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By Roy McNett (with excerpts from a 2002 Minneapolis Star-Tribune article by Doug Grow)
After 11 years of wandering this watery globe in his sailboat, Gill Hummel doesn't show much interest in settling down.
What started out to be a whimsical cruise to the Northwest Caribbean somehow turned into a leisurely six year odyssey around the world.
 AFTER A FIVE MILE HIKE on the island of Fatu Hiva in the French Marquesas, Hummel takes a refreshing dip in a locale that he said was indescribably beautiful, even though there weren't any beautiful maidens around.
Originally from Minnesota, Hummel didn't set out to break any speed records or even adhere to a particular course or schedule.
Like Forrest Gump who one day decided to just start running, Hummel one day decided to "just start sailing".
He was fifty-three at the time and was a clean-shaven, hard-charging businessman involved in real estate and construction.
He held an estate sale ("I insisted that they call it an estate sale because it was the end of this life") to dispose of his house, furniture, garden tools and any other "stuff" that wouldn't be needed on a sailboat.
Then he bought a used Volkswagen van, loaded up his dog, "Sherlock Pheasgrouse", and drifted along the Atlantic coast to find a sailboat and to educate himself about sailing.
He finally located a 1979 32-footer in Ft. Lauderdale, named it Sangfroid, meaning "cool, calm, collected, distant," and headed for the Bimini Islands.  S/V SANGFROID
He never took a sailing lesson, instead relying on reading, observation and instinct.
Then the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Martinique and Venezuela.
"My original plan was to get to Venezuela and nothing more than that," he said. "But once I got there, I decided to keep on going."
He went to Panama and through the canal, and the horizon of his dream was endless.
As with any grand adventure, there often comes tragedy.
His dog Sherlock "took an unauthorized shore leave" in Tahiti and never came back. Hummel looked for Sherlock for weeks and was finally told by an islander that the dog had been "eaten."
"I still miss him."
Sherlock had been excellent company, particularly on those long over-30-day passages in the Pacific between islands when single-handed sailors often start mumbling to themselves or start raging at the wind, or the absence of wind.
"Sometimes, I wasn't even sure of what year it was," he said.
He sailed on. To the Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji and then Australia.
While at sea, he ate fish that he caught with a line trailing off the stern. When at anchor, he ate what the locals ate, avoiding the expensive restaurants and watering holes of the more "yachty" sailing types.
Hummel's appearance is a bit on the "scruffy" side with his full beard and salty attire chosen from used clothing stores in various ports.
He discovered that the look that comes naturally at sea was important in gaining acceptance with local populations. Clearly, this was no Dockers or L.L. Bean clad American tourist.
"When you go into most countries, if your purpose is not to get drunk every day, your expenses are incredibly low," he said.
He stayed as long as five months in some ports, occasionally picking up an odd job to make a little money.
And he did virtually all the repairs on Sangfroid, even overhauling his three-cylinder engine in Thailand, where he befriended the owner of a small machine shop.
There was Malaysia, then Sudan, Egypt, Malta, Greece, Italy and Spain.
And there were some rough spots.
He barely escaped from pirates in the Red Sea only to be run over by a Israeli merchant ship off the coast of Israel and left for dead.
When he managed to get his battered boat to shore, he tried to get help from Israeli bureaucrats, but received none, he said.
Despite a few incidents like that, Hummel said he found good people everywhere.
He and Sangfroid are now in the Rio Dulce waiting out the hurricane season.
Where to next?
Most likely, wherever there's water and wind.
GRAVE OF PAUL GAUGUIN ..French painter (1848-1903) who left France, his job, wife and children, for Tahiti in 1891, and later moved to the Marquesas, where he died. 
CAIRO, EGYPT -- the great pyramids  WAILING WALL -- Jews around the world turn their eyes to the Western Wall, also know as the Wailing Wall, which is the closest location to the place where the temple used to stand where Jews can pray. The wall we know today was a part of the temple's western wall, hence its name. Believers leave notes in the cracks between the wall's stones. 
SUAKIN -- On the Red Sea coast of Sudan, just south of the modern harbour and town of Port Sudan, are the remains of the late-Medival city Suakin. This city once was the most important emporium on the west coast of the Red Sea and on one of the main routes of the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca:
DINING IN SUAKIN  PILOT WHALES
off the coast of Panama 
ANT HILL in Darwin, Australia 
PERCY ISLAND -- a mecca for sailors, Middle Percy Island is on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The tattered U.S. flag hanging from the rafters was flown by Hummel crossing the Pacific. 
The Sphinx of Giza is a symbol that has represented the essence of Egypt for thousands of years. Even with all of the pictures that we see of the Sphinx, nothing can really prepare you for the time that you finally see the Sphinx with your own eyes. |
