He liked to stop in the Napa Valley on his way to South America or the South Seas. He liked to climb Mt. St. Helena, and run through the vineyards, and drink Schramsberg champagne. He was my first living hero, and I lost him at sea.

I met Gerhard Kiesel in Vancouver, British Columbia while helping to carve the "Orenda" -- a dug-out Haida canoe that a logger/anthropologist hoped to sail all the way to Hawaii to prove that the Northwest Coast natives were the progenitors of the Hawaiian Islands. The logger, Geordie Tocher, was looking for a navigator. One evening, a man appeared, stepping lightly over the wood chips, wearing a silk shirt, a pencil-thin moustache, and an ascot. As we shook hands, I knew he was special and that he would change my life.

At age 17, Gerhard Kiesel had been the youngest officer in the German army, stationed at both the Russian and Western fronts. He was wounded five times, and blinded permanently in his left eye by shrapnel -- the result of an American bullet that smashed into his helmet. After the war, and for all his life, Gerhard sought peace. He became a baker, winning gold medals in international competitions for his creative confections and deserts. He came to Canada with two daughters after his high-fashion model wife divorced him.

In 1978, Kiesel and Tocher sailed the dug-out canoe all the way from British Columbia to Hawaii -- 54 days at sea. Tocher said: "It was Gerhard who pulled us through. The bigger the waves, the bigger Gerhard's smile."

When I first met him, Gerhard had 30,000 miles of blue water sailing under his belt. Many of his experiences bordered on the marvelous.

Sailing a ketch from New Caledonia to Australia, over the radio Gerhard heard a report to all mariners to look out for an expedition raft going from Peru to Australia. Suddenly -- looming ahead were strange, surreal sea monsters. Amidst thousands of miles of open ocean, closer, the creatures materialized on the raft's sails, painted by Salvador Dali -- his nephew leading the expedition. Six months at sea, they were completely out of fresh water and food. On the balsa raft, the native Indians from Peru bowed down to Gerhard as if he were a savior. He gave them all his food and water; then fasted for the two day sail back to New Caledonia.

Gerhard told of how in the South Seas, you smell the islands before you see them: following the fragrance of orchids -- more reliable than a compass. Gerhard's favorite island was Tikopia, an eroded volcano with the inside cone a fresh water lake full of flowering lily pads. His boat, "Destiny," was only the fourth to have ever stopped there. The natives were pure-blooded and did not welcome dilution. However, the King was so impressed with Gerhard's qualities that he invited him to live, amongst them, in total paradise.

"Blue water sailing spoils you for normal life," Gerhard said. "When you return to civilization you feel like a caged bird. We Germans call it wanderjahre -- a restlessness to seek out the wonders of life. In the South Seas you see 60-70 year old men cruising with young women aboard. Tanned and fit, they catch fish and fruit. The 'old' men look 20 years younger. All their cares are gone. The only way I can work a normal job is if there is another adventure out on the horizon."

In July l983, Gerhard and a young Hawaiian, Nojay Komoda set out to break the 8 day sailing speed record from California to Hawaii on a 19 foot, 435 pound catamaran. I went down to Long Beach for the bon voyage party aboard the Queen Mary. Not his usual buoyant self, Gerhard seemed troubled, rushed, ill-prepared for the greatest test of his life. The tiny catamaran, dwarfed nearly into non-existence by the colossal Queen Mary -- in its frailty seemed much too arrogant a craft to pass harmoniously over the vast Pacific Ocean.

The novelist Tom Robbins wrote: "The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that an adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin, the greater the adventure)."

Their margin of escape was down to nil. They were totally exposed out on the tiny catamaran's tarpaulin with no cabin to duck into. A fierce storm swept the Pacific two days after they left. . . In a bit of bitter irony, the boat's name was "Hurricane." Four months later, a Canadian freighter found the hull floating upside down 800 miles north of the island of Oahu. Gerhard and Nojay's bodies were never seen again.

A few months before the attempted speed record, Gerhard wrote to his daughter Andrea: "Well, darling, you asked why I do these things with danger involved. . . I think I'm an addict to hair-raising moments. Maybe it is something leftover from wartime. . . I'm very fortunate to still be alive. Life has to be won again and again -- after every accomplishment. Darling, I know you are concerned about the trip, but you see, I'm so much older than you. I'm close to the end; you're just starting your life. The boat I'm going on is record small. The chances are 50-50 or less. I don't care. I have lived to the fullest: experienced sadness, happiness, glory, fame, beautiful women, defeat, many tears. I never will die in bed old, sick, unwanted. And if the sea and the Gods (if there are any) do not want me, I will cross their lines again and again. . ."

Gerhard Kiesel was 61 years old; Nojay Komoda, 26, when they died. Could their deaths have been the reversal of the Icarus myth? Could it have been not the impetuousness of youth -- but Daedalus, the father, who, secretly fearing the physical deterioration of growing old, subconsciously plunged them into the sea?

"I was so used to my father's adventurous nature," Andrea Kiesel wrote to me. "I thought he could do anything, including the impossible. He was never afraid to take risks, facing danger with a gusto that was almost frightful. But he tried to live out his dreams -- something most of us never do."

Gerhard once told me the words he wanted on his tombstone: "I died because I lived." Lived in the fullest sense of the word: from the horror of Nazi Germany to the paradise of Tikopia -- with all stops in-between.

Gerhard Kiesel's unique combination of gentleness and strength, heartfelt sincerity, and impeccable old-world manners (the only man I knew who could wear an ascot and look manly!) -- all is gone, yet he lives on. When I am pushing the limits in a marathon or a mountain climb -- or trying to fight-off a deadly attack of malaria contracted in Africa, I see his countenance before me. The tougher my plight, the bigger his smile and brighter the gleam in his eyes.

With hindsight, I now view Gerhard as Jung's archetype of the purer eternis -- the eternal youth. He made his way through life as an adventurer, living for the high moments. Ordinary life didn't interest him. He was made for greater things.

Each year, on the anniversary of his death, I buy a bottle of Schramsberg champagne and go to the ocean. Each sip from the bottle raises a different memory of the man, and the moments we shared together. Before leaving, I always pour the last of the champagne on his realm: the waves. I know it will reach him I think, as I walk away.