SANTA CRUZ — Captain Groggy Swagger was visible through a break in the metal fencing at the Santa Cruz North Harbor parking lot. He stood at the helm of a sailboat with Rock and Roll painted in block letters across the stern. He wore a floppy hat, loose breeches and a crimson coat that reached around his healthy paunch. By his side were two men — one dressed in a white button-up that fell to his knees and the other in an “I workout” t-shirt that had a picture of a Wii controller. His motley crew.
He barked orders at the two. “Grab that line,” he said. “Pull it this way.”
The two stumbled around the 27-foot sailboat trying to keep up with his orders. Together the men had logged only a couple of hours at sea.
“Keep pulling,” Swagger continued with a matter-of-fact look on his face.
Little did I know that for the next four hours I would join this disjointed crew as we raced and sometimes inched along the California coast on one of the first beautiful spring days of the year.
Thus beginning my introduction to modern day piracy. No Somalis, hostages, tankers or ransoms though. Only a lot of booze, bad pirate jokes and inexperienced sailing.
But let me back up for a second. Swagger the pirate is actually a 33-year-old native Santa Cruzan named Aaron Rhodes. By day he hovers over a computer and consults for an IT company on the East Coast. But when he’s on his boat, he’s a pirate. And so is everyone else. As he wrote on his blog in January, “The first rule on my boat is, if we go sailing you must be in full pirate regalia.”
Luckily, he made an exception for this unprepared reporter.
A Schooling in Modern Day Piracy
Rhodes didn’t seriously adopt his ulterior identity, Captain Groggy Swagger, until last November when he bought and began living on the sailboat. He founded the Santa Cruz Pirate Fest, an annual celebration of everything pirate, earlier that summer, but had never given serious thought to living at sea.
Back then, he didn’t have any clue that he’d like sailing or that he’d live on a sailboat one day. He knew almost nothing about it. He was hoping to buy a home at the time, but couldn’t find a banker who’d give him a reasonable loan.
“I made more than a lot of couples combined, but that didn’t matter to them,” he said. “They didn’t want to take a risk with someone who is single.”
So in an odd way, one might say he has the mortgage crisis to thank for his current living situation.
Regardless, one day while driving by the North Harbor after weeks of failed attempts to get a loan, he got an idea.
“I realized I could just live on a boat,” he said. “No rent.”
Thus began a serious journey to do exactly that. He started by reading books on the basics of sailing and shopping around for a boat. He had absolutely no experience, so he had to learn everything from scratch. Think learning where the stern, bow, starboard and port sides of a boat are.
“I setup an appointment with some guy who was going to teach me the basics, but he never showed up,” Rhodes said. “So I decided to just learn it all on my own.”
When he got word from a broker that a sailboat in his price range was available, he jumped on the opportunity. Before he knew it, he was the proud owner of a 1982 Catalina 27.
“I like it,” he said with a grin. “It’s my first boat.”
And the first home he’s ever owned. His mortgage on the sea.
He gave up his studio apartment and most his furniture and moved onto the $17,000 sailboat in November. He traded a bed for a mattress stuffed in a closet-sized room at the front end of the sailboat.
He was obviously willing to give up a lot of the luxuries of living on land, but he wasn’t about to leave behind his technology. He might be the only pirate in the history of the world to have his schooner outfitted with a flat screen TV, Xbox 360 and wireless Internet.
Beyond technology, the living side of the bargain has been a breeze.
“There have been no major issues,” he said about the transition.
During the winter months when temperatures can dip into the 40s at night he just hooks up a space heater. Electric and water access are included in a $500 a month slip fee (the rent to keep his boat in the harbor). Slip fee and a $250 loan payment for his boat means his monthly living expenses amount to $750. That’s dramatically lower than before when his studio apartment alone cost him $1,200 a month.
The sailboat is setup for cooking as well. “I eat lots of shish kabobs,” he said. “They’re easy.”
He showers and gets his laundry done at NextSpace, a co-working office space in downtown Santa Cruz where he also telecommutes for work. It also provides him with a mailing address. They allow him to use the office address as his home address when necessary.
“NextSpace filled in all the missing pieces,” Rhodes said.
Though the transition was seemingly easy, he hadn’t overcome his largest hurdle.
Learning to Sail
Rhodes bought his sailboat without knowing how to use it.
“I couldn’t get the boat home on my own,” he admitted.
Though he had spent hours reading books on sailing, he still didn’t feel confident enough to dive into by himself. Luckily his grandfather had owned a sailboat years earlier and volunteered to guide him for his first sailing trip.
“He answered all the questions I couldn’t answer with books,” he said.
In return, he allowed his grandparents on the boat without sporting the required pirate attire.
“My grandmother wouldn’t have been happy if I had asked her to dress like a wench,” he said.
After that inaugural trip, he has slowly been getting a feel for proper sailing. He still insists on having other people with him. He made one trip out on his own, but was a bit overwhelmed.
“I don’t want to do that again anytime soon,” he said.
Joining the Crew for the Day
When I joined the crew for the day, it was Captain Groggy Swagger’s sixth outing. We found ourselves trying to escape the choppiest waters he’d ever been in (about 5-foot waves), caught in a kelp field, making absurdly slow and clumsy maneuvers and caught deep in the wallows of inebriation. Swagger never lost his composure, but at points it was questionable whether any of us knew what we were doing.
At one point, we found ourselves with dwindling rum supplies — “A captain’s worst nightmare,” Swagger proclaimed with an empty bottle in his hand — caught in a kelp field with no wind. As other sailboats raced by riding on an ostensibly endless supply of wind, we inched closer and closer towards the shore.
“What did pirates do in the past when there was no wind,” asked one of the shipmates.
“They waited and they got drunk,” Swagger said.
In response, another shipmate popped his head out from within the hull of the boat and brandished a fresh bottle of red wine. Soon enough, we found ourselves back in the grace of the wind. Excluding a close call involving the main sail and a low bridge, we eventually found ourselves back at the dock.
After a few remaining orders from Groggy to clean up the deck and a quick dinner, the crew returned to their cars to trek back to their terrestrial lives. But Captain Groggy Swagger disappeared back towards the dock — a modern day pirate.
Originally published in the Cournalist.