Farewell Klaus

My friend Klaus Krist died in Honolulu on August 19 from complications arising from congestive heart failure. . His good friend Elfriede notified me by email.


Arnold and I met Klaus in early March when we visited the condo on the beach at Punaluu in which he had lived in the 1970's. In the corner apartment on the ground floor, just meters from the beach was a man doing some house painting and we struck up a conversation. Like Arnold, he had lived there many years before and had recently returned. That was Klaus. Although he was busy preparing for company he expressed great interest in our sailing adventure and asked for my telephone number. Klaus had had a boat built in California in the 70's or 80's and had sailed it to Hawaii.

He telephone me a few days later and soon he boarded the bus to Honolulu and visited me on Pachuca where I gave him a tour of the boat and showed him photos of our cruising adventures. By then Arnold had returned to Seattle.

Klaus and I became good friends. We "clicked", as they say. We both enjoyed a good beer and seemed to continually laugh about all sorts of things. We met several times in Honolulu and once I visited him for lunch in his veranda over beer with the sounds, sights, and smells of the beach which was only meters away.

Klause was not in the best of health. He had had a heart operation several years earlier and was short of breath. Several times he wondered why he had these health problems when he was only a few years older than me and here I was sailing around the world. I told him that I could not explain it. But even then he was a tall, well-built man and still good looking enough to remind all of what a handsome man he would have been in his prime. I also remember him telling me several times "I wish that we should have met 20 years ago." and also "Live life while you can."

Klaus expressed an interest in going for a sail and it so happened that Jeff Compton and I wanted to take Pachuca out for a trial of the new Monitor wind steering that he had helped me to install. So One ofternoon it was Klaus, Jeff, and myself sailing off Waikiki Beach in a 15 kt wind.

I knew Klaus for only a few months but I feel fortunate for that. There is something about friendship that resonates in the human psyche and that transcends time or space. It's like we always knew each other.

But life must go on. I like to think that Klaus went out peacefully with a smile on his face. The accompanying photo, happy at the helm of Pachuca, is how I like to remember him.