Good Wood for Sailors and Police

It looks as though Latitude’s great friend Jack van Ommen of the Gig Harbor, Washington-based Naja 30 Fleetwood will not make it “around the world in 80 years” as he had hoped. For in order to do that, he’d have to make it from the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal to an imaginary line between Trinidad and Cuba in about 10 days. Given how tough it is to sail upwind east from Panama during February — it’s blowing 22-27 knots in much of the area today — it wouldn’t be easy.

But with van Ommen having already cruised to nearly 60 countries on a 30-ft boat on a modest Social Security budget, who cares if he is a week or two late finishing his goal?

Having once thrived — and then floundered — in the timber business, van Ommen knows all about trees. While passing through Lake Gatun in the Canal, he spotted a familiar Guayacan tree.

“They bloom in January/February,” says van Ommen, “and produce the lignum vitae that has a natural lubricant. My grandfather, like a lot of other sailors, used it for the sheaves in wooden rigging blocks. And when I worked for a hardwood importer in California, we sold it to White Brothers in San Francisco, and they used it to make billy clubs for the San Francisco Police Department."