Sea Hitchhiker Swaps Skills to Roam the World

SAN DIEGO —  At 32, J.D. Gott has spent half of his life at sea, much of it in slow, unplanned trips to points around the world at other people’s expense.

He smiles slightly as he ticks off the locales he has visited, as if remembering something distinct about each place or each voyage aboard the sailboats that have taken him there.

“The world is 75% water, so what better way of getting around than to use it?” Gott asked matter-of-factly during an infrequent stop in San Diego, his hometown. “And I always have loved the ocean.”

Gott is a nautical hitchhiker, part of a community of seafaring people who tour the world working for passage aboard sailboats that cruise the oceans year-round.

Instead of paying for gas like their landlubbing counterparts, Gott and others offer labor or knowledge of the oceans in return for transportation to a destination and the opportunity to roam the seas.

Kirk Webster is a Malibu resident and professed romantic who took a 13-month world trip, part of it aboard sailboats.

“It’s one of the last kinds of experiences or adventures you can do that’s still ‘Old World,’ if you will,” Webster said. “On a boat, you’re just at the whim of the weather and the wind. People are still out there doing it the old way.”

The hitchhiking community meets in ports to tell stories, swap books and advise each other about captains. Their informal network depends on word of mouth and classified ads, but ports around the world have systems for matching “cruisers”--people with yachts--and experienced or inexperienced people looking for spots on board.

“It’s international,” said Bill Parks, a reporter for Latitude 38, a San Francisco-based sailing magazine. “People from all over the world are doing that.” He added that this kind of travel is becoming more popular.

At the San Diego Yacht Club, scores of people have left their names in a file at the security gate for skippers looking for crews headed to Mexico, Hawaii, Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. Shelter Island businesses such as Mail Call, Bo’Sun’s Deli and Pacific Marine Supply sponsor bulletin boards where skippers and crews can post their phone numbers.

“I am looking for any kind of crewing job, full-time, part-time and will go anywhere,” reads one message at the San Diego Yacht Club. “I just want to sail. I’m ready now!”

Pacific Marine is also host to a huge matching party each fall that draws as many as 1,500 people from as far away as Alaska and New York.

“This has been a traditional thing for the past eight years for us,” said Pat Falkosky, owner of Pacific Marine Supply. “San Diego is a last stopping point for outfitting and provisioning boats. About 99% (of boaters) stop in here.”

Gott’s travels have taken him to Athens, Aruba, Curacao, Cozumel, St. Maarten, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and other locations, most of the time for no pay. A trained sailor qualified to pilot vessels up to 200 tons, Gott usually receives expenses in return for his skills as a skipper, navigator, mechanic or deckhand.

He is now outfitting the High Roller, a 47-foot sloop that he will help sail to Australia, where he hopes to earn some money sailing charter boats before his next voyage.

As a youngster, Gott could always be found at the beach and the harbors, working on boats and sailing.

Dream Realized at 16

“My uncle was a commercial fisherman, and when I was growing up, all I wanted to do was be like him,” he said. “No fireman, no policeman, no lawyers, no doctors. I always wanted to be him.”

By the age of 16, he was pursuing that dream on commercial fishing vessels from the West Coast to Alaska. He has fished for tuna off Mexico, dived for abalone off Catalina, and dredged for clams in New England.

“I went from fishing season to fishing season,” Gott said. “You’d start off in San Francisco fishing salmon and end up in Alaska fishing crab. When you get done with one season, you look for a boat that’s going on to the next season.

“I’ve ended up sleeping on docks in the heavy fog up in Oregon, sleeping on docks in a sleeping bag with a sign attached to me (that read) ‘Hire me,’ because I had no money, no food, didn’t know anybody around. I got off the boat because the guy was a loser. You take a risk when you get on a boat.”

Gott’s fishing career ended when a 400-pound crab pot, filled with 700 pounds of crab, broke loose from its hooks and slammed into him, smashing his ribs. Surgeons removed his right lung.

‘I’d Rather Sail’

“I came very close to not living,” he said, “and I decided that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing that. I’d rather sail.”

Gott chartered a sailboat with a friend he met on a fishing excursion and sailed the Caribbean for four months.

“That was my first real taste that I wanted to get out of the power-boat (business), which is more like truck driving at sea, and get into sailing, which is more creative. And you work closer with Mother Nature,” he said.

His life ever since has been a series of voyages punctuated by brief landfalls when he scrabbles for work. These days, while waiting to set sail for Australia, he is hawking light jackets and is known in Shelter Island restaurants and bars as “J. Jackets.”

Like other nomads bitten by the sailing bug, he has come to prefer the water to the land, enduring the minor annoyance of being ashore while arranging his next voyage. While in harbor, he prefers to live aboard a boat whenever possible.

‘It’s Your Space’

“I’d just as soon be on a boat,” he said. “I’d just as soon have a boat out at anchor and be able to row out to that boat. Because nobody can come a-knocking. Nobody can come a-calling. You know, it’s your space.

“And the sound of the waves, the sound of the water, is a lot better than the sound of the trucks . . . and people kicking at your door at 2 o’clock in the morning (to say) ‘Hey, let’s go party.’ ”

Hitchhikers cite wanderlust, love of the ocean, the easy pace, cheap travel and the desire to explore other cultures as the attractions of their pastime. Special bonds are created between people who travel long distances and survive the adversity of bad weather together. For most hitchhikers, getting there cheaply may be the ultimate object, but speed and destination are usually secondary to the true joy of living on the open sea.

“You don’t have any TV, you have very little radio. The news is very unimportant. You don’t care who the President is,” said Paul Taylor, 41, a San Diegan who island-hopped in the Caribbean recently. “You do a whole lot of reading, so it’s mind-expanding. You get a lot of exercise and you lay in the sun.”

Hitchhiking Technique

“Life is too short to work all the time,” said Pauli Kuoppamaki, a 22-year-old Finn who has hitchhiked in the Baltic Sea and was residing temporarily in Riverside. “Work is good, but not all the time. Three to four months a year, I work.”

There is something of a technique to hooking up with skippers. It helps to have nautical skills to offer, and a good cook is always in demand. But yachtsmen will also take inexperienced passengers aboard because people are needed on deck to stand watch 24 hours a day.

Gott and Webster advise a thorough inspection of the boat and a long talk with the skipper, but they concede that a hitchhiker never can be completely sure of the captain’s qualifications or personality. Asking other travelers or the dockmaster their opinions of a captain also can be valuable, they said.

Women are advised to be extra cautious about signing on with predominantly male crews.

Gott has turned down rides because of frayed rudder cables and oil in the bilge, and captains with “short man’s complex.”

“You have to look for a good, safe boat because your boat is your only link to land,” Gott said. “And you also have to make sure you’re sailing with someone who is competent.”

Risks Assessed

“You always inspect the boat,” Kuoppamaki agreed. “There’s all kinds of weirdos out there. If the boat is in good condition, usually the guy is pretty good, too.”

Captains run the same risks. In 1983, jail escapee Kevin Cooper killed four people on a Chino Hills horse ranch, then eluded an international dragnet for seven weeks by hitchhiking aboard a dilapidated sailboat out of Mexico. Cooper did not harm a couple and their 5-year-old daughter who were aboard with him, but he was ultimately captured after he was suspected of raping a woman at knifepoint on a nearby boat after a party.

“I’ve seen a lot of men, and it doesn’t take me a long time to size a guy up,” said retired Marine Lt. Col. Dave Phifer, a Vista resident who is advertising in the San Diego Log newspaper for a crewman to help him sail a 31-foot ketch to Seattle. “And if something happens, I guess, well, I’ll have to handle myself the way I do when I’m on the streets of L.A.”

Life aboard a sailboat 2,000 miles from the nearest land is not always a pleasure. Almost all hitchhikers have been battered by storms that made them question their choice of transportation.

Gott has been searched for drugs by various naval authorities, caught in gales, and spooked almost to the point of cardiac arrest by the spotlight of a surfacing U.S. Navy submarine off the coast of Cuba.

Overboard Fall

But his worst moment came when a sailboat lurched and his hand, which was covered with suntan oil, slipped from the shroud he was holding. He was pitched overboard. The other man on board was asleep below.

Gott screamed as loud as he could before hitting the water, then surfaced and began yelling again.

“Fortunately, he heard me and came about,” Gott said. “But it was still a minute or more before he could get up, release the auto-pilot, bring the boat about, come about and get me back on board. Believe me, it was very lonely when I fell off the boat, not knowing if he heard me scream.”

More routine discomforts include incompatible crews, cramped cabins (Gott is 6 feet, 5 inches tall), constant dampness, little privacy and a shortage of fresh water. Piracy is something Gott is wary of but has never encountered. Rookies often must endure bouts of seasickness.

Still, Gott said, “You’ve got more comforts on boats. You can go up on deck and watch the sunsets. And if you don’t like your neighbors, you can pick up the anchor and move someplace else. As I say, they have to be able to swim or have their own boat to come visiting.

“The best sleeping pill in the world is the slow rock of a boat under a full-moon sky, sleeping up on deck.”