Apple Valley Sailors Dawdle Across the Atlantic
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Author: Stuart Kellogg; Daily Press, Victorville, CA
Released 19 August 2005
DAILY PRESS (VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA, USA), August 6, 2005:
In their 24 years of marriage, Ed and Noelle Lesh of Apple Valley have traveled in 36 countries and had countless adventures.
Of the latter, the greatest - so far - must be the time they sailed ensemble across the Atlantic Ocean, a voyage of 28 days. Either that or the single day they spent flying back and forth across the American West.
Noelle was raised in Paris, Ed in Pittsburgh, Pa. When they met in Denver, Colo. - in 1979, on the last day of his vacation from the oil company Aramco - he knew no French, and she knew no English.
Who needs words?
They married in 1981, in Denver, so Noelle would be allowed to join Ed in strict Saudi Arabia.
But when the newlyweds showed up at the French consulate in Los Angeles, hoping to get the name on Noelle's French passport changed, they were told that the Denver authorities had not yet recorded their marriage certificate.
And so they flew back to Colorado, made sure the certificate was recorded, and returned to L.A. - three flights all in one day.
Ed describes Aramco's compound in Dhahran as "about as big as Apple Valley and Victorville combined."
"Inside the compound," Noelle says, "it was like America. But when going outside to the city to shop, I would wear black. The Mattawa (religious police) would spray a woman's legs with black paint if her skirt was too short."
Back in the States, while working for Nevada Power, Ed - who'd been bitten by the sailing bug while visiting friends of Noelle's on St. Bathelemy, in the French West Indies - learned to sail on Lake Mead.
"If you can deal with Lake Mead," he says, "its high winds or absolute lack of wind, you can sail anywhere."
At Nevada Power, Ed heard of so many co-workers who'd died just after retiring that he took a vow: not to wait till his own retirement before fulfilling his lifelong dream of sailing across the Atlantic.
And so, in 1985, he returned to lucrative Aramco in order to earn enough money to buy a seaworthy boat.
In August 1990, the Leshes were in Dhahran when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait - not that many miles away.
When Ed asked the Saudis for Noelle's passport so she could leave the country, he was told that only retired Aramco employees and their dependents would be given their passports.
And so Ed retired.
A year before, in Antibes in the South of France, the couple had bought a 43-foot Henri Wauquiez ketch. They named her the Coup de Foudre ("lightning bolt" or "love at first sight").
Leaving France with 465 liters of diesel fuel, 100 bottles of wine, 200 cases of beer and 200 gallons of fresh water, they sailed southwest toward Spain.
Ed says he loved the Mediterranean at night, "when, because of the phosphorescence, dolphins swimming toward the boat looked like bright green, neon torpedoes.
"Dolphins love to surf the bow wave."
During a week in Gibralter, Ed bought a Russian military sextant ("No 'girlie man' technology for us!").
"This was during Glasnost," he says, "and the poor Russians, who had no money, were selling off their military equipment."
From Gibralter they sailed southwest to the Canary Islands and thence to Barbados.
The journey from the Canaries to the West Indies should have sped by in 15 days. But because for 17 days there was no wind at all, it took the Coup de Foudre - "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean" - 28 days.
"Since we had a limited amount of diesel," Ed says, "we'd chug along at 2 knots during the day and hope for wind at night."
The Leshes made fresh water with a reverse-osmosis water-maker equipped with solar panels to charge its batteries.
"As a rule," Ed says, "we rarely saw another boat. But some people ran out of water and radioed for help."
Other crews, reduced to smoking tea, would radio an appeal for cigarettes.
Thanks to his Russian sextant, Ed, who had learned to use one by taking a course offered by the British Royal Yachting Association in Saudi Arabia, always knew where they were.
"You look at the horizon and take the elevation of a star, the sun or the moon," he says. "Knowing the height of a star at a certain time, you can then look in a book and learn your latitude.
"Once you know how, it's a piece of cake."
In the middle of the Atlantic, a 15-foot shark swam up beside them ("That's when you're glad you're in a 43-foot boat," Ed says).
Also in midocean, they learned that when whales blow, it smells like rotten shrimp.
Whale halitosis notwithstanding, the Leshes never got seasick. And Noelle learned to cook even when sailing between waves taller than their 67-foot mast.
"That wasn't scary," Ed says of the heavy seas. " It was exhilarating.
The only scary time was when a halyard let go in the middle of the ocean. Noelle had to keep us on course while I climbed up to grab the halyard.
"Noelle could neither swim nor sail, so if I'd fallen into the ocean, that would have been the end of me."
As a rule, Noelle says, she preferred sailing at night because you can see the lights of other boats - and avoid them:
"But at night some crazy single-handers (people sailing solo) will put their boat on autopilot and sleep down below with no lights on."
When they were 200 miles off Barbados, their dog could smell the land. This was long before the Leshes could, even before the lost stork that had decided to accompany them.
When they docked in Barbados, on Christmas Day 1990, they had just 1 liter of diesel fuel left.
"After we arrived in Barbados," Ed says, "there was a series of great storms. To slow their boats and keep them from nose-diving, some crews had tied their stoves to lines and dragged them behind."
Noelle adds that during their adventure, they met people from Canada, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Italy:
"If we saw a topless woman, we knew it was a French boat. But if it rained, that meant a free shower, so everyone stood on deck naked."
At St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Noelle worked at A Touch of Class, a jewelry store, in order to earn money for provisions and repairs to the Coup de Foudre.
From there the Leshes sailed south to Venezuela, where, according to Noelle, they had to watch for pirates, "people who'd steal everything from your boat while you were ashore."
The worst storms of their two years at sea were at Cape Hatteras, off of North Carolina, where the Gulf Stream turns northeast.
In 1992 they sold the Coup de Foudre to a couple in Maryland.
In Ed's wonderful phrase, "that was like selling our ocean house in order to buy a land house."
Two years ago, the Leshes moved from Texas to the Victor Valley.
While Ed works as maintenance manager of the High Desert Power Project, Noelle - she who can neither swim nor navigate - dreams of winning the Lotto and setting sail once again.