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This may be a good time to take out that atlas that has been gathering dust,
or at least the latest National Geographic insert map because the following
story goes around the world. Four years ago in March 1995, James Rego weighed
anchor with local lad, Jeff George (whose family owns the Playa Mazatlan
Hotel) on board as crew. They were headed for the French Marquesas in a
50 foot sailboat named Velero, which happens to mean sailboat in Spanish.
Following a 28-day trip, they headed on to Tuamotos, the French atolls where
they were exploding a-bombs two years ago. By July they were in Tahiti and
off to Fiji. Mr. Rego's 27-year-old son, Tim, replaced Jeff and the odyssey
continued. By Halloween they were in Brisbane where they remained to sit
out the hurricane season. Cruising up the Barrier Reef, they got to Darwin
and in July 1996, joined a race headed for Ambon, Bali, Jakarta (actually
the Thousand Islands) and up to Batam, which is an Indonesian island right
near Singapore. What James Rego noticed is that no matter where you went,
the only universally accepted currency was the US dollar. He said that although
a US passport was nice to have, what helped most was patience and a smile.
After visiting Singapore and Malaysia, they settled down in Phuket for a
year and a half, berthed in a new marina. From there, they traveled by air
all over Asia and saw much of Thailand too. Tim said although his dad was
enjoying all the traveling, he was beginning to talk about returning to
Mazatlán, a conversation that was to continue steadily, in fact repeatedly,
for the next two years. Besides, the bottle of Tequila they were carrying
around the world was beginning to run low. Time to switch to Mekong whiskey!
It was February of 98 when they finally headed East again, leaving Thailand
for Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Red Sea, Sudan, Egypt, the Suez Canal and
at last Cyprus, where they spent five weeks in port. By then it was May.
Mr. Rego described a largely fish diet along the way, some of which they
still have in the freezers. When they put into the small ports along the
way, most were able to supply them with fuel and fresh fruits and a few
vegetables, but not much more.In Egypt they rested in a hotel with their
boat tied up right outside their window. Camels were more common than cars.
It was like something out of a movie. Only in bigger towns did they occasionally
eat the local |
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fare. They spent almost two months in Greece and arrived in Italy in the
height and heat of summer to find almost everything closed down. A month
in Mallorca before a brief stop in Gibraltar took then up till Fall. Then
it was on to Tenerife where they ran into a few sailors from the Australia
race. Boating is a small world! They crossed the Atlantic without a storm,
thinking about Columbus' maiden trip into the great unknown 500 years earlier.
With the advent of GPS (global positioning satellite), Rego knew exactly
where they were at any given moment. They made it to Barbados in 26 days.
By then they needed new sails, which they had already received in The Canary
Islands. They did a quick tour of the ABC islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao
and then this past Christmas was spent in Venezuela. They finally hit a
storm, bad enough to tear their new sails, so they put into Cartegena for
five weeks to have them repaired and loved the old city, but cautioned not
to try to go inland. When they lined up at the Panama Canal, there were
70 other boats waiting to go through. It took only two weeks total. By now
they have been through both man made canals, almost all the major oceans
and many seas, to find themselves back in the Pacific. After three weeks
in Costa Rica they sailed straight up to Acapulco, back into Mexican territory.
There they ran into a bit of a scare when a Mexican tanker played chicken
with them at 3 a.m. in the morning. Since they always had one person on
watch, even at night, and had a radar with a 14 mile radius set to beep
when it sighted something, they only had to keep moving and maneuver faster
than the big tanker. Zihuatenejo and Puerto Vallarta were the next ports
of call and finally, at long last: Mazatlán. They arrived late at night
and went into the municipal harbor first. Having celebrated their goodbye
party at Sr. Frog's, they decided they should let the staff know they had
made it back and so within an hour of docking, they went directly to Frog's
to report in. Thus after 28,000 miles, the next day they shifted north a
few more miles and put into the El Cid Marina, which according to Rego "is
as good as any marina in the world". Rego and son plan to be in Mazatlán
a few weeks before heading back to the US for a deserved rest. The boat
goes to Stockton, CA and they will be close by, contemplating their next
move, waiting for the heat of summer to dissipate in Mazatlán, so they can
come back again soon! |
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The Boat
The
Crew
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