An unforgiving sea stole Rick Langel's guitar, his amp and his notebooks containing years of song lyrics and arrangements written by hand. It also consumed the place he called home for many years.

"It was everything I owned," said Langel, speaking by phone from Astoria early Tuesday. He said he spent the last two nights on the streets of the scenic coastal town.

A roving musician of sorts, Langel became the unwitting source of headlines last week when the van and trailer that housed his gear and his family effects became submerged by a rising tide as he slept Wednesday in Clatsop County.

Locals spent the next two days trying to extricate the sinking, sand-locked vehicles, which had already spewed their contents into the raging surf.

In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, the 61-year-old said he was overwhelmed with the attention the mini saga attracted and somewhat miffed by the assumptions many made about him.

"I'm not a tweaker, I don't do drugs" he said. "I'm just trying to live my dream."

Langel, whose last permanent address was in Damascus, fancies himself a traveling troubadour.

He picked up a guitar for the first time in 1979, inspired by songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and James Taylor. But family life and the need for a steady job kept him rooted in Oregon for nearly four decades, he said.

Five years ago, after a difficult divorce, he decided to hit the road. Langel said he's since busked and picked up gigs from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Wallace, Idaho, carving a well-worn path throughout the American West.

"It was just something he wanted to do for years, to travel and play music," said his son Ryan Langel, 37, who lives in Portland. "On the other hand, I think it's been a way for him to cope with pain and loss."

The freewheeling drifter said he supplements his meager music income with a monthly disability check and the occasional odd job.

Langel said his lifestyle suits him. He meets fellow travelers and musicians on the road. Places and people inspire songs.

"I go where the wind blows, really," he said.

Last week the wind blew Langel to the north Oregon coast, an area whose offbeat towns and inhabitants he's grown to love.

He said he chose Del Rey Beach near Gearhart mostly because he could drive his Chevrolet 20 Globemaster and attached travel trailer, chock-a-block with his life's belongings, on the sand.

A buddy from Wheeler, a town 30 miles south, came out to visit Langel that Tuesday to play some tunes on the beach. That evening the friend left to go see his girlfriend in Astoria, Langel said.

So he dozed off in the driver's seat of his van. When he awoke, his rig was surrounded by water. As he tried to maneuver out of the surf, Langel's vehicle struck a sandbar.

"The motor choked out, then the battery started shorting, then the van started smoking," he said. "My body from the waist down was completely wet."

Langel managed to get out of the van. He called 911 at around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Clatsop County Sheriff's Office said.

It took several hours for a tow truck company to arrive and attempt to hoist the sinking rig out of the ocean. By then, the van and trailer were buried 3 feet deep in the sand, according to the sheriff's office.

The pounding of the surf eventually destroyed the trailer, casting some of Langel's possessions into the sea and scattering the rest up and down the shore.

His van remained stuck until Friday, when locals used an excavator to haul it out of the sand, turning Langel's live-in vehicle into a crumpled hunk of metal.

"You could just see the look on his face. The devastation, like, 'Man, there goes everything I had,'" said Matt Armstrong, a Clatsop County sheriff's deputy who assisted with the removal.

Langel said he lost his Blackstar and Fender amplifiers, a Stratocaster guitar he planned to refurbish, along with microphones, cables and cabinet speakers. A collection of family photos and his mother's old Bible were also gone.

He did recover a pair of acoustic guitars, though Langel said he did not know whether they'd still play.

The sheriff's office allowed him to camp out on the beach for the next several days, since he had nowhere else to go. Langel said he spent most of that time wandering up and down the beach, collecting the flotsam and jetsam of his life.

"In the end, I just gave up and left it up all in a heap," he said. "It was too much of a mess."

On Sunday, he traveled north to Astoria. He spent that night wandering the streets, unable to sleep, and the next in a lawn chair outside.

Langel said he's now trying to figure out what to do next.

"It's like those waves out there, you know?" he said. "It's all pretty turbulent."

A GoFundMe campaign has been created to help Langel get back on his feet.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh