Being thrown into a world of cold showers and canned meat proved to be only a minor inconvenience for a girl whose passion and strength developed at a young age. The long expanses of sailing—grazing the coast of Baja and crossing to mainland Mexico—were made endurable by pit stops in little towns to obtain rations. Although Liz was young enough to be playing with Barbies and could have easily disregarded the realities of moving the boat, she was given small, yet important tasks to complete. “I didn’t get any breaks for being a girl,” Liz reflected with a rugged edge to her voice. She was taught how to stand watch, drive the dinghy, and fish for food—simple, yet crucial jobs in a life where necessities were the main focus.

For that year, Liz was a tiny sponge, absorbing all the knowledge about the boat, the rawness of the environment, and the sweet simplicity of the people that breathed within the Mexican borders. She recalls a moment when her parents sat her and all the kids down and asked if they would consider traveling by boat again on their own. “Yeah, I want to sail around the world,” she told them with naïve conviction.
When Liz returned to the States, it was with a newfound maturity and a heightened environmental awareness that her experience had imbued in her. In the awkward and formative years following her return, Liz first tried surfing. Being slight of stature but with little Popeye muscles budging from her arms, she had the perfect frame to be a surfer. Needless to say, she picked up the sport quickly. Once her family moved to a house within walking distance to Del Mar beach breaks, she wanted nothing more than to ride the waves.

Liz went on her first surf trip in the summer of 1998. “I realized surfing gave me a whole new reason to travel around the world, rather than throwing on a fanny pack and going to a museum,” she laughed. After that first wave-inspired trip, a map of the world was always spread across Liz’s room with arrows marking a dreamed-of sailing route. For now Liz’s love of surfing was driving a vision of traveling the world by sea, an idea that had laid dormant in her psyche for years.

But Liz’s dream did not die, even when she headed for UCSB and the life of a Gaucho. There, she was naturally drawn to the waves that gave the campus its finest character, at least to a surf-infatuated freshman. Try-outs for the surf team were held in the 2-foot creeping onshore conditions of Sands Beach. Bronzed freshman girls with sticker collages on their boards littered the beach. Liz signed up with butterflies in her stomach, as she was new to the contest arena. She stoically surfed her heat and a week later, at the much anticipated team meeting, they announced that she had indeed made the team. Silent cheers echoed inside her. She was eager for her surfing to be recognized, and what better way was there than the promise of competing in the NSSA college division.

Liz was recognized for her powerful talent on the waves. Her career on the USCB surf team culminated in her winning the Nationals at Salt Creek. Observers could see the fire in Liz’s eyes before the final; she was psyched to take the win. That accomplishment tempered something inside of her; she felt her surfing had been validated. Now something that was once so high in her ambitions was crossed off her internal checklist. Ahead was another dreamed-of opportunity.

Upon graduation, Liz took a crewing job on a 165-foot mega yacht and left Santa Barbara to sail around world. But after less than a month, she felt stifled by orders and schedules and realized this was not the job for her. She came back to America with “no direction, no money, no enthusiasm, and stripped of confidence.” Then she met Barry Schuyler.

“I guess it was serendipity that brought us together,” Barry later reflected to her in a letter. At 80 years old, Barry had made the Santa Barbara harbor his haunt for decades. Barry had lived and breathed sailing for most of his life. During a chance meeting in the harbor, Barry rather nonchalantly told Liz he was looking for someone to sail his boat around the world, which he planned to restore and fully equip.

“Wait a second,” Liz thought, “Someone is willing to send me around the world on his sailboat?” She assumed it was too good to be true, but after discussing it at length with Barry, she realized he was serious. At his old age, this project would be a means to keep the fire of life burning inside him. “In my heart I knew it was meant to be. I was really scared, but I had dreamed this dream for so long that I knew I had to seize this opportunity,” Liz said. She could now merge her adoration of surfing and traveling the world into a valid, well-prepared trip.

In February 2004, Liz and her crew of employees began overhauling nearly every system of the boat. For money, she sweat out long nights at the local bar and grill, dealing with difficult people. During the days, she spent hours toiling in cramped spaces on the boat. Liz re-christened the boat to the “Swell” and spent months organizing crew for different legs of her trip, giving tours of her boat and obtaining sponsorships. People of all ages and walks of life have volunteered their time to play a small role in the preparation of her dream; many plan to accompany her when she anchors at some outer reef to surf at a newfound spot.

Currently, Liz is living out her dream with a crew of two others. After leaving San Diego on January 30 and sailing down the sleek leg of Baja, where she stopped long enough to score epic waves at nearly empty beaches, she has ported in Cabo San Lucas before continuing her journey. Just days before docking in Cabo, all the days of preparation and hours of dreaming of surfing culminated in a 3-day surfing fairy tale in Playa Santa Maria, Mexico. Friends from Patagonia and Wetsand.com joined Liz there to experience a chapter of her adventure. Belinda Baggs and Mary Osborne, to name a few, each rode boards of different colorful shapes and sizes.

At Playa Santa Maria, Liz anchored the Swell beyond the swells in view of her friends’ campsites, hardly waiting to suit up in a 4/3 and jumped into the Pacific toward head-high reelers. For three days Liz and friends drew out cutbacks on the long right-handers.

According to Liz, she would "look at the smiles and then the swell and feel like I had died and gone to heaven." In fact, so soul-satisfying were the waves that Liz felt a little guilty that such sweet satisfaction could happen within a week and a half of her departure. "I felt like I had eaten my dessert before my dinner or something," confessed Liz in one of her blogs. It was a reluctant farewell that Liz bade to this dream spot as she departed toward Cabo San Lucas and the rest of her journey.

Liz’s itinerary includes sailing along the coasts of Mexico and Central America, then sailing west from Panama in late April to the Galapagos, then the Tuamoutus, Tahiti, and New Zealand. She eventually hopes to make it all the way around the world by way of rounding the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. As Liz summed up in her mission statement, her plans are to “sail the Swell around the world in search of surf and explore different breaks throughout each region.” She hopes to “promote environmental understanding through cultivating a better understanding of the ocean.” There will be video and still imaging as well as a detailed journey of her travels.

You can read about Liz’s updates on Wetsand.com under “women who,” and check out her profile on www.gallaz.com.