One of my first sailing memories came from when I was five-years-old. Our family was on a vacation in Hanko, Norway, and the hotel had a sailing instructor with a 20-foot sailboat. George, the instructor, was trying to teach me to steer straight and I was not getting the hang of it. I can remember telling him, “I’m steering straight, the fjord must be moving.”
When our family settled in Washington, D.C., for my elementary school years, we first had a 16-foot O’Day Daysailer and then a Columbia 28. We sailed out of the West River Sailing Club on the Chesapeake Bay in Galesville, Md. I took my first junior sailing classes WRSC in Penguins, Jet 14s and 470s. The instructors used racing, daysailing and cove exploring day trips to teach us to sail as well as instill a life-long love of the sport. On our family boat, we raced on Wednesday nights and cruised on the weekends. My father would take me and my friends on week-long cruises to celebrate my birthday. The club also had a two-week cruise every summer. On those cruises, every night the boats would raft up and while the adults drank their cocktails, all the kids would swim, compete in dinghy rowing races, hang out on the beach, etc. Being on the boat was fun for the whole family. Another great feature was that I got to race with many different sailors on a handful of different boats, which showed me how many different ways there are to enjoy the sport.
I honed my racing skills when our family moved to Columbus, Ohio. My father bought a Thistle and there was a ton of one-design regattas everywhere in the state. At our club there were two national champions and at the club on the reservoir across town their Thistle fleet had three national champions. Starting when I was 14, our family would drive all over the state going to regattas. Sailing in different venues against different sailors helped the learning process. I learned how to read the wind in different topography and learned by watching different sailors handled their boats – all which you don’t learn while sailing in the same place sailing against the same sailors.
Even though I spent the next 50 years racing dinghies and then offshore boats, the ember of the dream to sail around the world stayed with me. I got my first ocean cruising experience after covering the America’s Cup in Fremantle, Australia in 1986-87. USA TODAY hired me away from SAILING WORLD magazine and sent me to Australia for two-and-a-half months to cover the Cup. From the beginning they told me that the job would end after the Cup was over since they did not need a full-time boating writer. I was young and single, so I brought my sailing gear to Australia and found a boat to sail home on. San Franciscans Jim and Diana Jessie gave me a crew spot on their custom Lapworth 48 NALU IV. Their circumnavigation lasted six and three-quarter years. I sailed with them halfway around the world. Sailing on NALU, taught me how doable ocean voyaging can be.
In 1995, my soon to be wife and I bought a 10-year-old Express 37, which we raced for 17 years with great success on Long Island Sound. We loved the boat as we could sail it by ourselves and race it with a crew of 10-11. We made a lot of friends over the years who sailed with and against us. But no matter how many times I tried visualizing how the boat could be set up for sailing around the world, I could not figure out how to create enough storage space.
In 2012 I bought a boat that we could circumnavigate on. The second SOULMATES is a custom 40-footer designed by Rodger Martin in 1991 as a doublehanded ocean racer and fast cruising boat. She was commissioned and built by the custom boat builder Eric Goetz. Goetz built the boat as his personal yacht. As neither a full-on race boat and a rather spartan cruising boat, she was a hard boat to sell and had sat on the hard for five years until I bought her. What cruiser in their right mind buys a boat with a towering four-spreader carbon rig held up by running backstays? I liked her not only because she was fast, but she was built strong and light. I knew Goetz would short-change his own boat.
Before modifying the boat to add to her cruising potential, we collected a number of trophies along the way. In 2018 my crew won the Gitanna Trophy, which the season championship for the fastest PHRF boats on Western Long Island Sound. In 2020, I raced doublehanded to respect social distancing. My teammate Gerard Girstl and I not only won the doublehanded division of the 240-mile Stamford Vineyard Race, but we also beat all the fully crewed boats.
In 2021, with the pandemic still roaring, cruising conversations moved into high gear. I brought SOULMATES on a two-day trip up the Hudson River to Scarano Boat Building in Albany, N.Y., where they built higher cockpit coamings, built out storage cubbies, installed a windlass and anchor roller, converted the forward ring frame into a crash bulkhead and moved the running back stays attachment point to the transom from the back of the cabin house. Click here to see details on the modifications I made to the boat.
In April 2023, I retired so that I could work full time on the boat. I missed my deadline of leaving in the fall of 2023 and at the last minute had to find winter storage. After that, I set a hard deadline of June 1, 2024 to depart on a shakedown cruise to Maine. I only missed the deadline by two days.





