John Kretschmer - Flirting with Mermaids: The Unpredictable Life of a Sailboat Delivery Skipper

By the same author

Cape Horn to Starboard
Used Boat Notebook

First paperback edition published 2003 by
Sheridan House Inc.

145 Palisade Street
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522

First published 1999 by Sheridan House Inc.

Copyright 1999 by John Kretschmer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission in writing of Sheridan House.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kretschmer, John.

Flirting with mermaids : the unpredictable life of a sailboat delivery skipper / John Kretschmer.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57409-164-6 (alk. paper)

1. Kretschmer, JohnJourneys. 2. Voyages and travels. 3. Boats and boating. 4. Sailing. 5. SailorsUnited StatesBiography. 6. Yachting. I. Title.

G440.K927K74 1999

910.4'5dc21

98-47633

CIP

Designed by Jeremiah B. Lighter

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 1-57409-164-6

For Lesa, for understanding why I had to write and for Joe, who will never sail the boat he built

Once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphins back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maids music.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Nights Dream

Have you ever seen her? he asked.
Often and often.
I, never.

But have you heard her sing? How can she sing under the
water? Who could? She sometimes tries, but nothing comes
from her but great bubbles.

She should climb on to the rock.

How can she, he cried, quite angry. The priests have
blessed the air, so she cannot breathe it, and blessed the rocks,
so that she cannot sit on them. But the sea no man can bless,
because it is too big, and always changing.

So she lives in the sea.

E. M. FORSTER, The Story of the Siren

He had but little learning, except what he had picked up
from the sun and sea.

HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby Dick

WHEN I FIRST met John Kretschmer he was flush with wanderlust. In those days, before the coming of GPS, he was wont to travel with his prized square wooden box that hed clutch in his hands as if it were a crown jewel, as he walked it through the airport security checks. The box contained his sextant, which for John represented his lifehis pride, spirit, love, joy, knowledge, and the world of water he pliedall in one.

It didnt happen overnight. John Kretschmer slipped into this life after a brush with fame after he doubled the Horn in possibly the smallest boat, a feat he achieved 15 years ago. If John had hoped to head off down a road of sailing fame, professional sailor extraordinaire, we know he would not have liked the regimen, the requirements, the business aspect of it. For, above all else, John Kretschmer represents one of the great free spirits of this world. When you read about his exploits you will begin to see him less as a yacht delivery captain and more as a person of amazing inner strength.

What I will always wonder about is how John Kretschmer has been able to keep his sense of humor. As things fall apart on all sides, while he dodges gunfire on the Arabian Sea, jumps into mid-ocean to wrap garbage bags around a leaking stern tube, mediates nasty crew problems, all while the weather gods are beating him to a pulp, there is always that slightly smart-aleck, sanguine person telling us in self-mocking tones how he managed to stay the course.

While John has spent 15 years sailing boats around the oceans of the worldsome 200,000 miles, and more than 100 deliverieshe almost never turned back. We are surprised when he is forced to turn the unseaworthy ISOLETTAas beguilingly beautiful that she wasback east, but not disappointed. It was one of the rare times John Kretschmer was beaten by the mermaids, when John would admit he kept that romantic illusion intact longer than was in fact possible.

What is this life of the million waves that John Kretschmer has ridden, where no onebut the mermaidshears your whimpers, hears you cry. There are few professions... none that requires you to extract this from yourself every minute of the day like yacht delivery, John says. And as you become a pawn of a world which you have little control over, a little overconfidence and braggadocio on the part of the captain can be overlooked as he, somehow, beyond all misfortune, gets the boat to its destination. If that means sailing the North Atlantic in January in a constant procession of gales, then so be it. But it takes more than intensity and a lot of that lust for the sea, and a sense of humor as strong as your will.

But deliveries are not all about danger. They are also about persistent, impossible-to-remedy breakdowns that are constant and about eking out miles, mile for mile, under ridiculous jury-rigged arrangements as the only solutions. Deliveries are about dream making, taking that boat to the arms of its loving owners on the other side of oceans. And deliveries are about finding your way through life, about being a guru, of sorts, to those trying to catch up with life, as John describes some of the passengers and crews who sign aboard his deliveries.

Its impossible to know what the sea will throw at you, but its wonderful to live in its world, pulling from it a life that has no parallel. It is one where in the end, when you are alone out there, you can begin to appreciate the mermaid gamboling off your bow, diving under your keel, and through your life.

John Kretschmer knows a lot about mermaids. He might be a world expert on them. Thats what comes from a life at sea.

As you passage through these true sea stories, you will brush with them, breathe the ocean world that John Kretschmer lives in, and giggle at its fanciful nature.

Micca Leffingwell Hutchins
SAILING Magazine
August 1998

I MAKE LANDFALLS for a living. I sail other peoples boats from one edge of an ocean to another and if I turn a deaf ear to the mermaids song and the boat and I arrive as planned, I get paid, bid the crew farewell and saunter off into the sunset, or at least to the nearest bar.