The Coffee Bean Story

Voyage to the South Pacific on Stortebeker III

by Trisha Schibli, Pacific Northwest Station with excerpts from the log of Chris Denny

In 1981, my husband, Kaspar, and I sailed south from Victoria, British Columbia, with my brother, Chris Denny, in his 33-foot wooden yawl, Stortebeker III. Chris needed crew, but more importantly, he needed to learn celestial navigation to complete his dream of sailing to the South Pacific. What better way to learn about the sun and stars, azimuths, and LOP (line of position) than to take your teacher along and sail to the open ocean? Once clear of Cape Flattery, our track took us about 100 miles off the west coast of Washington and Oregon to give Chris an offshore experience.

It was an eventful trip, long before the days of GPS, reliable depth sounders, and small boat radars. Shortly after we departed from Daphne Island, we ran into thick fog. It was then that Chris discovered his chart folio started at Cape Flattery, 60 miles from our home port. Luckily, Kaspar and I had sailed and raced in those waters many times and managed to remember the general headings through the islands to eventually run on the 20-fathom depth contour toward Cape Flattery.

As we groped our way into Neah Bay at the end of our first-day run out the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Kaspar shouted, “Stop the ship!” Suddenly we were in 6 feet of water according to the Seafarer sounder’s rotary flashing dial (remember those?).

Chris and Kasper (aft) taking a sight.

Chris’s logbooks with hammer and coffee beans.

Somewhere in the bottom of a locker was the sounding lead (so much for order in that locker). Over the side, the long lead line found no bottom. We were relieved, and amused, that the Seafarer flasher had gone around once and was reading 66 feet, not 6.

The next day, still in thick fog, Kaspar piloted us out of the harbour. Timed runs and careful compass courses should have taken us well into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and deep water, but without warning we spotted breakers ahead. It turned out that after some repairs the previous evening, Chris had thrown his steel toolbox just inside the cabin and under the bulkhead mounted compass, creating a 20-degree error. Another lesson learned for Chris, and thankfully no harm done. His tools were duly stored elsewhere.

The Washington/Oregon coast is notoriously rough and windy to offshore sailors. For Chris, this was the first time at sea in his own boat, and Stortebeker III was leaping and rolling. At breakfast, the coffee percolator went flying, toast was abandoned, and the cabin sole became his “galley counter.” Breakfast was Chris’s favourite meal, so it was a rough introduction to life at sea.

Wind and fog came and went during this portion of the trip, allowing for the odd sun shot to confirm our DR (dead reckoning). As we approached Point Reyes off San Francisco, Most sailors know that besides tending the sails and needs of the boat, food and drink become a focus at sea. Often, supplies are limited. Somewhere between Hawaii and British Columbia, Chris ran out of coffee and wrote in his log what has become known in the family as “the coffee bean story.”

again in the fog, Kaspar taped the Zenith long-wave radio to the main hatch slider to keep the direction-finding antenna lined up fore and aft. With this rig, we homed in toward the point on the DF “null.” We were so intent on watching for breakers ahead that we were a bit shocked to look up and see the lighthouse, which felt like it was overhead.

Our passage from San Francisco to San Diego was less

Stortebeker III and Chris when we left them at the San Diego Yacht Club.

eventful, with fair winds and clear skies. The celestial navigation lessons were full on, and Chris was ready to graduate to practicing on his own. Kaspar and I bid him farewell in San Diego and headed back to work.

Chris picked an ad off the notice board in a local chandlery and signed on a new crew, Sharon. She, too, wanted to practice celestial navigation. After a few stops in Mexico, they set sail for Tahiti, 3,800 miles away. All went well for the first week, but on Dec. 21 the Autohelm tiller pilot (“Otto”), so vital on a shorthanded voyage, developed a problem. To quote from Chris’s log:

Poor Otto had a seizure @ 18:00 hrs. He just kept flashing his lights and squeaking. We suddenly realized that the poor soul had us way off course. We balked at the thoughts of turning back or steering the 2,100 miles ahead of us! Sharon took the tiller. The rain was streaming down her new, white, Line 7 wet-weather gear. Down below, I prepared to operate. The Aladdin lamp was turned up bright, the table cleared, and tools readied. Sharon kept (Stortebeker III) squared up to ease the motion. I completely dissected Otto’s brain & found 1 or 2 drops of water and a solder drip, which could have been shorting with a little water on it. I put it all back together carefully & with bated breath we turned him on. He worked perfectly and still is! Needless to say, we are very relieved and have our fingers crossed for Otto.

Otto did keep working, and on Jan. 21, Chris and Sharon arrived in Tahiti, pleased with themselves at finding that little island in the Pacific. Sharon flew home to California, and Chris cruised the islands for a couple of months with friends before beginning his single-handed passages home via Hawaii. This entailed two long legs, each requiring more than a month at sea. Most sailors know that besides tending the sails and needs of the boat, food and drink become a focus at sea. Often, supplies are limited. Somewhere between Hawaii and British Columbia, Chris ran out of coffee and wrote in his log what has become known in the family as “the coffee bean story”:

I had run out of ground coffee, and I have no instant, so for three days or so, I have been suffering various teas, both regular and “hippie,” from “Heath to Heather” to “Feeling Free.” I found them all unsatisfactory to say the least. I was enjoying hot chocolate but ran out, then graduated to Ovaltine but ran out of milk powder. Just when I was resigning myself to some “Kamile” tea, I found a pound of coffee beans ... unground!!

I never realized how structurally sound a coffee bean is. If you try to hit one with a hammer, it will side slip and shoot off to a hiding spot somewhere. I did manage to crack one with the pliers, but after doing five this way, I decided it was a bit slow going. The cheese grater popped to mind, so I unearthed it and gave it a try, The sixth bean was reduced in this way, however, it took five minutes and caused a dreadful abrasion on my forefinger and thumb. I was nearly going mad by this time, drooling for my first pot of coffee in days.

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 cruis- Oregon 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.