Aye, aye, Captain

COEUR d’ALENE — There are life lessons to be learned in being a boat captain.

Just ask David Kilmer.

One piece of advice he consistently gives his crews is this: “Don’t bring too much.”

His life advice is the same: “Don’t pack too much.”

“We tend to overpack,” he said. “We think we’re going to somehow make life better by putting everything in that bag. Well, everything doesn’t fit. And the simpler, the better. Almost always, the simpler the better.

That applies, pretty much, to everything.

“Have less stuff. Have less chores in the day,” Kilmer said. “Take more time to look around you and appreciate the ride.”

The Coeur d’Alene man, sitting in his 27-foot tugboat, “Tuggy,” moored at the Boardwalk Marina, is doing just that.

It’s his floating office in the summer. It’s where he loves to be, working or playing.

“I’ve found that the water is where I need to be,” he said.

Which explains his quest to become a captain and his recently published book, “A Peril To Myself and Others: My Quest To Become a Captain.”

It is filled with stories of Kilmer’s adventures on the water.

He recounts tails of turbulence, of death, of friendship and of addiction (to sailing). He writes of astonishing beauty, tragedy and frightening adventures.

Some are incredible, and yes, all are true. Because they are what happens when you live life.

“This new book is going to come to delve wholeheartedly into almost like an owner's manual for life based on how you run your boat is also a good way to run your life,” he said.

And life, as Kilmer says on a sunny morning, is good.

He is pleased by early reaction to his book and how readers are connecting to his stories.

“I think what people have told me universally, that they appreciate just being immersed in that world. The feeling of just like being right there,” he said. “Having your hands on the boat, not knowing what to do. Being in a situation, just trying to put readers right there where they can experience that firsthand.”

Kilmer is well connected in Coeur d’Alene and North Idaho. He’s the editor of CdA Magazine. He’s a swimmer and dedicated to fitness. His skipper skills standout.

He’s going on 15 years as captain of Sizzler, the internationally known yacht owned by the late Duane Hagadone often seen gliding around Lake Coeur d'Alene.

He and his wife Rebecca have sailed their 36-foot boat from Bellingham to the Bahamas by way of the Panama Canal, and each winter head out on a new sailing adventure.

With blue eyes, blond hair, an easy smile and engaging personality, it’s easy to listen to David Kilmer. He listens back. He’s one of those people you want for a friend. It’s what helped him find what he was looking for in this life.

His quest to become a captain began when he was a boy and his father built a small, wooden boat. They floated it in the bathtub and called it Skipper.

“I still have that boat," Kilmer said. "And I think that set the hook."

In 1993, he would leave his job as a reporter at the Priest River Times and join a buddy on a sailing trip from Mexico to Hawaii. They spent 21 days covering 2,300 miles on the open ocean. Just two young guys. No life raft. No GPS. No rescue beacon.

They found Hawaii using a sexton.

“After that, I just pursued sailing as much as possible,” he said. “I would race on Lake Coeur d’Alene. There was a great racing scene at that point. And I remember I would squint across the lake on these evening races, and I would pretend that there was no hills and that there was only horizon and that I was going back to sea. And I began to dream about that. So even though I was working here in Coeur d’Alene, I began to have actual dreams at night of sailing in a blue ocean, and I just had to answer those dreams and that's how we went off in the Caribbean.”

Because to be a boat captain, everybody told him he must go to one place: the Caribbean islands.

So he went.

He bought a one-way plane ticket out of Idaho and packed a small bag.

He flew away to a new life.

“And with really no idea if I even truly had a job. So it was one of those leaps of faith that sometimes life rewards you for," he said.

It did.

“Being a captain in the Caribbean somehow crystalized a lot of things for me,” he said. “It made me understand my role in the world, some of my purpose in the world and how to go about being a human in the world.”

He is, today, a captain, licensed to guide a 100-ton vessel.

And he loves it. He loves the combination of being outside and working hand-in-hand with Mother Nature.

“She is always in charge if you work outdoors on the water, and there’s a sense of humility in that,” he said.

He loves the interaction with wild creatures and came to cherish his interaction with his fellow human beings on the water.

"That’s really at the heart of the book and what became my favorite part of being a sailboat captain," Kilmer said.

It’s not all a pleasure cruise. As Kilmer said, “When you work on boats, sooner or later, you're gonna get dinged in some way.”

“When you're on a boat, especially out in big wind, big seas, there's always something that can get you,” he said.

What he found somewhere along his captain journey was that the thing most likely to get him, to cause him trouble, was not the wind or waves, but himself.

“You can fear storms, pirates, sharks. But the closest calls I came were always something that I did. That wasn't quite right. And it ended up almost costing me either a finger or a limb,” he said. “Or in one case, I was almost crushed between a boat and the dock. But it's because I didn't do what I should have done in that situation. I am grateful for my reflexes at the end of the day, that allowed me to escape trouble, because that would have been a very serious, life-altering accident. And that's where I got the title of my book, "A peril to myself and others." And I was that peril to myself and others as a captain, and there's always the potential to be that out on the water. And that's where that sense of humility and respect comes in.”

A Peril To Myself and Others: My Quest to Become a Captain is available at the Well-Read Moose at Riverstone Village, through the Hagadone Marine Group and Amazon.

Kilmer’s hope is his readers “get a vicarious sense of adventure and a taste of what it's like to be in the Caribbean islands."

And he adds this:

“I hope they get a sense of how wonderful life truly is, and what a privilege it is to be alive.”