As Albanian coastal security forces fixed their machine guns on the 136-foot M/Y Edgewood in early October 1966, eleventh-hour stewardesses Nancy Altman and Jeanne Dana huddled closely together belowdecks. Edgewood had illegally entered Albanian waters for the second time in a month and was now being chased away; the first time, Altman’s and Dana’s passports were temporarily confiscated, and Edgewood’s Capt. Rolf was taken ashore for questioning.
This is just one in a novel’s worth of adventurous stories from Altman and her well-kept diary that recounts an 11-month, 17-country European epic. The two college students hitchhiked through England, swam off the Monte Carlo quay with actor Tab Hunter, traversed the Austrian Central Alps, served dinner to King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan and made lifelong friends.
“Well, it’s an adventure I think about every day,” Altman says, holding back tears.
Tales of Greenock
Before she sailed across the Atlantic and gallivanted through the Mediterranean, the farthest Altman had ever traveled from her home in Corte Madera, California, was about 200 miles to Lake Tahoe for summer jobs. Her fire for adventure was always there, though. It was best exemplified in her sailing trips with friends in San Francisco Bay, boating on the Sacramento River aboard her uncle’s 36 Stephens, and spontaneous hiking and camping trips throughout the Golden State.
Growing up, Altman’s mindset was different from that of her older sister, who married at 19 and had three children by the time Altman left for Europe in ‘66. Altman says she was influenced by the counterculture movement and that “growing up around San Francisco in the ‘60s was an eye-opening experience.”
“I was at the beginning of the baby-boomer period that was part of the free spirit of the ‘60s movement,” Altman says. “Getting married and having children was the furthest thing from my mind. Besides, I could see how much work it was for my sister, and I knew that I had to see the world before I settled down, or it would never happen. The experiences I had during those 11 months abroad were life-changing and helped shape who I am today.”
The direct impetus for Altman’s European tour, she said, also derived from visits with her Scottish grandmother, who lived in San Francisco. Huddled around a globe that Altman now has in her living room, her grandmother would tell tales of her Scottish hometown of Greenock, and her sister, who still lived there. “She would often show me on the globe about her home in Greenock and how far she came in 1906,” Altman says. “This, perhaps, made me even more curious about traveling to these far-away places.”
To fund their trip, Altman and Dana, then Nelson and Mitchell, respectively, spent most of 1965 babysitting, and cleaning houses and hotel rooms. Then 20 years old, they earned almost $1,300 (approximately $12,700 today), first spending $375 for a one-way, month-long Holland America cruise to get to Europe and allotting $5 (approximately $49 today) each, per day. They flew to Los Angeles and departed for Le Havre, France, aboard SS Maasdam, by way of the Panama Canal and stopped in Mexico, Jamaica, New York and Ireland. Once in France, they stayed with Dana’s friends just outside Paris and helped care for their children. Their compensation? Flights to London.
No Plan? No Problem.
Arriving in London in late February marked a special point in the young women’s trip, as most everything prior had been prepared. In fact, the two didn’t even know how long they’d be in Europe. They also didn’t have transportation arranged for the 450-mile trek north to Greenock, until they wandered the city’s Edgeware Road. There, they purchased a green 150cc Vespa scooter. Both girls had experience riding a Vespa around the College of Marin campus, but neither was prepared for the treacherous cold ahead of them.
Navigating English backroads, the two swapped one-hour driving shifts for the next four or five days, exchanging a lone pair of sheepskin gloves and tapping into a bottle of brandy for warmth and spending their nights in bed-and-breakfasts and youth hostels. They eventually met two truck drivers who agreed to take them from Bowes to Glasgow (about 150 miles), from where they then drove the Vespa the rest of the way. “I don’t know why we didn’t just take a train. Why wouldn’t we do that—or a bus?” Altman chuckles. “It was probably my crazy idea that we get this scooter. That’s the coldest I have ever been in my life.”
When they finally reached Greenock, Altman’s great-aunt immediately greeted the girls with a warm bath. “She looked so much like my grandmother,” Altman recalls. Altman also met her great-aunt’s daughters and her mother’s cousin, who shared familial stories. Her first meal here was a traditional Scottish dish: Finnan haddie. “I just remember that warm white fish, with that cream sauce. Oh, my God,” Altman exclaims. “It was so good. We were so, so happy to be in a home with a hot bath and a home-cooked meal.”
Altman and Dana departed Greenock after three days and ventured down the East Coast with the Vespa to take the Dover ferry into Calais, France, where they would reunite with Dana’s Parisian friends. Following another cash-infusing stint of babysitting, the two made a stop in Nuremberg, Germany, to take their college exams. “They would send our exams over to Nuremberg,” Altman recounts. “It was at an American military base. And, so, this whole time we’re traveling, we had to study as well, because we had to take these final exams.” In Nuremberg, Altman recalls the two cooking celery soup atop someone’s radiator before eventually meeting with Dana’s mother for a proper meal and a hotel room. In all, Altman and Dana also took their Vespa through Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Italy, before they coasted down the Côte d’Azur into Monaco. There were several inconvenient flat tires and what Altman describes as their “scariest time” aboard the two-wheeler. “We were coming down the Austrian Alps, and the brake-cable broke,” Altman says. “We flew through a small village, yelling, while people and chickens scrambled to get out of the way. We finally managed to find an uphill slope to stop.”
“’The Lord was with us,’” she adds, chuckling. “And I’m not even religious.”
‘My Happy Place’
It was mid-June, and the girls were nearly broke and in the middle of finishing a meal at an expensive restaurant in Monte Carlo. With most of their money depleted, the two needed to find work to earn a return trip stateside. Any job would have sufficed, but they decided to venture to the docks and test the waters amongst the yachts, where Edgewood’s captain approached them.
His seven-stateroom superyacht had just arrived late from St. Thomas and needed a last-minute cleaning ahead of the arrival of its next client. Originally, they were told it be Frank Sinatra, but it turned out to be Saudi Arabian tycoon Adnan Khashoggi, his wife Soraya and their three children. Altman and Dana enthusiastically accepted trial positions, cleaning the yacht’s interiors over the next two days. Edgewood desperately needed stewardesses, so Altman and Dana were eventually hired for the five-month, Mediterranean charter.
“‘Oh, happy days!’” Altman read from her diary, recalling her reaction to their hiring. “‘The crew really likes us. Then we went swimming on our lunch hour.”
Edgewood took Altman and Dana all across the Mediterranean: Cannes, St. Tropez, Corsica, Venice, Sicily, Capri, the Dalmatian Coast, Athens, Rhodes, Alexandria, Beirut and various smaller ports. Altman remembers the awe-inspiring enormity of the Corinth Canal and a dreamy, month-long stay in Venice, where she and other crew were once pulled over for speeding in a speedboat.
The girls were equally as star-struck by the celebrities, like singer Shirley Bassey, and royalty, like the countess of Borghese, aboard Edgewood. Most demanding of the yacht’s guests, though, was Mrs. Khashoggi, whom Altman and Dana referred to as “The Madame.”
“We had to change her sheets every day; we had to hand-wash all of her lingerie,” Altman recounts, “but she was nice to us because we were a big help, and we were the only two women (in addition to the nanny) on board.”
The time aboard Edgewood wasn’t always smooth sailing, though. The girls once spilled a bowl of soup on a guest and plunged a wine bottle’s cork into its contents during a 20-person dinner party that included the king of Jordan (fortunately, no one noticed). And, just a month into the charter, the captain and crew mutinied against the yacht’s overbearing manager and unanimously voted to remove him.
“We had the captain of the ship, but there was a manager on board who tried to call all the shots, and he was not well liked,” Altman says. “So we had a mutiny in Piraeus (Greece). The yacht’s owner, who was from Detroit, had to fly in.” Apart from the mutiny, a fish flying through her cabin’s porthole and evading Albanian gunboats (the captain ultimately promising to stay out of Albanian waters for good), Altman remembers the time at sea fondly. She’s always referred to the water as her “happy place.” During one of Edgewood’s visits to Cannes, Altman purchased a yellow key fob with a small caricature of a sailboat and promised herself she’d have her own boat, one day. “I would just rather be on the water than anywhere,” Altman says. “Maybe it’s my Scandinavian [heritage], but I just loved what I was doing—every minute of it. You know, I was able to steer the yacht a lot of the time. I just love the whole idea of boating on the water. So then I got the keychain and said, ‘Someday, I hope I’ll have my own boat.’”
Nuance Horizons
By 2001, Nancy had accomplished a lot: she had worked as a nanny for New York Director Sidney Lumet in 1969; started her own event-planning business in 1972, operating it for 18 years; married her husband Howard Altman, in 1975. By 1996, they’d successfully sent both their sons to university and it was time for Nancy to live up to the promise she made herself more than three decades years earlier.
Early on, Howard wasn’t terribly keen on being a boat-owner, so Nancy subtly planted Grand Banks literature throughout their San Anselmo home to spur him on. He eventually budged, and they attended their first boat show in Oakland in 2000. A year later came their first boat: a 1984 34-foot Tollycraft. They christened her Nuance.
“Howard was on a business trip, and he was at a restaurant called ‘Nuances,’” Nancy says. “He was in the men’s room, and there were towels there that were embroidered with ‘Nuances.’ So he says, ‘That’s a great name for a boat,’ and took a towel and brought it home.”
Shortly after purchasing their first boat, the Altmans hired a skipper to teach them all the basics, with Seattle’s Ballard Locks as their training grounds. Both also enrolled in most every United States Power Squadron class. Boating would become a way of life.
Originally, the Altmans planned on bringing Nuance back home to San Francisco Bay waters, but their Washington friends, who owned an Ocean Alexander 52, convinced them to test their yacht in the Pacific Northwest for the summer. They agreed and, in 19 years of boating, never brought either of their two boats back to California. “Most couples, when you’re empty nesters, the husband will take up golf, and the wife will take up something else,” Nancy says. “But this was something we were both very passionate about. It really brought us together; it was something that we share deeply and emotionally. It was just a great time in our lives.”
Over the next two decades, Nancy and Howard made some of their fondest memories in the Pacific Northwest, with their favorite voyages being an arduous yet fulfilling solo trip along the Broughton Archipelago aboard their second Nuance, an Ocean Alexander 46, and a surprise-birthday gathering at Chatterbox Falls in British Columbia that Howard planned for Nancy’s 60th.
Nancy especially remembers their time in Friday Harbor, having spent every Fourth of July there from 2002 to 2019. “I can recall the sound of the ferry engines starting up at 6 a.m. and the three blasts, as it left the harbor,” Nancy reflects. “Smells take me to our friends’ home and beautiful garden above the bay. We would always help prepare the food, while salmon was being smoked on the patio. Before the food, we would walk to town for the Fourth of July parade.”
The Altmans celebrated their 50th anniversary in January. With the years advancing, they stopped boating and sold the Ocean Alexander just before the pandemic, but they still make time for new adventures. While it might not be as risky as gallivanting through Europe with no cellphone, no credit card and no itinerary, or running Nuance amidst northwestern islands, Nancy’s excited for her next adventure: a river cruise with Howard down the Danube from Budapest to Regensburg. “It’s an adventure because it’s something that my husband and I have never experienced together. We’ve never done this type of trip together,” she says.
Before that though, Nancy plans to attend a mahjong cruise in February—girls only.
