Dave Baxter
Our life of 50 years was ALL Pure Stoke
By Janice (Favorite Wife)
My Hubby was exuberant with Stoke. Our adventures through life were filled with exploring, navigation, learning and sharing experiences with family and friends. From the waters of Santa Cruz Island to Fiji, Caribbean, British Columbia to Alaska. We shared Dave's love of the ocean with many of you. Our life was full but not yet complete. Our first adventure we took off on when I was just 21 years old. Dave met a guy with a Cal 39 sailboat who needed crew to sail him around the world. Dave asked him if he could bring his surfboard and his girlfriend he would go. So we packed it up and I brought my sewing machine and off we began sailing to Mexico. The boat had no electronics for navigation, Dave and our other crew person had only their sextants. We spent 4 months gunkholing every bay and village down Mexico. Crazy seas once 20 feet on our stern where we were actually surfing this 40 foot boat. I was on watch and I just couldn’t even hold onto the tiller any longer because the weather helm was so hard. I got Dave to come up and relieve me when the next wave literally tubed the cockpit. The trip broke up when we were deep down in Mexico where the owner of the boat actually got off his own boat and Dave, I and Charlie delivered the boat back to Newport Beach. When we were parallel with San Diego we were still 600 miles off shore to catch the trade winds. Why would we EVER turn on the engine? So with only the stars, huge math equations and dots entered daily on the map, we were amazed 31 days later to see the back side of Catalina Island right where Dave thought it was going to be! I followed him all around the world after this. Dave's passion for the ocean was his Pure Stoke. We shared this passion with our children, families, grandchildren and many of you.