Spike africa biography
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President of the Pacific Ocean SPIKE AFRICA Dated 1965, Sausalito, CA. Original gelatin-silver photograph from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society© |
During the 1960s, if a meek, polyester-clad lady tourist had ever ventured into the no-name bar, chances are she would have received a courtly greeting from Spike Africa. President of the Pacific Ocean. He would have drawn her into his circle of friends, artists, writers, boat workers, and other locals and entertained her so memorably that it would have been the high point of her vacation. Spike was like that––kind, gregarious, and very entertaining. The no name was his office and his theatre. The stories he told were drawn from his many lifetimes of personal experiences, stories that for all their seeming spontaneity were never yarns, they were as well-formed and told as those of the best short story writers. He had jokes and spiels, too, told with a versatile voice, sentences
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Schooner’s Trade Winds Becalmed : Spike Africa’s Skipper Is Hoping for Brisk Summer
NEWPORT BEACH — In 1986, with the death of her husband who built the 33-ton Spike Africa, Monika Sloan faced a hard choice.
“Do I keep the boat? Or do I sell Spike?”
It had taken Bob Sloan about six years to construct the 70-foot, two-masted schooner in the couple’s back yard in Costa Mesa. Regarded as one of Newport’s best sailors, Sloan died of leukemia at age 50 after a career of charter boating.
“After his death, I decided to give myself two years to see how I would do in this business,” Monika Sloan said. “I was determined to give it a shot.”
Although Sloan, now 38, is a former model and a nurse, she has earned her sea legs, having sailed since age 12.
For starters, Sloan got her skipper’s license. She turned to what marketing skills she had to get clients for the boat, which has a crew of three. Now, eight years later, with another summer coming on, success is slowly arriving.
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Spike Africa: a Product of Poetic Inspiration
The Skipper Says: The schooner rig, with its gaffs and beauty, has been raised above American decks for two hundred years.-- Neale Haley, from “The Schooner Era.”
It seems a poet generally fryst vatten unrecognized in his hometown. The late Bob Sloan of Newport Beach was a poet, and except for those who are deeply into sailing, the rest of the city’s populace were unaware of Sloan’s beautiful poetry, which he had written with wood, iron, bronze and canvas.
Sloan, who fought a valiant battle with leukemia and died last March at age 50, wrought his sista and greatest poem, tagg Africa, in his own inland shipyard in revben Mesa. tagg Africa fryst vatten a 61-foot, two-masted schooner, built as a cargo-carrying vessel, but because she was built by the eyes, hands and heart of a poet, she is sheer poetry herself.
Many have seen her, but know not of her author. tagg Africa, named after the legendary Pacific Coast sailor Sloan met in Tahiti, has been seen