"Dick’s fast-paced Manning Up In Alaska is a riveting, good read and an entertaining adventure book. At times we laugh; at other times we hold our breath. Regardless of whether we’re sailors or landlubbers, he holds our wide-eyed attention with this action-packed tale as we sail with him and his wife up the coast from Mexico to Alaska aboard his 47-foot sailboat, Last Resort."

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The amazing truth is that lifelong sailor and hard-driving entrepreneur Dick Drechsler didn’t expect to live, much less cruise 2600 miles of ocean. After neck and throat cancer treatment confined him to taking nourishment from a feeding tube, he lost his energy, humor and will to survive. He was forced to retire; he was unable to travel. Worst of all, he was no longer able to enjoy his passion for sailing.

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This book is about how, despite these very long odds, he refused to give up. His story of regaining partial use of his throat; pursuing a lifelong dream to cruise in a sailboat and discovering a new, exciting avocation is a page-turner in every regard. And, in the end, Dick came to dedicate his life and this book to helping other cancer survivors enjoy life and even thrive. For his efforts, Dick received the Bluewater Cruising Association Coastal Award and have been inducted into the Catalina Offshore Cruisers Hall of Fame. Dick is passionate about helping other cancer sufferers and has formed a charitable foundation, Sail Through Cancer Foundation, which is dedicated to providing respite and relief in the form of a day on the water to enrich the human experience.

An Astounding Tale of Overcoming Cancer, Sailing 2600 Miles to Alaska and Finding New Direction

     Dick’s fast-paced Manning Up In Alaska is a riveting, good read and an entertaining adventure book. At times we laugh; at other times we hold our breath. Regardless of whether we’re sailors or landlubbers, he holds our wide-eyed attention with this action-packed tale as we sail with him and his former wife up the coast from Mexico to Alaska aboard his 47-foot sailboat, Last Resort.
      The amazing truth is that lifelong sailor and hard-driving entrepreneur Dick Drechsler didn’t expect to live, much less cruise 2600 miles of ocean. After neck and throat cancer treatment confined him to taking nourishment from a feeding tube, he lost his energy, humor and will to survive. He was forced to retire; he was unable to travel. Worst of all, he was no longer able to enjoy his passion for sailing.
      This book is about how, despite these very long odds, he refused to give up. His story of regaining partial use of his throat; pursuing a lifelong dream to cruise in a sailboat and discovering a new, exciting avocation is a page-turner in every regard. And, in the end,

Dick came to dedicate his life and this book to helping other cancer survivors enjoy life and even thrive. For their efforts, Dick and his former wife received the Bluewater Cruising Association Coastal Award and have been inducted into the Catalina Offshore Cruisers Hall of Fame. Dick is passionate about helping other cancer sufferers and has formed a charitable foundation, Sail Through Cancer Foundation, which is dedicated to providing respite and relief in the form of a day on the water to enrich the human experience.

The book consists of 10 chapters, a forward and an epilogue,a dozen images, approximately 275 pages, as follows: 

Forward

 A brief, seven-page, description of the diagnoses of cancer and the radical treatment necessary to save my life. It also chronicles my nationwide search for a doctor who could open my esophagus after the unusual after-effect of my throat growing completely shut and the pioneering surgery that ensued leaving me, however, unable to subsist except on an extremely limited liquid diet.

Chapter 1, From Racer to Cruiser
     “Wake up, wake up!” I yelled to my sleeping former wife, Sharon, as I tore up the floorboards to expose the bilge. Much to my shock, I discovered two feet of water and it was rising rapidly, threatening to top the batteries. If it did, it would short out the entire electrical system, including our communications. I had to locate the source of the flood and do so quickly. I was torn between thoughts of getting myself under control so I could first assess the problem, or just putting out a Mayday call and abandoning ship right then and there. Here I was, 62 years old, a cancer survivor with a serious eating disability and an only partly functional left arm, about to make a life and death decision for both my wife and me. We were six miles offshore on a pitch black night, in six-foot seas with 20-to-25-knot winds blowing right on the nose, facing a seemingly unstoppable flood. Unchecked, the rising water would soon doom our nearly-new 47-foot sailboat, and perhaps the two of us as well. What manner of circumstances had led me to these dire straits?
        This introductory chapter tracks my 50-year sailing history, from an epiphany while attending Catalina Island Boys Camp, where I first experienced sailing at age 13, through sailing Malibu outriggers during summers spent in a rental house along the Old Malibu Road, and humorous experiences that occurred aboard other sailboats I owned or sailed.

Chapter 2, New Yacht, New Life

For 17 years I cruised a Catalina 36 between San Francisco and the Mexican border and during much of that time I also owned a Moorings 51 charter boat in St. Lucia. This chapter is an entertaining look at those years and the rich experiences they brought. It starts with an explanation of how the Catalina 36 came to be named Venus Butterfly, and why, ten years later, it would be unceremoniously de-named and re-Christened Last Resort. It also includes an enlightening analysis of the tragic changes I witnessed in the youth of the small town of Soufriere in the West Indies when a satellite television system with American programming was introduced in the town.

Chapter 3, Life, Death and Something In Between

This chapter recounts the life-changing events that transpired over a three-year period from 2004-to-2006, including  my struggles with cancer and how I arrived at the subsequent decisions to sell my wireless Internet company and to buy a cruising sailboat on which to sail away, with the intent to live aboard and keep on cruising until there is absolutely no choice but to move directly to assisted living!

Chapter 4, Delivery Day, Olé
   A short description of the commissioning process, the trials and tribulations encountered along the way, some technical information, things I learned and equipment changes I made after seven months of shake-down cruising in Mexico.
    The saga of an offshore delivery along the California coast and the journal of seven months cruising in Baja, Mexico as I joined the "90-day Yacht Club" at the Coral Hotel in Ensenada. It includes tales of endearing relationships with charming locals and the "Baja bash," replete with gale force winds and steep 12-foot seas that filled the cockpit and challenged the crew.

Chapter 5, Repatriation

 This is the story of our return to the United States and the events of the seven months I spent in Southern California reworking the boat and preparing to cast off the dock lines for good. It tells of meeting Richard Spindler, the publisher of Latitude 38, and how, upon hearing my story, he would publish an article about me in the August 2007 issue of the magazine. The overwhelming response and outreach from that article was the genesis of The Sail Through Cancer Foundation (www.
sailthrucancer.org), which I subsequently established to provide respite to other cancer sufferers.

Chapter 6, Ensenada to San Francisco

 Using a strategy of hopping between harbors while riding the strong southerly winds produced by approaching low pressure systems as we sailed in the dead of winter, we witnessed the effects of 30-foot seas in the Santa Barbara Channel and in the aftermath learned of three people seriously injured during the storm. We visited most of the diverse harbors along the coast and took in the local color during this four-week passage.

Chapter 7, San Francisco

 A brief account of our six weeks in the San Francisco Bay area while we waited for the Pacific High to build in the North Pacific. We visited many of the yacht clubs and discovered what life aboard is like while moving from one location to the next in this cosmopolitan environment.It was during our stay that I received sufficient encouragement to proceed ahead with formation of the Sail Through Cancer Foundation. I discuss attending the weather classes conducted by Lee Chesneau and the valuable lessons learned, all of which would serve me well as I approached greater challenges from the winds and seas that lay ahead.

Chapter 8, San Francisco to the Inside Passage 

During this 800-mile leg we were confronted with a life-threatening drama when the high water alarm sounded while far offshore in heavy seas in the dead of night. This is my account of how I overcame the challenge of a flooding boat to save ourselves and continue our journey, juxtaposed with my former wife’s "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" view of the same events. She would later add her own commentary to my nonchalant log entry where I commented how "great" it was our safety systems all worked when she wrote the following: 
            "Now, does that sound at all like we faced down death in a scene that could be spliced into the film “Victory at Sea’? Does it even sound like we’re on the same boat? I had no idea there was any great news, other than the fact we survived. This tells me Dick and I are living in strange and often complex, parallel universes. While he’s Peter Pan, I’m the conservative and reluctant Wendy. While he’s Captain Kirk – going where no man has gone before – I’m still Wendy. I haven’t gone anywhere at all."

If that weren’t enough, we would also find ourselves on another dark night, disabled in big seas and diminishing winds after snagging a crab pot off Newport, Oregon that fouled our prop.

Chapter 9, Alaska or Bust

The chapter describes the scenic beauty we encountered as we ventured into the wilds of northern British Columbia, in awe of the scenery and wildlife we experienced on a daily basis. From whales sounding close aboard, to our first sighting of majestic eagles and visiting our first fjord, we were humbled by the sights and sounds surrounding us. It also relates the challenges and dangers from racing currents in Seymour Narrows, the effects of gale-force winds against the opposing current in Johnstone Strait, and sailing across Queen Charlotte Sound in fifteen foot seas. 

In the same vein, Sharon whimsically described my futile attempts to catch a halibut when she wrote "Last night Dick decided he would catch a halibut. .,eu,niyndfkljwehfnv [Excuse me, I was still laughing.] `I’m Jigging,' he explains. He is jerking his fishing pole up and down like a carousel pony. 'It’s when you lure the fish into thinking there’s a fish in trouble that will be easy prey.' He has bathed his colorful lure with very aptly-named Butt Juice. The lure’s yellow and white streamers flutter very attractively. As we wait, he tries different techniques. First there is the straight up and down jig. This is akin to the missionary position in jigging and it is not exciting to watch or participate in, apparently. So he enhances his repertoire to include exotic moves like figure eights, before introducing increasingly higher levels of difficulty. 'That’s good,' I encourage him. 'That must look like final death throes down there. I’m sure it’s like Madame Butterfly.'

"Did I happen to mention that I’ve been appointed to the position of Gaffer? The Gaffer gets to take this pole with a steel hook on the end, poke it into the halibut’s gill whenever Dick pulls it out of the water and hold the approximately 100-pound fish thusly until Dick manages to do something about it. (What that something was has yet to be explained or probably even thought through, exactly.) Fortunately, halibut did not apparently find our Butt Juice stimulating enough. I ate chicken last night." 

Chapter 10, "Just Man Up!"

What is immediately striking about Alaska is that everything is big. If it weren’t enough to be challenged by uncharted rocks, raging, turbulent currents, williwaws, deadhead logs, violent storms, crab pots, big seas, life-threatening mechanical failures, grizzlies and approaching cruise ships in narrow channels, after reaching Alaska we could add "bergy bits" and icebergs to our list. We witnessed a life-and-death situation as a large, 150-passenger cruise ship ran aground in Tarr Inlet, and I saw nature in its raw, cruel form when a pod of Orcas attacked a baby humpback as the helpless sow stood by unable to do anything but utter her haunting, mournful cries. I spent a summer that wasn’t a summer in Alaska, but weather aside, the experiences were priceless. I had reached my goal and as I spent my final night at anchor nervously fending off icebergs as big as cars in Glacier Bay before starting the return voyage, I basked in the satisfaction that I had overcome adversity and the odds to reach my goal.

Epilogue

What’s next for Last Resort ?
Continuing to build the "Armada of Hope" that forms the core of the Sail Through Cancer Foundation is a high priority. Cruising to Mexico, Central and South America, transiting the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, and even Europe are all possibilities in the continuing voyages of Last Resort.

....and perhaps a sequel to Manning Up In Alaska.