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For the past eleven years Mary and Denis Umstot have put 48,000 nautical miles under the keel of TEKA III. Many articles about their travels were published by Passagemaker Magazine, from “Lure of the Bahamas,” to “Anxieties and Realities of Crossing the Atlantic,” to transiting the Panama Canal, as a few examples. Their Black Sea Rally adventure of 2004, with 36 other boats flying flags of eleven countries, became an article in the Turkish nautical magazine, Naviga, as well as Passagemaker.

Now Mary has written a book, Voyaging to the Mediterranean Under Power: Imprints of Ports, People, Sunsets, and Storms, which includes those stories and much, much more. Her writings reflect daily life on a passagemaker, including all the planning and preparation required to journey all those miles in safety and comfort.

During their time at sea they experienced the ocean in its many moods—sometimes benign, sometimes, boisterous; weathered gales on passage or at anchor, solved problems from changing a fuel filter on the Gardner engine in a rolly sea on a very dark night, to fixing a broken auto-pilot sensor cable off the coast of Africa. Having the right tools and expertise to match the challenge are mandatory for a successful trip.

They fully appreciated all the wonders of nature that came daily. Sunsets, sunrises, rainbows, stars, and wildlife were abundant along the way. And wrapping one’s tongue around different languages, even just to say “Hello,” was a special experience. Then there’s the exotic food and long history witnessed by ruins to walk through and explore.

• A really dark and scary night!
• Breaking out of the box
• A tale of two maiden voyages
• An aborted trip
• The wonders of Alaska!
• The stormy Pacific and a stowaway
• The “Big Ditch” and beyond
• Lure of the Bahamas
• The East Coast—tip to tip
• The big blue ocean
• 9/11 from far away
• Spain: pickpockets, festivals, and cruisers
• France by sea and by land
• Italy: inland and islands
• Taste of Tunisia
• Glimpses of Gaeta
• Croatian imprints
• “Looking for Zorba”
• The mysterious Black Sea
• Middle East Escapades
• Turkish tidbits
• Get ready: crossing the Mediterranean
• Get set: staging in the Canaries
• Go! Heading for Antigua
• Rainbows and green flashes
• Cruising pirate waters—the southern Caribbean
• Hello Pacific!
• On the hard again
• Smelling the barn!
• In the rear view mirror
• Life essay—a postscript

A Really Dark and Scary Night!

   On the night of October 13, 1997, I felt fear like I had never felt before. My husband, Denis, and I stood alone in TEKA III’s pilothouse, watching the wind and waves outside the windows creating quite a disturbance. As we approached Cape Flattery on the northwest coast of Washington, an outgoing tide, running about four knots from Juan de Fuca Strait, charged into twelve-foot swells coming in from the Pacific Ocean.
   To enter the Strait we had to make a starboard turn near Tatoosh Island, a formidable rock formation. I stood on the port side of the pilothouse watching the waves build ahead of us, with a curly lip on each top. Scared? You bet! As we neared the point to change course, I physically moved closer to Denis and began taking deep breaths to control my fears. Denis had experienced that treacherous area salmon fishing for years, and from his intense concentration on steering the boat, appeared confident enough to pull it off. I, on the other hand, felt totally helpless. In my mind, if we did not climb that wave just right while turning, we would lose control and roll over, to be swallowed by the wave. I would never see my children and grandchildren again.
   With darkness all around us, we turned as the next wave started its climb. The running lights reflected white foam from wave train after wave train on both sides of us. That’s when I actually held my breath.
   But we made it! In only a matter of minutes we were sliding down that big wave, heading into the Strait and safety. The image I have is of huge hands lifting me up and carefully cushioning my ride. At that point I bonded with my boat!
   An hour and a half after that momentous turn, we dropped the anchor in Neah Bay Harbor, relieved that the day and trip were over.
   We had decided to abort our trip south to the Baja that fall due to a chain of storms that filed one right after another into the Northwest, holding boats in ports for weather windows. These ports were few and far between along the Pacific Coast and days were getting shorter. Weather windows might not stay open long enough to make a passage. It took us from 6:45 A.M. to 9:40 P.M. to make it north from Grays Harbor, Washington to Neah Bay on that day. Shorter days meant traveling in the dark at both ends. And the ocean had one of its boisterous days during that time.
   We experienced other episodes of bad weather during our ten years at sea. After making it through this one, coupled with the realization that the ocean had many moods, benign to boisterous, I approached each scary situation humming a mantra: “Feel the rhythm; trust my ship.”

Mary Umstot can call the world her home, having lived overseas many years, and traveled extensively by land in the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia. With TEKA III she answered the call of the sea for a new avenue of exploration. From her nautical adventures she has published thirteen articles in Passagemaker Magazine; in addition, other stories have appeared in travel magazines in the States and Asia. She lives with her husband, Denis in Seattle, Washington, where they have enjoyed boating in Washington and British Columbia, Canada for over twenty-five years.

ADVENTURES ON TEKA III

Denis and Mary Umstot bought TEKA III, a 52-foot ocean going trawler, in 1997. 48,000 nautical miles later, they have many tales to tell of adventures on the high seas and visits to foreign ports of call. Mary has captured these in her new book, Voyaging to the Mediterranean Under Power: Imprints of Ports, People, Sunsets, and Storms.

Their boat traveled the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to the Panama Canal and crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice. They also circumnavigated the Mediterranean, Black and Caribbean Seas, giving them many cultural experiences.

Over eleven years of cruising some of their dramas included storms on the ocean and at anchor, “bumps in the night,” plus a near collision with a freighter, and a stowaway rat. The positives focused on nature at its best—sunrises, sunsets, starry nights, dolphins swimming across the bow wave, and whales breaching close by. She describes all of these with zest and humor to entertain and educate her readers.

This book can be ordered through the publisher, Booklocker.com. Price: $17.95. ISBN 978-1-60910-082-7.

Note on the book’s title change:

During the first week after publishing my book, Passagemaking Under Power: Voyaging to the Mediterranean on TEKA III, Georgs Kolesnikovs claimed that “Passagemaking Under Power” is his trademark. He ordered me and Booklocker.com to immediately stop using the phrase. His basis is that he has been using it in a non-commercial list, called “Passagemaking Under Power List” and once, in Dec 2004, for a West Marine seminar in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. Legal advice was that he stood on shaky ground since he had to be continuously using the phrase in commerce to even claim trademark. He also had not registered the trademark with the US government trademark office. He refused to give me permission to use it without a very substantial payment. My publisher is a small business that cannot afford even the threat of legal action; thus, they pulled the book from the market and I had to re-title it. On the positive side, the new title sounds more romantic and might attract a wider base of readers.