Sailing enthusiast Scott Herman was looking for a sailing program in Charleston, South Carolina, for his son who is on the autism spectrum. Upon learning that none of the sailing programs in his area were equipped to provide his son instruction, Herman decided to start his own camp.

Born modestly out of necessity, Spectrum Sailing became the first sailing camp specifically created to serve people on the autism spectrum. The first camp was held in 2017 with a maximum capacity for ten sailors. When seventy applied, Herman quickly realized the impact that his new endeavor might have on the community of kids on the autism spectrum. 

“From the very start, I wanted to build a program where we really do hold a camp,” Herman says. “These kids aren’t the ones who get picked to be on the school team. They don’t have drawers full of team shirts. These kids spend almost every day with their parents, who are constantly looking for new things for them to try. So, for three days, these kids get to spend time with camp friends. They tie knots. They laugh at silly camp jokes. And while they’re doing that, maybe their parents get a break as well.” 

The camps are staffed by a combination of Spectrum Sailing leadership and sailing instructors from the host clubs, who receive advanced training in working with kids on the spectrum. On each boat, there’s a second adult volunteer—some of whom travel long distances to provide the help. Local sailors sometimes lend their boats to take parents out to watch. By the end of the third day, it’s more than a boat ride. The kids are sailing the boats, and the instructors are just riding along. 

This year alone, ten camps have been held from Newport Beach, California, to Portland, Maine, and from Holland, Michigan, to Houston, Texas. Each camp was fully attended, giving more than 400 campers the confidence-building experience of learning to sail this year. More than 100 volunteers gave their time and effort to make it all happen, and even more growth is planned for 2025. 

According to Herman, the biggest challenge remains how to scale the camp initiative to meet the demand. Unfortunately, for every camper accommodated, currently, at least three must be turned away. 

“Harken joined as a national sponsor of Spectrum Sailing in 2023,” said Harken CEO Bill Goggins. “We watched how Spectrum Sailing campers would come in on Day One as halting first-timers—sometimes not wanting to leave their parents—and leave after the camp picture on Day Three feeling like they’ve discovered something that they didn’t know they had inside. The expressions on their faces are the same ones you see from any first-time sailor, old or young, who first experiences sailing’s magic. ‘I can do this. I got in a boat. I did this and it was really fun.’ And that just goes to show how being exposed to sailing can be life-changing for these kids.

“It teaches self-reliance in a way that sports with lots out-of-bounds lines can’t,” added Goggins. “We started Harken Blockheads to help pass that along to the next generation of sailors. Scott’s concept for Spectrum Sailing felt like it might work similarly. Then we went to a camp, and we saw how they did it. And they do it well. 

“They bring specialists to teach the local sailing instructors who host the camps how to instruct kids who are differently enabled. They bring a curriculum that is tested and tweaked and proven to work. Then they watch the power of sailing work in these people’s lives. And in that incredibly loving and organized environment, sailing delivers. You can see it on their faces. You can see it in the way the kids run to camp on Day Three where they might have held back on Day One. And then there are the stories you don’t always get to see in what sailing does for these kids days and weeks later. Those things are sometimes even more incredible.”

For more on Spectrum Sailing, visit their website. 

The post Sailing Camp Empowers Kids on the Autism Spectrum appeared first on Cruising World.

I’m feeling very uncomfortable,” my daughter said, midpassage, as we sailed through the Sir Francis Drake Channel in the British Virgin Islands.

Looking aft, I could see her standing, ­gripping the wheel, the sea behind her lumpy and tilted, the dinghy bumping along as we beat into the April trade winds.

I said nothing. We were aboard a Moorings 52, a powerful sloop, doing 6 knots as we passed between The Dogs and Virgin Gorda. Dutch, our instructor who sat nearby, spoke to her quietly, repeating steps he’d introduced just two days before. § She pursed her lips and paused. As I watched with admiration, she raised her voice to the crew.

“Ready about.”

Amy Carrier and I were in the third day of a promise made decades before: to teach her to sail. Life had intervened, with 42 years passing since we had lived in the same state. What prompted the trip were two big birthdays: my 80th and her 50th. With the caution that a father ought not to teach his child to drive—or sail—I proposed that we go grand and enroll in Colgate Offshore Sailing School’s Fast Track to Live Aboard Cruising, an intense eight-day course that, if passed, awards US Sailing’s Bareboat Cruising certification.

Our resumes were night and day. Amy was a Ph.D. consultant with a wall of degrees. Except for a week on my boat a dozen years before, she was as raw as a sailor could be. Her goal was to charter a boat with her husband. 

I had sailed for more than five decades, on and off, starting with a 12-foot Snark, a sailing school in Denver, a bareboat month in the Caribbean, and 15,000 miles on my 35-foot Allied Seabreeze yawl with stops at Key West, Florida, and Montgomery, Alabama, over to Cuba, and then across the Atlantic and Mediterranean. 

So, as I flipped through three assigned textbooks during the flight to Tortola, I said to myself, I know all this stuff. My biggest concern, frankly, was a mixed metaphor: feeling like a fifth wheel while biting my tongue.

Joining us in Tortola were Angela and Scott Ness, two 66-year-old Ph.D. cancer researchers from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had done some Hobie Cat sailing in California’s Long Beach Harbor. Their goal was to bareboat with friends in the BVI when they retired in June.

Our instructor for all but the first day was Offshore’s branch manager, Folkert “Dutch” Jongkind, a native of the Netherlands with a ton of experience, including 25 weeks a year leading groups like ours. 

Colgate’s course slogan is “From couch to captain in a week.” As we spent the first two mornings of the course in a classroom, I watched my three well-educated colleagues madly scribbling notes, sketching little boats, and labeling parts while I ate birthday cake. We then moved aboard a Colgate 26, a specially designed open sloop with room for the instructor on the stern, and began to put into practice what we had previously learned on the dry-erase board. 

Tacking, jibing, running, beating, person overboard, picking up moorings: Seeing all of it shoveled into one week made the details of sailing seem astoundingly granular. Maneuvers that I took for granted, when they were broken down into steps, dwarfed instructions for a houseful of IKEA furniture.

We then moved aboard Glad 2B Here, a sleek monohull with four air-conditioned staterooms, a galley and salon, and twin helms and electric winches. We took the first quiz, and I was mortified as all three shipmates scored 100 while I, the grizzled know-it-all, got 94. That night, I got up at 3 a.m. and crammed for two hours, just like I did in college to squeak out a bachelor’s in psychology.

Sailing with Dad is an origin story for many sailors. One of my favorites is My Old Man and the Sea by David and Daniel Hays. You’re on a boat together, learning not only how to sail, but also life-living skills, passing on wisdom and ways of being in calms and gales and moments of stress just by watching, imitating, osmosis.

Tacking, jibing, running, ­beating, person overboard, picking up moorings: Seeing all of it shoveled into one week made the details of sailing seem astoundingly granular.

The dreams, the expectations of time with Dad can fall short because they’re weighted with old chafing and might-have-beens. “If you don’t do it right, then there can be judgment, and that is an energy that leads to friction,” Doris Colgate, who heads Offshore, told me. Widely honored for opening the sailing world to women, she said: “Women love to learn with other women because there’s absolutely no judgment involved. Everybody feels they’re on an equal basis, and they’re much more relaxed.”

Women also learn differently, she said. “They want to know what they’re doing and why they should be doing it. When it doesn’t come out, I’m much more willing to say: ‘I don’t get it. Please show me again.’ Most guys wouldn’t do that.” 

The worst thing a man can do when things get wild is grab a line or tiller from a woman. “Oh, God, I hate that,” Colgate said. “There’s something called chivalry, and if I see one more coat thrown into a puddle, I think I’ll scream. Even today it happens—even with our instructors. I get on the boat, and they take the helm away. Seriously.”

Amy’s mother and I divorced when she was 8, so I missed her growing day to day. I called nearly every night from across the country but often imagined her rolling her eyes at any discipline or wisdom. Our times together were big trips around my work: camping in Yellowstone, boating through the Grand Canyon, rounding up cattle on a ranch.

Even if we had found the time to sail, there was so much to impart. I had learned from millions of waves, hundreds of nights at anchor, decisions good and poor, moments of bliss and beauty. I wanted to teach all that while protecting her from mistakes I’d made.

What I really wished was for her to sit alone in a beadboard Snark with nothing but a daggerboard, tiller and lateen sail, and learn to feel the ballet of sailing. Or time on a J/22, a real sailing boat, feeling the line in her hands, watching telltales and the Windex. Those were the best sailing schools, I felt, if only because that’s how I had learned.

At Colgate, we had a week. I could only watch her try her first jibe, first oversteer. Lines, winches, clutches—it was ­confusing to her, she later admitted. Moving on to the 52 after two classroom days was, I felt, a leap to meet the minimums. But right beside us was Dutch, whose demeanor projected assurance that you were safe, that you could fail but not fall into trouble. 

Dutch also knew the islands, the bars, the restaurants and the best mooring fields, which we sampled. They fueled our drive to get on with learning. For me, the grandeur of the islands was background to the drama of our onboard classroom.

I could feel the anxiety from three high achievers to learn in a week what had taken me four decades. “I thought I knew how to sail,” Scott Ness said afterward. Angela added, “I felt I was on a hockey-stick learning curve.” The week entailed learning a new language, tying new knots, being visibly stressed while tacking the Colgate 26 through a mooring field. “I’m freaking out because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” she said. “I was not ready for it.”

By week’s end, we were able to josh about goofs made in front of one another. (That included my fall into the dinghy when my aging knees buckled while climbing onto the dock at Willie T’s—beforeI ordered my first Painkiller.) Through repetition, book learning and teamwork, everyone passed. We had a ticket to rent a bareboat.  But all three of my shipmates knew that they needed more time before chartering.

“I learned how to sail,” Amy said when we talked, back in the United States. “I couldn’t have gone sailing by myself ­before then. I didn’t know all the ­mechanics of a boat. I didn’t know what to do with sails and all that stuff.” 

After Dutch showed her the boat’s self-righting design, and how to control it, her fear of heeling dissipated. “I learned a lot,” she said. “It was exhausting. Intense. Am I ready to charter myself or with an unexperienced crew? No. If there was a little sporty boat available, would I take it out? Yeah, probably.”

The graduation certificate for US Sailing’s bareboat cruising course was, in reality, a driver’s license, in Dutch’s view. We knew the rules of the road, but not how to drive in all conditions. His job was to “open the door. A first step to sailing.”

Doris told me: “I always say about sailing, it’s 90 percent bliss and 10 percent terror—and you need terror. You need to be out there at some point where everything’s gone wrong and it’s pretty scary weather. But once you have that education, or you’ve had the years of experience like you have, it’s not alarming. You just buckle down and do what you need to do. And I think that translates into life as well.”

Ultimately, what Amy and the Nesses were learning was this: “They can do anything they want. They are empowered, emboldened,” Colgate said. “It’s a huge confidence-maker when you can make a boat go where you want it to go with wind alone. That’s pretty exciting.”

In our postmortem, Amy and I realized that we had long shared a philosophy imparted by Dutch. If you’re not enjoying it, something’s wrong. You should be able to relax out on the water. “That’s a stance you and I both have taken with jobs and everything else,” Amy said. “If it isn’t fulfilling, if I’m not enjoying it, f-ck it.”

Our last day in paradise, when we were supposed to take out the boat overnight and return it without the instructor, was canceled by a rolling series of fierce thunderstorms. I used the time to reflect. My usual melancholy at leaving Amy was brightened by the vision of her sailing into the morning sun, as I had done so many times. With little inheritance to pass on, I had given her something of me. Searching for the words to describe that gift, I asked Amy what she told her friends.

“I went sailing with my dad.”

A Daughter’s Perspective

Three days before Christmas, I received a text message from my dad: “Got time to talk?” 

He informed me that the Offshore Sailing School had spring 2024 availability in its Fast Track to Cruising course in the British Virgin Islands. We immediately had to decide whether to attend because the price would increase at midnight. 

I responded with a resounding, “Um, OK?” 

Up to that point, our idea of taking a sailing course together was just that: an idea. We had tossed around a few of them: chartering a bareboat in Europe (his proposal), chartering a captained boat in the Caribbean (my suggestion), traveling to Cuba (also mine). All of these were possible answers to the question of how we should celebrate his 80th birthday.  

Our conversations seemed like fun dreams until that December day, when I realized just how serious he was. 

Dad shared an email from the school’s coordinator with the details. I blanched a little at the cost, as well as at the time we would need to dedicate to this adventure: eight days in the BVI plus at least one more for travel. I had just started a new job.  

Luckily for me, my new boss loves to sail. I had dreamed for years of visiting the BVI. I longed to see the white sands of Anegada, the Baths, the Soggy Dollar.

What settled the matter was my acute awareness of the passage of time. I had lost my mother two years prior. She was a far-too-young victim of Alzheimer’s disease whose rapid decline and passing tore my world apart. Dad was turning 80. He exudes good health, but you never know. This was an opportunity for (perhaps) one last big trip together, and for him to share something he loved with me. How on earth could I possibly say no?

I served as travel agent, using miles and points to coordinate our flights from Ohio and Vermont to Miami a day before we had to be there. We were taking no chances. From Miami, we flew to Beef Island together with our duffels and boat shoes, then took a quick taxi to meet the ferry to Scrub Island. Dad chatted with a young couple celebrating their honeymoon and bought them celebratory Coronas as we waited.  

The resort was gorgeous, secluded and peaceful. Our rooms ­overlooked the docks. We could see two of the Colgate 26 keelboats, along with a variety of catamarans and one or two monohulls. Our first evening, we bought cheese and wine from the market and crashed early.

Class started the next day at 8:30 a.m. sharp, but with a surprise: Offshore had arranged a birthday cake for Dad. We, along with two other students, spent a few hours in the classroom before heading out on one of the Colgates. I was relieved to know that I wasn’t the only nervous one on board.  

Rain chased us back in, and we had a lazy lunch before repeating the morning’s structure.  That evening, we celebrated Dad with dinner and another cake. We begged our classmates to take some back to their room.

Our second day mirrored the first: more classroom, more sailing, and confusion interspersed with flashes of understanding and feeling—for just a moment—like we knew what we were doing. On Day 3, we boarded Good 2B Here, called dibs on staterooms, stowed our gear, and headed out to open-ish sea.

I remember the next few days as a blur. Tacking and jibing, learning to read a chart and use a compass, and understanding the magnetic variation caused by something as small as a smartphone. Stand-on rules and the exceptions, the complexities of the engine and the water system, how and when to use the marine radio. But there was fun too. We took a break one morning to visit the Baths, arriving early and having the park to ourselves. We sailed through sun and sudden downpours, and we threw that poor fender overboard again and again. We made checklists for raising the sails, putting the boat to bed, what lights to turn on at night, and how to use the navigation and sound systems.  

Our last night on board, Dad and one of our classmates made dinner: shrimp and pasta accompanied by wine and laughter about our newbie mistakes and our instructors’ endless patience.

Dad and I talked and joked, and snipped at each other when we got tired or frustrated. We’re both hard of hearing, which made the wind and waves an occasional nuisance. We shared memories of our many travels together and wondered aloud what it would be like to come back to the BVI and charter a boat for ourselves. We didn’t make it to Anegada or Soggy Dollar, which is all the more reason to return.  

Still, I watched him nap in the midmorning quiet and gave thanks that we had made this choice, that we had taken this time to spend together. 

Our last morning, he asked our classmates how they thought we did as father and daughter; he seemed taken aback by the answer: “You have different temperaments.” 

Maybe true, but we share a passion for the really cool things we’ve done together. Yes, Dad’s love for sailing was successfully passed down, just as he had hoped. Since then, my husband and I have relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina, and I started researching sailing clubs on the coast. I also persuaded my husband to enroll in the same course in the BVI. I plan to join him there.

Perhaps, to celebrate Dad’s 85th birthday, he and I can charter our own boat and finally make it to Anegada, with a stop at the Soggy Dollar for a well-earned Painkiller. Until then, I’ll treasure the memories of our week together and look forward to the next text I receive that asks, “Got time to talk?” —Amy Carrier

The post Passing the Tiller appeared first on Cruising World.

It was to be a routine delivery: bringing my boat home from the Mediterranean, sailing from Tunisia up along the west coast of Italy to Genoa, where I would put Ranger on a freighter to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 

But it turned out to be a journey of ­discovery. A sail into the past, along a landscape so choked with beauty and bounty, hazards real and imagined, ancient myths and contemporary events, all amid rolling seas and emotions. Five knots was too fast to absorb it. Only now, years later, have I found the storyline.

In 800 miles, I traveled through 2,000 years of marine navigation, from a continent once skirted by Phoenicians who lit fires as waypoints, to the creation of nautical charts and compass wayfaring, to explorations of the entire world. It was all capped, in the 1980s, with the invention of electronic charts.  

On a rhumb line, Genoa lay 500 miles to the north. Pushing my 1970 Allied Seabreeze yawl, I could have motorsailed it in five days. But to pass by the Italian coast would have been a crime punishable by regret. I set aside two months and invited three mates to join me for ­successive segments.

The first was Wally Wallace, a burly, fearless Vietnam War paratrooper. First mate on my 2002 trans-Atlantic, he’d become a sought-after delivery captain and cook on Maine tourist boats. I knew that he would save me if Ranger were to founder. He met me in Tunisia at Yasmine Hammamet, an upscale, French-owned resort and marina where I had left the boat, and began to tackle a list of jobs created by three years of Saharan sun and dust. We were getting to know Ranger again, including her dripping “dripless” shaft seal that periodically lit up the bilge-pump light. My log is filled with expletives from each time it spiked my blood pressure.

Once we had cleared customs with a 40 dinar ($13) baksheesh bribe, we found ourselves in waters divided by culture and wealth. There were Muslim shores where fishermen still plied hand-hewn sailboats, and where Africans trying to escape died trying. There was the “North” of wealth and opportunity. Hammamet was used by large-yacht owners to sail through European Union loopholes. By visiting Tunisia for a couple of nights every two years, they avoided a 20 percent tax on the boat’s value. The cost of fuel for the round-trip from their home ports in Europe—thousands of dollars—was worth every penny to them.

The night before our departure in March 2012, a cold Sahara wind whistled through a thousand shrouds. Little did we know that 100 miles away, two boats carrying sub-Sahara Africans were wallowing toward the Italian island of Lampedusa, where they’d hoped to find asylum. One boat with 50 souls landed the next day. The other, with 60 people including two pregnant women, was found in distress a few days later, with five passengers dead.

As that tragedy unfolded, Wally and I were motorsailing toward Trapani on the toe of Sicily, 150 miles and a First World away. There, we enjoyed a beer and baked redfish that Wally caught en route. From Sicily, under jib and jigger, we made 6 knots bearing 31 degrees across a lumpy Tyrrhenian Sea, marked by mythic wakes of Odysseus. In his famous book, Homer had left a spaghetti snarl of supposed routes and infamous dangers. 

“It would be tempting to treat the Odyssey as a Baedeker’s guide to the Mediterranean,” writes David Abulafia, the dean of Mediterranean scholars. Alas, he added, “the map of the Mediterranean was infinitely malleable in the hands of the poets.”

That said, Homer got one thing right: The Med is tempestuous. During our 180-mile sail across the northern border of the “Aeolian triangle,” named for the bag of wind given to Odysseus by Aeolus, Wally was kept busy changing sails.

The welcome sight of Amalfi on the Italian mainland is reflected in my log’s tally of our landfall celebration: pizza, beer, pie, internet, ice cream. A stroll through the colorful waterfront, devoted now to tourists and old men telling old stories, provides just a hint at Amalfi’s maritime significance. Although a bronze statue of hooded Flavio Gioia stakes the claim that he invented the magnetic compass here in 1302, it too is a myth. Centuries before, the Chinese had discovered the magic properties of lodestone, a rock that, if hung on a thread, points north and south. 

Still, behind the legend is a true history of Amalfi as an international port, a wealthy city-state based on trade fostered by the compass. For 600 years in the Middle Ages, Amalfi merchants turned the Mediterranean into a bazaar, trading Italian wheat, timber, linen, wine, fruits, and nuts with Tunisia and Egypt for oil, wax, spices, and gold.

Paper charts, drawn by exploring sailors, stimulated more trade. Italy, and the whole Mediterranean, shows up on maps as early as 500 B.C. The Romans mapped their empire, in part to mark their conquests. While Columbus sailed “for gold, god and glory,” the Med was mapped for one reason: money. Amalfi’s prominence vanished with an earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the port on November 25, 1343.

Portolan charts, an Italian term for detailed port maps, were in use by 1270. “The outline they gave for the Mediterranean was amazingly accurate,” writes Tony Campbell in The History of Cartography. The work of the first named practitioner, Pietro Vesconte of Genoa, who died in 1330, “was so accurate that the Mediterranean outlines would not be improved until the 18th century.”

Leaving Amalfi, sailing southwest along the Sorrento Peninsula, we lacked the wardrobe and class to rub shoulders with the glitterati on the island of Capri. Instead, we created our own photo ops amid the rocks and tunnels and cliffs of Faraglioni at the island’s southern tip. Our only companions were tourist boats filled with envy.

After spending the night at anchor, we crossed the Gulf of Naples on a ­sunny, breezy easterly to Torre del Greco, a blue-collar town in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. After touring exhumed Pompeii, we sailed to Naples, in search of—what else?—pizza, only to find dozens of joints claiming to be the original. Home to the US 6th Fleet, Naples has a footnote in navigation history as one of the first ports to be charted in detail using surveys from land, in 1812 by Italian cartographer Rizzi Zannoni. 

I then headed north, slowing to marvel at Homer’s ability to imagine two ordinary boulders as home to sirens, women who sang sailors to their deaths. It was here, Homer wrote, that Odysseus tied himself to the mast to resist. Wally and I covered our ears.

On April 4, we arrived at the River Tiber, downstream from Rome and under the flight path to its airport. After some struggle to find a berth, I located a spot in the river itself, tied on the outside of the quay of a classy country-club marina. Its fee was 36 euros ($50) a night. I had been spending, on average, $50 a day total since leaving Tunisia, but we had now entered Italy’s more developed, and expensive, boating waters. I had $1,700 left.

Wally and I shared a taxi to the airport, where he departed and I picked up my daughter, Amy. She had little sailing experience, but by hewing close to the coastline, I felt that I was taking a reasonable risk. And, truth be told, I wanted to make up a bit of time lost with her since her mother and I divorced 30 years before. We had shared many road trips in the American West, but I’d missed so much and knew so little. She was now 38, and that night aboard, we had a good talk about her boyfriend, her job as a university fundraiser, and, for some reason lost to me now, death and disabilities. She introduced me to prosecco, and we dined on hors d’oeuvres as if we were yachties.

The next morning, as she removed sail ties while dressed in a parka, she realized that the bikini she had packed would not see the light of day. Under crisp clear skies and windshifts from east to west, we sailed to Civitavecchia behind a rugged breakwater, human-made like most marinas on the coast. The wind picked up, and it began to rain at 2 a.m. “Cold, nasty night,” my log reads.

Amy had brought an early, unlocked smartphone, and with a local SIM card, she found an Italian weather site with sea conditions. As day broke clear, we expected some onshore chop, but as we rounded the breakwater under power, we ran into the storm’s aftermath: giant onshore rollers. As Ranger hobbyhorsed dramatically, Amy, who was sitting forward, clearly scared, turned and shouted, “Daddy!” I put her into a harness, jacklined her to a U-bolt, and told her to sit near the mast, where the movement would be smaller. I raised a reefed main, but with winds less than 5 knots, it didn’t help. By midmorning, I could raise the jib and shut off the engine. It was better, marginally.

“Long, rocking day,” my log reads. “Amy was a trouper.”

At 3 p.m., she steered us into Porto Ercole, a big grin on her face. Two beers and some potato soup later, we were in bed at 7:30 p.m., “wiped.”

A terrible surge woke me at midnight. I got Amy up to move the boat parallel to the dock, bow in. At 4 a.m., I adjusted the spring line. At 9 a.m., it was rainy and windy—the Med’s many moods. I wasn’t feeling that hot either. 

I’d now been a month at sea, and Amy sailed us 20 miles to a quiet anchorage. We planned two nights but knew from her phone that “stuff was coming.” We ­motored into a nice marina with hot showers at Grosseto. Along the way, looking west, we could see the cruise boat Costa Concordia still lying on its side three months after striking a rock off Isola del Giglio. Thirty-two people died. The captain who abandoned the ship before it was cleared was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison. It was a chilling sight, and a reminder that the Med, charted for centuries, could still snag a boat and kill.

On April 17, my third mate, Dave Pfautz, joined us, and Amy took us to dinner for my birthday. David, a nurse, had introduced me to living aboard in Key West, Florida, and had helped me find Ranger. We made a nightly ritual at sunset to sail out and watch for the green flash, and toast our good fortune. I asked him to cross the Atlantic with me, but he backed out at the last minute because of a health issue. Now he felt he could join us, and I gladly accepted his presence as payback.

Amy left early the next day, taxiing to a train to Rome. She left her phone, and a card, thanking me for all “the wonderful new memories.” I cried. Several times.

“Sea turned to shit,” my log begins for April 19. Big, westerly waves made for a rolly ride north, and an exciting entry in breaking surf into San Vincenzo. Dave threw up again, perhaps from a bad plate of clams, and I persuaded him to go to a hospital. I ate tapas alone. 

At midnight, I woke to howling winds. They weren’t forecast. The waves were crashing against the breakwater at Marina Cala de’ Medici. I risked an escape, gunning the diesel out through the breaking surf. Stuff flew around the cabin. Dave was weak. It was a lumpy, tough day.

We stopped at Viareggio on a national holiday, grabbing a toehold on a crowded dock end. Set against the rolling hills and vineyards of Tuscany, with Pisa and Florence beckoning, the region might have lured me to stay if I had not been on deadline and burdened with an infirm crewman. With less than 100 miles to go, I was eager to catch the boat home.

As a result, I also passed a chance to investigate a note in Rod Heikell’s Italian Waters Pilot. Ten miles away in Marina di Carrara, known for its white marble, sat the headquarters of the two leading electronic chart companies: C-Map and Navionics. 

The story of how two local boyhood friends—Foncho Bianchetti and Giuseppe Carnevali—conceived and built the first marine chart plotter, the Geonav, by digitizing paper charts and displaying them on a mobile screen, describes one of the great leaps in marine navigation. Their first unit, displayed at the Genoa boat show in 1984, cost $12,000. They made 200 that were snapped up by, among others, the King of Spain and Prince of Monaco, according to Carnevali. The friends soon split over business strategy, with Carnevali heading Navionics and Bianchetti forming C-Map. Their competition, which drove innovation, remains today in headquarters a few miles apart. Navionics is now owned by Garmin and C-Map by Brunswick Corp.

The fact that it happened in Italy, atop the long history that I had surveyed, was coincidental, both men said. And yet today, both companies acknowledge that Italian innovation, precision and artistic creativity would make it appear inevitable.

With relief, Ranger and I finally arrived in Genoa, tucked into a slip and, between sumptuous meals, began to undress for the freighter trip home. It was on this ­waterfront that Christopher Columbus, born in 1451, escaped his family’s sheep farm. He began to absorb the lore and ­avarice of merchant ­trading, first as a ship’s boy that took him to the eastern ­waters of the Med. His first documented trip was to the island of Chios, near Turkey. By this time, ­navigational ­innovation had moved to Spain and Portugal, and their explorations. Columbus followed, and the rest is history.

I said goodbye to Dave, happy to be alone with Ranger. He flew home but never recovered his once-buoyant soul. Some years later, after a motorcycle accident, he died in surgery. Whenever I see a green flash, I think of our sunset cruises and the life he introduced me to.

Ranger’s last Italian trip, a couple of miles to the Dockwise yacht-transport dock, was a nail-biter as waves ricocheted off concrete abutments, creating a maelstrom. Violently rocking, Ranger’s prop at times came out of the water. I’m not big on prayer, but as I mumbled, “Please, God,” I also shouted to the Racor fuel filter: “Don’t fail me now!” 

I could understand why the Med had been seen as inhabited by spirits: evil, benign and inviting. We cruisers travel odysseys every time we shove off. It takes will and skills, vision and dreams to journey by boat. 

Checking my Garmin GPS II, I saw that Ranger and I had traveled 15,000 miles. I had reached my goal—across an ocean and an ancient sea—and had gathered both a sail bag of stories and a great sense of accomplishment. I didn’t know at the time that this would be my last great ­sailing voyage. But at 68, I had nothing left to prove. Like Odysseus, I was going home.

The post Cruising Italy: A Voyage Through Time appeared first on Cruising World.

I was at home trying on outfits, preparing to meet author, yachtsman and YouTuber Christian Williams. My aim, I’d told my wife, was to look nautical, literary or, at the very least, not silly. “Do we own any turtlenecks?” I asked, searching through our closet. 

Emily had left the room, and our 9-year-old son stood in her place. “A turtleneck?” Ezra asked, shaking his head. “Dad, who’s more famous? You or this guy you’re going sailing with?”

Christian Williams is a former newspaper editor and television producer. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was at The Washington Post. He worked on Bob Woodward’s legendary investigative team, and sailed with Ted Turner and won the 1979 Fastnet race. He completed three solo passages from Los Angeles to Hawaii (and back), most recently at age 78. He’s also the author of five books, and has written and produced multiple TV shows. “Oh, and he’s the creator of a YouTube sailing channel with 75,000 subscribers and over 10 million views,” I said. 

“So, he’s way more famous than you,” Ezra said. I stepped toward the mirror wearing the same pants and sweatshirt that I wear five days a week as a stay-at-home dad, daytime sailor and part-time writer. “Well, we’re sort of in different lanes,” I explained.

When I pitched this story to my editor, I was all confidence: I’ll go sailing with Williams, interview him, and explore what a noob sailor like me can learn from a seasoned singlehander. But when the moment arrived to pick up the phone and call Williams, I bit my nails and rewatched some of his sailing videos. I put on the audio edition of his book Alone Together and tidied my apartment. Lunchtime passed. I’d rehearsed my lines and twice microwaved my coffee when my wife advised: “Just listen to some pump-up music and give him a call. You got this, David.”

I left Williams a voicemail. A couple of days later, I was driving through Los Angeles, listening to “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean, when my phone rang. “Yes, I’ll help with the story as needed,” Williams said in his cool, New England accent. 

“Well, it’ll be a fun, lighthearted piece,” I stammered, revealing my own jitters.

“Or it can be as serious as it needs to be,” he said.

I thanked Williams and told him what a big deal this was for me as a fan and newish sailor. “Among my friends, you’re sort of a household name,” I gushed.

“A household name?” Williams said with a chuckle. “Well, maybe only in my household.”

It’s a sunny Southern California Saturday afternoon when I arrive at Marina Del Rey to go sailing with Williams. I stand under a flagpole at California Yacht Club, holding a life vest and a six-pack of beer. In the distance, Williams, down on the dock, is preparing Thelonious II, his Ericson 38.

Since I began sailing two years ago, I’ve had to quit counting the number of people who’ve suggested that I watch Williams’ videos (I have), read his books (I am), or look for him on the water. I’m a bit star-struck when my 6-foot sailing hero appears, walks me down the dock, and welcomes me aboard his boat. “So this Ericson is a 1972?” I ask. 

“It’s an ’84,” Williams says. “Come on inside.”

My gawd, I’ve set only one foot on the boat, and I’m already making unforced errors.

One measure of a sailor’s acumen is technical skills: navigating, trimming sails, reading wind and weather. Another measure, I soon realize, is the ability to welcome others aboard, weave them into the sailing experience, and keep them safe. Williams gives me a quick tour of his Ericson’s wood-trimmed cabin, offers pointers on how to move around the deck, shows me where handholds can be found, and tells me what would unfold in the unlikely event that one of us goes overboard. 

I tell Williams that I’m not planning to fall off the boat today. In fact, I’m not really planning anything. My aim is simply to sail with one of my heroes, soak up the experience, and talk shop over drinks afterward.

Williams casts off the lines and expertly prop-walks his boat out of the slip. As he motors through the ­marina’s main channel, we pass port-to-port with a sailboat that’s dragging six fenders through the water. Williams shakes his head and makes some well-crafted jokes about California boaters. I laugh along. I hope that he doesn’t discover the 2020 magazine cover with a photo of me aboard my newly acquired Cape Dory 25, committing the same sin. 

“Take the helm, would you?” he asks a few moments later. “And take us up to 5 knots.” 

I have to make a lucky guess about which lever is the throttle. Then, standing at the helm, I watch as Williams goes forward, heaves on the main halyard, and raises a crisp, new mainsail. 

Skies are blue. The wind is 10 knots. We’ve just cleared the harbor breakwall and entered the open water of Santa Monica Bay. “Feels a lot like steering a car,” I call out, raising my voice above the breeze as Williams makes his way back to the cockpit.

“Is that how you steer your car?” he asks, cracking a smile. “You wobble the wheel back and forth?” 

I guess I haven’t mentioned that this is my first time with wheel steering, or that the sailing column I write is called “The Noob Files,” or that my most popular story is about crashing my boat into the dock. 

“Well, how do you hold the wheel still?” I ask, seeking expert advice.

Williams tilts his head and considers the question. “You hold it still.”

We both laugh. 

For the next few miles, we sail closehauled, heeled over at 15 or 20 degrees. Williams chats with me about the spoils of Santa Monica Bay (“summer sailing here never gets old”), a few of his favorite things about the Ericson (“its graceful hull form”), and some of the small leaks he chased down during his most recent passage from Hawaii to Los Angeles. After seven decades on the water, he’s calm, cool-headed and confident—approximately the opposite of myself. My first two years of singlehanded sailing have been an emotional roller coaster. At first I feared the wind, then the waves, then the immensity of the ocean. Above all, though, what I’ve feared most is screwing up. Maybe that’s why so many of my stories highlight my mistakes.

While I “steer,” Williams goes forward. He studies his furler drum, gazes up at his new genoa, and then sits on the bow pulpit for a while and looks out at sea. Is he bored? I wonder. Does sailing get dull after one has completed long solo adventures offshore? 

Soon, I’ll ask him. For now, we’re a mile or so offshore in 10 knots of breeze, and the 74-foot Foggy is screaming past us. The boat—designed by Germán Frers with input from its owner, architect Frank Gehry, and built at Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine—is packed with surprises. It has more than 800 pieces of glass flush-mounted on the surface of its teak deck. In the salon, there are colorful carpets and a sheepskin sofa. But what’s really surprising is that, while sailing with a well-known author and yachtsman aboard what many sailors would consider a famous boat, we were both now stargazing.

We’ve gone 3 or 4 miles ­upwind when we reach the Santa Monica Pier. Williams tacks, oversteering a bit to make my genoa trimming easier, then points us back toward Marina Del Rey. With some luck and instruction, I adjust the traveler.

“Well, how do you hold the wheel still?” I ask, seeking expert advice. Williams tilts his head and considers the question. “You hold it still.”

Then, over a couple of beers, we swap stories about the joy of sailing small boats as kids. Williams says that his first boat was a red $20 kayak that his father purchased. Mine, I tell him, was an orange 12-foot Snark borrowed from a neighbor. Eventually, the Williams family would move up from Moths to Penguins to Lightning boats. Then, later, they’d spend New England summers on wooden cruisers exploring Long Island Sound.

“Much of it captured while passing an 8-millimeter movie camera around,” Williams says in one of his videos detailing a family cruise in 1961. “Each roll of film in the camera was 50 feet long and took three minutes of film.”

Six decades later, Williams is still happy to be on the water, and he’s still shooting movies. In videos, he sews cushions, stops leaks and disassembles pumps. He explores how to sail and why we sail, and he muses on philosophy, time, meaning, and memory.

On our homestretch, Williams holds the wheel and handles the lines. For a time, our small talk grows quiet. It’s just the sound of birds and the lap of water. And that’s when it hits me: Nothing crazy is going to happen today. We don’t have 30 knots on the nose. We’re not crossing oceans. No records are being set. 

Maybe it’s all for the better. You see, what’s brought me here isn’t Williams’ achievements or know-how. What’s drawn me is his “knowing that,” his reflective, philosophical side, and the way that sailing seems to have shed light on, widened, and added depth to his life. That’s what I admire and want to explore and emulate.

There’s a harbor breakwall that protects Marina Del Rey’s main channel. After we steer behind it, the wind drops off, the water turns flat, and the Ericson’s genoa sways gently like a curtain. As we drift, one of the sheet lines backs out through a genoa block, escaping slowly before falling silently into the water. 

In a moment, the line will be retrieved. We’ll start the motor, drop the sails, and return to the dock. But what’s the hurry? For now, Williams simply looks down, watching the line as it trails alongside us in the water, perhaps remembering something from a lifetime spent messing about on boats. 

“Should I get that?” I ­eventually ask.

Williams smiles. “Sure,” he says, still gazing into the water. “Why not?”

David Blake Fischer is a “noob” sailor living in Southern California. He hasn’t crossed oceans. In fact, he’s only recently crossed the Santa Monica Bay. Follow him on Instagram as he fumbles out of the channel, backwinds his jib, and sometimes drags his fenders on Delilah, his Cape Dory 25. 

Calamari and Cocktails

Inside California Yacht Club, the author sat down with Williams at a corner table overlooking the slips for a chat.

You’ve said that sailing is an open door to the universe, where life on the other side is forever changed. How has ­sailing changed you or ­transformed your life?

I think it’s fair to say that sailing has sustained me through everything. For some people, it might be love of dogs or something, but for me, through all the ups and downs, sailing was always there because it is that window to the universe.

As a kid, you spent summers sailing with your family on Long Island Sound. What did those early experiences teach you? 

I was fully aware that my father had learned how to sail as an adult. He had come back from the war, probably around age 30, and didn’t know how to do it. It was all learned. Meanwhile, I was 12, and I took to it instinctively. And the overriding message to me was: This is something I can do well. And it sustained me through high school and beyond. Whenever I screwed up something, at least I was good at sailing. 

You’ve raced, completed long passages offshore, chased thrills, and found adventure. Does daysailing on familiar waters get boring after all of that?

You only have to go 1 mile offshore, and you might as well be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Your senses pick up the wind and waves, and you find that you’re alone. And, really, on boats from Sailfish to multihull ocean races, as soon as I’m out of sight of land, I feel I’m in the right place to recognize myself. When I’m at a cocktail party, it’s a performance. But offshore, you remove the audience, and you’re just who you are. And that’s more interesting than terrifying. Because you find out you’re just a part of the whole. And believe me, in the city, I don’t feel that way. Life in the city is a constant performance, a competition. Always has been. But if you take anybody and put them alone at sea, they encounter a different universe.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a large number of Americans went sailing. Today, thanks in part to YouTube and the availability of older fiberglass boats, a new generation of people are finding their way onto the water. What wisdom would you offer those who are just getting started in sailing?

When you’re 80, which I am, these things appear to you as aphorisms. It sounds like a Nike slogan, but just do it. If you want to sail around the world, quit worrying about the right boat. Do it in the boat you have. Do it tomorrow. Often, we mistake prudence for wisdom. We spend much of our lives trying to perfect the beginning. I say, quit worrying about it. Do it. You might just learn something and get an accomplishment out of it.

Your videos skewer the notion that singlehanded sailors are fearless stoics, immune to discomfort, content in the ­silence of the universe. What are singlehanded sailors really like?

It would be easier at the age of 30. So there’s that. But seriously, and I don’t mean to get philosophical, but we judge ourselves too much. Everything is a judgment of self, a categorization of our behavior, seeing ourselves in the light of what others might think. But if you’re a singlehanded sailor, 1,000 miles offshore, nobody is judging you. And it’s a great feeling.

There’s a calm vibe to your videos of offshore passagemaking. Are you really that calm out there? Is there an overwhelmed, overreacting or fearful side of Christian Williams? 

Be gentle with me, but I’ve never felt fear out there. On my tombstone, it’ll probably say, “How did he do?” So you put yourself on a sailboat, on an airplane, or speaking before a thousand people: It’s all a test of where you stand in your own universe. How did I do? For me, the fear is humiliation, and the reward is…I did OK. It’s been a beneficial, providential driving force in my life. How far can I push things without screwing them up? That’s good. That’s worth doing. 

How does sharing an offshore passage via YouTube change the experience of solo sailing?

There’s a video gene that desires to document one’s time on Earth. When it comes to sailing, I don’t think anyone has accurately documented it. I’ve made every mistake in the book, and I want people to know what those mistakes are, laugh, and then proceed at a more accelerated pace than I did. But I want them to wind up in the same place, which is, just, the awe of it.

We’re all out there chasing or following after something. For some, it’s peace or tranquility. For others, it’s adventure. What have you been chasing?

For me, sailing has been about opening a door and seeing what’s on the other side. And, as you do, you sense that the door’s not easy to open, and you don’t know what’s on the other side. And you get only a glimpse of it.

You’ve solo-sailed from Los Angeles to Hawaii three times. Have you found what you were looking for?

You come back from a summer sailing to Hawaii and back alone. Your first thought is, I’m never doing that again. It’s really uncomfortable. Two months later, your thought is, I’ve got to do that again. There’s something out there I missed. I didn’t ask the right question of myself when I had the chance. I’ve got to go back. I’ve done this trip three times for that simple reason.

Will there be a fourth trip?

 Maybe.

The post One Mile Offshore With Christian Williams appeared first on Cruising World.