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By Jo Bailey and Carl Nyberg One evening when Steve returned home from work, tired and discouraged, Tammy quietly planted the seeds of an impossible fantasy. “Why don’t we just sell the house, buy a sailboat and go cruising?” she ventured. Tammy knew him well enough after 27 years of a good marriage to know this might be what he needed to hear. What a crazy idea, just not the sort of thing responsible people do. They had a home, cars, pets and other obligations, although their two daughters were grown, educated and happily married. And Steve and Tammy, were, after all, powerboaters not sailors. Within a couple weeks of the preposterous suggestion, the couple drove to Seattle from their Olympia home to look at sailboats. They almost immediately fell in love with the beautiful 50 foot Gulf Star Mark II ketch, Skybird. “There were three bedrooms, three bathrooms, kitchen with a microwave and pantry—this floating home was right up my alley, I thought,” Tammy wrote. They put money down on the boat, subject to a survey and test sail, and their lives changed forever, turning their crazy dream into stunning reality. Skybird became Steve and Tammy’s boat in the summer of 1994. Her book, Sailing on the Wings of “Skybird,” the adventures & misadventures of a couple who sailed away, is their story. It’s a delightful book about a charming couple who took a chance. They sold their home and furniture four months later, and sold or gave away nearly everything else. “It felt like we sold everything except our skis and our IRS records. By unburdening ourselves of material things we were removing the yokes harnessing us to our landlocked lives,” Tammy wrote. “We anticipated exciting and positive things. Choosing to leave was not a matter of ‘dropping out’ of society, but a way to ‘drop into’ a more satisfying life.” They decided it was also time to relinquish their careers as both were nearing age 50. Steve had worked for 26 years in the sales force of a national paper company; Tammy was a homemaker and registered nurse. They also resigned volunteer commitments. This inexhaustible pair worked through the fall, winter and spring, totally refurbishing the ketch, installing modern electronic navigational equipment, building in a desalinating watermaker, adding new rigging and new hand-sewn sails, installing an inverter, rewiring, sanding, painting, varnishing, decorating and doing everything possible to make the boat safe and functional. Some of the decorating Tammy did included matching wallpaper and linens, new china and all matter of incidentals to make the yacht homey. “Steve and I have always worked well together and over the years developed a comfortable relationship. The challenge of readying the boat and learning new skills invigorated us,” Tammy wrote. “Skybird became our own floating city, complete with infrastructure. She made our water, our power, and with the added GPS units, could locate herself within 20 feet latitude and longitude anywhere in the world.” When they weren’t working on the boat they were reading every sailing story they could to “whet our appetite to become sailors ourselves.” “Planning and doing this trip was the most fun thing I ever did,” Steve told us. “I wanted the adventure.” They moved aboard, continually working on the boat until they were ready for a shakedown cruise during the summer of 1995. They planned to sail to the San Juan Islands and then north to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. While crossing Nahwitti Bar at the north end of the island, they inadvertently discovered that they definitely needed to rethink how they had stowed their “stuff,” especially in the galley and main salon, as happens to many sailors on their first cruise into rough waters. “The sea’s short steep chop caused items in the cabin to tumble about. Things I thought were stowed well were not. Books, coffee pot, foodstuffs and other items littered the cabin floor. The pullout shelves holding plates, bowls and cups pushed open their locker doors and crashed to the galley floor. The pantry door, accidently left unlocked, threw its contest out. Oatmeal, beans and noodles were added to the mess. Our securing would need reworking when we returned home, another chore adding to our ever-growing list of things to do in preparation for “the big trip” down the coast. “With the rough seas and bouncing boat, everything in the cabin we’d neglected to lash down tightly leapt from its home and added yet another layer to the floor. Soon our stomachs began to leap as well. All three of us were seasick.” In addition, the whisker pole had come loose from the mainmast and was flailing about. Steve was nearly knocked overboard by its thrashing. He grabbed and secured it, but it had already gashed a hole in the deck. This was a true “shakedown” cruise, but nevertheless they called it a four week “marvelous trip.” By early September they were ready to go offshore, and the “learning curve” began in earnest. “I was so excited when we headed out the Straits (of Juan de Fuca) to Neah Bay and then into the Pacific, just one year after we bought the boat,” Steve said. “I wanted the adventure. We were fancy free, what a great feeling.” Less than two days later, as they sailed peacefully about 60 miles offshore, wind speeds jumped from 10 to over 50 knots in less than 10 minutes and they faced their first real storm. It was there, sailing wing and wing, “when we thought our lives were over as the wind overpowered us, and we careened downwind, down huge swells with sails full out, unable to bring them in . . .” Tammy wrote. “The wind increased to 55 knots, putting more force on the taut sheets and billowed sails. Up to this time the autopilot had been handling all the steering, trying to keep us on a steady course, but we now had to take control and steer by hand. In the short time it took Steve to disengage the autopilot, Skybird broached sideways and rolled to starboard, causing the whisker pole to dip and the jib to scoop up water. This created a tremendous tugging force on both the sail and the pole. We were in danger of a complete knockdown.” Steve was about to grab a knife to cut the jib sheet (they were so frightened that they didn’t even think about releasing the sheet, she wrote) when the 5/8” diameter sheet, a 15,000 pound test line, snapped, sounding like a gunshot. Once they got the jib and jib sheet under control they still had to deal with the mainsail and getting the boat under control. They finally dropped the main and powered under bare poles. “The experience frightened me so, I realized why others gave up on their sailing dreams when faced with the ocean elements,” Tammy wrote. “But I couldn’t give up, I told myself, I will learn to handle this, I must... I can’t give up the ship this soon.” Much later, after things had calmed down. Tammy wrote, “We had managed to make it through our first storm at sea, but as my captain informed me, ‘It won’t be our last’.” 
The Guays made it safely down the coast and spent from November 1995 through early April 1996 along the Mexican coast, befriending other cruisers, enjoying Mexican culture and attending to various boat necessities, especially keeping the boat in safe running condition. “Steve became a master electrician, plumber, mechanic and jury rigger, as well as sailor,” she wrote.
In April they left for their first crossing and longest ocean passage, sailing from Manzanillo, Mexico, to the Marquesas. They made it in just 19 days, most of the time on a port tack. The trip was hot and muggy and the boat became uncomfortable. From Tammy’s log: “The laundry is piling up and up, and the air is extremely muggy. Everything inside and outside the cabin is wet and covered with salt crystals. The deck looks like a spray of diamond dust with the sun glimmering off the salt facets ... All my efforts ashore to make our ship homey are disintegrating. Our china has been replaced by paper plates or even more functional servers—the food’s original containers, cans or cartons. “The decorator pillows are shoved in spots to keep items secure or from rattling. Color-coordinated towels, once folded in the heads, have been used for mopping and are draped about. Everything is sticky-salty.” Shortly before arriving in Polynesia, she wrote, “With the monotony of (the crossing)—minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day—the thought of seeing land turns our previous depths of despair to a sense of excitement and anticipation. We revisit our South Sea picture books and look forward to being in the tropical settings. Almost there! We think we can smell land. We know we are near the end of this long passage. “Ahead we faced the 3500 foot high island of Hiva Oa, our intended destination. Soon we would set our feet on terra firma after so many days of terra shiosha at sea. Next day at first light, our approaching masts signaled our friends, who greeted us with waving arms and smiling faces from their dinghies. ‘Ahoy, Welcome!’ We were safe.” Tammy said she had wanted the experience of new cultures, and she loved the South Pacific islands and the native people. All through spring and summer of 1996 they cruised in French Polynesia, including the Tuamotus, Tahiti and other Society Islands. By late summer and fall they had sailed to the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji and on to New Zealand. “I’m beginning to realize the sea passages, in and of themselves, are not the be-all and end-all that we anticipated. Rather, they will be the means to an end—the way to get from point A to point B. Our exciting and fun adventures will be the lands, the people and the cultures we encounter,” Tammy wrote. We were not tourists but travelers. Tourists are passive, expecting interesting things to happen to them; whereas travelers are active, in search of people, adventure and experiences. Anchored one day in a quiet lagoon in Fiji, several women cruisers met for coffee aboard Skybird. One woman asked if they thought any of their friends or family really knew what they were all doing. “I realized what she meant was, are they aware of what it’s actually like to be cruising the Pacific? During our time visiting foreign lands we had seen or experienced the beautiful and the unsightly, quiet and chaos, and a full range of happy and sad moments. The unpredictability of cruising, I suppose, is what makes it so interesting, and adversity is the name of the game. Challenges are a part of a total experience that many of us chose to meet and overcome. Without them how could we call our travels ‘adventures’?” she wrote. Tammy and Steve continued on their adventure, to Australia, Singapore, Malayasia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea, Sudan, where they were arrested, Egypt with its magnificent pyramids, the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean, where they visited Israel and Turkey, where they cruised for over six months. It was in Turkey in 1998 that they decided to sell Skybird and return back home. “We had lived on the boat for more than four years, traveled over 25,000 nautical miles and visited more than 20 countries during our odyssey. We had engaged in many interesting, sometimes scary, experiences. We had an unbelievable adventure, one that gave us memories to last a lifetime,” Tammy wrote. Their book chronicles these adventures, giving a realistic look at what living aboard and cruising through four years was really like. 
“Traveling aboard a boat for a length of time can test a relationship. For Steve and I, ours grew stronger; we were drawn closer together with a deepening love and respect for each other. Throughout the trip we did everything together, whether it be visiting with friends, inland touring, gathering provisions or boat maintenance. Because of that, we became joined at the hip.
“On the wings of Skybird, Steve and I soared to greater levels of understanding of our world and ourselves. For four years we lived aboard and sailed the seas of uncertainties, but returned anchored in deeper values, tolerance and appreciation for all of life. We were grateful we had chosen to fly away, but we had many reasons for returning,” she wrote, “including grandchildren.” Tammy has a favorite Mark Twain quote, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off your bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” They did. Sailing on the Wings of Skybird, a charming book about a couple who took a chance. Email svskybird@aol.com to find out where it is available. ...back to 48° North title page.
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