Aproximada
ORCAS ISLAND, Wash. -- At 85, App Applegate keeps pushing the limits of living off the grid.
Out here in Puget Sound, on the upper west side of the American dream, he lives in a shack without running water, listens to National Public Radio on a hand-crank radio and avoids outhouses as ecologically incorrect. He prefers a shovel and an open field.
Barely 5 feet tall, Applegate is a Hobbit-size pioneer among the counterculture cadre that has long sought soggy exile in the far corners of the Pacific Northwest. But Orcas Island, which Seattle millionaires are busily refurbishing as the Martha's Vineyard of the West, is not nearly far out enough for Applegate. So, for the past 15 years, he has been building an escape module.
It's a whopper: An 80-foot, 50-ton, three-masted sailboat. Local sailors say the wooden barkentine is nearly finished, solid and seaworthy, if a bit rough around the gunnels. Applegate built it by hand -- outdoors, often in miserably dank weather -- and he paid for the whole thing with Social Security checks. He plans to sail east around the world to dock in Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba. He's a fervent admirer of Fidel Castro."We will set sail in April," he said. "I am not yet sure which April."
There is a logistical kink. The boat sits where it was built: on the side of a mountain beneath towering Douglas firs, 400 feet above sea level, six miles from a suitable boat launch. A narrow dirt road -- steep, potholed and snaggled with switchbacks -- lies between Applegate's boat and its departure for his beloved "Coo-bah."
