I had to go back farther.

Last week I got an e-mail from an old friend. He said he had been on Google looking for things from his past, when he came across ‘Barry’s Corner’. He was stoked to find me after thirty years and to read about part of the adventure that he enjoyed so much when he was just seventeen.

The fellow’s name is Chris Heg. He was of the two young guys who were aboard the Alden schooner Constellation when Geoff Bourne and I sailed into Russell, Bay of Islands, New Zealand in December of 1977. We knew the boat and her owner from contacts years before in San Diego and Tahiti, and anchored right next to her in the calmest part of the bay.

Constellation had limped into New Zealand just ahead of the Seminole with a dead generator and main engine. She was a sitting duck for bad weather, being manned only by Chris and the owner’s eighteen year old son, Poindexter Erb (for real!). The sails and running rigging were a mess, and the anchor windlass was barely running, so they would have been in serious danger had there been any drastic change in the conditions.

When we first anchored, we rowed by and said our hellos and headed for town after having a gam with the young guys and finding out what was going on with the boat. We’d been sailing for two days, coming non-stop from Whangerei, and were looking forward to getting a hot shower and a beer. New Years was coming soon, and the town of Russell was filling with young people and families on vacation. The fruit trees had some good picking too.

After finding a friendly shower stall at a local boat yard, we wandered into the Duke of Marlboro pub and found it full of crazy drinking Aussie tourists, mostly young guys with ten or fifteen plastic beer cups stacked up like a tower, adding to each one with a new full cup, the challenge being to not spill the lot. There were some really long arms that afternoon, and the whole show was giving us an idea of what we could expect as New Years got closer and the crowds built for the holiday.

After being in town for about a week, we met a lot of young people around the Duke. Among them was a number of pretty girls, and through Dexter and Chris, we also met a number of young guys. During that week we had little to do during the days once we cleaned up the Seminole and put her to sleep safely. That left plenty of time for exploring the little town, finding all the fruit trees and vegetable gardens, and trying to create some ‘recreational diversions’. In other words, we were looking to party.

The schooner CONSTELLATION is an elegant lady, born in 1932. Sailing her was a wonderful experience, a blast from the past. We had no idea at the time how much she would impact our lives.