Even as a Kid I Liked to Travel Distances

An Interview with adventurous West Wight Potter 19 Sailor Bud Kerner

By George Wehrfritz of the Potter Yachters

At just 19 feet and displacing about a ton fully laden, Cat’s Meow was a minnow in the Pacific Ocean. Yet in his mid-70s, Bud Kerner piloted his stock Potter 19 down almost 500 nautical miles of California’s rugged coastline, testing his and the sailboat’s limits during serial adventures that have become yore in the trailersailing community. Bud, who turns “a young 87” this month, hosted the recent Moss Landing to Monterey sail and is preparing to lead the Delta Bridges sail one last time, with the same attention to detail that’s made it a perennial favorite in our club.

Bud joined the Potter Yachters in 2000 and served as commodore from 2009-2011. Based now in Rio Vista, he’s begun to refit his smaller boat—an early Potter 14—to tuck under Delta bridges and explore its quieter waterways. Over several in-depth conversations, Bud shared stories about solo sailing, the Internet, his fondness for the Delta, and a trimaran wrecked by scoundrels.

You have a fondness for the Delta.

Well, I live in the Delta now. In fact, I’m looking at Don Person’s tent from his P15 to see if I can rig it onto my P14.  At Moss Landing last year, I slept on it for the first time ever, but realized I couldn’t sit up in the cabin and needed some means to stay dry while having coffee in the cockpit. I intend to rig the P14 to explore more of the Delta by crossing under bridges that don’t open. With its Lateen rig I can drop the mast quickly and do it.

Bridges is one of the club’s more popular sails. Why, do you think?

I don’t know. There’s a lot of motoring. Even if there is wind, down low in the water the levees can block the flow. You look up and see the trees moving, but you have no wind. Some years its white-knuckle sailing. People like going under all the bridges.

Before sailing you were an avid long-distance bicycle rider, right?  

Actually, no. In my youth we spent summers at the largest spring-fed lake in Pennsylvania, where somebody gave me a 6-foot wooden dinghy. It had a hole in the seat where you could step a mast so I made one, and got an old sheet for a sail.  I forget what I did for a rudder. The prevailing wind went from the side of the lake we were on to the lee shore about a mile way. I’d make the crossing but I couldn’t tack back because the dinghy was flat-bottomed and the leeboard I made broke. There were two motorboats on that lake, one of them for the lifeguards who were, you know, college kids, and I was pre-teen at this time. So when I went out on the water they’d come out too because it gave them a chance to use the motorboat to tow me home. That’s how I started sailing.

My second boat was a trimaran. Very old, with heavy canvas sails, amas made of plywood and a metal hull with a fabric covering. Before I went out each time I had to patch holes in the hull fabric or I’d sink.

Could you tack through the wind?

If you back-filled the jib it would come around. I paid something like $15 for it and used it for a couple years at the lake. There were these two guys … I don’t remember how this happened, but they wanted to race me. At the time, nothing on the lake but the two powerboats could beat me. So we agreed to race for $100, and on the morning of the race I went down on the dock to put the trimaran in the water and it must have had a hundred holes in it. The guys had guaranteed I couldn’t beat them, so the race never happened.

Now, when I was a young lad I used to ride my bike a fair distance, too. It was a one-speed with balloon tires. I always came home at night, but for some reason instead of going around the block like most kids I liked to take long trips. As an adult, a year or two after I moved out to California in 1977, I thought gee, it would be nice to ride down the coast on a bicycle.

I mentioned that to my neighbor and he was all for it. I rode a three-speed bike at the time and my sleeping bag was gigantic, but we actually went down the coast on Highway 1. Afterwards I said I’d never do it again because there was no room for bicycles on the coast highway. But I was living in Morgan Hill at the time, so we’d tour from there to Los Angeles on Highway 101, ride to the airport, rent a car and drive home. I worked for IBM, so I got a pretty good deal on rental cars. I don’t know how many times we did it. At least ten.

Wow!

My neighbor, he was a school teacher, and later with my son Rob we did the LA ride a lot. We went north a couple of times, up to Washington. Our biggest endeavor was to drive to Oregon and pick up the cross-country bike route heading for Pennsylvania, where my wife’s mother lived on a farm. We’d ridden all the way to the Rockies, but in Idaho we got news that my mother-in-law had died. So we rented a car and came back.

I did a lot of bicycling, and I think that’s why, when I got the sailboat, I wanted to go somewhere.

What did you do at IBM?

I started in 1962 and worked with American Airlines to develop the first commercial, real-time reservation system. I was with them until we got it online.

So we can blame you for all the flight delays in the 1970s?

That’s right. And you can even blame us for the Internet, because we were the first ones to do something like that commercially.

When did you first see a Potter?

I’m not 100% sure. Maybe in Mechanix Illustrated or Popular Mechanics. I bought the boat from the factory in December of 2000—soon I’d read about the Potter Yachters. Judy was commodore at the time, and that January she organized a group visit to the Bay Area Tide Model in Sausalito, which Bobbi and I also attended. After that I joined the club.  

What differentiates Delta and ocean sailing?

The California coast is not very forgiving. In the Delta, if you’re out during the week you don’t see a lot of boats, but you see people, cars driving on levee roads, you’re not very far from shore. So if something really did happen you just point the boat into the shore, run aground and get out. On the Pacific, it’s surprising how few people you see. Not that many people sail out off the coast. They sail around near a marina.

I enjoy being out there all by myself, knowing that if anything happens I’ve got to fix it.

Describe your California Coast project.

I started with a crew, a friend who flew out from Connecticut for the Cruiser Challenge. We sailed into Monterey from Richmond. Now, even as a kid I always liked to travel distances. We did that on bicycles for years. And during that sail to Monterey I thought: Gee, it’d be interesting to go down the coast. So I did.

Bud aboard his Potter 19

How many legs did you do? Over how many years?

Seven multiple-day cruises. It took five or six years. 

Did you track how many days you sailed on this journey, how many nautical miles you covered?

No, I didn’t. But I’ll figure it out for you. (Ed. Note: about 470 NM as the crow flies)

Give us an overview.

For the second leg, I left Monterey solo in the dark. My plan was to anchor off the coast for two nights in route to Morro Bay. The cruising book I was using told me where to do that.

The first morning was quiet but the wind continued to build. By afternoon I had pretty good wind and was probably around Big Sur when I discovered that my autopilot only worked to a certain point, and when the wind went beyond that it couldn’t really handle the boat. It was like a novice sailor that didn’t react fast enough, and the boat began turning up and doing all sorts of funny things.

I decided then I’d better reef, so I get up on the cabin, sit with my legs in the cabin and begin to reef. The autopilot is steering, but just then the wind overpowers it and it turns the boat sideways, and it heeled so far water was coming into the cockpit. I’m sitting up on top of this cabin and there is nothing anywhere. And I’m thinking ‘God, this might be it.’

The boat wants to come back up, but the autopilot is trying to keep it on course, so we go for some ways—not a long way—with the boat on its side and water coming into the cockpit until the boat finally rounded up and I got down and started steering. I was so shook-up I dropped my sails and started to motor.

Soon I get to the waypoint in the book, but I’d expected a road, maybe a little village, but I don’t see anything. I continue on, determine that was the waypoint and go back. Looking at the shoreline, I see a stretch where there are no breaking waves on the shore, so I figure out that was where I was supposed to anchor. Which I did, then I made supper and began to re-rig the mainsail I’d stowed. My halyard is twisted around the mast, so I take it and throw it up to get it around the mast, but it doesn’t go around the mast but up the mast. Instead of getting up and untangling it, I throw it two more times, until finally it is so high I can’t reach the end of it. Then I realized: because I couldn’t raise my mainsail I couldn’t go on, so I decided I’d better return to Monterey.

In the morning I motored back against the current. On the way I heard a whale blow, then heard it a second time and caught a grey whale as it was submerging. Every minute or so that whale came up and did a blow, and one of its eyes was looking at me. He or she was probably 50 feet from the boat, and stayed with me for ten minutes, maybe longer. I was going against the waves and the current, so it was a very rough ride back.

That was my first attempt to go south. The next year I started again from Monterey.

How’d that go?

Same ocean anchorage the first night. No issues. My next stop was San Simeon, and I had almost no wind all the way around Point Blanca, which is a great big rock full of guano that turned it white. From there I’d plotted the wrong waypoint in the GPS for San Simeon. The GPS says I’m there, but I don’t see any harbor. Still, I go in. At this point I’m concerned about how much gas I have left. I keep going in until I realize I’m heading for a bunch of rocks, so I turn around and have to power out of a bunch of kelp before motoring on to San Simeon and anchoring.

At the time I was a AAA member, so I was considering calling them, inflating my raft and paddling ashore to refill the gas tank. But I figured I still had some gas and only 15 miles to get to Morro Bay.

After the harrowing day I’d had getting to San Simeon, I drank quite a lot of wine at dinner and went to sleep. Then my anchor alarm went off, so I had to get up after drinking all that wine and reset the anchor. So I made a rule: if I’m at anchor, one glass of wine with dinner. The next day the wind came up some and I actually sailed to Morro Bay. On the way in, there’s this large sailboat motoring in, and the guy said “Where’d you come from?” I said Monterey, and he said, “You know, there’s some guy on a small boat sailing down the coast.” I said “Yeah, it’s me.” He was a yacht club member, and they let me stay at their dock that night.

You’ve written about rounding Point Conception during the 4th leg of this journey.

I set out well before dawn. Ideally, I’d have rounded Point Conception in the morning, but it was too far away. Also, I wanted to see a place call Destroyer Rock mentioned in my cruising book. It’s near Vandenberg Air Force Base. In 1963, I think, six or eight destroyers were heading south down the coast, dead-reckoning in fog. The lead destroyer’s captain thought he was going around Point Conception and turned into this rock on shore. A number of destroyers followed him in. The book said that wreckage was still visible, so I went in pretty close to shore but didn’t see it. From there it’s a 10-12 mile run to Point Conception. I was probably a mile offshore.

I didn’t go out further, which was a big mistake. About 8 miles from the point a siren goes off in the boat. Until then I didn’t realize I had a siren. I’m looking around, trying to figure out where the hell it’s coming from, and I realize it’s the radio.  NOAA, with a Small Craft Warning: wind building to 35 knots and waves from 5-7 feet, every 4 seconds.

By this point I couldn’t turn around. I put a reef in when I got the warning. I was thinking: four seconds isn’t a lot of time to go from one wave to the next. If NOAA was right, and the waves were running 5-7 feet, every now and then a really big one—say, 11-12 feet—would pass through. The closer I got to the point the harder the wind blew and the bigger the waves got. I’m moving fast—faster than the waves—and I’m actually going off the front of them. So, to slow down I drop my jib with the downhaul but it doesn’t come down the whole way, and I’m not going forward in such big seas with my autopilot not working. But the reefed main and that little but of jib was the right combination, and I slowed up enough that the waves were going by me.

Scary.

Yeah. I’d steer a wave and have 4 seconds to position for the next wave, and then a big one, maybe 10-14 feet, caught me and I broached. I wound up on top of this very large wave, my bow pointing toward shore, and I thought: Shit, this is not good. I fell off that wave, hit the valley between it and the oncoming wave and was able to get the boat around before the next wave passed. Otherwise it probably would have rolled me.

And I kept thinking, once I round Point Conception everything’s going to be okay. I also kept looking at the beach. By then I’d been sailing maybe 12 hours, and I was pretty tired. The shoreline looks like a regular beach, and I’m thinking: I could beach this boat and walk home. I was really tired.

Eventually I anchored where my cruise book suggested. I went forward, dropped my anchor having forgotten to put on my gloves, and the boat takes off backwards, as the wind is still blowing 35 knots. The line is running out at a pretty good rate and I’m afraid to grab it. Then I wonder: had I tied off the bitter end? Fortunately, yes. Soon the whole 265 feet of line runs out, and I have just enough time to grab and cleat it. I had pretty good scope, but with such winds I set my second anchor off the stern to prevent swinging back and forth. Oh yeah, and there was an oil tanker off my stern.

That night I slept in my clothes, head to the bow of the V-berth, just in case I had to jump up if the anchor slipped. So my head was right under the bow cleat where I’d tied off the anchor, and boy, did that cleat groan all night long. The wind never let up, and in fact when I left in the morning it was still blowing, and did all the way down to Santa Barbara.

Did you ever think: “I might die here?”

When I broached on top of that wave, I really thought that was it. All the way down I kept looking at the shoreline to calculate whether I would turn in and beach the boat. I’d had all the fun I’d wanted to have.

In Santa Barbara the word went around that I’d rounded Point Conception. The harbormaster wanted to talk about it. I walked over to West Marine to replace a padlock, the guy there was like “You’re the guy who sailed around point conception!” The news spread fast, and I thought they were going to ask for my autograph. There’s a little museum nearby, and the guy let me in for free.

What happened south of Santa Barbara?

From there I went to Marina Del Ray. From there I joined the SoCal Potters sailing out of Long Beach to Catalina. Dave Kautz was going with them, so I sailed down to meet him, but it was foggy, and there are freighters everywhere, the next morning fog everywhere, I don’t think you could see 50 feet. So I go down and there’s a P-15 with a father and his adult son, who was puking for most of the trip. They weren’t that experienced, so I stayed with that boat until we came out of the fog, where I met Dave and we sailed together into Twin Harbors. The next morning, I sailed over to Dana Point, then to Oceanside. My last leg was to San Diego.

Solo circumnavigator Teddy Seymour, writing on the subject of risk on the high seas, once concluded: “If you want guarantees, buy a toaster.”

That’s true. The ocean, you know, it sank the Titanic. What if a 100-foot wave comes along? There’s a certain risk, and I can’t explain why I find it appealing. After I broached, in those waves coming on every 4 seconds, I was thinking if I don’t make this, it was really silly. If being on the ocean were my business, and I died in that business, that’s one thing. But if I die now I’m leaving a wife behind just because of a hobby. I always told Bobbi that the most dangerous part of any trip was towing the boat.

That depends on where you sail.

Right. On a lake, it’s reasonably safe. If you’re on the ocean in extreme conditions, even with a group, someone will know where you sank. If there had been another boat with me as I rounded Point Conception, let’s say, and one of us got into serious trouble, the other boat couldn’t help them except to say “This is the last point where I saw them.”

Risks are involved.

The question is—why do you take them? One of the things that attracts me, is being out there solo with nothing around and only myself to handle whatever happens. That’s appealing for some reason. I never used the radio to call for assistance while sailing down the coast. I mean, I listened to it. There was some very interesting stuff sometimes, but I did not use it to seek help. •SCA•