Eighteen Years Aboard the 85-ft Ketch ‘Nereus’
In Latitude 38’s April issue, we shared a story by Sausalito’s Margaret “Pinkie” Pomeroy about her teenage years cruising aboard her beloved 85-ft steel-hulled, ketch-rigged Nereus. Together with her parents and her two brothers, Pinkie spent six months aboard Nereus, covering 13,490 miles from San Francisco to Singapore, via the Pribilof Islands off the coast of Alaska. Recently Ashlyn Brown from Port Townsend, Washington, read Pinkie’s story and wrote to fill in Nereus’s story across the years since the ship’s last voyage with the Pomeroy family.
My heart skipped a beat when my husband opened his April Latitude 38 (#574; “Nereus’s World Cruise”), passed it to me, and asked, “Is that the same boat you were on?” Indeed, it was the very same boat I had called work and home as a single mom for 18 years. The Latitude article filled in a large chunk of the boat’s history that I had always wondered about. The bronze plaque on the wall between the galley and pilot house displayed the name Nereus and its build in Tacoma, Washington, in 1962, the Year of the Tiger according to Chinese horoscopes. For that reason, and for its deep, reliable purr, we named the (original) Caterpillar engine El Tigre.
I shall try to provide a timeline, picking up where your article left off, but spoiler alert: The ending is not a happy one. The boat was purchased by an American who renamed it Independence. That would have been in the late 1970s, and I have been able to confirm that they were cruising and chartering in the Mediterranean in the early 1980s. After that cruise, I believe it sat in shallow water behind the owner’s house in Key Biscayne, Florida, until we came along in early 1990.
We found it in sad condition: Abandoned fuel tanks meant rotten steel. A sudden downpour revealed massive leaks in the deck plating. The price suddenly dropped, and my boss at the time closed the deal. The next few months were a flurry of work to re-weld the master cabin floor plating and close leaks in the deck. We built small en-suite heads in each cabin to upgrade for possible charters, installed a new mast and roller furling and new mattresses, repaired the walk-in refrigerator, stocked the boat with long-term provisions, and set sail for the Caribbean. We kept the name in the spirit of all that it implied.
In the 18 years and 75,000 miles I was on board, a lot changed. Almost every year we were replacing hull plating or railings, much of the work done in Trinidad. At one point, my daughter (not the owner’s) participated in the total rebuild of the engine. The aft area of the boat was eventually enclosed as a king-size suite at the request and expense of a major client who was aboard at least twice a year for a while. The saloon was remodeled, and the canvas turtleback on the foredeck was rebuilt in steel, creating a really cute child’s cabin.
We made eight transatlantic crossings, three Mediterranean round trips to the owner’s home country of Slovenia, two trips to Brazil and voyages up and down the Caribbean. We did two years in the Central Pacific, plus charters back and forth through the Panama Canal and to the San Blas Islands.