Eight Bells For Bob Unanski

There are people who come into your life in the most unexpected way, Bob and Barb Unanski got together with us for Thanksgiving 1998. I don't know where anyone else was but my wife and I and our two dogs were sailing Baja California that November and Bob and Barb were nearby on a Taswell 43 called Freya. We ended up sailing all the way to the Panama Canal on and off with them. It was buddy boating of the best sort, hopscotching each other,meeting, parting and sharing card games and meals along thousands of miles. It was an enormous addition to our sailing life through Central America. Bob and Barb squeezed into a rental car with us for a five-hour drive to San Jose the capital of Costa Rica when one of our dogs needed to see a vet. We all slept in one room in the Best Western, Bob and I out snoring each other, they said. Barb and my wife that is. We helped each other through the Panama Canal and shared another amazing Thanksgiving in 1999 in the San Blas islands of Panama, under the coconut palms of a deserted island. Traveling alongside Bob and Barb was magical.

Bob, a man not given to being around dogs, seen here helping Debs, our husky mix , hunt for monos, monkeys in northern Costa Rica. The monkeys took great delight in tormenting Debs from the high branches of the trees hurling chattered insults at his fenzied ineffectual pawing.Bob was an electronics engineer tremendously proud of his employee number 22 with Tandem Corporation, a pioneer of the Silicon Valley revolution in California's Santa Clara Valley. He wa salso a keen Ham radio operator W4RFU, and spent hours at his desk onboard Freya with his electronics. I was fond of noting that cruising brought us together and made us firm friends despite our different social, political and career backgrounds. He was like a father for me when we were out sailing. In 2004, cruising the Bahamas he helped rebuild our water maker on our cabin table, his patience and perseverance a shining example to an impatient young wretch like me. Bob seen here in another picture from his website showing him with his wife Barb in the back alongside her sister Anita, celebrating his 70th birthday. He died in Arkansas February 27th 2008. He was 71 years old.

After they sold Freya they moved to Arkansas to be near family and I wished they could have come to the Keys to enjoy the cruising life ashore that we enjoy so much. Its hard to imagine he's dead, but he died quickly in an aerobics class of all things, here one minute and gone the next. It's all our fates, and we should all be so lucky to live as well and generously as he did.

Sailors used to mark time by ringing bells and when they changed watch they rang eight bells and it was also customary when they died to ring eight bells, and Bob was a sailor through and through, and I shall miss him every time I think of all our miles together. Go in peace good friend, and fair winds.