Aye, Aye brother Shackleton

Seasoned sailor Kia Koropp finally gets the feeling of being worth one’s salt after a two-month ocean passage from South Africa to the Azores

- Kia Koropp

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kia Koropp and John Daubeny have been cruising the Pacific, South East Asia and the Indian Ocean for a decade with their two children on their 50ft Ganley Solution, Atea. In 2020, they sailed 6,000 miles from South Africa to the Azores. They have just completed a month’s transit from Costa Rica to the Gambier, French Polynesia.

Despite having had my share of adventures worth telling over a cold pint, I don’t consider myself to be much of a seaman,  somehow I don’t feel I fit the mould. I sail a boat. I live on a boat. I raise my kids on a boat. I transit oceans by boat. But seasoned seaman? I don’t think so.

But for the first time I felt like I’d earned that status as I sat sipping a frothy pint in Peter’s Bar, with decade upon decade of captain’s hat (and the occasional captain’s bra) above my head. Peter’s Bar is as old as the volcano it is built on, currently run by its third generation of Sr Azevedo, who continues to supply transiting mariners with more than just ale: for generations Peter’s Bar has been the sole support for ships and people passing through, supplying provisions and parts, mail collection and delivery, medical supply and local gossip. It might’ve taken me 10 years, 55,000 miles and a few dozen ocean crossings, but I finally got it – that feeling of what it is like to be a salty old seadog worth her lick.

Ocean miles