Dreams Really Do Hold Water at Boating Bash

David Barnes is a landscaper. Tina Eddings delivers packages for United Parcel Service. They’re both 25 and they live in Temecula, in southern Riverside County.

But they’ve been bitten by the itch. The travel bug. And they’ve got it bad.

“We’ve both got college degrees, we’ve both had career kind of jobs,” Barnes said. “And we said, ‘This is not it.’ ”

Not when the South Seas are beckoning. Australia, too. And New Zealand.

And what better way to get to any of those exotic destinations, they figured, than on a first-class ride, a luxury yacht?

On Saturday night, Barnes and Eddings had the chance to turn their daydreams into a done deal. They crammed into a San Diego marine supply warehouse along with hundreds of would-be sailors in search of a ride, and, more important, the hundreds of yacht skippers who were looking for crews.

After barely a couple of hours at the party, which began at 6 p.m. sharp at Pacific Marine Supply’s Point Loma warehouse, Barnes said they had a “couple offers we’re going to check out.”

“We could have been in Mexico already,” Eddings said. “But it’s off to the South Seas for us, and we think we’re going to be able to do it.”

Another apparent match, and another reason that a party that began as a friendly get-together in 1978 has become an institution in the yachting community.

Pat and Joan Falkosky, who own Pacific Marine Supply, throw the party every year on the last Saturday in October, just before Nov. 1, the official end of the hurricane season in the South Pacific and the date most boat insurance kicks in, Pat Falkosky said.

Although Pacific Marine’s previous owners began the parties in 1978, word has spread since the Falkoskys took over the business in 1983 that their event is the place to find a ride to a palm-fringed island, or the helping hands that boats need to get there, Falkosky said.

“There are a lot of people who try to duplicate this party,” said Joan Falkosky. “But this is it.”

Of course, there’s something in it for the Falkoskys, because the party is good business. “This is going to make you remember where to order your part when it breaks down,” said Noel Myers, who cruises the seas with her husband, John, aboard their 42-foot yacht, Nonpareil.

The Falkoskys believe their party is the largest gathering of its kind along the West Coast. This year, more than 500 people made reservations, he said.

No one knew how many actually attended this year, although the best guess was 600 or 700, a success by all accounts but nowhere near the record crowd of 1,000 a few years ago. This year, for instance, there was still room over in one corner to stand by the inflated raft filled with ice and soft drinks.

No question, though, the place was packed, and with people of all sorts. There were former accountants, former mechanics, photographers, surfers, drifters, frustrated novelists, young people, old people, very rich people, a man who said he had $1,000 to his name and wasn’t used to being that flush, Brazilians, Canadians, Americans, Dutch and at least three English women.

The party attracted all these people from all over this watery planet.

Mandy Parker, 28, had made it to San Diego “for the winter” from Cheshire, England. She had gotten to town via “six different boats,” leaving Spain in June, 1988. She was hoping to arrange a ride next spring to New Zealand.

“I got here,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll get wherever I want to go.”

Terry Stone, 25, drove down with his friend Terri Nash, 24, from Cranbrook, British Columbia, a town of some 17,000 people 50 or so miles north of the border above the junction of Idaho and Montana.

Stone said he and Nash had read about the event in a Canadian magazine and drove to San Diego to make it, stopping along the way only in Las Vegas. “Everybody has this dream,” he said, holding a sign that indicated he was “open to all offers and,” he had underlined, “I mean all offers.”

Stone’s sign also advertised the qualities he could bring on board: “Young, reasonably intelligent male seeks adventure on the high seas.” As the evening proceeded and he fielded a steady stream of inquiries, he was living proof that, while sailing experience or mechanical ability help, neither is a necessity.

Bob and Lenore Bence left Seattle on Sept. 5 in their 44-foot boat, Shadow Fax, en route to “Mexico, then Costa Rica, then the (Panama) Canal to the Virgin Islands, then who knows where.” They were in search of a “warm body that’s reliable,” Bob Bence said.

Far more relevant than any acquired skill, in fact, was the most basic genetic difference. For females, especially single women, the party was a buyer’s market.

“Every guy with a sailboat, his ambition is to sail off with a lovely lady into the sunset,” said Mike Falkosky, 29, who works at the family business.

Confirmed Larry Alderson, 40: “I’m looking for a dream gal to go cruising around the world. I’m basically looking for one gal. It’s a tricky situation. But the boat’s all ready to go.”

Ed Laraway, 51, who had just left Marina del Rey on his boat, Infinity, for “10 to 15 years,” said he hoped to find female help, someone “willing and smart.” There’s the “obvious reason,” he said. “But from what I understand, they’re easier to get along with. And they bathe.”

The single women, meanwhile, said they were wise to the game.

“The only boat (from the six rides) I’ve had trouble with, I got thrown off in Casablanca for saying no,” Parker said. “I try to avoid the ones looking for a companion. If they say they don’t care about experience, that means they’re looking for a companion.”

Stacey Pullman, 35, said she is a trained chef, and if someone wanted to take her aboard, it would be with the explicit understanding that any shaking and baking would be confined to the galley.

“I don’t think there’ll be any problem,” she said. “It shouldn’t be difficult.”

After a couple of hours at the party, Pullman, too, had offers worth exploring, and wore a cautiously optimistic smile. Across the room, David Barnes and Tina Eddings had thrown caution to the wind, as it were, and were giddy with the flush of their dreams.

“Hey,” Barnes said, “let’s face it. It’s either this or a 30-year house mortgage. Which sounds more fun to you?”