Doug Elliott: 'Home is the sailor...'

October 12, 10:53 PMDenver Everyday People ExaminerDon Morreale

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Doug Eliot

The last time I saw Doug Elliott, he and his wife Diane were living aboard Salacia, a thirty-eight foot sloop they’d bought in Houston and sailed to Key West for a re-fit.  The date was September 11, 2001 and we sat together in the cabin, watching the Twin Towers topple over and over again on CNN.

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Elliott was in town last month on the homeward leg of a 5000 mile motorcycle odyssey through the Mid-west.  The cycle adventure is emblematic.  The man’s been on the move  for the past ten years.

Salacia Under Sail

In the 90s, he and Diane were living in Albuquerque where he was running a local employment agency that he was able, over the course of three scant years, to grow it into a major head-hunting concern with a national focus. But it wasn’t long before he began to have misgivings about the ethical conduct of the corporations he was dealing with. 

‘These were Fortune 500 companies,’ he says, ‘and nobody in any of them was focused on long-term growth.  Only short-term gain for themselves.  Most of them couldn’t spell morals if you gave them six letters.’

Elliott faced a dilemma.  ‘The cash flow was great,' he says. 'But I felt myself disintegrating.  I was neglecting my spiritual center and it was clear that I needed a change.’ 

At this point, he did what any self-respecting entrepreneur would do under the circumstances.  He talked to his wife.

Salacia interior view

‘I told her I’d been thinking of taking early retirement, buying a boat and going to sea.  Bear in mind that if she agreed to it, she would be giving up a promising career as a psychologist with the New Mexico Department of Corrections.  But all she said was, Hey, I'm in!  She’s one plucky lady.’

They bought Salacia, leased the house, got rid of the cars, turned the business over to a manager to run until they could find a buyer for it, and sailed off into the sunset where they lived happily ever after.  Uh...well, not exactly.

‘We had this romantic notion of cruising,’ Elliott admits. 'Pristine beaches, palm trees, Margaritas on the poop deck.  The reality was more like the toilet breaks down and you have to deal with the stinky consequences...like, right now!  Bow to stern, keel to mast, everything required attention, all the time.  And it wasn't like there was just one thing to deal with.  Usually there were five.’

Despite the hardships, the Elliotts enjoyed their time at sea.  They sailed the West Indies and spent four adventuresome years in Venezuela, perfecting their Spanish and making friends with the natives. Then something happened to cement their decision to sell the boat and return to life ashore.

In October of last year some friends were sailing near Isla Borracha off the Venezuelan coast when some locals approached in a fishing boat asking for water and cigarettes.  Without provocation one of them pulled a gun and shot the boat’s owner through the heart twice.  The story spread quickly through the boating community.

‘After ten years,’ Eliot says, ‘we'd been  thinking of getting out anyway.  But his was a pretty clear indication that Venezuela was no longer safe.’

Was it worth it, the hardship and danger?

‘Yeah.  Definitely.  Before I went to sea I was kind of abstract and intellectual.  But I came to distrust secondary thinking and to rely on that first flash of intuition.  A lot of gringos were raided in Venezuela.  But in all our time out there we were never once attacked by pirates.  If the place had a bad feel, we’d leave.  We learned to trust each other’s intuition and we came through it OK.’