deva in paradise

Vessel Name: Deva
Vessel Make/Model: Freya 39 sloop/cutter
Hailing Port: Ketchikan, Alaska, USA
Crew: Michael and Debby Spence
About:
It has been 40 years since we started sailing DEVA. We spent 12 years circumnavigating the globe, starting in 2007. We have been sailing about 6 months of each year, then returning to Alaska and visiting our friends and family the rest. [...]
Extra:
The circumnavigation was our second long voyage together. The first one was in 1988-89 when we sailed from Alaska to Hawaii and French Polynesia. The present voyage started in the Bahamas/Caribbean in 2007, then through the Panama Canal and the South Pacific, the Mediterranean, and eventually [...]
01 August 2022 | Jolly Harbor, Antigua
26 October 2021
15 July 2019
31 July 2018
07 March 2018 | Curacao to Panama
30 January 2018
20 November 2017
28 October 2017
11 July 2017
14 May 2017
02 December 2016
08 November 2016
03 March 2016
26 January 2016
Recent Blog Posts
01 August 2022 | Jolly Harbor, Antigua

Sailing through a Pandemic

We started where we left off before the Pandemic. In the boatyard in Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia.

26 October 2021

DEVA's 40th birthday

Today, the DEVA is a humble little cruiser sitting next to mostly larger and more spacious sailboats in places we visit. She does not have the cavernous interior of newer boats, is narrower and has more varnished woodwork, which hints at her vintage design.

24 May 2019

Cyclo Cruising the Canal du Midi

Cyclo-Cruising the Canal Du Midi

10 December 2018

From the Gulf of Lyon to Spain

In Cap D Agde we tied up in another very large French marina, (with over 3000 boats) adjoining an amusement park-like area with a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster. The main attraction for us was that we could tie securely about a half mile inside a labyrinth of canals, far from the swell of the Mediterranean [...]

DEVA's 40th birthday

26 October 2021
michael spence
Today, the DEVA is a humble little cruiser sitting next to mostly larger and more spacious sailboats in places we visit. She does not have the cavernous interior of newer boats, is narrower and has more varnished woodwork, which hints at her vintage design.

What surprises people is her original sistership was an all-out racing machine

At first glance, DEVA looks like a North Sea fisherman or nordic-inspired cruiser. Actually when first designed in 1963 she was a racing boat. Her oldest sister, named Freya, was tank tested and built by Norwegian-Australian brothers, Magnus and Trigve Halvorsen to sail in the Sidney-Hobart race. She won that race three times, a record not eclipsed by any other boat until the early 2000's.

DEVA's beginning:

It all started in 1977, when I was visiting my Dad in Sausalito, California. Driving by a boatyard I noticed a unique hull shape with a lovely canoe stern being fitted out in the yard. I stopped and turned around for a closer look. I met a young Swedish man named Stig who was building her. What I learned from him that day made that boat seem all the more interesting. He told me the hulls were being built in Petaluma and I should go to see the construction in progress there.

I drove up to Petaluma the next day, and met Jim Gannon, a Sydney, Australia sailor who was crew on the original "Freya". Jim told me he had a hull in the mold that I could buy if I was interested, but that I would have to finish it myself. After giving it some thought over a couple of days, I paid $8000 for the hull on the condition that I could keep it at his yard for a year on the assumption it would take that long for me to finance and arrange the rest of the construction.

It was a silly investment, but I was 26 and didn't know any better

To my Father and some of my friends the idea me getting a boat seemed absurd. I did not own a car or anything else but a few footlockers and books, but I had a sailboat, or at least the hull of one. I had a job in far away Alaska, but I was unmarried and had no debts. So began the construction of the Deva.

She is named after a Hindu Goddess

The first boat of her design was named after the Nordic goddess "Freya". In the 1970's most young people in the Western world, including myself, were interested in things like Meditation and Hindu theology. So I named the boat after a Hindu goddess, in keeping with the goddess Freya theme. Deva is a generic term meaning simply "god or "goddess", but I favored the Deva "Sarasvati" was the one, because she is the goddess of Knowledge, Music and Art. Devas are worshiped in many parts of the world influenced by the Hindu faith.

Over the course of that first year I arranged financing for the construction at a Seattle Bank. Just enough to cover the cost of materials and some of the actual construction of internal structural elements for which they had patterns at the Petaluma yard. I did car and truck deliveries from Seattle to California so I could ship 1 ½ tons of lumber, the engine, and other hardware at just the cost of the gasoline to drive there. Of course it took two days of driving every trip, and I made several. I drew the plans for the deck house and the deck to be built in white oak and epoxy laminated plywood, and hired a rowing shell builder, Ron Owens, to laminate the 30 deck beams. In 1978 I employed two friends, David and Beth Anderson, to help me fasten the deck. All of the work would have to be done on my week off, every other week, from the Alaska ferries. The hull builder, Gannon Yachts, put in the bulkheads, installed the engine and cast in 10,000 lbs of lead into her keel.

Set back by a Thief

Not everything went well in the construction. I hired a local shipwright, David Fleming, to build the deck house according to my drawings. After I paid him in advance for the bulk of the work, and left town to go back to my job, the thief left town a day later, owing rent on his shop where my winches and materials were left. I had to hire a lawyer to recover the materials from the landlords property as she put a lien on the items left behind by her errant tenant. I filed a report with the Petaluma police, even giving them details I had learned about his rental of a U-haul truck and planned destination of Seattle. Basically I was robbed, and forced to build the deck house myself after paying a crook to do it. Some three years later a lumber yard manager in Anacortes WA told me that Mr Fleming had set up shop there, indebted himself to many local businesses, and left town, just like he did in Petaluma. That experience taught me to be more careful about hiring workers and paying them in advance.

A journey across the country

The work continued on the deck and deck house, which I finished just in time during the Summer of and Fall of 1979, for the boat to be trucked out of the boatyard. I had taken a new job as a pilot trainee in New Jersey, so all my belongings had to be shipped there at my expense. My Dad knew a man that had just bought a truck and trailer, and offered to haul it to New Jersey for about $4000. What he and I did not know is the man had no experience with over-road permits and would take 28 days to tow the boat across country in mid Winter.

Deva arrived in New Jersey covered in road dirt in February 1980. She was unfinished but covered with a deck and deck house and a temporary plywood hatch. I was barely earning enough money to pay rent on a small apartment in nearby Sea Bright. My plan was to finish her to a degree that I could move onboard and not have to pay rent except at the harbor. On April 1 a few friends from New York came by: Dan and Virginia, and Greg and Lori, to help me launch the boat and step the mast. Once again not everything went according to plan, as the boatyard insisted they do all the bottom paint and zincs. They forgot to install the zinc anodes that protect the shaft and propeller, and the bottom paint was still wet upon launching, so red paint smeared up the white hull sides 2 feet at four places where the slings bared against the hull.

Her first Hurricane

My job became more complicated as I found I had to return to Alaska for work over the Summer to supplement income. I left the boat in Highlands marina for 4 months. When I returned in late September and moved back on board, I had to prepare for an approaching storm. It was the remnant of a hurricane, which brought a 10 foot storm surge into the harbor followed by a receding low tide about 10 feet below normal. (similar to storm Sandy in more recent times) It was a good thing I was aboard to tend lines, , as the high tide washed away the small pier alongside the boat, and the breakwater at her bow was submerged. Then the tide went out and most of the boats in the harbor went aground and fell over. Deva leaned up against a piling with tight moorings and stayed upright. When the tide came back in, many of the boats had flooded and sank in their berths. It took weeks to clear away the wreckage. Fortunately the only loss for DEVA was her two rub rails, about 25 feet long and solid oak, which had not been installed yet, washed away. I found them the next day about 100 yards away in the piles of wreckage in the marina.

Sailing to Florida

By late Fall it became apparent that my job was mostly training with very little income producing work, and at the same time I was offered a steady Summer job piloting in Alaska. It was clear that there was no reason to tough out an icy Winter in the Highlands marina when we could sail to warmer climes in Florida where I could finish the boat in better weather. My good friend Don Busscher, with whom I had sailed years earlier, had a home on the waterfront in Ft Lauderdale and he offered to let me tie up DEVA there for a while.

In early December 1980, DEVA was hardly finished. I had completed the sliding main hatch and temporary engine controls, installed a depth sounder, running lights,and bought a second hand genoa sail. I installed a temporary sail winch on the foredeck for heaving the one anchor. She had no windows, no sailhandling winches, and just a small kerosene cook stove and a diesel cabin heater. My girlfriend came with me for the voyage down the Intracoastal waterway. We mostly stayed in the shallow dredged channels, with just a few jaunts into the ocean where low bridges prevented our passage. It was bitter cold for a month or so, with no protection from rain or wind around the cockpit. So it happened Deva's first sailing was done with no mainsail, just one genoa and the 3 cylinder Volvo engine. Days were short so we often motorsailed in darkness.

The Building continued in Florida

Once we were tied up in Fort Lauderdale, I could resume the task of building. I hired a young man who was an experienced boatwright, Doug, to help build coamings around the cockpit. He had amazing talents for fitting pieces of teak and plywood together, and I learned a lot working with him.
By April of 1981 I was preparing to go back to Alaska for the Summer, so I put DEVA into a boatyard on the river in Ft Lauderdale, at River Bend. I thought I had done a pretty thorough job of preparing the boat for storage, but missed an important detail, making sure all food items were roach proofed.

Infested with cockroaches

Upon return to the boatyard in October, the boat was infested with large cockroaches. I discovered them when I turned on a light in the forecabin in the middle of the night. Yikes! They were everywhere. Thus began a 3 day program of fumigation, followed by cleanup. I traced the problem to a box of cereal that was unopened but had a wax-paper bag inside. The Florida heat melted the wax and provided a plentiful food source for insects during the months I was at work in Alaska.

During the Winter of 1981-82 I did not re-launch the boat, since it had become apparent that I would be returning to work full time in Alaska. It was a tough choice deciding what to do next with the boat, but it was clear she had to be transported overland a second time. Decommissioning and recommissioning a boat for trucking is a painstaking process, but I could not afford to pay anyone else to do it. The mast and rigging and all railings, pulpits, had to be removed and then reinstalled after the trucking to Seattle.

Overland again to Seattle

In early April, 1982, I hired a Canadian trucking outfit to pick up Deva in Fort Lauderdale and transport her to Seattle. Maple Leaf Yachts did the transport, and they were excellent. I flew to Seattle from Ketchikan and spent a few days re-rigging her and prepping for a voyage to Ketchikan. My Dad and a friend from the Alaska ferry, Barry West, joined me for that trip. I bought another used sail, a mainsail, from Hood Sails in Marblehead, so Deva would for the first time be fully rigged as a sloop.
We sailed North on April 15, right into a Spring snowstorm, heading up the Inside Passage to Alaska.
The diesel heater was put to good use as it was cold and wet most of the way North. Deva had little in the way of on-deck protection from the elements: no spray dodger. Our foul weather gear was all we had. My dad brought his fur-lined Winter hat from WW11 army days. He was a good sport during the 10 day voyage, never complaining about the cold. He was 70 years old and all of his sailing was in either California or the Caribbean, so Canada and Alaska was an extreme change for him. On one snowy day he looked at me with a tear in his eye and said "I'm afraid my sailing days are over". I did my best to cheer him up but it seemed he had made up his mind. Barry was also a good shipmate and endured the hardships in good spirit. Being a Marine Engineer, he brought a lot of technical expertise that was helpful on the trip.

1982-83, a year of many changes

The story of Deva is linked of course, to the story of Mike. We tied up DEVA in Ketchikan, my Dad and Barry flew home to WA and California, and I began an all-consuming career as a full time ships pilot in Alaska. On June 1, 1982, (my luckiest day ever) I met my wonderful, beautiful future wife Debby on a ship ship called the Statendam. Later in the Summer she came up from her home in California for a week visit in which we went sailing on the DEVA to the Misty Fjords National Monument. We swam in the frigid waters, saw whales and porpoises,and enjoyed a whole rare week of sunny weather. A couple months later Debby came back to Alaska to stay a little longer. We sailed to Port Townsend WA after the cruise ship season ended and wound up staying there for the Winter. . Our relationship grew closer as she joined me in flying back to Ketchikan during my periods of cargo ship duty. She accepted my proposal of marriage and we planned a wedding on the same ship we met on, to take place at the end of the cruise season.. We sailed Deva from Port Townsend back to Ketchikan in April of 1983. On that voyage we learned on a marine operator call that my Dad had passed away. It was almost exactly one year from his last voyage on the DEVA. We tied up at Comox, BC, and flew South for his memorial.

So began a year in which the DEVA would be tied up and not sailed anywhere.

Not long after our wedding, I was diagnosed with Testicular Cancer. Debby, we learned, was pregnant.
My surgeries and treatments would last for months. If those were to be my last days, I thought I would rather spend them with Debby and our new child. The boat became less important than everything else. We put on her stem-to-stern canvas cover and bought a condo ashore that became our new home. It seemed we might never sail her again.

The cover came off in 1985

With our new baby Carly a year old, Debby and I ventured out on the water again on the DEVA
We did some nearby cruising to Black Sand Beach and Rudyerd Bay, just a few hours from Ketchikan.
We also signed up for round the buoys racing in Ketchikan. We had racing sails made, a spinnaker and various sizes of headsails. DEVA was competitive and had a advantageous handicap rating because of her full keel and dated design. The local PHRF rating committee tried to change the rating because she was too successful! For three years, our sailing was mostly just around Ketchikan.

First time Across the Pacific

In 1988 We signed up a crew of 4 guys for a crossing to Hawaii in the Spring. John Larsen, Ron Keyes and Scott Golden teamed up with Mike for the crossing.
Debby was pregnant with our second child, so she flew with 4 yr old Carly to meet us there.
The passage was an opportunity to see what DEVA could do in the open ocean, and she did not disappoint. From Neah Bay, WA, she logged over 195 miles a day four days in a row. That's a 24 hr average of 8.5 knots, and not using a spinnaker to do it. We sailed into Kaneohe Bay after 17 days at sea. We rented a berth at a condo marina and held it for 3 years, so we could sail seasonally in the islands while Mike worked half of each year in Alaska.

Family Sailing in Hawaii and Polynesia.

In late 1988, Debby, Carly, and newly arrived Cameron, (age 6 weeks) arrived in Hawaii with Mike to see how we might manage sailing inter-island. We knew it might not be possible to get far from Kaneohe Bay where the boat was moored. As it turned out we were able to sail to Molokai, Lanai, Maui, and the Big Island with our new baby. Little Cameron, it turned out, loved the motion of the boat under sail, and 5 year old Carly was already an accomplished sailor.

In February of 1989, Mike enlisted two friends, Keith Stump and Rick Hardcastle, to sail Deva from Hawaii to the Marquesas. It took 15 days in tradewinds, on the same tack all the way, to make landfall at Nuku Hiva.

A short chronology

1977 Purchased Deva's hull while she was still in the mold in Petaluma, CA
1978-79 Built her deck and deck house in Petaluma with help of friends
1980 Launched in Highlands, New Jersey after I took a job there.
1981 Sailed New Jersey to Florida with one used genoa sail
1982 Sailed Seattle to Ketchikan Alaska, with two used sails. Finally finished building.
In June I met my future wife Deborah, who quickly became a sailor.
1985-88 Raced Deva in PHRF handicap in Ketchikan and Washington
1988 Pacific crossing Whidbey island to Kaneohe Bay Oahu, Hawaii
1989 Hawaii to Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society Islands and return to Oahu
1992 Hawaii to Ketchikan Alaska
1992-2007 Alaska, WA, and British Columbia
2007-09 Overland to Florida, then sailed Bahamas, Antilles, to Trinidad
2009 Trinidad to Panama, Galapagos, and French Polynesia
2009-10 French Polynesia
2011 French Polynesia to Cooks Islands, Tonga and New Zealand
2011-12 New Zealand and Australia
2012-13 Australia, to Southeast Asia, shipped to Turkey
2013-2019 Mediterranean, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Italy, France, to Spain
2019-21 TransAtlantic, Spain to Canaries and Caribbean, St Lucia, Grenada
Comments
Deva's Photos - Main
Over two years passed as DEVA was confined to to sailing only short passages in the Caribbean.
81 Photos
Created 1 August 2022
a short history of our boat
13 Photos
Created 26 October 2021
Sailing from Europe to the Caribbean, across the Atlantic
68 Photos
Created 8 January 2020
95 Photos
Created 21 July 2019
98 Photos
Created 24 May 2019
122 Photos
Created 10 December 2018
we launched our bikes from the boat in Port Napoleon
40 Photos
Created 10 November 2018
106 Photos
Created 31 July 2018
On our way back to the USA from Europe, we sailed on the beautiful 4 masted bark Sea Cloud
35 Photos
Created 7 March 2018
65 Photos
Created 30 January 2018
95 Photos
Created 20 November 2017
65 Photos
Created 28 October 2017
51 Photos
Created 11 July 2017
170 Photos
Created 14 May 2017
76 Photos
Created 22 April 2017
73 Photos
Created 2 December 2016
19 Photos
Created 8 November 2016
287 Photos
Created 3 March 2016
115 Photos
Created 17 January 2016
90 Photos
Created 11 December 2015
127 Photos
Created 19 November 2015
60 Photos
Created 17 November 2015
36 Photos
Created 26 October 2015
41 Photos
Created 5 May 2015
30 Photos
Created 19 April 2015
28 Photos
Created 19 April 2015
40 Photos
Created 8 March 2015
21 Photos
Created 15 November 2014
16 Photos
Created 15 November 2014
117 Photos
Created 26 April 2014
119 Photos
Created 12 April 2014
68 Photos
Created 11 April 2014
68 Photos
Created 7 March 2014
28 Photos
Created 7 March 2014
38 Photos
Created 8 February 2014
17 Photos
Created 6 February 2014
42 Photos
Created 16 January 2014
22 Photos
Created 15 January 2014
25 Photos
Created 31 December 2013
3 Photos
Created 22 December 2013
43 Photos
Created 13 December 2013
55 Photos
Created 3 December 2013
27 Photos
Created 13 November 2013
Sailing up inside the Great Barrier Reef
19 Photos
Created 23 October 2013
69 Photos
Created 7 April 2013
16 Photos
Created 16 March 2013
27 Photos
Created 2 March 2013
24 Photos
Created 14 February 2013
49 Photos
Created 13 February 2013
9 Photos
Created 25 January 2013
74 Photos
Created 23 January 2013
5 Photos
Created 23 January 2013
41 Photos
Created 23 January 2013
we just returned from 6 months in the USA
2 Photos
Created 6 November 2012
some images form our first days in australia
10 Photos
Created 24 May 2012
32 Photos
Created 1 May 2012
January and February 2012 in New Zealand
23 Photos
Created 5 February 2012
more new zealand
14 Photos
Created 7 January 2012
we couldn't fit all the pics into one album!
20 Photos
Created 30 November 2011
2009-11
122 Photos
Created 27 October 2011
Dec 2010 to present
123 Photos
Created 24 October 2011
about Deva
9 Photos
Created 17 October 2009
Our voyage from the Panama canal to the Marquesas, Tuamotus, and Society Islands
64 Photos
Created 4 October 2009

About & Links

Photo Albums
01 August 2022
81 Photos
26 October 2021
13 Photos