The Cosbey Chronicles Part 1 | E68

On Episode 68 we introduce the first installment of the Cosbey Chronicles. Marc Cosbey, aka Uncle Coz, Cozmo, Sharkey, is the kindred spirit of the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, and one of its co-founders. Born in the early 1950’s, Coz left home at 17 years old and never looked back, living a free-spirited life of adventure from exploring the American West to sailing around the world on everything from old pirate ships to the most advanced Americas Cup racing boats. In this first episode of a multi-part series with Coz, we chat about his youth in Southern California during the birth of surfing, working in the Utah oil fields as a roughneck, a three-week backpacking trip through the Shoshone Wilderness of Wyoming where he accidently set his face on fire, hitchhiking and getting picked up by gun-toting thieves, building and racing Americas Cup sail boats and surviving a five-day winter storm in the Pacific Ocean on a 1910 Baltic Trader, an adventure that he thought would be his last.

3:00 – Recording from the Downieville Classic.

5:30 – Introducing Marc “Coz” Cosbey aka Uncle Cozmo.

10:30 – DOPE or DERP – Hot Tubs.

14:10 – Part One of Cosbey Chronicles – Growing up in 1960s California, Traveling the West, Backpacking, Hitchhiking, Boat Building and Sailing.

17:30 – Growing up in Newport Beach, California in the 1950s and 1960s, early days of surfing.

20:10 – Leaving home at 17 years old and started surveying for oil.

24:10 – What was Moab, Utah like in the early 1970s?

27:10 – Cody, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park in the early 1970s.

28:00 – Backpacking from Cody to Jackson, Wyoming through the Shoshone Wilderness, accidentally burning down their tent and burning up his face and hands.

38:00 – Hitchhiking and getting picked up by guys who just robbed a convenience store.

42:58 – Do you ever pick up hitchhikers or Pacific Crest Trail hikers?

47:30 – Spending a winter skiing in Mammoth Lakes in the mid 1970s.

50:30 – Moving to Oahu, Hawaii to live on Waikiki and Ala Wai work on boats, surf and wind surf in the 1970s.

54:00 – Spending months sailing across the Pacific Ocean on the Lord Jim sailing ship.

59:30 – Finding the section of an old NASA rocket floating in the open ocean, then a killer whale follows next to them riding down a giant swell.

1:02:30 – Refinishing a 12 meter sailing race boat for an America’s Cup team in 1986 for Tom Blackaller and competing in 1987 America’s Cup in Australia.

1:15:35 – Sailing a real pirate boat built in 1910 from Alaska to San Francisco and the closest Coz ever came to perishing at sea in a 5-day storm.

1:26:10 – Delivering a super high end sail boat across the Atlantic and receiving a mayday call about a captain who was lost at sea with clients stuck on the boat.