A Challenge That Put Wind in His Sails

The impact crumpled Kestrel's bow dramatically, mangling her pulpit railing and almost wiping out the stainless steel headstay that supports the mast. The trawler crew, brought on deck by the collision, stood by while Atkisson raced below to search out what he was certain would be a hole in the hull, gushing with all the chill water of the Irish Sea. Astonishingly, there wasn't even a crack below. Kestrel sailed to Crosshaven, Ireland, wounded but under her own power.

Plenty of sailors would have sworn off the sea right then. Atkisson's maritime addiction, however, is more pronounced. Hooked on sailing as a boy in San Francisco, he spent his boating years there mostly racing. But when he moved to Washington in the mid-'70s and acquired Kestrel, he switched to cruising, preferring to test his seamanship against his own limits and those of the watery world. With his wife, author and former Washington Post science writer Kathy Sawyer, he had explored the prodigious shoreline of the Chesapeake, glorying in leafy, heron-stalked anchorages and skinny-dips in the misty mornings.

Gradually over the years they expanded their cruising range in Kestrel, adding voyages up the coast to New England and off the coast to Bermuda. Gradually but systematically Atkisson upgraded his sturdy little boat with things like redundant navigational systems, self-steering systems, cabin reinforcement and extra sails. Repeatedly he resisted the siren's call of larger, more modern vessels in favor of keeping one whose every nut, bolt and cranny he knew with the intimacy of the seagoing engineer and craftsman he had taught himself to be.

But blue-water voyaging was never far from his mind. "I always wanted to cross an ocean," he says. This was particularly true as he neared the age of his father's death: "I don't want to die thinking of a lot things I never got around to doing."

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On July 8, 2005, 24 hours after her argument with the trawler, Kestrel was safely docked in Crosshaven, where she would get a nose job. Atkisson flew back to Washington for 10 months to ponder how two vessels sailing blind could find and run into each other on an otherwise empty ocean. And to contemplate darker possibilities: Had Kestrel been 100 yards farther along on her course, the trawler would have cut her in two.

Undaunted, he flew back to Ireland in May 2006 and embarked for Dublin, where Sawyer joined him for a seven-week sailing tour of Ireland, Scotland and the Hebrides. It was something of a pilgrimage for both, descended as they are from Ulster Scots plus, he says, "whatever contribution was made by marauding Vikings."

During those weeks they sailed 986 miles through 10-knot tidal rips and 18-foot tides, dodged 40-knot ferries and looming freighters, withstood draconian wind shifts and enjoyed some of the most beautiful scenery they'd ever experienced. When they returned to Crosshaven, Sawyer flew home to work on a book project. Atkisson stocked up the boat to sail to Spain.

The most memorable aspect of his trip down the Iberian coast, better even than the beautiful, festive cities of La Coru¿a, Spain, and Lagos, Portugal, was "the wonderful welcome I received everywhere, in part because I'm a former drunk."

Mariners, he notes, have always been notorious boozers, and a goodly number are now on the mend. In every port city in the world some sort of 12-step meeting is underway almost any day. "And if you land in another country and don't know anyone, that's a great place to meet people," Atkisson says. Perfect strangers took him into their homes, fed him meals, lent him cars and committed other kindnesses beyond number.

"I think my voyage had real meaning for them," he said. "It seemed to reassure them you can accomplish something difficult . . . with your life even after many years wasted as a barfly. And, of course," he said after a pause, "it represented that to me, too."