by Keith Smith
He wears a necklace of four Antarctic seal claws given to him, one for each of his four solo circumnavigations. His longest trip around lasted six years; his shortest, two, all on a 31-foot wooden Norwegian fishing vessel. He’s soloed his current boat, Froken, a wooden Colin Archer-designed cutter, across the Atlantic (only) five times. When he retired from the merchant navy to go cruising 39 years ago, he’d never made a penny anywhere on land; his entire life’s income has all been earned upon the sea. And, unless you’re more than 59 years old, he has been on that sea longer than you’ve been alive. His name is Utz, and, at the age of 75, he’s made what could well be his very last sail.
I’d known Utz before but made it a point to know him better when our rhumb lines crossed this (and, as I later learned, for the last) time here in Margarita. Why? Well, Utz is a fascinating character in his own right, but equal to that, he is a living chapter in the history and tradition of cruising. Talking with him, listening to his stories, connects me somehow to that rich past and a long life well lived at sea. His story deserves to be told in full and, although my pen could never do it justice, I still wanted to acknowledge Utz and his accomplishments here, now that the twilight of his days at sea are upon him.
German born, he went to sea at the age of 16 with the Norwegian Merchant Navy right after World War II. He’s sailed square-riggers and trained merchant seamen how to do the same using technology closer to that of three or four hundred years ago than to the modern gadgetry found on most boats today. In his time, he’s had young Polynesian native girls row out to his boat in their dugout canoes upon his arrival in port. (Having seen too many movies, I’d always had a fantasy about that: the girls would be topless, they would feed me coconuts filled with some intoxicating brew and would then seductively beg me to become their God of Virility. But, alas, my dreams never came true. All I ever had come out to welcome my vessel were overly aggressive boat boys! Yes, they were topless, yes they offered intoxicants, but the only god they wanted was in my wallet. Not nearly what I’d had in mind. I guess, unlike Utz, I started cruising just a little too late!)
To see Utz, you’d never guess all he’s done. Sure, his tanned and weathered features tell of a long life at sea, but his slight physique seems less than that required for such solo accomplishments as his. That made me wonder from where his true strength must come. I suspect it comes from his brain, where he’s stored all the skills and knowledge learned over 59 years; from his heart, where he’s kept his zest and passion for sailing for so long and from his belly, where he’s found the guts to do it, again and again — alone. Those inner strengths have enabled Utz to do all he’s
done when bigger men would have never dared leave the dock.
If he likes you, he’s a pleasant fellow in his own salty way but not altogether tolerant of us new-age cruisers, nor would I be in his place. He’s got an opinion on all things nautical, some timeless, some you might view as out-of-date, but all richly deserved and every one warranting your consideration. But that takes work. Utz is not an easy man for me to understand if for no other reason than English is not his first language and German is my pitiful last. So I’ve had to follow his words very carefully especially whenever we’ve shared more than a few rounds of rum together. But listen I have.
His gear box broke down a while ago. Utz intended to repair and rebuild it himself but needed new gaskets.
“I’ll use charts,” he said.
“Huh? What? Charts?”
“Charts. They make wonderful gaskets. But not British Admiralty charts, though, They’re no good. The paper they use for those charts is too thick for good gaskets.”
“Utz, why not just get some gasket material?”
“What for? Charts work just fine — but not British Admiralty charts — they’re too thick.”
Although skeptical, I promised to keep that in mind. And sure enough, Utz announced the next day that he’d rebuilt his gear box and that the nautical-chart gaskets had worked just fine. I
left the bar that night wondering. What specific chart did he use? What exotic stretch of ocean,
sailed so long ago, did he think was best for gear box gaskets? My thinking, aided greatly by the rum, tempted me to go back and pose the question to Utz. Then I decided not to, suspecting he’d
laugh at the novice fool before him who would think the geography of a chart could possibly
make any difference to its virtues as a gasket. But I’m not so sure. Wouldn’t the chart for some place holding fond memories make a better gasket than the chart of a place that didn’t? I may ask him still.
Some time ago, after having made the decision to hang up his sextant, Utz found a potential buyer for Froken who wanted Utz to sail her over to Trinidad to get her hauled and surveyed. I offered to help him take her there (since Utz has lost much of the vision in one eye and admits only now to less strength than he’d prefer for solo passage making). So I offered to crew for him.
Then I begged. Then pleaded. But Utz, more than a little stubborn in his ways, told the potential buyers no. If they wanted tosee the boat, they could damn well come over to Margarita. I was crushed. I had already begun fantasizing what it would be like to crew for the man on what would be the last voyage of a career spanning 59 years, four solo circumnavigations and five other ocean crossings. As a student of cruising and history both, it would have been my once in a lifetime opportunity to witness, first hand, the final page in the final chapter of such a celebrated history of one man’s cruising life. You see, to me, Utz is famous and, for me to sail with him would have been nothing less than accompanying Eric Clapton with my guitar or pitching a baseball to Babe Ruth.
Are there more like Utz out here? Yes, I certainly hope so. We all should. Seafaring is older than known history and, although well documented in endless shelves of books, how often do we get to sit down and talk with such history, to put our lifestyle into that kind of perspective, before it’s all lost in our hurried rush into the pushbutton future. That’s why I’ll never miss an opportunity to sit down with Utz or anyone like him. Not just because they’re fascinating people, not just because of their timeless wisdom or legendary stories, but (at least for me), because it’s a chance to pay homage to those who have gone before us, those who have done this further and longer and, in important ways, better, with far less than we can ever really begin to appreciate. Like Utz, they have shown the way, one that most of us can now only follow with our GPS, chart plotters and autopilot in hand. But try making a gear box gasket with your chart plotter.
Fair winds, good luck and God bless you, Captain Utz. May I gain even a kernel of your knowledge and experience so that, one day when my time comes, some young whipper-snapper cruiser on his newfangled, gizmo-filled boat will want to hear my stories of old and, more importantly, those I’ll forever remember of you….
This article originally appeared in the March 2007 print edition of Caribbean Compass.
