid hours of you today. It was great. That's a lot of being. It's great. No, I mean, it's beautifully done, and it's beautiful. I'm delighted. I'm going to listen to it all the way to San Diego and all the way back.

Awesome. Okay. So I've read it. I've read it and I've listened to it. it and it's it's beautiful both ways you do a beautiful job i appreciate it um and i'm not just saying that to flatter you and i hope that folks really who um love a great story this is a terrific story this is a terrific story it's delight i'm delighted that i'm here because it involves baha which is why i'm here but it's a delighted delightful story under any circumstances you know i i i guess i would just say this

you you said did i know that the voyage was over and then and then i started to say this Voyage of the Cormorant I'm at work on another volume and it could very well this could very well be titled Voyages of the Cormorand if Voyage of the Cormorand is volume

one as it is I've got a working title that's not that but but yeah there's lots of I've been on lots of trips I've been back down to Baja since then, tailoring.

I've been numerous times to our Channel Islands out front here. I've been to Vancouver Island. And there's lots of other places. I would be very interested to explore. My great-great-granny came over from Denmark and ended up in Antioch, California, in 18-something. And I want to go check out the Delta. I think that would be really interesting, could be very interesting.

But, yeah. man a boat is a is a pain in the neck but it's such a great thing to have you know well you're you're probably saving on mooring fees this isn't like yeah you're not mooring a yacht in newport with the comeron yes that's it all right well we're going to wrap it up here you've been super generous christian um where is the best way for people where can people find you on the internet where's the best way for people to find out about what you're up to? You're shaping surfboards for a living. You've got that going on.

Yes. If people want to read about your life, Christianbeamish.com. There is such a thing. Take me through all your interactions with the public. Yes, indeed. Christianbeamish.com. It's, you know, I'm sure most people say this or people who have it together don't say it. But if you're anything like me, you know, the website could probably use a little updating, but it's there.

There's some things. You know, I've got some articles, and I think it gives a snapshot of, you know, the who and the what. I sure appreciate Patagonia. Golly, for, you know, gearing me up for the trip and publishing this beautiful book. And also Penguin Random House bought the audio rights and were such a pleasure to work with and hosted me beautifully to do the reading. We set up a studio over in Ohio and got it done. What a treat that, I mean, your book came out in 2012. So hard cover, soft cover, and eight years later on audio.

So I'm just saying again, like I just. Well, I got a call in to Brad Pitt for the movie. He's going to do the movie. Exactly. I think, you know, there's just. I think Brad could really do a great Christian B-Mish. For people who aren't sitting here, he's a, you know, there's a striking resemblance. You're too generous.

All right. So Christianbeamish.com. The book's still on Patagonia because I bought two hardcover first editions the other day. I'm going to give one as a gift and one for myself. And obviously you can be found on all those other sites. Yes. I'm big on Instagram. But you can see all the various surfboards I do.

But, you know, the surfboards are, it's all the same stuff. It really is. It's, uh, I was, as I was working the other day, I just, I have such a strong feeling that my life, all these, all these seemingly disparate parts of my life are, are indeed the, aren't they all for all of us, but the parts of a life and they do fit together and the one informs the other. The writing and the surfing, the boats and the surfboards, the going and even the staying, you know, it's, It's all in there.

Well, you've got some beautiful reasons. The two children that I saw in Natasha makes a lovely rum cocktail. Yes, she does. You have a beautiful home here in Carpenteria, so I get why you're here. But I hope for my own selfish sake, there's another book coming soon. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's in the works.

All right. Well, we'll leave it there. Thanks again. All right. My pleasure. Thank you. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff.

And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.