We meet James, but not Kimi

Ko Olina Marina, 12-MAR-2020 — It’s always interesting meeting someone with whom you have corresponded but never met.

I’ve been writing professionally, in one form or another for something approaching forty years, but I find I still get spooked writing for a new audience, and so I did writing this. The obvious audience is followers of my blog, but this post will also get read by the members of the WhatsApp group of Zingaro Patrons and other invitees. They know James better than I do. James is a celebrity with this group who are fiercely loyal. I find myself worried that I’d somehow lose face with them, or even with James.

James and I started corresponding off and on just after I discovered his Zingaro YouTube channel. There were few enough episodes that they could easily be watched back-to-back in a couple of hours. I think he had met Kimi by then, but perhaps not. James figured prominently in a piece I wrote about why there would never be a Caro Babbo Youtube channel. He has an easiness about him, mixed with competence that make him interesting and easy to watch. The first few episodes could have been titled this week’s pretty girl, because there seemed to be a new young woman in every episode. There wasn’t any mystery about why these women would spend time with James.

And then, at some point, an 18- or 19-year old named Kim shows up and James loses his heart. He and I corresponded about what a lucky man he was.

When we saw James this past week he talked about how much money he blew through in those early days of the romance. Unlike the eighties pop hit, Kim stayed after the money was gone.

James and I kept in touch with erratic emails. He wrote about his time growing up in the Pacific Northwest and his dad being a cop in the Seattle area. We corresponded about profanity in the Zingaro videos and an article I read by a mother looking for a YouTube channel she could watch with her kids where the sailors didn’t swear like sailors.

James wrote back that that was the way he spoke. I countered that this was about increasing his audience, and suggested that he could make a joke about it with a bubble over his mouth when he was profane, etc. In the end, the sound just went dead though James mouth continued to move.

Sometime in the last year or so I told James that Caro Babbo would be in Hawaii. I think he’d already said that he was thinking of sailing there. We agreed we’d meet, most likely in January, and he asked if I might bring the old st4000 wheel-drive from the Raymarine autohelm I was replacing, so that he could have it as a spare. (The morning we met he released a video that explained his interest.)

The gods amused themselves by having our car stolen the week before we were scheduled to set sail: No spare wheel-drive for James. And thankfully, so very thankfully, in the days before the theft I took out the sails, the wind vane pieces and all of the critical parts that we were going to need to sail to Hawaii. I don’t know what we would have done if those things had been in the car when it was stolen.*

I flew to New York from Hawaii the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the same day I learned my father had, what would turn out to be, a fatal stroke. I was sitting in his hospital room when I learned that Zingaro had pretty much broken up west of the big island of Hawai’i while sailing from Fanning Island.

I wrote a post about it and sent the link to James who asked that I make some changes. He wasn’t ready for the world to know that the voyage of Zingaro had come to an end. It is an audience that he is managing, after all.

I reviewed the eventual Kickstarter page and made a suggestion or two, which were apparently heeded, but they were the type of things that all the other reviewers probably pointed out as well.

By the time we had arrived back on Oahu on Februrary 7th, the Kickstarter program was underway and James had raised 50% more than his goal. But, he still hadn’t sold Zingaro. James had said he wanted, I think, something like $15,000 for the pretty much busted-up boat.

I expected that James would have to pay disposal fees, instead.

By now, most of my conversations with James were via WhatsApp. Texting almost entirely, but he did spend 20 minutes speaking with us about sailing down to Fanning Island. While James loved the place, he warned us never, ever to sail down there from Hawaii because of the weather en route.

Speaking to someone for the first time is when we often learn about the other person. Though James and I had never spoken, on the voice call he seemed to be exactly who he was in the videos and on the live broadcasts. Was I who he expected? Did James know how old I am? Would it matter?

We’ve spoken with many people who have sailed to Fanning and they all recommend it because it is an easy sail. James described how he lost the electronic copies of some of the cruising guides he was going to use to get to Hawaii, and hadn’t realized the degree to which the Islands intensify the winds whipping around and over them. He’d also bet wrong on the behavior of the third of three fronts coming through.

The morning James was flying here to Oahu, he sent a text saying that he had just sold Zingaro. The agreed-upon price was $10,000.

I told James I would be at the Apple Store at Alamoana mall. We agreed we’d meet somewhere for lunch when I finished there.

Meeting someone in the flesh is different than phone. I knew what James looked like, but it was unclear that he knew what I looked like.

In my twenties I formed a professional bond over the phone with a co-worker in another state. We looked forward to finally meeting. When we met our appearances told the other too much about ourselves, just like gang colors, and the whole thing fell apart. He wore a crew cut and I was a shaggy hippy boy.

A celebrity just raises the stakes.

I think most of us feel the celebrity will be self-important and have claims on their time, real and otherwise, such that we will have to work around their schedule.

I’ve been a minor celebrity, to the degree people would start to stutter when they realized they were actually speaking to me when they called, or they would stop me and ask if I was John Juliano. One doesn’t feel any different on the inside. There is always that small amount of incredulousness: You know who I am? Why would you even care to remember me? I’m just some guy. But when the shoe is on the other foot, we are impressed to be meeting someone we admire.

At the apple store, I was deep into a conversation with two Apple techs about how the MacOS would not upgrade the firmware in this device without an Apple SSD installed.

Someone called out, John. I looked up, and son-of-a-bitch, there was James standing next to me. He’d recognized us.

With James was Ken Wood, who is a patron, and was putting James up at his place in Waikiki.

My first impression of James was that he is as good-looking in person as he is on screen; I was pleased that that was true. I was surprised that he is only about my height, somewhere between 5 foot 10 and maybe six feet. I expected him to be much taller. It always happens on videos taken aboard cruising boats: the boats are always smaller than they look and the headroom is never the eight feet from which we draw our expectations of height.

We jumped into Ken’s truck and drove to La Mariana, a well-known marina with what is said to be the last Tiki Bar in all of Hawaii. We arrived about 1:30. Lunch had started to die down. We all sat a round table.

Where was Kimi? In Mexico, traveling with her 18-year old sister.

The conversation was easy and as interested as we were in James, he seemed equally interested in us.

We talked about boats he was looking at, boats he had owned, and his strategy for buying a boat. He was keeping an eye on resale value. There is a large stair step down when a boat crosses a certain age. James decided he would pay more for a boat that will not have stepped down in value when he felt he would probably sell it.

He is going to Seattle to meet his mom and travel in her motorhome to Southern California, stopping at marinas along the way to look at boats. I got the impression that he wasn’t seriously looking at buying any of those boats, but wanted to look at as many boats as he could in order to get a better education.

He expressed concern that the clock is ticking. He only has a certain amount of time to buy that boat before he has to give back all the Kickstarter money.

We talked about what country to flag the boat, and where the business entity that will own the boat and the company the Kickstarter is funding is located.

We also talked about the type of experience people who sail on the new boat will have. James was clear that this was not going to be luxury sailing, and it would not be a charter per se. The guests will travel on a sailing adventure and education trip. They’ll join the boat wherever it is for a portion of the continuing trip. To me it sounded like there would be many, many people who would like to join such an adventure.

I worried that we weren’t including Ken in the conversation. James knew Ken and told us not to worry. Ken joined in at various points, and answered the phone often. Ken owns a commercial construction company and, unlike everyone else at the table, is actively employed. But when we expressed concern that we were eating all of his time, he told us he had dedicated the entire day to this.

James talked about his surprise when people recognize him. When I told the server that James had a YouTube channel and was well-known, James didn’t seem embarrassed, but somewhat resigned that I was going to tell this woman to look at his channel. She came back a few minutes later smiling and pleased and told James but she had watched part of the most recent video- it was on repairing an st4000 wheel drive.

At the table, we talked about James’ upcoming retreat: he didn’t know it was a silent retreat when he signed up and was worried about whether he could do it for ten days. I said I thought the retreat might be a good way to recover from what happened and to contemplate what would be coming next.

The conversation jumped around for a bit talking about the Youtube channels Delos, and La Vagabonde and the huge amounts of money they’re dragging in. We, and I think James, didn’t find the sailing of two very rich couples as interesting as couples trying to get by: people we could identify with. But their viewership numbers continue to rise. The numbers are too high for the viewers to be sailors – There aren’t enough sailors out there. But Delos, La Vagabonde and RAN all have new babies and new chapters in their sailing – and a broadened potential audience.

We spoke about Nanji and how Nanji had dragged on to a reef. James told us he’d been in touch and offered his support.

James told us that most of the YouTube channels are in touch with each other sharing information about how to be successful. He shared some of that information with us. James mentioned that he and Kimi supported channels; we’ve seem Delos do the same.

And, we talked about Miss Lone Star’s Vimeo Channel where the woman spends a lot of time nude. James commented that she was making $6,000 a month doing this.† Her latest video is entitled Having Coffee in the Nude

We told James we knew he and Kimi were starting to get some money when Kimi got a new bathing suit, and how we liked his interview with someone who stayed on board and told the audience that they had lived on black beans until they caught a fish, because that is all there was to eat. James told us that he is still friends with the man.

James insisted on paying the check for lunch, saying he was celebrating after selling Zingaro. It turns out he is going to be paid over time. From what we know about Hawaiian ethics in these matters, I worry that this haole just got skinned but given my feelings about the repairs Zingaro will need, I understand James relief on selling it to a new owner.

Ken and James dropped us back at the mall about 4:30. We did some produce shopping and then caught the ‘C’ bus back to Ko Olina, about an hour ride and a 25-minute walk, arriving well after dark.

James should be in about day 6 of the Vipassana retreat now.‡ I haven’t heard that he bailed, though he told us about a US Marine he had heard of who couldn’t finish it. Friends of ours in Seattle have completed the retreat multiple times, telling us it does wonderful things for them. It is not for me. Where do people get the time to do this multiple times? It is free, if you’re considering doing it yourself.

I’m spending the majority of my time here in Ko Olina working on Caro Babbo, finishing up my Master’s license and looking forward to sailing again.

Thanks for reading our blog.

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*As predicted by the Seattle Police, once the thieves ran out of gas, they left the car by the side of the road. I didn’t think they would steal any of the things in the car itself, but they did take everything except the wheel drive leaving fast food wrappers behind.

We flew the wheel drive with us when we returned in February. It is in the AFT cabin.

†That evening I looked at Miss Lone Stars’ page for her Vimeo Channel. In the blurb she says that in the initial episode she talks about staying attractive over age 30 and her breast implants. She implies that she does this naked while showering. At $30 per month I decided that I would take her word for it. $6,000 per month is only 200 viewers. Yikes, that is profitable.

‡ We just learned today that the follow on session has been canceled.