I must go down to the seas again,to the lonely seas and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and
The white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
” “Sea Fever,” 1st stanza, John Masefield

When Phil Henshaw retired as a commercial pilot for America West in 2002, he didn’t just settle in at home, gold watch in hand, pick up the remote and flip channels between sports and talk shows for his retirement, although he confesses he’s done his share when he’s not sailing. He found another definition for remote, as in far away or distance in place.
Phil answered the call of the sea by taking his sailboat from San Diego to Hilo, Hawaii by way of Manzanillo, Mexico. Phil and his son Mark set out on Phil’s 38-foot heavy displacement sailboat he built. He bought the hull in 1977, launched it in 1983 from his former home in Seattle, and then moved it down to San Diego, his new home, in 1988.
On March 16, 2006, at 4:30 a.m., Phil and Mark left Manzanillo, Mexico for their 26 days and four hours of sailing to Hilo, Hawaii. Why Manzanillo as a jumping-off point? Manzanillo is the same latitude as Hilo for the 2,900-nautical-mile trip.
In order to get the boat to Manzanillo, Phil enlisted the help of Mark’s friend, another UC resident, Brian Ohlfest, for the first leg of the trip on Jan. 6. The three sailors made 16 stops on the way south.
With enough food for 40 days, a water maker converting saltwater to fresh, a self-steering vane, a wind generator to make electricity and fuel only good for 30 hours of motoring, Phil hoped for wind. He got his wish for nine straight days out of port, making an average of 125 miles a day. Then the wind stopped. The guys played the waiting game for five days until the wind picked up again. At this point, a lot of folks might have turned back to shore.
This is where the definition of remote comes in, as in far off and hidden. During their trip, they saw only three boats and those were close to the Mexican coast. Mark saw a shark on his four-hour watch, and they both saw a few whales. When asked if they had difficulty getting along in that small environment with four hours on and four hours off duty, Phil said they had mild disagreements but nothing serious. They read, had their iPods, short-wave radio and marine VHF.
“Going into Hilo was great,” according to Capt. Henshaw. His eyes lit up when he described seeing the windward coast of the Big Island, green everywhere. With a light rain falling, Phil and Mark were greeted by five or six dolphins and two complete double rainbows.
They stayed in Hilo for a week and felt the inner ear impact of moving, rolling on the first day when their sea legs adjusted to land. They sailed the boat to Kona, where Phil’s older son Mike lives with his wife Kim, young son Cade and daughter Amber. Michael, lawyer by trade in San Diego, recently moved to Kona to live his dream of owning a diving charter boat. He hasn’t looked back even during the recent earthquake.
In the meantime, Phil rented a space for his boat at Kailua Bay, where he lived on the boat for 30 days. On Aug. 1, Steve Mann, an experienced sailor, joined Phil and Mark for the return trip. The trio sailed over to Hanalai Bay, Kauai, in two nights. Now the watch duty was three hours on and six off. The nautical journey returning to the mainland was “much more difficult,” according to Phil.
On one occasion, when the sailboat was on automatic pilot, so to speak, Mark was on duty but opted to go below to visit with his dad and Steve for a few minutes. He looked up and out and shouted an expletive as he raced up to the deck. Bearing down on the boat was a Matson Containership 20 yards away from them in the middle of the ocean. Whoever described flying as hours of boredom interspersed by moments of sheer terror could also use that to describe sailing.
“However,” Henshaw says, “it is almost impossible to panic at sea because you know that you must keep your head and do what needs to be done or the consequences can be very unpleasant.”
This type of trip is not for the faint of heart or those addicted to Starbucks and shop-’til-you-drop days.
The wind must perform.
“The Pacific High in the summer, winds that go clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, was way north,” Phil explains. “We didn’t have the luxury to go in that direction because we only had 600 miles of fuel. We had to get the winds to propel us back home.”
By the sixth day, they knew sailing the northern route to the Seattle area wouldn’t work. There was no wind for several days and then “their guardian angels” saw to it the wind picked up, as they chose the southern route that extended the miles for this journey.
How do you stay clean on a venture like this?
“You don’t get that dirty and everyone smells the same,” Phil says with a smile.
Quick showers were available. On the return trip, they had a satellite phone and Phil would call Michael for computer weather reports.
When asked about the hurricane off Mexico, Phil said it might have had some effects on the wind. However, the whole Pacific was calm. With food for 50 days and concern about the lack of winds, they talked over rationing and managing fuel, with the newest member disagreeing with Phil on that.
“Disaster nearly occurred on the 35th day of the return trip when we almost lost the self-steering vane because a belt came off, but we fixed it before it failed completely,” he says..
Normally the return trip would be 3,000 miles; they sailed 3,700 miles in 42 days. Ask yourself if you could handle the last 42 days on the sea, from Sept. 15 until today, Oct. 26? Day after day, night after night, only five or six boats passed by, including the containership that could have destroyed their craft. When they pulled into the Laurel Street Mooring Buoys on Sept. 22, they had only a gallon and half of fuel. That was it. Phil’s wife Barbara was greeted by three guys with “great big beards.” She declined to make this nautical journey with Phil, Mark and Steve, but she did fly to Hawaii in April to see her grandchildren and their seagoing granddad for Easter.
“Mechanically, the boat took abuse and needs aesthetic work, but it will be seaworthy again soon,” Phil says.
He’s proud of this boat he built after purchasing the hull, especially, the hand-cast hardware by a machinist in Seattle.
Crossing the ocean between the mainland and Hawaii with no place to stop is something many of us can’t imagine. This is no cruise ship with creature comforts. It’s not like a plane Phil flew, where you file a flight plan. You let your family know your ETA (estimated time of arrival). It’s you and the sea and hopefully the winds.
Phil is not talking about his next nautical adventure, but he’s doing what the media describe as Reinvention instead of Retirement. “Who knows what next week will bring?”