What does it take to sail away? - The 'X' Factor...

by Shlomit Auciello, Herald Gazette/Sail-World on 11 Jul 2009 A young man, a big dream, some luck, and the 'X' factor.

Patrick DiLalla left his home in Rockland, Maine, USA with a college friend in the summer of 2006 in a 26foot wooden sloop to cross the Atlantic.

It took them just 18 days to reach the Azores, a journey of around 1900 miles.

There are many young men who dream of sailing away, but only some of them do. What is the difference? Read Patrick's story and decide...








Before leaving Maine, DiLalla had worked for two years at Atlantic Challenge in Rockland's North End, as head instructor for the Community Sailing Program.

'Part of my inspiration was seeing the little kids, optimists pushing their limits and seeing what they can handle,' he said.

Before leaving on his multiyear voyage, DiLalla had sailed and taught sailing in small boats. He had been to sea only twice in a yacht belonging to a friend of his family.

'I really loved it and thought it would be really cool to go wherever I wanted,' he said. So began the dream.

Then he got Plumbelly. This was the luck.

'The boat kind of fell in my lap,' he said. 'The guy was fed up and wanted to get rid of it.'

DiLalla said he got a lot of help preparing his boat for the trip across the Atlantic. He said the instructors at the Apprenticeshop were generous with their knowledge and advice and Atlantic Challenge's library is 'full of everything you could want to know about sailing and wooden boats.'

He said friends in the building trades and people such as Mike Whitehead at Pope Sails helped him make parts he needed and learn the skills that would help him maintain his boat.

'I tapped into the knowledge of people in the Rockland area like KC Heyniger, waterfront programs director at Atlantic Challenge],' he said. 'I asked what the safe way was to do things. The rest I learned as I went. You learn pretty quick when it's necessary like that. It was an experiential learning experiment.'

In 2005 he took Plumbelly to the Caribbean.


'It was my trial run,' he said, adding that an Atlantic crossing had been on his mind for some time. 'My life just kind of unfolded and that seemed like a logical thing to do, to keep sailing.'

After landing in the Azores, DiLalla's friend flew back to the United States. DiLalla continued in Plumbelly to Portugal, eventually crossing paths with a large square-rigged sailing ship that hired him on for a six-month trip to the Caribbean and back.

When he returned to Portugal in the summer of 2007, DiLalla picked his little sloop up at the marina where he had stored it and departed for Morocco on the north coast of Africa where he spent the next 12 months.

'It was absolutely fantastic,' he said. 'I'd never been to any Arabic speaking or Muslim place. It was kind of eye-opening.' DiLalla said he started to learn French while in Morocco, one of nine languages in current use there.

'But they're so eager to communicate — some Spanish, a little English or my really bad French seemed to suffice,' Dilalla said, adding that he learned the latter tongue later while in Senegal.

After Morocco, he traveled to the Canary and Cape Verde Islands.

'This was all over the course of a little bit of time,' he said. Then DiLalla sailed to Senegal in Western Africa, to a river called the Casamance, south of the Gambia.

'I went way up a little tributary,' he said. 'It's all mangroves — a huge spider web of rivers.'

A French yachtsman he met told him about a place in a little village called Nioumoune, pronounced 'new moon,' where he could leave Plumbelly while he returned to the United States for work. DiLalla said that in the end, he and the man who took care of his boat became good friends.

'I had a big, wild and crazy trip with five different canoes and a rally car taxi ride with nine people packed into a little station wagon up to Dakar so I could catch this flight back to New York so I could work in Maine for the summer,' he said.

On the way to the airport he met a teacher from the school in Nioumoune and they got to know each other. They kept in touch, and while DiLalla was in the United States he offered to help the school when he returned to Senegal.

That summer, in Maine without his boat, DiLalla worked doing house carpentry for Joe Godfrey in South Thomaston.

In October, at the end of the rainy season, the sailor flew back to Dakar.

'It was sweltering hot there,' he said. 'I made my way back to the boat by the same chain of canoes. She was sitting there just like I left her.' He met with the villagers about what their needs were and how much money he might be able to raise from friends in the States.

'I got in touch with people and asked what they could send,' DiLalla said. 'In the end I raised $3,000.'

DiLalla said about half of the money came from his father's Rotary Club in Cleveland and the other half came from Godfrey and other friends in the Rockland area. In addition to raising money, he helped replace the school's roof, windows and doors.

'It was a spectacular experience,' he said of his time in the village, where he was welcomed into the homes of those he met. 'It was fantastic the way I got to know the community, a great outpouring.'

In February of this year, DiLalla left Senegal, bound for Grenada in the Caribbean. The voyage took 23 days. Along the way he saw a bit of wildlife, he said, including some seabirds and a few dolphins and whales.

'It was definitely lonely, and a long haul,' he said. 'There was a lot of tropical sunshine and a good breeze.' That most recent crossing was Plumbelly's 28th trip across the Atlantic.

'The boat has a big history,' he said.

DiLalla said he worked his way up the Caribbean to Bermuda, then to New Bedford and to Portland, Maine. He sailed to Mount Desert Island, where he picked up another college friend, and together they made the final sail to Vinalhaven and Rockland, where it all began.

'We had a really lucky run with the wind,' DiLalla said Thursday, after returning the previous night from the three-year journey that took him to Portugal, Africa and the Caribbean, before bringing him back to Rockland.

Can you pick the 'X' factor?