Bernard Moitessier
Author of The Long Way and man who decided, when about to win a single-handed round-the-world yacht race, to hang it all and go round the world again. Eventually settled on an atoll near Tahiti.
Just the sort of person who would have got on with Klaus Kinski, you rather think. And sure enough, they met, sailed together to Mexico — of course — and characteristic trail of destruction ensued. To adapt Wikipedia:
In December 1982, Kinski chartered Moitessier and his yacht Joshua as Kinski was preparing for a role in a sailing film. The pair sailed from San Francisco and anchored off the beach at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. There was a freak onshore storm. Joshua dragged her anchor, collided with another yacht, lost her mast, and then beached along with 25 other yachts, and filled with sand. Moitessier spent days trying to dig her out but the salvage costs were too great, so he sold her as a wreck for $20. On a full moon high tide, a trawler towed and a bulldozer pushed the yacht back into the sea and she floated free.
We’d like to think the “sailing movie” Kinski was preparing for was Fitzcarraldo, but alas the dates don’t quite match (the accident happened on December 8th 1982; The film was released nine months earlier. But the story of how the accident happened is great: classic Kinski.[1]
They don’t make em like that any more. Either of them.