I evaluated every piece of mechanical equipment on the boat in the light of its possible usefulness to grind the coffee, but nothing, nothing could work. I pounded beans number seven and eight on the threshold using the companionway drop board in its guides as a guillotine, but it was awfully slow going and the salt spray made rather a mush of it. I eyed a sheet winch. It looks like a coffee grinder, but damned if I could figure out a way of making one grind coffee without wrecking the winch. I decided that would be going a bit far! Beans nine through fifteen were lined up in a row along the hinge in the table. “As I close the hinge the little devils will all be pulverized,” I thought, but I only succeeded in straining the hinge and leaving little coffee bean impressions in the mahogany. By this time the bacon was fried to a crisp, and I had one thimbleful of cracked beans! I finally hauled out my trusty pressure cooker and rusty claw hammer. I threw a handful of beans in the bottom, closed my eyes, and bashed the hell out of them with the end of the hammer handle. A few beans got away, but most of them succumbed after ten minutes of pummeling. I let the pot perk for a good twenty minutes, as the grind was what you would call coarse. The coffee sure tasted good though; it was worth every minute of the hour that it took to produce it. A few days later, the log continues: I burst out laughing this morning as I reached down to find out what it was I was stepping on and found it was a coffee bean, and it wasn’t alone! Chris also ran out of pipe tobacco, but that’s another story. He made it back to Victoria in August 1982
after a successful 11,000-mile voyage in just under a year. As Chris approached Victoria, Kaspar and I sailed out to meet Stortebeker III and threw him a tin of pipe tobacco. Sadly, Chris died in 2011, but he had accomplished his dream of sailing to the South Pacific, and Stortebeker III had certainly proven her seaworthiness.
Stortebeker III
Designed by H. Rasmussen and built by Abeking & Rasmussen, Stortebeker III was launched in 1937 at Lemwerder, Germany, near Bremen (A&R #3170). She is 33 feet long with a 5-foot draft, yawl rig, and has a tight planked mahogany hull. To prove her seaworthiness and promote A & R, she was sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1937 by Captain Ludwig Schlimbach. She has had various owners over the years, one of whom was John Franklin-Evans, who later owned our wooden yawl, Starfire, in the late 1960s. To quote Chris’s log once more: . . . By the way, Franklin-Evans made this trip (HA to BC) in May 1954 in 31 days. I’ ll be sure to beat that. I’m on Day 23 now, three more should do it. After Chris’s voyage and several more owners, Stortebeker III was shipped back to Germany and is now undergoing restoration in Hamburg. Kaspar and I sailed Starfire up the Elbe River to Hamburg in 2015 to meet the current owner and view the ongoing work on Stortebeker III (see their blog at stoertebeker3.de). 2
Trisha on watch on
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stortebeker III off the Trisha and Chris Denny grew up cruisOregon coast. ing extensively with their parents on the British Columbia coast and later sailed and raced in the Victoria area. Chris, an industrial designer, loved the challenges of fixing up an old boat or car and overhauling the engine. He owned Stortebeker III from 1979 to 1995. Kaspar and Trisha were married in 1971 and have owned wooden boats ever since. After closing their marine business in 1992, they headed offshore on Starfire, a lovely 53-foot yawl designed in 1962 by Alan Buchanan. That five-year voyage took them west about around the world via Japan, Australia, the Red Sea, Suez Canal, Mediterranean, transatlantic to Panama, and home to Victoria, B.C. In 2005, they set sail again, heading down the Pacific, around Cape Horn and up the Atlantic to cruise part of each year in northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Unable to cruise in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions, they rejoined Starfire in 2021 and sailed from Crete, Greece to Turkey. Trisha and Kaspar received the CCA Far Horizons Award in 2015 in recognition of their extensive offshore voyaging.
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