By Toshi Tanaka

August 27, 2024

 I work on boat for living

I mean a ship. It is close to 280 meters(!) in length (~920ft), more than 110,000 ton displacement. It is an LNG tanker; my job is connecting the huge pipes for loading the LNG into storage-tanks. It is a specialized technical job that requires strength and skill, as you can imagine; it is only sometimes dangerous work.

Though I have been on 2 month cruises three-or-four times, crossed Atlantic ocean… know a bit about ships, big vessels, how to plan a voyage… that sort of thing. But if I am honest, I am still a novice when it comes to sailing, even after 5 years occasional crewing on a friend’s 34’ sailboat near my home. I have been sailing with these pals until I recently fell into a nice, respectable thirty-five year old 30’ sailboat that needed a new owner and some loving restoration. That is when I discovered TSPS. And that is where I spend my weekends now.

But the point is, sailing in a sailboat gives you many first-in-a-lifetime experiences (often cascading upon you in one shot!). So for example, a couple of weekends ago I traveled out to Hota for sailing on a lovely, recently-restored 45 year-old 34’ Peterson sailing yacht. Garuda is owned by one Evan Burkosky who is pretty famous among the TSPSers; I would like to tell you how this tiny journey brought me many first lifetime experiences. All were pretty good.

First time in Hota

Oh man, Hota is so far from my beaten path even around Yokohama where I grew-up. It is even way outside my regular sailing area with my pals. Since my sailboat is new to me and requires lots of attention to the engine, I went by train. This was to attend Captain Evan’s engine-maintenance workshop. By the time it takes to get there, I could have gone to Osaka! My route took me to the Uchibo Line, familiar to me as my tanker-job is in Kisarazu on the Chiba coast… right where the underwater Aqualine connects the two peninsula (Yokohama-Chiba).  I know how far this is but wow, Hota is a different story. Very Chiba-rural for a city-guy like me… wild, full of jungle and mountain forests… almost to the tip of the peninsula. I have never been there before… my first trip into deeply rural Chiba!

This is not a day trip. I mean, considering what is out there in Hota: beautiful nature, mountainous landscape, the smell of sea; actually, a mere day trip back-&-forth would be a waste. So I planned for an over-the-weekend stay.

Late in the afternoon Captain Evan picked me up at nearby port train-station. On the way driving to where Garuda is berthed, I saw an out-of-place classy non-Japanese car, with license-plate number “Ya” in hiragana. I had a strange sensation that I would come across some yakuza Oyabun, driving his car out here, to a nearly obsolete fishing town… maybe to dump his betrayed mistress or a crazy wife? Catching the look on my puzzled face, Captain Evan says nonchalantly “Oh, that’s Tim’s car”.

“Huh? Who is THAT?” I wondered and immediately began thinking maybe I came to the wrong place.. that perhaps I should’ve gone to Hooters instead of Hota!

Firsts with Captain Evan: night time & single-handed sailing

There was still a bit of daylight when Captain had me carry his maintenance tools and materials onboard to Garuda. While that sounds bland, getting from the quay onto the boat required traversing an insanely narrow, teetering gangway without handrails from the quay and simply perched onto his beautifully restored yacht’s bow-pulpit! A death defying feat that was another first for me. Seems he does it all the time! But my heart-rate returned to normal several minutes later.

The whole purpose for going to Hota was to learn from this Canadian and obtain his advice, by hands-on working on Garuda (particularly engine noise reduction) so that I can apply the same skills & techniques to my recently acquired sailboat. But it seems this trip was not going to be quite like that… just not today (we did it the following morning).

As soon as we got set on Garuda, the Captain said while gazing up into the sky, “Well, it seems like a nice wind so why don’t we go out for a sail?” And as I well know from my experience, when you are on someone’s boat, and they are the Captain, their voice is The Rule. So of course I replied with the required enthusiasm “why not!” (I don’t think my voice cracked audibly).

As merely a ‘crew-experienced’ novice, I asked how I can help once we cast-off the mooring lines and started motoring gently towards the mouth of the harbor.  “Just stay there where you are now and watch how I single-hand manage my boat, okay?”.

I thought single-handed operation was really only doable for a smaller boat, like a ~20’+ Yamaha but definitely not for something over 30 feet; certainly it cannot be safe! For a 30+ft boat, even double-handed requires a competent skipper and crew, I always thought. So this was was my first time to see and to experience how to single-hand a pretty massive 30’+ sailboat. It was beautiful and poetic and such an eye-opener for me!

First night-time sailing

Soon after he killed the engine and we were drifting out to sea, it was already dark. Under the stars and under sail, Evan taught me how to sail, how to trim the sails (you need to come to Garuda for those details!): it was an astonishing and surprising, awakening experience.

I apologize that my English is not perfect but I wanted to write this story as gratitude to TSPS, to Oyabun Tim and of course to Captain Evan Burkosky for such a wonderful opportunity. Looking up at the stars in the middle of the massive Tokyo bay entrance, slicing through the water, I asked aloud, “What could be better than this?”

Those are, in fact, the same-words said to me by a third-mate crewmember on one of my training ships when we were stuck on a lifeboat in my first training cruise. I was 20 years old then, but already smitten with this pastime we call sailing.