The Engineer - Wayne Roper is in charge of the care and feeding of the Sailing Yacht Sancerre, our 46' Jeanneau and our Catalina 36 Wiley.

 Wayne says that his 36 year mechanical career is as twisted as his sense of humor.

"Starting back in the Jurassic period," he says, I started "helping my dad repair outboard motors, along with my own bicycles and neighbors lawn mowers, minibikes and motorcycles."

Wayne's boating career started even earlier: "My family has owned boats as far back as I can remember. I first started going on my Dad's fishing trips when I was three or four years old.  We would make the channel crossing every Saturday that weather permitted in a 14-foot power boat. These pilgrimages to the promised fishing land continued in the fourteen footer until one Saturday that I didn't go. On that day my Dad set out from Santa Barbara harbor with a friend from work at the usual 0430. By noon the fishing was suspended due to the weather making an abrupt change from calm and warm to cold and extremely windy. Fifteen to twenty foot swells suddenly appeared dashing any hopes of getting home. They ended up beaching the boat at Frenchy's Cove and spending the night as the guest of Raymond "Frenchy" Ledreau himself. (That's Frenchy and a guy named Webster to the right.) The evening was passed by sipping brandy accompanied by the admonishment from Frenchy regarding the size of boat that was selected for the island crossing by my father. Due to the experience and words of wisdom from Frenchy the fourteen footer was sold and replaced by a more suitable craft. We continued the weekly trips together until my fathers death in 1962.  

"I eventually learned to sail at age thirteen. Always preferring wind to power, I have continued to sail in lakes and in the Santa Barbara Channel for the past forty odd years in various size boats usually too small for the task, but always exciting. I have found sailing to be one of the few things offering the ability to totally relax, recharge and put life in perspective."

These days, Wayne keeps Sancerre and Wiley's engines humming, the plumbing flushing, the electronics ... well, you get the idea. He brings vast experience to this job having worked for Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu, Hyster, Clark, Dresser, JCB, Kubota and New Holland. He reports that he's "repaired things as small as a lawn mower to something large enough to push your office building into the street and load it into a dump truck.

"I spent the majority of my years in the field, which meant that you put all your tools on a very well-equipped $80-$100,000 service truck complete with welder, air compressor, and an 8000 pound capacity crane, and repair equipment wherever it was working. And I might add in whatever kind of weather it was working in. More than once I found myself repairing something in the snow. In my career, I have been able to repair engines from .049 cubic inch displacement through 16 cylinder 4000 horsepower prime movers, burning gas, diesel, Nitro methane, liquified petroleum gas, liquified natural gas and hydrogen as fuels. I have performed these repairs from the Mojave Desert to Santa Rosa Island and from South-Central Los Angeles to Slick Six at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc.

"One of the principal requirements of being a field mechanic is the ability to do the impossible with nothing.

"I have repaired equipment, for good people, bad people, thieves, riffraff and the occasional movie star. It's never been dull, always fulfilling and the best part of it - most of the time - is the people you meet."

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