Head Of Sails

Come aboard with the man behind the motion of the world’s largest fully rigged tall ship.

- Fran Golden

WHEN THE 42 SAILS BEGIN TO UNFURL on Star Clippers’ 439-foot, five-masted tall ship Royal Clipper, the largest such ship in the world, it’s a jaw-dropping moment for guests. Some 54,000 feet of cloth catches wind as the marching tones of the song “Conquest of Paradise” play from loud speakers, punctuating the drama.

For Oscar Guevara, 39, it’s a hectic time as he and the ship’s other two riggers pull lines, check routing motors, tie knots, and keep their eyes to the sheets, their senses piqued to the power of the breeze. They are in man the-battle-stations mode as they do their job of maintaining the sails.

A SAILOR’S LIFE

The life of a seaman in fiction may reflect rowdy times and tall tales, world exploration with a dose of pirate speak, and a penchant for tattoos. That’s not the life that Guevara leads.

“People say, ‘Oh, you sail around the world and I hear that all the seamen have a girlfriend in every port,’” he laughs heartily. “I say, ‘Oh yeah, I wish to be like that, but we are always working.”

Guevara spends 10 months at sea and then returns to his home in San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, close to the Atlantic Coast, where for three or four months he’s a leisurely family man. When he’s home, his wife and kids (a teenager and a toddler) are his main focus.

“Sometimes I have to explain to friends and relatives that when I am home I don’t want to talk about the ship,” he admits. “I want to know everything about home. It’s like with our kids, I leave my daughter one year and she is suddenly 13 and a teenager. I want them to know how much I miss them.”