Ko Olina Marina, Kapelei, HI, 24-MAY-2020 — The binary roller coaster we ride, we’re sailing to Alaska, we’re not sailing to Alaska, was turned on its ear and into trivia when we learned our friend Greg James drowned a mile from shore.
Jennifer learned about Greg’s death through a post by Kevin McBee (who you can see in the attached video) on a sailing group.
I called the local police, who were closed, and eventually the coast guard to try to get ahold of Greg’s family before they learned about his death on the internet.
Instead, a few different things happened. First, I ended up giving interviews to the Australian Broadcasting Company and Murdoch’s News Corp. And, the state department found Greg’s sister, Hope, before I did.
I contacted the media because I wanted to control how Greg’s story was spun. I did marketing for a few years and worked in newspapers for more than thirty years.* By getting out in front of the story one can control how it is spun.
There are very few journalists who are not responsible and who don’t want to get the facts right. Most importantly, journalists want someone to interview and quote, someone as close to the story as they can get. The converse pressure is to generate content and attract eye balls. The fear is that that the only people they will be able to interview are people who will make educated guesses as to why an unknown, unnannounced American ended up on their shore, dead.
By contacting their media I was able to paint an accurate picture of Greg that would answer their questions and present Greg as he was and as he and his family might like to have him remembered while his family was being located.
The picture I painted was of an experienced, competent sailor who had just sailed thousands of miles to Australia and drowned when he fell off his boat while lowering his mainsail.
The unanswered and unanswerable question was why was he not clipped in (tethered) to his boat.
About 48 hours after Greg’s death, Sgt Greg Hargreave called me to tell me what details he could and to give me Greg’s sister’s name and phone number.
Before I could call Hope, Greg’s nephew found me on messenger. He and I chatted and tried to set up a call, which we did not make.
I spoke with Hope the next morning who politely asked me to break off all communications with the press, which I did.
Searching for Greg James, or his vessel Alcobri, does not turn up any US stories. I’d like to make sure his US friends learn what happened to him.
His boat was kept in Roche Harbor at one time and shows up on a Roche Harbor registry. He also lived in Kirkland, where he managed a five-building apartment complex. I’d like the Seattle Times or the local NPR stations to run a piece so that his friends will know what happened.
The piece that I thought captured Greg best was by the News Corp paper — the paper I was most afraid to speak with. It was the last interview I gave before Hope asked me to stop speaking to the press. By now I didn’t like that I was becoming the face of this story. I’m not Greg’s family, though I was pleased with how Greg was being presented in the press.
My strategy: stay on message, only say things that you are comfortable being quoted — no asides — and do not be lead where the journalist thinks the story should go. There are story templates that are easy for the journalist to fill in. The journalist supplies this template to help the interviewee come up with a cogent narrative. Tell the truth and don’t worry about that narrative. A different, non-mundane narrative makes a better story anyway.
Patrick Billings, the News Corp journalist, was late to the party. The facts of the story had been covered by ABC, so he wanted to do a story on who Greg was and why was he showing up unannounced. From the beginning I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that Greg knew he couldn’t infect anyone with COVID-19 because he had been at sea too long.
I was afraid of a nightmare narrative that some interviewed-expert might construct: an unknown sailor arrived from some unknown place potentially carrying the virus. For all interviews, I made sure that I told the interviewer that Greg could not have the virus and sent all a link to the track of Greg’s vessel showing he did not stop after leaving the Marshall Islands.
It was only Patrick from News Corp who talked about who Greg was and why he would make this kind of journey; how he was different from many sailors in that he would change his plans.
Patrick supplied words like eccentric, which I discarded, because he was not. I supplied, ”thinking out of the box,” ”well-read,”competent and confident”, ”well-prepared” and I discussed the safety improvements Greg had made to his boat. I didn’t spin. I told only the truth. It was a nice thing to be able to do: to present Greg’s strengths.
Patrick covered the man and did talk about how Greg didn’t tell the Australians that he was coming. I mentioned this in every other interview. No coverage mentioned it. Why did I mention it? To get it out there in the open so it could not be used as something that was hidden.
Apparently, ABC did not think it worthwhile. News Corp did.
I canceled another video interview with a local Australian TV station when Hope asked me to stop speaking with the press. That outlet did not run anything that I could find. Like News Corp, they were late to the party and could not report the facts, which were already covered. Without an interviewee, I suppose the story did not have merit.
A local Mooloolaba resident, Lisa Maree B, has sent us links to videos via Facebook. Thank you, Lisa Maree. The post continues below.
Jennifer and I worked the rest of the week on boat projects. I worked primarily on two projects: adding a second electric bilge pump and cleaning out the Racor fuel filter, which had gunk in the bowl. Each project frightened the hell of me.
The bilge pump, because I had to fit even more stuff in the already crowded bilge and I would have to drill a hole in the hull.
The fuel filter scared me because: I was afraid I might have a ”bio” problem — bacteria growing the in the fuel tank eating the fuel and creating a filter-clogging sludge; I wouldn’t get the filter back together properly or I might break something; and/or that I would get air in the fuel lines that I would have trouble purging.
Both projects were trouble free. Jennifer and I put all our provisions back in the ”basement,” crossed those two projects off the to-do list and relaxed. In that moment, I realized that Greg was truly gone.
Jennifer had, the day before we learned about Greg, found the obit of a high-school friend written two-years earlier. The number of deaths has weighed on her — we know many people have lost so many more people than we have — but it is starting to pile up. Greg is the third person we’ve written about in our blog in the past thirteen months; the fifth in four years.
On Friday night, we stumbled into a party in the accidental village on E dock where all the quarantined boats have been docked. As each vessel came out of quarantine the village and comraderie built.
The party was in full swing, with everyone making some attempt at social distancing. The party was on a dock with a breeze, in the state with the lowest infection rate in the country. We were made to feel welcome.
Parts of the party had a high-school feel. Alcohol flowed and tongues loosened. While I was gone for a few minutes, the talk turned to the poor people in a corner of the marina on B Dock who were viewed as losers. We are docked in that corner.
Jennifer was crushed. Is this what they think of us? Jennifer worried. We don’t have a big boat. We don’t have an expensive boat. We don’t have a boat that is well known in the US. We wouldn’t change any of this, but is that what it takes to get respect here?
We had labeled E dock as the dock of the cool kids. Sometimes the cool kids get out of hand. In high school, I floated in and out of the cool kids. When I had my moral compass in place, I defended the kids the cool kids belittled (when my moral compass was out of place, I lost my tongue to defend – a failing).
I sailed mostly on the east coast. In towns like New Haven, where Friday-night ’round-the-can racers dry sail their forty-foot boats, I accepted that the insecure owners would look askance at my boats — to their credit, the secure, serious racers would talk to me as a peer about whatever boat I had.
Once in Seattle, I fell in love. Not only was every boat equally revered, homeless living aboard were generally just accepted as one more variant of boating.
Most exciting was never knowing what boat the person you were talking to owned. If a sailboat, it could be a beat T-bird he picked up for a grand or two, or some vessel that cost ten digits. Further, and this was most eye-opening, after coming from the east coast where someone who had sailed to Bermuda was a god, it seemed as if almost everyone had sailed to New Zealand.
I’m sure it was just alcohol talking and need for oneupsmanship talking on E dock, but it hurt Jennifer. The weight of passing family and friends together with the sudden uncertainty of social standing makes one uncertain of so much more.
Me? I, in many ways, fit the profile of a software engineer, which is what I am. Software engineers tend to get their self-worth from external, objective sources, like working code, or very fast cars, or sailboats that go long distances alone. We’re not the type to join rallies or to sail in a group.
I have Jennifer, that is all the approval I need.
Finally, are we going… somewhere? For the last two weeks we had settled on traveling by airplane to Phoenix in the first or second week of June. Vacationing there, while we did some work on that house, and then driving to Port Townsend, with some of Hilary’s more dear possessions, in the car that Jennifer keeps in PHX. However, yesterday we met Ben and his family from Anchorage, who tell us we will be fine sailing on the Kenai Peninsula.
All certainty about what we are doing has flown out the window: we have ascended the vertical slope of the binary roller coaster.
*No, I was not a journalist. I developed and supplied editorial solutions to newspapers, magazines and on-line publishers. Aside from media and marketing being personal interests of mine, I needed to know how journalists work in order to supply effective solutions. I also became friends with and business partners of journalists and editors, including managing editors, university journalism professors, newspaper owners and publishers. I also wrote a column for five years on the newspaper industry.
Those people on E dock are pathetic. You two successfully sailed to Hawaii doublehanded on a boat smaller than the vast majority of sailors would ever have the nerve to do. Their insecurity is showing. Unbelievable. I wish I had been there to tell them off.
Re: sailing to Bermuda, I do think people who sail there are amazing given the need to cross the Gulf Stream (an easier prospect going east since the weather forecast for the Stream is pretty reliable due to its proximity to the departure point vs. heading back to the U.S.), and it’s still on our bucket list for next summer – Covid permitting. But New Zealand? That’s just astounding to me. Those sailors ARE gods. 🙂
Kimberly,
It was just the alcohol talking I’m sure. I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’m certain it must have been in jest. But, they hurt Jennifer’s feelings and played with her self-confidence.
Doesn’t the stream run north? I would have thought that you could have it carry you north. (I have never looked into this.)
We have an offer or two (or perhaps none) to crew on boats heading back to the mainland in mid-June, if we don’t sail. I’m concerned that this could ruin us for Caro Babbo – or maybe make us crave her even more.
About NZ sailors being gods: there is the fact that they walk among us. They certainly don’t look any different from a distance.
The Gulf Stream definitely provides an excellent boost going north. The problem with heading west from Bermuda is that it takes several days to reach it so if the forecast is off and north winds kick in, it’s a problem.
We met a fellow Bristol owner who has sailed there and back several times. He said the trip back always kicks his tail.