Wind Is Back In Couple’S Sails Cda Pair Plan Round-The-World Trip One Year After Boat Sinks

Retiree Harvey Olson reached for Dan Elkins’ hand and shook it with vigor.

“You son of a gun, you’re actually going to do it!” Olson said, speaking for a slew of people who showed up Sunday to bid Dan and Sandy Elkins “bon voyage.”

The Coeur d’Alene couple leave on Friday for a round-the-world sailing adventure. They sold their house to buy a world-class boat, then kept their dream afloat even after the boat sank in Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“It’s amazing,” said Olson, who knows the Elkinses from church. “Can you imagine the courage that takes? Who has never thought they’d like to do that?”

Dan, 52, is a sawmill worker; Sandy, 49, a school bus driver. They’re quitting their jobs to pursue their dream.

Many area residents became aware of the Elkinses’ plan when their 42-foot Swedish yacht, the Arahina, sank while moored at Arrow Point in January 1998. A through-hull fitting had mistakenly been left open, and the pumps that would have saved the day were put out of commission by a marina power outage.

The couple was living on the boat at the time. Their personal possessions, charts and expensive electronics were ruined, along with the engine.

When Dan told his friends at Idaho Forest Industries what had happened, “we thought he was kidding,” recalled co-worker Clark Huffman. “Then we saw the tears in his eyes.”

Thanks to insurance money, lots of elbow grease and the help of people like Huffman, the trip was only delayed.

On Sunday, everyone had a story about how, after years of more traditional North Idaho pursuits like hunting and snowmobiling - Dan Elkins was smitten with sailing. Sandy caught the bug, too. They went every other weekend to Puget Sound to learn from friends such as Bill Brown of Anacortes.

Brown insisted that he didn’t see the allure of the ‘round-the-world trip. “I sail a lot, and I don’t have a clue why they’re doing this.”

The Elkinses were sold on the idea after making one trip to Fiji with an expert sailor.

Last August, in the company of four friends, they sailed Arahina from Anacortes to San Francisco. Despite some equipment failures - “the autopilot never did work,” said Sandy - the shake-down cruise was a success.

They beamed as they talked about emerging from cold and fog into sunlight just as they sailed under the Golden Gate bridge. They spoke of being followed by dolphins, “just like the Pied Piper.”

The couple will spend two more weeks in San Francisco - making repairs, taking inventory, figuring out an onboard e-mail connection. They plan to send messages to family and to the community, via The Spokesman-Review’s travel page.

“We’ve been seven years trying to put this thing together. We did it the hard way, like everything else,” Dan Elkins told the partiers. “We want to share it with you.”

Brown and Sid Goodwin of Coeur d’Alene will sail with the couple to San Diego. From there, with Goodwin still aboard, they’ll make the planned 25-day trip across the Pacific to French Polynesia.

The tentative two-year itinerary lists Tahiti, Bali, Suez, Gibraltar, Grenada, Acapulco and many points in between.

There was a fair amount of black humor at Sunday’s party. One guest joked that Arahina means “Sunk Once Already.” It actually means “Guidance from Above” in the Maori language.

The oldest of the Elkinses’ three daughters, Angie Lynn, was determined to be cheerful about the fact that her folks are leaving on a potentially dangerous trip.

“You know, you can worry about your mother and father anywhere,” she said. “At least they’ll be out there doing what they want to do.”