Could this be the famous "Skipper" of rec.boats?

Last month I was in the small village of Kake AK when an old Willard
Searcher came chugging in. Naturally I went over and said hello. The
owner/captain was a fellow named Gary who lives in Kansas. He
informed me of the following things:
1. He had recently bought the boat in Homer, Alaska without knowing
anything about Willards. He saw the boat mentioned on the web, drove
almost 5000 miles to see it, and bought it without survey.
2. After spending a few weeks "getting her ready" Gary left Homer
and cruised single handed, across the Gulf of Alaska to arrive where
I just met him.
3. For all this open water passage Gary single-handed without an
autopilot, anchoring in open roadsteads when he was too exhausted to
drive.
4. His navigation tools were a Garmin plotter with very crude charts
and a road atlas.
5. Forty miles from Kake his hydraulic steering lines completly quit
so he looked around the boat, found the emergency tiller that the
PO had said was on board, fitted it and hand steered into Kake from
the cockpit in the rain. He used just a compass course to cross
chatham Strait which is open on the South to the Pacific Ocean.
6. Gary plans to continue South to finally reach Costa Rica where he
may live for awhile.

Just look at a map to find Homer and you will see that the voyage of
Willy to Bermuda with a full crew was child's play compared to
Gary's little jaunt. I have been considering crossing the Gulf of
Alaska for five years and I still would be reluctant to do it. I was
really impressed.

There is a lesson here about boats and people. We can each make our
own conclusions.

I urged Gary to join the list and tell us about his passage.

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:05:41 -0400, The Count
wrote:

Could this be the famous "Skipper" of rec.boats?

===================================

Skipper's real name was David Mann, from Derby, Kansas.

He would have done that passage with just the road atlas, preferably
in a Bayliner.