For Don Moseley, the spectacular Southern California islands and coastline are his playground, and he extends a red carpet of hospitality for those who want to join in the fun – from whale-watching and water sports to sailing trips or dining on deck.
The swells came with regularity and high enough to point the bow skyward. “Whoa, it is a little heavy out here,” Capt. Don Moseley ’61 said, concurring with a friend back on the dock who had cut short a fishing charter. Moseley had steered the Dulcinea out of her snug dock for a short cruise outside Newport Harbor, rounding a bell buoy draped in sunning sea lions before heading back to her slip.
As owner of Shellback Yacht Cruises, which he began six years ago, Moseley sets sail regularly from Balboa Peninsula, whether taking charters out for a few hours to celebrate a special occasion or for an extended 10-day sailing vacation. He captains a 48-foot, slooprigged sailing yacht and is a 15-year veteran of Greek, Turkish, South Pacific and Californian waters, including Santa Catalina, the Channel Islands, San Diego and Ensenada, Mexico. Three years ago, his three daughters, Jessica, Selene and Michele, crewed for him in the Newport/Ensenada Race, the largest international
yacht race in the world and one he makes every year. Licensed by the U.S. Coast Guard for 100-ton vessels, Moseley also makes deliveries along the West Coast and Mexico
as a certified delivery captain and marine surveyor.
It’s all a long way from New Mexico, mining and lobbying. But Moseley is at ease with the distance. His career spanned a company’s evolution from Utah Construction and Mining Co. to Utah International to General Electric and finally to
the Australian-owned Broken Hill Proprietary, or BHP, from which he retired in 1998. But in 1995, Moseley sailed from Tahiti to Honolulu in 19 days, and it changed his life.
It took a while, however, before Tahiti was possible. He left Lamar with a mechanical engineering degree and, after saying no to graduate school, soon had a job with Magcobar’s mining division. He worked there eight years and moved 12 times. Then, he was offered a position with Utah Construction and Mining Co., beginning an unanticipated 28-year association as a superintendent and engineer. “I was just blessed that things went the right way because it wasn’t because I made them happen,” he said. “All I know is I worked hard and always tried to have the company’s best interests at heart.” He remembers the words of his Dad, a Mobil Oil Refinery union leader, “If
management treats the workers right, there’s no reason to have unions. The way to get along with management, or anybody, is always give them more than they expect.”
His sister and brother-in-law, Anita and Eric Heitzman of Lumberton, are also Lamar graduates. “He has always been my idol,” she said. “He’s just a very caring, special person. He was 14 when I was born, but he took me to things at Lamar, took me duck hunting. He always had time for me.”
Moseley moved into community relations with BHP. He was living in Farmington and ran for the school board. When the company moved their lobbyist from Santa Fe to Washington D.C., Moseley was tapped in 1979 to learn the ropes. “And that’s a whole different world – politics compared to building plants,” he said.
He lobbied for them for the next 25 years and enjoyed it. “I got to where I knew all the legislators and their staff and knew what their constituency was – what was important to them” – from blue collar citizens and Santa Fe environmentalists to farmers, ranchers and the oil, gas and power interests of Farmington.
“I would visit every new legislator in the state in their hometown before the legislative session started in January, so when they walked into the Capitol, they knew me,” Moseley recalls. “Early on, someone took me under their wing and said, ‘The most
important thing you’ve got is your credibility. Don’t ever lie to a legislator or give them information that is not correct even if you have good intentions, even if you think you know the answer.” He retired in 1998, but continued lobbying for BHP for three more years.
He hasn’t given everything up to live aboard permanently, however. He spends some time in New Mexico, Washington state and Washington D.C., consulting for a company exploring wave technology for energy production. But sailing takes more and more of his time.
His interest in boats was sparked in Greece in 1966 as he watched the yachts anchor off Plati Gialos beach on Mykonos Island where he and his family would spend Sundays sunning, snorkeling and having dinner at the taverna. Magcobar sent him to Greece to manage mining and shipping operations and, a few years later, to
Nigeria for a temporary assignment. He learned Greek and a lot of patience. “You learn a lot about getting things done in different ways instead of the accepted standard way, and learning to speak Greek taught me there are different ways to express yourself other than the ordinary English way,” he said.
He finally bought a sailboat in 1976, kept it on Navajo Lake, outside Farmington, and taught himself to sail. He also taught his three daughters. The eldest, Jessica, learned to love it and later urged her Dad to return with her for a Sunsail cruise in Greece. “You go out in a flotilla of four to six boats with a lead boat, and they take you around different islands,” he said. “We sailed around the western part of the Ionian Sea down below Corfu, Lefkas and Ithaka.”
The next year, the two chartered a boat to tour southern Turkey. “God, that was a great trip – to see those ruins . . . Turkish baths in mud holes that had radioactive mud that’s supposed to be good for you . . . drinking apple tea and bargaining for kilim,” he recalls.
In 1995, they signed up to crew a Tahiti-to-Honolulu voyage – 19 days, 2,000 miles, and the chance to participate in the 500-year-old ritual crossing of the equator to pay respect to Neptune, Roman god of the sea – an event that transforms pollywogs into shellbacks.
“That’s when I really got hooked because there’s nothing like being out there on the ocean – nothing but sky and water for days and days, on watch two or three hours and off watch four or five hours.”
The schedule for the Turkey trip was quite different – up at 10 in the morning to sail until about 2 p.m. to make the next village, sleeping until about 8 at night before going out to party until 4 or 5 the next morning. “We just had a ball, and I would do the Greek table dances that I had learned on Mykonos before,” he said. In contrast, they left Tahiti in a storm, and Moseley was seasick for four days.
“I lost 13 pounds on that trip. You have some time out there because what else do you have to do but think about things? You can’t go jogging or work on the house or run some errand. Your free time is much more available to you when you’ve got a well-organized and structured crew. When you have off time, you’re either sleepin’ or thinkin’. Everything began clarifying about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I came back and decided what I wanted to do was sail.”
He’s been busy this spring with charters, sailing lessons, power boat deliveries to and from San Diego for the Newport Boat Show and a new offering, dinner-at-anchor. He also tells the tales of the history of Newport Harbor, its homes and famous residents, to the 300 passengers of the harbor cruise and dinner cruise boats.
He saw too many people retire at 65 and die at 66. “I said to myself, ‘if I can do this and can afford to do it, I’m going to do it,” he said. He loves the life and the sea, and, today, he teaches others how to enjoy its pleasures and challenges.
