Every town has a few people whom others come to think of as “adventurers.” That’s no surprise, since everyone has a certain capacity and desire to do something unusual once in a while. Maybe it’s simply to take a trip to someplace you’ve never been, or just to go spend a few days in New York — the city, that is. But real adventures are more than that, and the people who indulge in them are sometimes worthy of mention.
Back in the 1980s and ’90s I worked with two men who certainly qualify as adventurers —and then some. Some of us thought they were quite daring. But they got away with it.
My friend Rob McCullough came to work as my colleague at the research company I worked for in Princeton Junction in the mid-1980s. He was from California and had received his PhD from Stanford a few years before. There is no question he was smart and dedicated to his job as a research scientist in aeronautics and fluid dynamics. He settled down in Sherbrooke Estates, only about a half-mile away from our building on Washington Road. (I thought I had an easy commute, but I was in Grovers Mill, a full mile away from work.)
After a few years doing research associated with new atmospheric communications concepts Rob decided to broaden his horizon: he decided to learn about sailing — in a sailboat, that is. Some years earlier in California, he had taken up hang-gliding as a “hobby,” if you can call it that. So he thought sailing would be easy by comparison, and a lot safer.
Rob was determined to learn all about it, and since Alan Bilanin, another of our colleagues, was an ardent sailor, with a large ketch he sailed at the Jersey shore and in the Hudson River, Rob had a ready source of help in learning about sailing. Another colleague, John Yates, helped him get more accustomed to the ocean by introducing him to the tricks of wind-surfing.
With a few pointers from Alan, Rob went to Bay Head and looked around for a boat that could be sailed in the open ocean. Eventually, in 1993, in the Chesapeake Bay, he found what he was looking for, and Alan approved. It was a cutter about 38 feet long with a 56-foot mast. A cutter has one mast and three sails: a jib, a staysail, and a mainsail.
Rob also decided that he would take a leave of absence from the company, since he anticipated that learning how to sail his new boat would be time consuming. Following Alan’s advice, he spent a season sailing his boat around the Chesapeake Bay before venturing out into the open ocean. A little more practice there off the coast and then he decided he was ready — to sail to Seattle! Seattle? Yes, he really meant it. Seattle, Washington. We thought he was nuts. But we also knew he was smart and very determined.
There are two ways to get to Seattle from New Jersey by boat — a very long way via three oceans —the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Pacific — and a shorter way. Logically, Rob chose the shorter way, even though it meant going through the Panama Canal in a sailboat. For a trip that long confined in a small sailboat one wonders about all sorts of things: eating, sleeping, coping with bad weather and rough seas, communications, etc, etc.
But Rob was determined, and he knew that some people had actually already sailed completely around the world solo by then, so what he wanted to do wasn’t that big a deal. And he also had a bit of help from his father, who sailed with him during the first part of the trip while they were off the Atlantic coast.
He also broke the trip up into sections. The first section took him to the Virgin Islands, where he spent several weeks. Then came the canal. After more than a month on the ocean, going through the canal was easy. And his wasn’t the first sailboat to go through it. But now he was in the Pacific and had a long way to go to get to his destination — nearly 5,000 miles. As it turned out he took another year or so, with an extended stay in San Diego. By now it was 1995, and he didn’t sail the rest of the way to Seattle until ’96. Once there he considered whether or not he might like to remain there and resume his technical career there, too, instead of returning to New Jersey.
But he wasn’t quite finished with ocean sailing, even though the Seattle area and Puget Sound are very popular sailing areas. After all, there was the Pacific Ocean right there to the west, and naturally that was his next challenge. How about sailing to New Zealand and Australia? Done! By this time he had talked Alan into going part of the way with him, so Alan flew to Tonga in the spring of 1998 and sailed the remaining 1,500 miles with him to New Zealand. That little excursion took about two weeks. Once in New Zealand, Alan flew home, but Rob remained in the area and explored New Zealand and eastern Australia. He then sailed north to Japan.
Eventually, Rob turned eastward and simply had to sail back from Tokyo to the west coast of the U.S. Crossing the Pacific took him more than two months nonstop. After all, it’s around 6,000 miles. Los Angeles was his first stop on the mainland, and then he went up to Seattle again. With the sailing urge out of the way for a while, now Rob had time to go back to work, this time with his own consulting company, which he still has.
Another of my colleagues — Bernie, from the early days at Aeronautical Research Associates of Princeton on Washington Road — was a glider or sailplane pilot. He kept a sailplane at a glider-port in the Pocono Mountains about an hour’s drive from here. I never had the nerve to try it with him myself in a two-seater, but he soared a lot and set a couple of point-to-point records for soaring from that location.
I have to admit that I was once an adventurer myself. This one was very low-key and on the water with Alan — not very far away, but exciting nonetheless. This occurred on his ketch — a two-masted sailboat. Normally he kept it at a marina in Jersey City when he was sailing in and around New York harbor.
One year he wanted to have some repair work done at a marina on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River south of Trenton. The boat had to be sailed there from Jersey City by going around Cape May. Alan rounded up several friends with boating experience but needed one more. I volunteered. For a trip like that it was safer and easier to travel using the Diesel engine instead of the sails, since the sails made us dependent on the wind, which could be questionable, and the trip was not really recreational anyway.
We left Jersey City late Friday afternoon, with the hope of arriving at the marina on the Delaware by Sunday afternoon. Before starting, of course, we had to leave at least one car at the destination so we could get back to Jersey City, where the other cars were, after the boat arrived at the marina.
Memories of that sail are vivid, especially seeing the Statue of Liberty from water level, going around Sandy Hook, the lights on the boardwalks and amusement parks at night along the shore at Asbury Park, Point Pleasant Beach, Seaside Park, and Atlantic City, among others.
As with any crew, we rotated sleeping in the bunks, being on duty at the wheel and throttle, and navigating. The first night we were off the south Jersey coast, and the second night partway up the Delaware River. I was at the wheel for three hours during the second night and always had to aim at the green light on the shore ahead. We all did what we were supposed to do and even went under a highway bridge lifting above us to let us pass. It was a never-to-be-forgotten experience, especially for a non-sailor.
I suppose we all took a cue from our boss, the founder of the company. He had a long background with sailboats and airplanes, and many of us shared his twin-Beechcraft when we went with him on business trips. But that will fill at least one more column. It would be interesting to hear if there are other boat and airplane owners in West Windsor today. I do know of at least one airplane owner not far from me.
