About Captain Bob

Bob was raised in Summit, New Jersey. His school years were a disaster and walked away from the formal education system at the age of 16. His super achievement skills were achieved through self-education techniques, skills he continues to use today. He says, "The ability to educate myself made it possible to break through society imposed barriers and be the person I dreamed of being."

At 17, he worked on an automotive assembly line in Michigan, at 18 he worked for the FE gold mining company in Fairbanks, Alaska. In 1954, at the age of 19, he joined the Marine Corps in Kodiak, Alaska. Six months later, in Japan, his machinist career started when he was put in charge of the machine shop. (Details in article "How to Make Dreams Come True".)  In 1963, Bob started his employment as machinist with the Panama Canal Company, Panama. In 1968, the company sent him to hard-hat diving school, after which, he performed underwater maintenance on the gates and valves at the Locks Division. In 1970, he worked as machinist for the Navy Undersea Research and Development Division in Kaneohe, Hawaii, helping them develop their mammal warfare program. In 1973, Bob went back to the Panama Canal Company and became preventive maintenance supervisor. He retired in 1988 as supervisor of the computer department. In Guam, in 1990, he received his Coast Guard Captain's licensed for tall ships and became dive boat captain. His current project is promoting motivation techniques for at-risk youth in the maritime world.  He is now living in Goose Creek, South Carolina, USA.

Some Background

As a teenager, Bob dreamed of jungle and sea adventures. During his early years he believed dreams were just that, dreams, they really don’t come true. At the age of 27, he found the courage to take action to make those dreams come true. At that time, he moved from Oklahoma City to Hawaii where he met active adventures, people doing the things he dreamed of. This is when his life as an adventure came true.

• 1962 Bob help crew a 36’ sailboat from Hawaii to Los Angeles, a 30-day voyage. One of the crewmembers was 20-year-old Joyce from British Colombia, Canada who was finishing a two-year trip hitch-hiking around the world. During the voyage, she fascinated the crew with her travel experiences. The association and experiences on this voyage changed Bob’s life forever, giving him courage, motivation and a driving determination to be an achiever.

• 1962 Bob hitchhiked through Central America with the goal of traveling down the Amazon River. By the time he reached Panama, he was out of money.

• The Panama Canal was hiring and Bob signed on as a machinist. There he found coworkers who hired on for the same reason; they were traveling through Panama when they ran out of money. The highly motivated attitude of coworkers impressed him. He met a machinist who was a freelance writer for Yachting Magazine. A security guard loaned Bob a book he had written and published about the Panama Canal Zone. At the nearby Yacht Club, a number of yachts were under construction by company employees. In this can-do environment, The Panama Canal became home base for Bob’s adventures, on and off the job.

• Panama had an environment where Bob could develop ideas into workable projects. He set a goal of rediscovering how the Polynesian people traveled between Hawaii and New Zealand 2,000 years ago. Their boats were dugout canoes and they had no charts or navigation interments. The art of these high seas adventures was lost long before Europeans came to the Pacific. Bob’s next goal was to rediscover this lost art.

• 1963 Bob traveled down the Amazon River by riverboat and raft. During this voyage, Bob took notes and made drawing of construction methods with supplies found in the jungle. With the ability to think and work like people without modern tools, Bob could advance to his next adventure.

• 1964 Bob had the Choco Indians build two forty-foot dugout canoes. He shipped them to Tahiti where he built a replica of a Polynesian double hull voyaging vessel named Liki Tiki. The goal was to sail it from Tahiti to Hawaii. Three days at sea, Bob discovered the two heavy hulls worked against each other and would soon breakup.

• 1970 Bob sail a 36-foot single hull dugout with double outriggers from Panama to Hawaii named Liki Tiki Too. The 5,000 mile voyage took 68 days. Dugouts with outriggers can cross any ocean.

• Bob discovered the Polynesian method of navigation. He calls it comfort zone navigation. He says intuitive senses leads man to any goal he establishes, whether it be in business or sailing a dugout canoe to a distance island. He refers to Captain William Bligh after the mutiny on the Bounty 200 years ago. Captain Bligh and eighteen of his loyal crewmembers were set adrift in a lifeboat. Without navigation tools, they sailed the open boat 3,600 miles through uncharted waters to the Dutch colony, Timor, near Java. This outstanding achievement is only possible with comfort zone navigation. Intuitive forces help the crew make the right decisions. Polynesians used the same navigation method.

• 1975 Bob was the first drive a motorcycle through 200 miles of jungle between Panama and Columbia.

• 1976 Bob was navigator on the Panama Canal’s tall ship Chief Aptakisic. He helped take 14 teenagers to New York’s bicentennial celebration up the Hudson River. In Panama waters, Bob was Captain.

• Bob had designed and self-built a 50-foot ketch named Hunky-Dory. With his wife Joan, they sailed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for five years.

• Digging for gold in the jungles of Panama was one of Bob's many projects.

Photos of Capt. Bob's adventures

Story behind the websites