The day Sally Helme fired me was pretty rough. I could’ve used a life coach. Like the dude who was brought in to replace me. 

The year was 2005, and I was five years into my tenure as ­editor-in-chief of this magazine. It was a different era. My mentors, the preceding editors—Murray Davis, George Day, Dale Nouse and Bernadette Bernon—had always emphasized that in publishing, there was a church and a state, equal but separate, with an emphasis on separate. The churchly editorial department, the words and stories, represented the scripture. Publisher Sally ran the business side—the state—responsible for generating the advertising lucre that kept all the wheels spinning. 

I’d been taught that it was not only beneficial, but also essential, to maintain an arm’s length from business decisions and to refrain from granting favors to clients. My job was to represent and satisfy the readers and subscribers. If the publication was the least bit phony, there was nothing to sell. And if the publisher-editor relationship was a bit tense, to the point of even being slightly antagonistic, that was a good thing. Healthy. Necessary. 

Man, I was outstanding at that part of the job.

Honestly, I wasn’t shocked when I was sacked. But the one thing that really ticked me off was that my executive editor, Tim Murphy, whom I’d been grooming to take my place, was passed over for the job. (Which contributed to his decision to quit, which made me respect and love him even more than I already did.) Thinking back, though, even that didn’t surprise me. Tim would’ve definitely wreaked even more havoc than I had. 

A short time before all the drama, I went in to work on a weekend. There at the door to my office was a pile of fresh dog poop. I’d seen Sally’s car, so I knew she was there and, sure enough, so was her pooch. She apologized profusely and cleaned up the mess, but I’m fairly certain that doggie got a treat shortly thereafter. 

Oddly enough, my first connection with Sally was through my mom, who ran an employment agency in my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. Sally had come to Newport to launch an upscale marine magazine called The Yacht, and my mother had played a role in staffing it. It was how I first came to know Sally.

As has been made clear in this issue’s tribute to Sally (see page 8), she was a force of nature. The marine industry was super-macho in those days, led by hard boys like the Harken brothers, Ted Hood, Everett Pearson and similar characters. And while Sally cast a commanding presence, she wasn’t the type to curry favor by batting her eyelashes. No, to succeed in that hypermasculine world, she always had to be the smartest person in the room. A Princeton grad, she always was. 

All that said, it’s absolutely true that for me, getting canned was not a bad thing. I pivoted to writing more of my own stories, not editing ones that I’d commissioned. I wrote a few books, sailed my butt off, and did things that I’d never have contemplated had I remained in the editor’s chair. Though it stung at the time, I came to be very grateful that it had happened. 

And Sally and I, amazingly enough, eventually became pals. Real ones. She was always supportive, and connected me with more than a few fine opportunities. Sure, we still tangled a bit. She was on the board of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, and in its early days, I was one of that organization’s most outspoken critics, which I knew bugged Sally to no end. It was just like the old days.

The last time I saw Sally was at, of all places, a beauty parlor: We had the very same hairdresser. (It was our mutual scissors friend who texted me the news about her passing, a good day before anyone else knew.) We’d caught up, gossiped, had a few laughs, even shared a quick hug. There we were, after all this time, a pair of old mates still trying to keep up appearances.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.  

The post Requiem for a Mate appeared first on Cruising World.

On May 1, 2024, Donald M. Street died in Glandore, Ireland, at the nimble age of 93. He’d just finished commissioning his International Dragon Gypsy for this year’s racing season. He was also looking forward to racing in 2029 at a regatta celebrating the 100th anniversary of the classic Johan Anker design.

Don was always an optimistic guy. He was also a true hero of mine, on many levels. He was one of the reasons I’d sailed to the Caribbean, to rub shoulders with such larger-than-life sailing legends before they disappeared.

I’ll never forget our initial meeting. It was in the late 1970s. He’d sailed into Long Bay, St. Thomas, aboard his $100 yawl Iolaire, which he’d salvaged off the beach in Lindbergh Bay in 1959. There was much welcoming, yelling, laughing and swearing as Don tacked through the fleet. Everyone involved in the laborious docking procedure of his engineless yawl seemed drunk, and happily so. Dozens of dinghies acted as towboats, tugboats and “let’s add to the confusion” boats.

Despite the towline chaos, Don didn’t seem the least bit uptight. His attitude seemed to be that if worse came to worst, he’d just aim for something cheap, like a piling or seawall. He was obviously happy to be back in paradise. He’d just sailed from Bermuda or Ireland or the Mediterranean, or perhaps all three.

He handled his vessel well in close quarters, occasionally having to shift his ever-present Greenie beer from one gnarled fist to the other.

He wasn’t a big man. He was unexpectedly slight. But he had a large presence and obviously loved the spotlight. There was a sparkle in his alert eyes, a spring in his step. And he moved around his rough-hewn deck with the grace of a tipsy dancer.

Obviously, he wasn’t rich. He wore cast-off clothes and mismatched flip-flops of different sizes and colors, and a sweat-stained white floppy hat with a lanyard clipped to his faded T-shirt.

Why was I—am I—so intrigued by Don? Because he was everything I wanted to be: a sailor, a raconteur, a wood butcher, a notorious international cheapskate and a world-famous marine writer. He was all my aspirations rolled into one.

Oh, and he was a contrarian, always willing to engage in conversational combat wherever and whenever contentious sailors gathered around fist-banged rum shops, from Maine to Trinidad.

In fact, he had every skill I desired as a sailor, save one: He wasn’t much of a mechanic. Twisting wrenches wasn’t his thing. (The US Navy had attempted to force him to learn diesel mechanics, but Don outfoxed the brass by submerging within the submarine fleet.)

His solution to his lack of mechanical ability was simple. He’d just unbolt and deep-six every “infernal combustion engine” from every yacht that he could. He loved converting auxiliaries into moorings.

“Nothing is more satisfying than the splash of an iron breeze,” he’d say with a playful wink. “Why, I’d never disgrace Iolaire’s bilge with one of those stinking, oil-oozing, demonically possessed thingies.”

“Yank it out, Fatty!” he’d yell at me. “You’ll be a better sailor without it.”

Amid all the colorful Caribbean characters and wonderful waterfront wackos who gathered on Iolaire’s deck, only one individual stood out: Don’s sailing companion and second wife, Trich. She seemed like a perfectly normal individual. Weird. Disconcerting, even. Perpetually youthful, she often wore a T-shirt that read, “I’m Don’s wife, not his daughter.”

Don was also a man of great fun and stubborn opinion. For instance, in addition to diesel auxiliaries, he also despised GPS units. He waged a one-man war (in the pages of Caribbean Compass and in person) against their use right up to the millennium.

But back to our initial meeting in Yacht Haven. As I marveled at his running rigging (I’m using the phrase for chafed lines loosely here), he ambled forward, smiled and said proudly, “Tennis balls.” His voice was oddly high—hence his nickname, “Squeaky.”

I could see the ancient, hanked-on headsail, which Don had probably retrieved from a dumpster after following Ulysses around. It had major problems.

“When the clew pulls out of your headsail,” Don pontificated to me, “just bunch up the fabric around a tennis ball, then triple-wrap your sheet just forward of the tennis ball, and tie the whole mess with a bowline. As the bowline slips down, it will clinch up the fabric around the tennis ball, and, hell, you can sail through a gale or two, no problem.”

This works. I know. My hero taught me.

Note that Don didn’t say “if” your clew blows out or “in the rare event of” but rather “when the clew blows out,” as if this is how real sailors cleverly manage their sail inventory.

Don saw me marveling at his hodgepodge wooden deck. “More Dutchman than The Hague,” he said proudly.

That simple, five-word sentence sums up Don perfectly to me, both then and now. He didn’t treat me like an idiot; he figured that I knew The Hague was in Holland, and that Dutchmen have a reputation for thrift, and that replacing a long plank with many short planks (or Dutchmen) was a common practice among frugal sailors. He had a sense of humor, and he had the ability to turn weakness (going to sea with an oft-patched deck and a rotten headsail) into strengths (carrying on with the voyage) while demonstrating a simple, time-trusted solution to a complex problem (how to cruise endlessly with empty pockets).

Don did all this in some strange sailor-conspiracy mode that indicated we true sailors understood each other. If landlubbers didn’t, why should we care?

He was famous for his frugality. Once, in a sailors’ dive in Douarnenez, France, in 1992, he bought me two beers on the same day. My wife, Carolyn, was stunned. “Damn,” she said. “That’s an international sailing record.”

Yes, Don could squeeze a penny so hard that Abe Lincoln would cry. It was part of his charm. If Don thought it was worth carrying aboard his boat, it was most definitely.

Why was I—am I—so intrigued by Don? Because he was everything I wanted to be: a sailor, a raconteur, a wood butcher, a notorious international cheapskate and a world-famous marine writer. He was all my aspirations rolled into one.

Don was also a diverse, accepting fellow. I’ve partied with him and a bunch of giggling Rastas in Bequia, seen him conferring with the business elite of the BVI, and gotten drunk with him at a soccer hooligan bar in the United Kingdom. Oh, and one strange evening in 1990, I sipped champagne with him and Bill Koch aboard the maxi Matador after its boom broke. (Don was playing rock pilot during the Maxi World Championship on St. Thomas while I was scribbling for the Marine Scene.)

Don would buttonhole anyone, including famous sailors. Paul Cayard, Gary Jobson, Dennis Conner, Peter Holmberg, Tom Whidden, John Kolius and Jim Kilroy were all listening to Don’s sea yarns at various points during the 1990 maxi regatta.

Yes, Don knew every famous cruising sailor—and he knew them from an early age. When Don was 15 years old, L. Francis Herreshoff (yes, the L. Francis) was encouraging him to become a naval architect. How cool is that?

Another thing I liked about Don was how unpretentious he was. Once, while I was anchored in a crowded harbor on Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, Don sailed in. He tacked through the dense anchorage to a large, empty spot in the middle, and promptly ran aground.

Without batting an eye, Don whipped out pen and paper to carefully record his lat/lon via a hand bearing compass, to assist future generations of yachtsmen. Do Imray charts have all the rocks marked? You betcha, thanks to the tireless Don Street.

Ditto his cruising guides, which, Caribbean sea gypsies would fondly joke, Don originally wrote with a quill pen on foolscap by the light of a tallow candle.  

He was first published in Yachting in 1964, and then began earning money from every marine publication that purchased ink by the 55-gallon drum. While building my 36-foot ketch, Carlotta, I poured over his books Seawise and Ocean Sailing Yacht, both treasure troves of practical, tried-and-true cruising info.

Don wrote hundreds of marine articles, many for Cruising World. He always had his own slant on things, claiming that the magazine’s Aussie founder, Murray Lloyd Davis, managed a small parking lot next door to Cruising World, and that revenue from the parking lot kept the publication afloat in the early days.

I loved to hear Don’s stories about Carleton Mitchell, three-time consecutive winner of the Newport Bermuda Race (’56, ’58 and ’60) and author of Islands to Windward and Isles of the Caribbees. I’d been aboard his boats Caribe and Finisterre, and was thrilled to hear Don tell sea yarns about him and Carleton pacing their wooden decks in the 1950s. Don was on a first-name basis with all the sailing heroes of my youth: Irving Johnson, Eric and Susan Hiscock, and Miles and Beryl Smeeton all knew him.

Don cared about everything pertaining to cruising vessels and the sailing lifestyle. If you called yourself a sailor but didn’t know the difference between carvel or lapstrake planking, he’d shake his head in disgust.

“The guy didn’t even know what a limber chain was!” he’d rant to me. “Didn’t know his garboard seam from his horn timber! I told the guy, ‘There are no ribs on a boat. Wooden boats have frames, man, not ribs!’”

Don learned to sail on Long Island Sound, born into a New York banking family. One of his first jobs was on Huey Long’s Ondine, a 53-foot Abeking & Rasmussen yawl, first as deck swabbie, then as skipper (with no increase in salary).

Soon, Don was rubbing shoulders with Charlie “Butch” Ulmer and other sailing rock stars of the day, many of whom mentioned the glories of cruising the Caribbean. Don impulsively decided to fly in and check out the scene.

Landing via airplane on St. Thomas on a Friday in the mid-1950s, he was working as a yacht surveyor by Tuesday. He drifted into writing about the growing charter industry after Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck (a frequent St. Thomas visitor who often chartered with famed Virgin Islands sailor Rudy Thompson) told Don that the key to becoming a writer was to write six days a week, six hours a day, and then wear down the editors with his submissions.

Don did exactly that. He was blasé about his writing. When I was a copy editor at Jim Long’s Caribbean Boating, he’d drop off piles of notated napkins and pieces of scribbled, rum-soaked bits of paper. He’d say, “See what you can do, Fatty. It’s all funny stuff, know what I mean? What should we call it? Does ‘Don’s Caribbean Capers’ sound like a good title?”

He was irrepressible. Nothing fazed him. At some point, Don was trying to sell me yacht insurance, despite it being easier to get blood out of a turnip. Then he hooked up with Imray charts. The man had incredible chutzpah.

We also sailed on many of the same boats, though never at the same time. I acted as navi-guesser on Paul Adamthwaite’s Stormy Weather for many years, leaving only when things devolved into fisticuffs during the infamous Great Bermudian Pillow Mutiny. Don slotted on board after the Monkey Crew revolted. He sailed with Paul during Stormy’s last Fastnet under Paul’s ownership.

Oh, Don was a rascal. He soon found that many folks wouldn’t charter Iolaire because she was engineless, a fact that Don then conveniently forgot to share. If a charter guest demanded that he crank up the engine, Don would agree to “motorsail” with his loud Stuart Turner genset thumping in the background.

Don also had an incredible memory. No matter where we’d meet in the Atlantic Basin or how long we hadn’t seen each other (or how many Greenies he’d consumed), Don would immediately launch into whatever marine bone of contention we’d previously been arguing about. For a decade or so, we hotly discussed the minutiae of cranse and gammon irons—exactly why, I can’t now recall. (A cranse iron holds the fore, bob and whisper stays at the end of the bowsprit, while the gammon secures the staysail stay and holds down the bowsprit as it comes off the deck.)

Was there tragedy in Don’s life? Yes. In the mid-1950s, his first wife was murdered on Grenada while Don was off-island. She was killed by a machete-wielding local. Don was 25 years old at the time with a young daughter named Dory. (Later, he had three sons with the Irish lass Trich, who raised the entire brood.) Don never spoke of the murder, to my knowledge.

But he did find interesting ways to say whatever he wanted to say. There was a tiny storage place under Iolaire’s bridge deck—perfect for a couple of fenders. Often, the sound of a clacking manual typewriter could be heard emanating from there, and occasionally, a young female graduate of Vassar or Goddard would emerge. “I’m Don’s executive assistant,” she’d say while wiping the mildew out of her hair, “tidying up his latest manuscript.”

No, they didn’t want to be rescued from their hovel. “I’m having the time of my life,” one told me. “Making literary history in the Caribbean. What could look better on my CV?”

I think the last time I saw Don was around 2010 in the Canaries. It was just before the ARC Rally, which was run by our mutual friend Jimmy Cornell. Don was in fine fiddle—a Greenie in one hand and a glass of Mount Gay in the other.

We kept in touch via email. Don was never shy about expressing himself or seeking help with his many doomed causes.

“They’re trying to make me wear a life jacket, Fatty,” he complained about modern yacht racing, “Over my dead body.”

Another email ranted about folks going offshore with electro everything. “They don’t even have manual bilge pumps,” he’d write, aghast.

The most amazing thing about Don was that, after all those sea miles and all those crazy Caribbean capers, he died of natural causes, surrounded by his loving family and friends.

Fair winds, my friend. Give ’em hell in Fiddler’s Green.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cruising World does not condone the practice of disposing of man-made materials in the ocean, and strongly encourages the use of lifejackets on board at all times.

The post RIP, Squeaky 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.

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If, while surfing the web, you happen upon a YouTube series called Sailing Blue Pearl, during Episode 15, you might think you’ve found the reality show Survivor. There are grimaces, grunts, gritted teeth, slumped shoulders and a voice in despair, close to defeat.

But the rivalry here is not between tribes in a made-up game. The antagonist is a boat. It’s a used boat, 40 years old, that an American couple found in Mexico. It was full of potential. But at first, as each problem and roadblock surfaces, and as the dream of sailing recedes, the series is almost painful to watch.

“There is so much broken on this boat that we really have contemplated selling this boat even though we just launched it a week and a half ago,” the usually bubbly series producer, Jessica Hanna, says in a voiceover.

Four months earlier, she and her husband, Chris, had acted on his dream to live on a boat. They bought a 1984, 65-foot, 40-ton Irwin ketch. After their first week at anchor, she panned her camera around Mexico’s La Paz Bay, past neighboring yachts floating in paradise, past a visibly exhausted Chris. She had a glass of wine in her other hand and was drinking it before it went bad because the refrigerator, “fixed” five times, still wouldn’t cool. “I look at the other boats out there, honestly, and think their life must be wonderful,” she says. “We thought this life would be wonderful. But there is so much wrong with this boat that all we can think about is, have we made a mistake?”

I’ve watched a fair number of refitting videos, but none so real or so honest, so full of highs and lows. The Hannas ­struggle with virtually every issue that first-time used-boat owners typically encounter. Relentlessly recorded and professionally edited, Sailing Blue Pearl is a documentary of missed problems, misplaced trust, naiveté and the realities of buying an old boat on which to cruise.

That said, each episode also portrays grit, ingenuity and small triumphs as problems are solved one by one. Most of all, what comes across is love and commitment between a wife and ­husband as they pursue their dream, and the faith they share in God and a sunset glass of champagne. If you binge forward six months to Episode 39, “Welcome to Our Home,” and watch the Hannas walk through their yacht, beautifully restored and cruising the Sea of Cortez, you’ll be struck, as I was, by their resolve and vision.

Their story begins in 2005 in a ballroom-dancing class in Redding, California, where Jessica, 45 and an Oregon transplant, hoped to meet new friends. By chance, she and Chris, 65, got paired for a waltz. As schmaltzy as it sounds, they were engaged four months later. They married in January 2006. Their wedding waltz is preserved in Episode 29, “A Love Story.”

After traveling to 19 countries on vacation, Chris retired from civil engineering, and the couple spent two years seeing 30 states while living in an RV. At some point, they drove it to La Paz, Mexico, and began looking for a boat. 

The Irwin, which had been chartered for $12,000 a week, was packed with amenities designed to make living and entertaining comfortable—luxurious, actually, by used-boat standards. It had a good-size salon, four staterooms, a spacious galley, three heads, a generator, a watermaker, an inverter, five air conditioners, two freezers, a refrigerator, hot water, a washer and dryer, a radar, navigation aids, and all the displays that a yacht might need.

While the sails, winches and spars seemed to be in good shape, previous surveys were shallow. Rather than commission another one, they asked local electricians who had worked on the boat to check its many systems. During the sea trial, “everything turned on…there was no problem,” Jessica says. “I mean everything ran, and then we bought the boat, and it was like magic—because there was much that did not turn on for us ever again, until we had it repaired or replaced.”

Chris adds: “The previous owner was less than forthcoming with regard to the condition of the boat. Let’s just put it that way.”

Wearing what they now admit were rose-colored glasses, they paid $200,000 for Jersey Girl II and renamed it Blue Pearl for the rare pearls that were once cultured nearby. The grins on their faces in Episode 3, “We Bought a Boat,” didn’t last long.

What follows in Jessica’s weekly video series is a medley of ­color exploring La Paz’s tourist port, and visits to beaches with their two dogs in their dinghy mixed with daily work on the boat. Two scenes that stick in my head: Chris emerging from yet another hatch, wearing kneepads and a headlamp, holding a broken wire or clogged tube or the rusted Vice-Grip that held the autopilot together; and their daily sunset toasts with a kiss.

They had budgeted $50,000 for upgrades. As of this writing, they were at $75,000, much of it spent on technicians who came and went erratically. A windlass rebuild set them back $1,000, and though they have a 620-gallon diesel-fuel capacity, they installed 500 watts of solar panels on the cockpit frame to charge new lithium batteries. A Starlink antenna and subscription significantly improved internet communications.

Their YouTube channel, with 65 videos, has attracted 2,875 subscribers and more than 130,000 views of their finished walk-through. Comments have helped them cope, tweaking what they should have done, and praising them for their pluck. 

“You two are such great inspiration,” Greta Geankoplis wrote. “The dream of cruising, and the love for it that can follow later, almost always begins with complete ignorance of sailing.”

Neil Campion commented: “Don’t give up. Cruising is taking the good with the bad.”

Another fan wrote, “Blue Pearl—my new National Geographic.”

Stan Owens added: “And we had all thought RV life was challenging. Think the S.S. Owens will stick to life on land a bit longer.”

After a year as boat owners and 1,100 miles up the Sea of Cortez, Chris and Jessica plan to cross the Gulf of California to Mazatlan on Mexico’s mainland to watch the solar eclipse in April 2024. From there, they may enter the Panama Canal to cruise the Caribbean.

When you watch their videos, filled not just with angst, but also with the beauty around them in the Sea of Cortez—breaching whales, dolphins, fresh fish caught off the stern, friends and family laughing, a cup of coffee in a quiet dawn—one can be forgiven for thinking that Chris and Jessica Hanna have nothing to prove. They are, in real time, starring in their own sailing dream.

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MerConcept, a French high-performance hub for offshore sailing and sustainable technologies, has launched a racing program to give female sailors experience in offshore multihull racing. 

Applications are now open, with a deadline of March 24 to apply.

UpWind by MerConcept will recruit, train and support a squad of six female sailors as they compete in the Ocean Fifty offshore sailing circuit, with the ambition to have a female skipper on the starting line in a multihull for the 2026 Route du Rhum. 

The all-new team will also be entered into the 2024 Ocean Fifty multihull circuit, led by the only Italian to win The Ocean Race, Francesca Clapcich.

Backed by founding sponsor 11th Hour Racing, UpWind by MerConcept’s overarching goal is to be a driving force in the transformation of offshore sailing. UpWind’s vision is for a more inclusive and diverse racing community, with equal opportunities for everyone. 

Also part of the vision is creating a larger pool of female talent available for selection to join mixed multihull crews for record-setting challenges like the Jules Verne Trophy.

MerConcept was founded by François Gabart, the fastest person to sail around the world. In a press release, Gabart stated, “Our mission at UpWind is to support and empower female sailors to excel in high-performance, multihull offshore racing, breaking down barriers, and creating a welcoming and safe space for everyone.

“Teams perform at their best when they comprise diverse talent,” Gabart added. “A first step to achieving this is to support the growth in the critical mass of talented female sailors with offshore multihull experience so that all teams taking on challenges like the Jules Verne Trophy will have mixed crews in the future.”

Female sailors from anywhere in the world can apply. Cécile Andrieu, MerConcept’s director of racing, says the project is open to a wide range of profiles and backgrounds. 

“Ideally, our applicants will have some good racing experience, whether it is offshore, inshore, match-racing, or Olympics, and have a genuine desire to get involved and bring this new racing team to life,” Andrieu stated in the press release. “At the end of selection week, we hope to have recruited two groups: a performance-focused squad to take part in the Grand Prix and trans-Atlantic races, and a second, which will support in the training and on deliveries, with a view to gaining valuable sailing experience and miles for their CV.”

What is the race schedule for the 2024 Ocean Fifty circuit? It’s yet to be officially announced, but is expected to include four events between June and October, including a trans-Atlantic race from west to east.

Where to apply: go to upwindbymerconcept.com. 

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As every sailor and music lover knows, the world became a quieter place in September, when the one-of-a-kind songwriter, mariner and balladeer Jimmy Buffett passed away after a bout with skin cancer. The outpouring of grief, appreciation and remembrances on social media was substantial, and nearly everyone seemed to have their own personal memory or tribute. Here’s mine.

I met Buffett in Fremantle, Western Australia, in the Down Under summer of 1987. I was there covering the America’s Cup during what became Dennis Conner’s Redemption Tour, when he won back the trophy he’d lost four years earlier. Buffett was a huge fan of Conner and his Stars & Stripes crew, and had flown to Oz for the duration, often playing sets at their waterfront base. It was pretty cool.

We had a mutual friend in writer P.J. O’Rourke, on assignment for Rolling Stone, where he’d more or less been handed the “gonzo journalist” baton from Hunter Thompson. P.J. knew absolutely nothing about sailboat racing, and we became press-boat mates. I could explain a jibe-set spinnaker hoist or leeward mark rounding, and he could crack me up with his endless array of anecdotes. They included his time roaming through the islands under sail with his pal Jimmy on Buffett’s Cheoy Lee cruising boat. Through P.J., I caught a couple of Buffett’s impromptu gigs in Fremantle dive bars, and was always happy to hang with that crew. 

All that said, at that stage, I wasn’t all that much of a Buffett fan. My taste changed in the ensuing years after I caught a couple of his live shows with the Coral Reefer Band (it was always hilarious to see 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley shaking the castanets). But what finally sold me on Jimmy Buffett’s music was when I started to pay serious attention to his lyrics. Specifically, those on one of his earlier records, the one named after the ­highway running down Florida’s Atlantic shoreline: A1A. 

A1A is not only my favorite Buffett album, but it’s one of my favorite records ever. So much so that I’ve come to think of the person, JB, and the album, A1A, as a single entity, one and the same. None of his truly famous hits are on it; there are no paradisiacal cheeseburgers or soothing blender drinks or folks getting drunk and getting down. Instead, there are 11 exquisitely crafted tunes, only about three or four minutes apiece, but with tales, lessons, and wordplay as carefully rendered and nuanced as almost any 300-page novel. If I were marooned on an island and could bring only five CDs with me, this would be one of them. 

Buffett’s genre has been dubbed Gulf & Western, which seems pretty accurate, but A1A is known for being part of his “Key West phase,” which also fits. By whatever term, one thing is certain about this collection: Nobody without a deep understanding and affection for the sea, nobody but a sailor, could’ve written them. 

Oh, the lyrics, like “Squalls out on the Gulf Stream, big storms coming soon” from “Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season.” Or “I’m hanging on to a line from my sailboat, all Nautical Wheelers save me” from “Nautical Wheelers.” Or “Got a Caribbean soul I can barely control” from “Migration.” Or this, from my favorite Buffett song, “A Pirate Looks at Forty”: “Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call, wanted to sail upon your waters since I was 3 feet tall.” 

The ode to Mother Ocean. Our very essence, our lifeblood. Damn straight, brother. 

Even the spare, inviting cover of A1A is just about perfect. Before he was an author, pilot, restaurateur, real estate mogul, Broadway producer, cultural icon, and just about every other bloody thing under the sun, he was just Jimmy, tanned and smiling in his rocking chair, under a palm tree with the white sand and blue sea behind him. A man in his element. It’s how we all should remember him. 

So, RIP, A1A. And thank you. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

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Take your boat out cruising enough times, and you’ll be smacked upside the head once or twice by the golden rule. 

No, I’m not talking about the “doing unto others” thing. I’m instead referring to the golden rule that should be etched into the trim somewhere in every cockpit: “Never cruise on a hard schedule.”

Being the perpetual planner that I am, I’ve always had a penchant for making a float plan. I probably get too much satisfaction from surveying a chart and, along with a tide table and my favorite weather app, plugging in some waypoints on the eve of a long sail. Double points if it’s a paper chart and I get to bust out a set of parallel rules and a pencil. 

Yet, as we voyagers know, that “three-hour tour” doesn’t always go according to plan. 

I recall one particularly sporty passage from Martha’s Vineyard to Newport, Rhode Island, many years ago. It was the final leg of a summer getaway with my wife on a diversion from her parents’ Great Loop undertaking. We stole away for a few days, and I got to introduce that side of the family to my old, cherished southern New England cruising grounds.

Going against my golden rule, everything was contingent on a Sunday return to Newport. My wife and I both had to be back at work on Monday, so we were handcuffed to a late-afternoon flight out of Providence on Sunday. Well, Mother Nature is always subject to change. Right around sunrise on Sunday, a cacophony of metal shrouds and stays slapped the mast as an unwelcome wake-up alarm. If not for those flights, we certainly wouldn’t have left Vineyard Haven that morning into a sea of whitecaps—not insurmountable, but not exactly pleasurable conditions. A prevailing northeasterly breeze coming off the mainland allowed little protection, though it did give us a favorable wind angle for reaching. We pounded all the way down Buzzards Bay and into Rhode Island Sound, soaked to the bone, taking spray in the face like we were in a locker-room Champagne celebration after winning the Stanley Cup. 

After one heck of a sleigh ride, we had a quick celebration of our own as we snugged the lines at Bannister’s Wharf and grabbed a cup of chowder at the Black Pearl before departing for the airport. The lesson: Even the best-laid waypoints can’t account for elements beyond our control, which is why you should never boat on a schedule. A hard schedule can pose a logistical nightmare, and it can suck a lot of the fun out of the broader cruising experience. 

I was reminded about all this during Cruising World’s annual Boat of the Year contest in October at the Annapolis Sailboat Show. With anywhere between a handful and a herd of boats vying for the coveted award each year, regardless of how well-organized our team is, some logistical challenge usually rears its ugly head. The judging, done over the course of a few days, is always on a tight schedule. This year, there were 19 qualifying nominees that needed dockside inspections and on-water sea trials amid the usual boat-show melee.

The first domino fell early, when we had to replace one of our judges because of an illness just days before the show. Then, one boat missed the show altogether, courtesy of a shipping snafu. A nasty virus soon sidelined our veteran photographer, as well as a few key nominee-boat representatives.  

Luckily, our Boat of the Year crew are a bunch of experienced sailors with a knack for assessing a situation, tacking out of bad air, and continuing toward the waypoint. And, oh, the sailing was sweet—as you’ll find here, and also in our January/February issue. 

Whether navigating the unpredictable sea or the turbulent eddies of a Boat of the Year contest, remember this: Sometimes the true joy of our journeys is found in the exhilarating freedom to navigate the unexpected. 

Follow Andrew Parkinson on Instagram @andrewtparkinson.

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There’s an alarm clock on the nightstand beside Tim Jackett’s bed in his home in Erie, Pennsylvania, but he doesn’t need it. Every weekday morning, at the otherwise sleepy hour of 5 a.m., he’s already wide awake, up and at it, ready to go. The drive to Painesville, Ohio, the current home of Tartan Yachts, is a 75-mile straight shot down I-90 that he can generally knock off in a bit over an hour (though he once got stranded on the highway for 11 long hours in a lake-effect blizzard). 

Jackett started working for Tartan as a summer job in college almost 50 years ago. Though he hasn’t toiled there continuously since then, the work has been the central thread woven through his long, eventful ­career as a boatbuilder and naval architect. These days, he not only designs the boats at Tartan, but he also oversees the operations and production. The plant gets ­underway at 7 a.m. sharp, and he won’t be late. 

Jackett’s a boatbuilder all right, but, to be more specific, because his roots play such an important role in who he is and what he does, he’s a Midwestern boatbuilder, a born-and-bred northeast Ohio boy, a child of Lake Erie, where his passion for sailing was kindled and the seeds of his lifelong craft were sown. 

The sixth of seven kids, Jackett’s the son of a US Navy veteran who briefly set down stakes in Florida following his service in World War II but soon returned to good old Cleveland, where he and his wife were raised. The family eventually moved to the east-side suburb of Mentor, pronounced Menner: “No ‘t’ in there,” Jackett said. “If you’re from Menner, you’re from Menner.”

Jackett attended the public high school there, but, more important, the little town had a cool, cozy, ­communal sailing club. It was a no-frills outfit (unlike the nearby hoity-toity yacht club) where his parents sailed their little wooden sailboat, a Privateer named Jacquette (the original spelling of the family name, in honor of the old man’s French-Canadian heritage). That club is where the racing bug bit Jackett.  

“There certainly wasn’t any junior sailing program, but it was a great place,” he said. “We were kind of the outcasts. We raced on Thursday nights because the yacht club raced on Wednesdays. And we used their marks. We did try to be courteous about it, but, yeah, we were the hoodlums across the water.”

Following high school, Jackett applied to exactly one college: the tiny, focused Cleveland Institute of Art. “I thought I was going to be a painter,” he said. “I was a bit of a loner at that point, and going up on a mountaintop somewhere and painting sounded pretty good. But my very practical dad didn’t think much of that as a career choice and encouraged me to go from the fine-arts side to the more-commercial program, which was industrial design. So I went down that path. And I spent my whole time there drawing boats. I got a copy of Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design and learned how to draw lines plans. When everyone else was drawing toasters and headlights, I was drawing boats.”

The boat-crazed lad searching to find his place on the watery planet went through a family friend to land the ideal summer gig: as a gofer at the busy local boatbuilding concern, Tartan Yachts. Launched in 1951 and originally called Douglass & McLeod after its two founders, the company switched in 1961 from building small one-design racing dinghies and launched the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Tartan 27, a wild success commercially and on the racecourse. By the mid-1970s, however, after a fire wiped out the company’s base in Grand River, it was owned and run by a passionate sailor named Charlie Britton, who would come to play a major mentoring role in Jackett’s life. 

Jackett’s job involved mostly warranty work, though he once leapt into murky Lake Erie to see if one could reattach a centerboard pennant on a Tartan 37C without hauling the boat (one could). During the couple of summers that he worked there, he never actually crossed paths meaningfully with Britton. That all changed thanks to, of all things, a local bar called the Beachcomber that the after-work Tartan crew frequented. 

Jackett’s sister was a friend of the owner, who wondered if her art-school brother could build a model sailboat to display in the center of the joint. (If you strolled to the men’s room, you couldn’t miss Jackett’s framed boat renderings from his college classes lining the walls.) Jackett was mightily enamored of the slick Tartan 41, of which there were several on the lake, including the one campaigned by Britton.

“I’d spent a lot of time looking at the boat and found a brochure and decided to do the 41,” he said. “The model was fully rigged, sheathed in fiberglass, had the keel, winches, everything. Charlie had a look and asked, ‘Who the hell made that?’ And that’s when I got to know him a bit.”

That first impression proved lasting. The summer after graduating, in 1977, at the tender age of 22, he was hired full time at Tartan. Little did he know then, but he’d embarked upon his lifelong pursuit.

If, at the time, jackett had any inkling about the tenuous future of American production ­boatbuilding, or about the twisting, turning marine-­industry journey that lay ahead of him personally, he just might’ve packed up his easel and headed for the hills. In the moment, however, there was no time for deep contemplation. His first project was the 33-foot, one-design Tartan Ten racer, and it was full-on.

Britton was betting the farm on the boat, with the ambitious goal of having 40 boats on the starting line the following season (other than the prototype, none had actually been built). Sparkman & Stephens had drafted the lines for the hull but little else. So, Britton set up Jackett in the development shop with a drafting table and told him to get to work. 

“I ended up doing the deck design and what little interior there was to it,” he said. “Charlie was a product guy, not a designer, but he loved the development side of it. If you had a sketch, he’d put his notes all over it. And we’d sit down and talk about stuff, and I’d take his thoughts and help him turn it into what we were trying to do. I felt really privileged to work with Charlie. He was such an experienced sailor.”

Collaborating with Britton on this inaugural ­effort was an almost perfect introduction to the business of creating yachts for a consumer market. And it would lay the groundwork for so much more to come. But ­working with Britton was also an adventure because it was almost never exactly clear what would happen next.

For instance, the union situation in Ohio was ­problematic, so much so that Britton shut down the production floor and moved that whole shooting match to Tartan’s second facility, in Hamlet, North Carolina, to which Jackett was also dispatched. In Hamlet, Jackett graduated from conjuring deck layouts to engineering entire systems, with Britton once again looking over his shoulder and working through problems and challenges. “It was a great experience,” he said. “Talk about a hands-on education.”

Also in Hamlet—because what else was a ­boatbuilder going to do with his time off—Jackett decided to rent a little shop and design loft, and build his own cold-­molded, 24-foot-6-inch racing sloop (it was ­actually his second personal boat, having completed one earlier in Ohio). 

“I’d work all day at Tartan, grab a six-pack, and go to work on my next boat,” he said. “One day I’m down on my hands and knees, and Charlie comes in and says, ‘What are you doing?’ And I tell him I’m building my next boat. Next thing you know, he’s down there on his hands and knees with me.” The sensei and student, back at it.

Like Jackett, Britton always had a side project going; under the auspices of a company he called Britton Marine, he commissioned Southern California naval architect Doug Peterson to draw a powerful 43-foot offshore racer, exposing Jackett to yet another facet of design work and the approach of a renowned designer. But the move also signaled Britton’s own growing wariness with union labor and Tartan in general. In 1984, he pulled the plug and put it up for sale. 

Partners John Richards and Jim Briggs (of Briggs & Stratton power-equipment fame) were the next ­owners, and their five-year tenure was characterized by ­missteps and false starts. But Jackett said that he will forever be indebted to them for one satisfying opportunity: to design his own boat, soup to nuts, the Tartan 31.

“Charlie was so enamored of Sparkman & Stephens,” he said. “I don’t know that he ever would’ve given me free rein to be the complete designer of the product. I made my pitch to John and Jim, and they said, ‘OK, we’ll do it.’ At that time, the development cost for a 31-foot boat was about $400,000. At that point, I’m like 30 years old, and I’ve got a company committing major resources to something that I conceived and drew up. It was cool.”

The new owners’ confidence was not misplaced; the production run for the 31 totaled 165 units, which made it profitable. The design also earned a Cruising World Boat of the Year award, which made it a critical success. Moreover, it gave Jackett a new title: chief designer of Tartan Yachts.

But Briggs and Richards weren’t in it for the long haul. When they decided to bail out in 1990, Jackett took the molds for a Tartan side effort called the Thomas 35, a one-design racer, and hung out his own shingle to build them: Jackett Yachts. Which is just about the time everything once again came to a fork in the road. A businessman named Bill Ross picked up the Tartan pieces and lured Jackett back into the fold, this time not only as the brand’s designer, but also as chief of operations.

Ross cared little about boats, per se; his expertise lay in finding distressed companies and making them whole. His stewardship was oftentimes a rough ride down a road littered with potholes. But two significant events occurred during the time he owned the place. The first, in 1996, was acquiring the popular, longtime Canadian brand, C&C Yachts. Jackett was thrilled, and in rapid order designed three C&C’s: the 110, 99 and 121, of which some 400 yachts would eventually be built. 

“They were my favorite boats growing up, even more than Tartans,” he said. “Really good performers, more toward the racing side, and now we could take on
J/Boats a little bit. The two brands worked together very well. Dealers were hungry for them. It was a really smart move. I stopped racing my own little boats and started racing the C&Cs I designed. I took the 99 to Key West and did some nice events with it. It was all fun stuff.”

The second seismic shift happened in the late 1990s. With their Fairport, Ohio, plant bursting at the seams, Ross enlisted the services of a fellow named John Brodie, who was exporting some of Tartan’s stainless-­steel parts from a facility in China, to build the Tartan 4600 there. The tooling was loaded on a ship, and Jackett landed in China the same day the molds arrived. After inspecting the decrepit infrastructure, he almost immediately realized that the entire idea was disastrous and wouldn’t work.

But one significant development arose from the ­otherwise failed experiment: Brodie wanted to build the boats in high-tech, vacuum-bagged, two-part ­epoxy laminates—a superior mode of construction—and Ross was all in. He told Jackett to make it ­happen (his arm didn’t need twisting; he’d been ­employing West System epoxy, which he loved, on his own cold-molded boats for years). Jackett enlisted some of the top names in materials and composite structures, eventually bringing all the new technology to the Ohio floor. At the same time, Tartan acquired an autoclave and started fashioning its own carbon-fiber rigs and parts. It was a major shift in how the boats were built, and, for that matter, marketed. 

“All of that dovetailed into our advertising, which Bill was really smart about,” Jackett said. “It was all about ‘engineered to perform.’ Audi was running a similar marketing program at the time, and Bill didn’t mind plagiarizing from the auto industry. It was an important element back then, and it still is. Our boats are different from a run-of-the-mill production boat.”

But the roller-coaster ride was far from over. The early 2000s were good years for Tartan, right up to the Great Recession of 2008, when the hammer fell on the entire economy. Tartan wasn’t immune: Ross sold out. Jackett Yachts reopened for business. There was a collaboration with Island Packet on a boat called the Blue Jacket 40; the launching of a new little daysailer, the Fantail; and the acquisition of the Legacy powerboat brand from Freedom Yachts. In 2014, thanks to the Legacy business he brought with him, Jackett teamed up with Tartan’s latest owners and rejoined the firm. 

If Jackett had never done another thing in the ­marine industry, you could say he’d enjoyed a rewarding, stellar career. But it turns out that there was another chapter yet to unfold.

the heart attack—yes, heart attack—that Jackett suffered after racing sailboats on Lake Erie this past August was certainly unexpected. At first, he thought the tightness in his chest was from sitting too long in an awkward position on the boat. Once ashore, he realized it was something far more serious. Quick action by several folks at his yacht club averted what otherwise might’ve been tragic. And he was a lucky dude indeed, surviving with all systems intact and sparking. 

I learned of Jackett’s health situation and other ­personal matters on a visit to the Painesville plant this past September while on an assignment to ­review the Tartan 455, his latest design. It’s a pretty sweet, ­powerful sailboat, with a raised deckhouse very much outside his usual purview. But as I discovered on a windy test drive on Lake Erie, like every Jackett design I’ve ever helmed, you get some sail up and it will haul the mail. So there was no real surprise there. Instead, the surprises came, one after the next, on a tour of the factory.

It was bustling place full of frenetic activity but with a palpable feeling of camaraderie and purpose. Pink Floyd blared from the wood shop. A makeshift help-wanted sign was placed near the entrance: “Marine Mfg, Now Hiring, Apply Inside.” Jackett was bearded (his last shave was the day he graduated from high school; his wife, Donna, and their three kids have never seen him without it) and bedecked in a Cleveland Browns hoodie (his beloved Brownies were playing that evening on Monday Night Football), and he looked every bit the image of the burly, no-nonsense Midwestern boatbuilder. He was clearly quite proud to show some visitors around. “We make two things here,” he said by way of introduction. “Boats and dust.”

At the front of the shop, a trio of older Tartans, including a 4400 that had been thrashed in the Bahamas during Hurricane Dorian, were undergoing complete refits, which is a welcome and steady stream of business. Around the corner, a new rudder was being cast for a Tartan 37C. If you have an older Tartan that needs parts or an upgrade—“regardless of vintage,” Jackett said—the company’s happy to address it for you. 

The hulls and decks for several new Tartan 365s, one of three models currently in production, including the 395 and the 455, were in various stages of construction. The 365 is Jackett’s latest critical triumph, the Cruising World Domestic Boat of the Year for 2022 and one of his 31 overall designs, including the C&Cs and the five backyard boats he ultimately built. (When complimented on that impressive number, he cracked, “We become prolific and old at the same time.”) In the rigging shop, a worker was laying up swaths of carbon fiber, straight out of the fridge, in the autoclave for a new spar. Out back, the original Tartan 27, Hull No. 1, was propped up and ready for a complete makeover, set to coincide with the 65th anniversary of its launching in 2025.

Jackett led us from the factory floor to the stairs and his second-floor office, where a window overlooks the entire hectic scene (and where his contented pooch, Ella, a German shepherd/husky mix, waited ­patiently). At the foot of the staircase was a pair of sneakers ­painted gold and mounted on a plaque. 

“That’s the Golden Tennis Shoe Award,” he said with a laugh, “for the guy most improved in staying at his workstation and not wearing out his shoes.”

This is where Seattle Yachts, the latest entity to own Tartan, comes in. In early, pre-pandemic 2020, Jackett was running the place with Rob Fuller, but matters “reached a financial rough point.” They reached out to Peter Whiting, a managing partner of Seattle Yachts, an established Tartan dealer that had several boats on order. Whiting paid a visit to the plant. And, in rather short order, Seattle Yachts took over Tartan Yachts. It was a strong move by the Pacific Northwest firm to commit to a good, old American brand.

Originally a brokerage office, Seattle Yachts had pivoted into boatbuilding and owned several brands. After purchasing Tartan, it made several six-figure investments, including the purchase of the new plant in Painesville. Eventually, the new owners put Jackett back in charge of overall operations. Always a stickler for running things efficiently and incentivizing his workers, Jackett witnessed a few too many folks taking too many breaks. Hence, the Golden Tennis Shoe Award for sticking to the task at hand, one of several new employee incentive programs. 

The new overall responsibilities have once again changed Jackett’s life, adding a daily commute back and forth from Erie, where he’d moved to be closer to his grandchildren. On top of everything else—­actually, more than anything else—Jackett’s a family man, and being closer to his kids is a huge priority as he navigates his 60s. Taken in context with his recent health scare, this desire leads to inevitable questions. Like, do you ever consider wrapping up your career? And what, exactly, does it feel like to be one of the business’s lone survivors, the proverbial last man standing? 

The answers took some of those old twists and turns. Under a photo on his office wall of the Tartan 31 under full sail—his first design, and still a fond memory—he offered a few thoughtful responses. 

Sure, he’s given some thought to moving on, but he needs a successor, someone he trusts, to whom he can pass the baton. He enjoys the operations side of management, building the team. He’s proud of continuing the long manufacturing tradition in northeast Ohio. He likes the fact that he’s there for owners of older Tartans, that when you buy one of his boats, you join the Tartan family. And the feeling he gets when setting the sails of a new design after months of hard work, that initial rush as it heels into the breeze, remains a cherished one. 

But what about it, Tim? How long? 

“There’s a country song that asks that question: ‘What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?’ And the answer is: ‘I’d be doing this,’” he said. “Maybe not with Tartan, but maybe I’d set up a little shop and build my own cold-molded 25-foot boats. Just for the pleasure of building them, putting them in the water, and sailing them.”

Once a boatbuilder, always a boatbuilder. 

Jackett had one last remembrance and anecdote to share. Fittingly, it goes back to where this story began, on that nightstand in Erie, next to the useless alarm clock. 

“Back in the mid-1980s, I actually sent a job ­application to Sabre Yachts, and I asked Charlie Britton to write a letter of recommendation,” Jackett said. “And he wrote one, in longhand. I tell people, you have your wooden box that you keep by your bed, and Charlie’s letter is in there. He was a man’s man, and there’s a line in there that I really appreciated: ‘The men have respect for you.’

“And that’s a cool statement, you know?” 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

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