On the Wind Sailing

#148. Paul & Sheryl Shard talk to us live from Toronto about their start in sailing, how they got into movie-making, combining their passion for movies, travel and sailing, Paul's career as a boat-builder, Sheryl's theatre background and lots more! Audience Q&A included throughout. -- I wanted to post my episode about Cuba this week, but being at the rally has left me with little time to finish it up. It’s a very cool story, but I think I can make it even cooler, so I’m putting it off a week. Instead, episode 148 is another interview with Paul & Sheryl Shard of the Distant Shores sailing tv show. I’ve been hanging on to this one for a while now - we recorded it live in Toronto back in January - and it’s a really cool deep dive into their sailing history, the popularity of their show, some of their favorite stories from over the years and all their traveling and lots more. Paul & Sheryl are professional media people, so they do a really nice job of storytelling. We mixed in a few audience questions throughout as well. Mia and I have gotten to know the Shard’s quite well over the past several years. They’re some of our favorite people in sailing, and we love catching up with them at boat shows and on the water. In fact, while we were racing Isbjorn in the Caribbean 600, we saw them sailing north, and downwind, as we sailed south and around Montserrat, beating our brains out upwind in the race! As for Isbjorn, she remains on the canal next to Pam Wall’s house in Ft. Lauderdale. Mia and I head back down on May 15th ahead of our next leg north to Annapolis. We have some very cool projects in the works with Pam that I’ll just tease now, but which won’t release for a while, so stay tuned for news on that. Our passages are sold out for the rest of 2016, but we’ve got a lot of cool stuff happening in 2017, including two Atlantic crossings and some sailing in the Azores and Scotland, so check out the calendar and register at 59-north.com/offshore to come sailing with us! And just today I got the maps for our 2018 passage routes to the Arctic and Iceland from our graphics guy Steve Olson, which is VERY exciting! I’ll be opening those trips and publishing the full schedule soon, for what will truly be the adventure of a lifetime! Finally, if you enjoy the podcast, please do me a favor and review it on iTunes. I appreciate all the great feedback - if you’ve emailed me at some point and I haven’t replied, send a gentle reminder and I promise I will! I genuinely try to get to all of them, and really enjoy hearing from our fans. Okay, with that, please enjoy my latest conversation, live from Toronto, with Paul & Sheryl Shard!

#147. is a fun one. Back in March, I had planned to do another podcast with Matt Rutherford to get an update on what he’s doing with his Ocean Research Project. As it were, Paul Exner was also in town to speak at a seminar Mia and I hosted in Annapolis. AND, ship’s pilot Mark Baummer was around, and had asked me for some advice to help him plan a passage to Bermuda on his Gemini catamaran. So, the inklings of an idea sprang to life - why not get the three of these guys together, all former podcasts guests, and have a little roundtable chat? So that’s exactly what we did. Matt invited us over to the house he’s taking care of in Eastport, and we sat around the coffee table in the living room. I got things going with Matt, and the hope was that everyone would kind of just jump in at points and start talking on their own. I was not let down. After a while, Matt, Paul & Mark just kinda started needing out on each other, and MAN was it fun to see! The longer the episode goes, the less you’ll hear my voice, as I just sat back and smiled and watched! We covered an array of topics, from Matt’s latest adventures, to Mark’s new boat, thoughts on electronics and radar, why Mark as a ship captain thinks required AIS might actually be a bad thing on the Chesapeake and much much more! This is a long and meandering episode, but I think you’ll agree it’s definitely worth your time! — A quick update on Isbjorn before we get to the show. Thanks to our good friend Pam Wall, she’s safely docked on a canal in Ft. Lauderdale until our trip north which starts May 18. The Cuba passage was a highlight of my sailing and traveling career - and I promise I’ll have an entire episode dedicated to that very soon - and it was great fun to share it with our awesome crew. We have one spot left on the Annapolis-Lunenburg passage from July 1-8, so check out the details on that at 59-north.com/offshore. We also just opened another spot for the Caribbean 600 race next February, so if you want to ‘level up’ and do some serious ocean racing, check out 59-north.com/oceanracing for details on that. Alright, with that, enjoy an awesome roundtable chat with me, Matt Rutherford, Mark Baummer & Paul Exner! -- This episode is sponsored by Broadreach, my former employer and one of the coolest sailing jobs I’ve ever had. Aside from being an amazing place to send your kids for an adventurer summer (listen up parents!), they’re on the lookout for skippers and mates to work the upcoming summer season out of St. Martin. Contract length varies from two to three months starting in early June through early to late August. Go to broadreachstaff.com to complete the initial job application! Broadreach - The World is Yours to Discover!

#145 is Tory Salvia, founder and executive producer of The Sailing Channel. Tory and I sat down in person in Annapolis a few weeks ago and had a fascinating conversation. We talked about Tory’s sailing career in general and how he got started, his love of good old boats, how he’s been influenced over the years, and more recently, his starting thesailingchannel.tv. Tory made his career in media production, making videos for the Navy for a long while as both producer and director on many of his projects. He has a love for film, which has shaped his career all along, but eventually he wanted to combine that with his love of sailing, and so The Sailing Channel was born. Today, thesailingchannel.tv is a mix of curation - Tory hosts many popular sailing movies from now and from the past - and original production. If you’ve seen ‘Red Dot on the Ocean,’ the Matt Rutherford story, that was one of Tory’s prouder moments as producer, as he brought it to life. We delve into how he made the business happen, some of his favorite sailing films, some technical aspects of how filmmaking has changed in the digital age, and much more. I’m recording this intro a little bit ahead of schedule - we’re currently anchored in Grand Case, on the French side of St. Martin. As I talk, Liz is sitting at the galley table making the show notes for this episode - one of the perks of doing that for us is she gets to hear the episodes before they release! As a reminder, you can find all the links and notes on these episodes on their blog page at 59northpodcast.com. Mia, meanwhile, just had the Sailrite sewing machine out to make some leather chafe guards for the anchor rode. The three of us are about to sail for Puerto Rico to meet the crew for the Havana passage. The big Cuba adventure is about to begin! But, of course, by the time this releases, we should already be back in Key West, or on our way. I hope it goes well! Thanks again to everyone who continues to email in. Keep them coming! And don’t forget to check out the calendar for 2017 if you want to come sailing on Isbjorn - that’s at 59-north.com/offshore. And finally, if you haven’t tried it yet, I encourage you to buy a bag of freshly roasted ‘Oh-Dark-Thirty’ coffee! We just got a new batch in for the boat, and it’s great!

#143 is Emma Louise Wyn Jones, a very charming and inspiring 22-year-old sailor and yachting photographer from the UK. I met Emma during the recent Caribbean 600 Race. If you happened to catch that video that the race media posted about Paul & I discussing the weather for the race, it was Emma who shot it. If you didn’t see it yet, check out this episode’s show notes page for the link. I was interested in talking to Emma about how she decided to go into yachting photography, her sailing history in general, and about what it’s like starting from scratch and trying to move up in the sailing world. I get a lot of emails from college students and twenty-somethings looking for advice, so this episode is particularly interesting if you’re one of those people wondering how to get your start. When we left Antigua in early March, Emma had gotten a crew job aboard ‘The Blue Peter’, the classic, 1930s-era 65-foot wooden sloop you might remember me mentioning in the Race Recap podcast that barged in on us at the start. I met the boat’s owner, Mat, who bought me a beer at the bar and apologized for the foul language his crew shouted at us! Anyway, Emma’s on that boat now, and will remain in the Caribbean for the rest of the winter season, doing her thing. In case you’re wondering, Emma has no secret formula for success, just a willingness to work hard and sleep in strange places. What a cool story! Contact Emma...For more information, enquiries for commissons or photo requests, feel free to get in touch! Email: elwjphotography@gmail.com Antigua Mobile: +1268 7855073 UK Mobile: +447551939849

#142. We’ve got two new sponsors for this show, but before we get to them, a quick note on Mia and I. We’re back stateside for a week, driving to Annapolis on the day this releases. If you’re in town, join us at Fawcett Boat Supplies on Thursday March 17th (St Patty’s Day!) for a free seminar we’re giving on fulfilling ocean sailing dreams. Fawcett’s has been holding these winter seminar series’ for a while now - in fact, Matt Rutherford’s is tonight, March 15 - and they’re a great way to pass the off season. Hope to see you on Thursday! This episode is sponsored by Mallard Marine Services & ATN Inc. Episode #141 is David Hayes & Isabelle Tremblay and their beautiful girls Rebecca & Demi. The ‘Morning Haze’ family, as we know they - by their boat name of course! - are veterans of the podcast, having been on the show, way back in episode #53. When we spoke then, their boat ‘Morning Haze’ was still on the other side of the Atlantic. Since then, they’ve sailed another several thousand miles together as a family, completing an Atlantic Circle and returning to their shoreside home in Quebec. We spoke in front of a live audience during the Toronto Boat Show in January, and delved a little bit into their family history, how and why they embarked on such an ambitious cruising project, what crossing an ocean (twice) in a Hunter is like, home-schooling, exploring Morocco and more. It was a lot of fun having Demi & Rebecca there this time too, to hear a bit of their perspective on what it’s like cruising as kids. The family is shore-based again, enjoying hunting and camping in the wilderness at their cabin up north. Isabelle also recently joined the World Cruising Club team and will be working part-time from her home in Quebec helping out with admin and event management on the North American side. As usual, thanks for all the great support from my awesome fans! If you want to support the podcast, go to 59-north.com and buy some small-batch-roasted Oh Dark Thirty coffee, sign up for a passage with us, or just send a friendly email. Thanks for all of it.

#141. It’s only been a week since our last episode, but when we went bi-weekly, I promised an interview every two weeks. Episode 140 is a live seminar I recorded from Toronto on Sailing the Baltic. Not an interview, of course, so sort of a bonus episode this week. I highly recommend going to 59-north.com/baltic to follow along with the slides from this talk. You’ll also find a load of show notes and links that will be useful if you ever plan to sail in the Baltic yourself. In this episode, Mia and I discuss sailing in the Baltic from our own perspective. We spent three summers in the Baltic on Arcturus, mainly sailing the Swedish coast, but also covering the Baltic islands of Aland and Gotland. This talk is full of practical notes and inspirational stories from our experiences there. Before we get to it, a few notes from us. Many of you have requested lists of books I talk about, and I finally got around to building a books page on the website. Go to 59-north.com/books to see all my favorites, sorted by category - some technical, some inspirational, and some having nothing at all to do with sailing! There’s also a form there if you have any you want to recommend yourself! Finally, we just sold the last crew space on the trans-Atlantic passage from Newfoundland to Ireland, which means we have just two spaces left to crew on Isbjorn for all of 2016. Those are both on our Ireland-Lisbon passage in mid-September. That’ll be a challenging Bay of Biscay crossing late in the season, with some potential for heavy weather, but at least it’ll get warmer as we sail south! For those of you from the US, it’s easier and cheaper than you think to fly to and from Europe, so don’t rule this one out because of the distance! Read details about the passage and signup on 59-north.com/offshore.

#139. if not THE BEST one yet, it's certainly the one I'm most proud of, for a number of reasons. It's the highly-produced, onboard audio, musically-enhanced storytelling podcast of Isbjorn's crew racing in the RORC Caribbean 600, only last week. Behind skipper Paul Exner, the crew of Dan, Charly, Vanessa, Keith, Ken & Michael and I charged around this most grueling of racecourses. We were in third place until I noticed a structural failure in the rudder bearings, forcing us to retire. This is the story, narrated by Andy and interspersed with live audio from onboard the boat during the race and music by Blaggards throughout. What do you think of this style of podcast? It's my first, and I hope you dig it! This episode is sponsored by Forbes Yachts. Visit forbesyachts.com to find your dream bluewater boat.

#138. I sat down with John & Amanda Neal of Mahina Expeditions, two of my favorite people in sailing and a huge inspiration both philosophically and practically in building my own offshore passage business with Isbjorn. This is the first of several podcasts I recorded in front of a live audience at the Toronto Boat Show in January, so you’ll hear some questions pop in from the handful of people we had in attendance. John & Amanda have varying and extremely interesting backgrounds that led them to the place they are today in sailing. John grew up on the west coast and did a bunch of single-handed sailing on his 27’ Albin Vega - the same kind of boat that Matt Rutherford completed his Around the America’s voyage on, by the way - and began giving lectures on how to go ocean sailing. He also became a pilot, a hobby he continues today. Meanwhile Amanda, half a world away in New Zealand, grew up cruising with her family and eventually wound up crewing on the first-ever all-female team in the Whitbread Race aboard Maiden. Their paths crossed many years later and since then the couple have sailed hundreds of thousands of miles together in their Hallberg-Rassy’s they call Mahina. Their voyages have taken them and over 1,000 crew members literally to the ends of the earth, from Arctic Norway to Antarctica and round the Horn over half a dozen times. They are consummate professionals and people to look up to if you’re interested in going offshore. Their website, mahina.com, is a treasure trove of information on all things offshore from boat design to checklists and everything in between, so be sure to check it out. As for our offshore passages, Mia and I only have 3 spots left for all of 2016 on Isbjorn. Just today we added another Caribbean trip for March of 2017, a week-long, downwind passage from Grenada to St Croix and the BVI following our trans-Atlantic from the Canaries. This week we’re gearing up for the Caribbean 600 Race, and we just completed the first two passages of 2016 with an awesome crew, despite some setbacks (check out the passages logs page on 59-north.com if you haven’t heard about it). You can find all of our passage info and sign up on 59-north.com/offshore. Thanks again for listening and I greatly appreciate the support of both my podcast fans and the awesome crews that have come sailing with us so far! Huge thanks to Ryan, Todd, Dan, Cicci, Greg, Andy & Mike for making the first two passages of 2016 so memorable and fun. With that, enjoy episode 138 with John & Amanda Neal! This episode is sponsored by Forbes Horton Yachts. Visit forbesyachts.com.

#137. is a unique one. It’s Part 2 of a very long conversation I had with Teddy J of the Sail Loot podcast. Teddy and I recorded over Skype when I was up in Toronto two weeks ago and wound up talking for over two and a half hours! This is unique in that It’s a ‘part 2.’ Teddy and I are releasing these episodes simultaneously on each other’s shows, so to catch Part 1 - in which I spend over 90 minutes talking about my own sailing history and a lot of the aspects of not only the Isbjorn business but also my entrepreneurial inspiration from my dad and my grandfather. So head on over to the Sail Loot podcast - just search Sail Loot in iTunes, or stream online at sailloot.com - and listen to Part 1. In Part 2 that follows here, I turned the tables on Teddy and spent the next hour talking to him about how he got inspired to go sailing after a trip in Dominica he did with some friends. Ever since then he’s always wondered how people managed to pay for their dreams, and hence the Sail Loot podcast was born. Teddy has over 30 episodes now interviewing a lot of well-known sailors about just how they make their dreams financially viable. Teddy and I also spend some time discussing the technical aspects of podcasting, talking about the gear we use and our production process. This was one of the most fun two and half hours I’ve ever spent on the phone! Again, be sure to download the Sail Loot podcast to hear me and Teddy in Part 1, and catch Part 2 here! Enjoy!

#136. is Rick & Julie Palm, live from Cruiser’s University in Annapolis way back in October. Rick & Julie Palm have been mentors of sorts for Mia and I. They had the role of event managers for World Cruising Club before we took over and have been active in the Caribbean 1500 basically since its inception under Steve Black, who was a dear friend of theirs. And they are consummate ocean sailors. If you want to follow the lead of a successful and humble ocean sailing couple, you can’t beat these two. They started cruising on a Tayana 37 and then upgraded to a Tayana 52 and completed a circumnavigation. Recently, now in their 70s, they bought an Outremer 51 catamaran. Comparable to the Gunboats in flat out speed, their new boat, Archer, is capable of speeds over 20 knots and is a true performance catamaran. In this episode Rick, Julie and I talk to a Cruiser’s University class about making the transition from monohull to catamaran, delving into Rick & Julie’s cruising history and what it’s like sailing over 20 knots in their new cat! If you’re in the Caribbean or Maine, look for the Ferrari red cat called Archer and say hi.