Salty Podcast #82 ⛵ Experience Offshore Sailing… BEFORE Buying a Boat! 🌊 with #SailLibra

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:05):
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Salty
Podcast coming to you live fromMarathon, Florida, aboard Salty
Abandoned.
Tonight's episode is for twokinds of sailors, the dreamers
and the salty veterans.
First, the dreamers, not yetsalty, but dreaming of the day.
You will be.
You picture yourself offshore,you scroll through boat
listings, you watch sailingpodcasts and YouTube channels.

(00:28):
You imagine being on a sailboat,but you want to feel offshore
sailing before spending yourhard-earned money on a boat.
This is for you.
And then we have the saltyveterans.
You've owned boats, you know therhythm of passages and the magic
of a star-lit watch.
But life changed, seasonsshifted, and now you're between
boats.
You miss it.
It's not necessarily theresponsibilities of ownership.

(00:51):
This is for you too.
That's why I'm so excited tohave Sail Libra here tonight.
Ryan, uh, that gives bothdreamers and salty veterans a
chance to step into a trueoffshore adventure.
No boat ownership required.
So settle in, grab a drink, andwe're going offshore tonight
with Sail Libra.
But first, please like,subscribe, and share.

(01:13):
It truly helps this podcastreach more sailors just like
you.
I'm Captain Tinsley, aboardSalty Abandon and Island Packet
320, and this is episode 82.
Please help me welcome Ryan ofSail Libra.

SPEAKER_01 (01:27):
Hi Tinsley, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 (01:29):
Welcome.
Thanks for being here tonight.

SPEAKER_01 (01:32):
Yeah, thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 (01:35):
So uh how did that sound?
Did I give a good description?

SPEAKER_01 (01:38):
Uh that was actually probably better described than
even I would describe it.
Uh you you kind of you you kindof nailed uh everyone that I
ever take out on this vessel umfrom people who have already
owned their own boat and theyknow what a pain in the ass it
can be, uh, with themaintenance, the upkeep, the

(02:00):
insurance, the slip rent, andall these things.
And then maybe you don't evenget to use it that much because
it just sits at the dock.
Um, so I get a lot of guys thatsail with me, uh, you know, and
gals that have already owned theboat, and then on the other
spectrum there's the dreamersthat are getting into the
lifestyle, and they want to, youknow, take a small step and say,

(02:21):
is this really the lifestylethat I want to live?
Or get into, right?
Not necessarily live, becausenot everybody desires to go and
move aboard a boat.
They would just like to use aboat and uh and use it safely.
So those are the things that wetry to you know impress on
people when they join one of ourpassages.
And since we only take six, Ikind of specialize, you know, a

(02:43):
lot of the trips are, you know,I I've become friends with all
these people.
We spend a week together most ofthe time, um, and I understand
their needs because we talkabout it all week.
You know, what what levelthey're at, you know, have they
done ASA training?
Those types of things.
And so when those uh dreamerscome aboard that have no idea

(03:03):
about anything, at the end ofthe trip, they kind of know they
know more so than a lot ofpeople that have taken ASA, you
know, classes that are in thebay or in a small keelboat,
something like that.
They have the full experience ofbeing on a large cruising
sailboat.

SPEAKER_02 (03:20):
Well, that that brings uh so I saw you that you
were on another podcast, andmostly you guys talked about I
didn't watch the whole thing,but you were talking about
buying a boat.
So you must you must end upgiving a lot of advice or making
suggestions, especially afteryou get to know them.

SPEAKER_01 (03:37):
I I do, and so everybody that sails with me
constantly has access to to myinformation, right?
So it's not like I'm gonnacharge you extra money later on
for a consultation if you wantto go buy a boat.
You just send me a message andI'll look at it on Yacht World
for you uh and see if it's theright boat that would fit your
needs.
Um one thing that I recommendfor a lot of people that maybe

(04:01):
they you know they are sailorsand they have done a lot of base
sailing, uh they're just lookingto spread their wings a little
bit, is to actually buy a boatin the Caribbean.
Um you can boats in theCaribbean are everywhere.
So if you buy if you buy a boat,say down in Grenada, for
example, uh, and we're timetalking about American clients

(04:23):
and most of this, so Grenada isa hurricane where a lot of boats
go to get stored duringhurricane season.
Uh so all those people kind ofgo home back to their lives in
the States while their boat issafely protected, they're hauled
out of the boat yard.
And then life happens.
Something happens, you know,somebody dies, somebody gets

(04:44):
sick, or they just find out thatthe lifestyle wasn't for them,
and those boats go up for salequite often.
They're really good boats,they're outfitted for cruising,
and most of the time, if you buyand you need to buy a boat if
you want to do this littleprocess that I that I teach
people, you know you want to buya boat that has a book value.
So you don't want to go buysomething from the 70s, you

(05:05):
don't want to go buy somethingfrom the 80s, you want to buy
something that's fairly new, um,kind of outfitted for what you
want to do, and then you canjust sail it all the way
downwind, all the way back toFlorida, and then you either
like it or you don't like it.
And if you don't like it, thenyou've already trade you've
already transported it all theway to Florida, you got that
wholesaling experience underyour belt, and then you can just

(05:28):
sell it because the market inFlorida is a lot easier to sell
a boat if you get it there,versus selling a boat in
Grenada.
You just have access to a largerpool of buyers.

SPEAKER_02 (05:39):
So there's a lot of people that would make it so
people get a better buy in inthe Caribbean?

SPEAKER_01 (05:45):
It's not it it's not necessarily this is a better
buy, it's a way that you canexperience the lifestyle kind of
on your own time frame.
So just say that one season,right?
So you buy the boat in November,or just say you buy it in
October, right?
You launch in November, and thenyou start moving your way up
through the islands, sayGrenada, St.

(06:06):
Vincent, you know, Dominica, St.
Lucia, all of these places thatyou're gonna go up through, and
you're gonna experience whatcruising is really like.
Um after there, you know, a lotof people don't realize that you
can see every island from everyisland in the Caribbean.
So a lot of people think it'slike pirates of the Caribbean,

(06:27):
right?
You you they get on their shipsand they're sailing for days
before they get to the nextrock.
Right.
No, all these all these rocksare right beside each other.
I can see every you know, whenyou get to the north end of one
island, if I'm traveling north,then I can see the south coast
of the next island.
And you know, some of those are30 miles across, some of them
are 40 miles across, some ofthem are fifteen miles across.

(06:49):
So it's not a big it's you coulddo it without a GPS at all,
otherwise other than just youknow making sure that you have
the proper depth for yourvessel.
Um, but there's no chance ofgetting lost, right?
So the only places that youcan't see land to your next
destination are between like St.
Martin and the BBI, which youwill just overnight you'll see

(07:12):
it, and then the Mona Passagebetween um Puerto Rico and the
DR.
And that's just an overnight,and then you see the DR, and
then you can bounce up throughthe Bahamas, you can go up the
north coast of Cuba and go tothe Keys.
So you're never really offshoremore than just a few miles or
more than an overnight run.
And a lot of people can buy thatboat.

(07:34):
Just say, for example, if theybuy a Benito and it's uh you
know a 20, you know, 10, right?
So that would be about a15-year-old boat.
It has a book value of X numberof dollars.
Someone had probably sell itacross the Atlantic or however
it got down there, and lifehappens.

(07:57):
That boat becomes available onthe market.
It's a lot of people arereluctant to buy a boat out of
the country.
Where if it's a US flag boat, itdoesn't matter where you buy it.
You just sign the back of theCoast Guard documentation and
give them some money, and it'syour boat.
It's not a hard process at all.
But you can involve however manypeople you want to involve when
you purchase a boat.

(08:17):
And so I'm not a big boatpurchaser.
I I don't I don't stand, youknow, I don't uh I'm not an
expert at purchasing boats, butI do give a lot of advice.

SPEAKER_02 (08:26):
Um and that's some boat brokers that you like to
refer to?

SPEAKER_01 (08:30):
I I don't.
I don't have any boat brokersthat I refer anybody to.

SPEAKER_02 (08:34):
Okay.
So I do, but if anybody needsone.

SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
Yeah, and as far as not that I have anything against
any boat brokers at all.
I just don't have a list of themin my pocket that I would say,
hey, this is the person that youshould call.
Uh because I just don't dealwith a lot of boat brokers uh in
everyday business, right?
Um so after you get that boatand you've had your experience
through the Caribbean, say, andit took you three months to do
it.
You don't you don't have to doit all in three months, you

(09:00):
know, during the season, right?
So you could go to St.
Lucia, you could put it up in amarina, you can fly home for a
few weeks, you can come back,take the boat, go from St.
Lucia to St.
Martin, enjoy that, do the LesSaints, all those islands, put
it up in St.
Martin for a few weeks, go backto work, do whatever you want to
do, and then you work your wayback to Florida.
Just say it takes a whole seasonto do that, and you can more

(09:22):
than likely sell the boat forwhat you paid for it in Grenada
just by simply moving it toFlorida.
Um, it's not out of the ordinarythat that could happen.
And even if it in even if itwere to cost you 30 grand,
right?
Say you sold it for thirtythousand dollars less than you
bought it for, well, you s youhad three months on a boat and a

(09:44):
and a big experience and a hugeopportunity to see a lot of
things.
That's right.
And so, you know, is thatexperience worth that amount of
money?

SPEAKER_02 (09:52):
And that would be one scenario, but another
scenario that everybody wouldlove it and they would keep it.

SPEAKER_01 (09:58):
Yeah, and that yeah, they could keep it, they would
love it, and if they didn't,they would know exactly why.

SPEAKER_03 (10:04):
And so the next world.
That's right.

SPEAKER_01 (10:06):
The next boat that they go to look at, they would
know that I I don't like drawersthat opened, you know, port port
to starboard.
You know, port to starboarddrawers are the dumbest drawers
on a boat, right?
When you heal over, they open.
You know, it's so uh so I likedrawers that go for to ask
instead of side to side.
Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 (10:23):
Um okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (10:25):
There's all there's all kinds of little peculiar
peculiar things about sailboatsand sailing that people uh you
know learn just by being on thewater.

SPEAKER_02 (10:35):
Okay, so first thing I want to do is ask you about
the boat, Libra.

SPEAKER_01 (10:40):
Sure.
Yep.

SPEAKER_02 (10:40):
So tell tell us about Libra.

SPEAKER_01 (10:43):
So Libra is a 1969 uh Bill Tripp Jr.
uh custom built boat.
It was built for a family thatwas in uh Connecticut at the
time.
It was built by Abbe King andRasmussen in Germany, um, which
is uh you know kind of apedigree uh boat builder that's
been building yachts, and Idon't know what year they

(11:03):
started, so I'm not gonna actlike I'm an expert on them.
But they've been building yachtsfor a long time and and lately,
you know, say the past 30 years,they're building a lot of mega
yachts and mega sailboats.
Um so Libra having that pedigreeand just me working on it and
remodeling it and things likethat, I can see the the quality

(11:25):
of the build uh inside the boat.
Um it's a really heavydisplacement boat.
It's uh 44 tons.
Um it has quite a lot of ballaston it.
It does have a bolt on, it doeshave bolt-on ballast, so it has
a piece of lead on the bottom ofit that weighs quite a bit,
probably about 15,000 pounds orso.

(11:45):
Uh but inside of that lead isalso a slot that there's a main
centerboard.
And the main centerboard adds uh10 feet of draft.
So normally sitting, I draftabout six and a half feet, and
I'm sixty feet long.
So for a sixty-foot long boatwith a heavy rig, because
remember I have two masts, I'm acatch.

(12:06):
Um that heavy rig will add a lotof roll because you just get
your momentum going, you know,with a six and a half foot
draft.
So putting that board down givesme the ability to draft sixty
and a half feet, and at sixteenand a half feet, the boat is
very rock solid.
Sail's very nice, it points toweather if you need to.

(12:28):
However, gentlemen never sail toweather, right?
You've heard that saying before,and there's a reason, there's a
reason for that saying is you'regonna you're just gonna beat the
crap out of everything, right?
You're gonna beat the crap outof your boat, your crew, and all
of your gear.
So try to, you know, try to setup your trips to where you're
sailing in nice, uh, nice areas.
But the boards do add a lot.

(12:49):
Um and the main board is in themiddle of the boat.
There's also what's what I callthe baby board, which is a solid
bronze board, and that one is inuh the aft, just kind of just a
little forward of the rudder,and it adds a lot of stability
in large seas where you would besurfing.
So in a surfing situation, justlike a regular surfboard that

(13:13):
has fins on the back of it,that's exactly what this fin
does.
Uh so it helps the boat staytracked and it doesn't round up
at the bottom of a large seastate.

SPEAKER_02 (13:25):
I was just looking for that reel to show to show
people.

SPEAKER_01 (13:30):
Yeah, there's uh that that one video that uh um
and I have some here, some dronefootage, I could drop it out
there, but there's there'sdefinitely a way that you can
sail a catch in anyconfiguration that you want to.
So with with the two masts andeverything being spread between

(13:51):
those, you know uh two systems,we can uh we can fly double
spinnakers, uh, you know, it'sreally called uh Miz and Stay
Sail.
Yeah, I'll let you watch thisvideo here.
So this was just last week.

SPEAKER_02 (14:05):
That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 (14:14):
And you just don't see a lot of boats like that
either.
You don't see boats that are setup to be able to sail like this
on a normal everyday basis.

SPEAKER_02 (14:31):
Oh let's play it one more time.
Keep talking about the videowhile we're fine.

SPEAKER_01 (14:36):
Yeah, so if you if you can see the setup there, uh
what's called ATO, which takesthe uh which is called the Miz
and Space Sale.

(14:58):
And if you notice, I don't evenhave the main style up.
So I have I'm running the Mizin,I'm running the Mizin space
sale, and that just really givesme a lot of uh off the wind.
And and in the so in thatcondition there, I don't know if

(15:20):
you can hear me or with thesound.
I can hear it really loudly.

SPEAKER_02 (15:28):
Um the uh there we go again.

SPEAKER_01 (15:35):
So in the this isn't the wind setup.
And there, if you notice,there's not a whole lot of white
caps up there.
We're this is sailing, we'resailing at about seven and a
half knots in about ten knots ofwind, twelve knots of wind.
And you know, that light airsetup is just with for for the

(15:59):
weight of this boat, the waythat it gets to sail, and being
able to, you know, being able tomake a boat move in light air is
hard to do.
So if you can sail, if you cansail your boat effectively in
light air, which is gonna bemost of the time, right, because
most cruisers or most sailorsare not gonna just head off into

(16:21):
big wind.
It's just not something thatthey do, right?
You know, the saying all of theall of the ducklings sit on the
Florida East Coast and they'rewaiting to go to the Bahamas,
and they're not gonna leave withany wind that has an N in it.
I I I've heard that since I wasa teenager, right?
You know, it's like, well, ifit's out of the northeast, the
north, the northwest, you can'tgo to the Bahamas.

(16:42):
You can go to the Bahamas, evenwith north wind.
It doesn't mean that it's gonnaturn the Gulf Stream into us
into a washing machine.
It can, uh, you know, given thatput does push the current, but
you know, if you got 15 or 20knots of wind, it's not gonna
stand it up that bad.
Uh it also depends on yourvessel, too.
Libra is built like a tank andshe kind of pushes her way
through the water more thangoing over it.

(17:05):
So a lot of the more modernbuilt boats that have a lot
flatter bottom, you're gonnafeel the motion more in those
boats than you would in a heavydisplacement boat.

SPEAKER_02 (17:16):
All right, so let's uh let's go back to your s how
your sailing journey began.
What drew you to this?

SPEAKER_01 (17:24):
Yeah, yeah.
So as a child, I was alwaysaround the water, uh, basically
on the lakes of Alabama.
So I grew up on Lake Martin,which is just north of
Montgomery, near Auburn,Alabama.
Um, and on that lake, I just dideverything that a boy would do,
right?
I was I was there until I wasabout 15 years old.

(17:46):
So, you know, growing up kind oftime story like was very, you
know, and I didn't have asailboat, not for a long time.
I had a little skiff that I rodearound in, but you know, my dad
taught me how to operate theskiff.
I was star he let me, you know,use the boat in front of the
house with a trolling motor fora first few years so I could go
and just fish or whatever.

(18:06):
And then later on he let me putthe 15 horsepower motor on and
kind of gave me the keys, andthen I don't know how many
millions of miles I put on thatboat.
But I burned through a lot ofgas.
Um and I was a little guy too,and I couldn't get gas at a
marina, it was too far, so I hadto haul those six-gallon tanks
up to the gas station down thestreet, fill them up, and then
take them back to the boat.

(18:28):
Uh but one day, uh, you know,these lakes uh in Alabama, they
have flood control where they,you know, they drop the water in
the winter to prevent floodingin the spring.
Um so in that time frame thingswash off the shorelines, and one
of them was uh a sunfishsailboat.
And the only thing that it hadon it was uh just the mast kind

(18:48):
of laid across it, and I had noidea what a sunfish sailboat
was.
I didn't even know at the timethat it was a sunfish sailboat.
I just knew what a sailboatlooked like.
Uh there was no internet, so wehad the encyclopedias, and if
you go to sailboat, it lookslike a sailboat.
So that's what I built it like.
So, you know, a tarp for a sail,uh, you know, a piece of stick

(19:10):
for a boom.
I had no jib, and of course, ifyou look at a sunfish, they're
not set up that way at all.
But I was able to sail thatlittle boat and uh and figure
out how it worked, right?
There's a slot in the middle ofit for the dagger board or the
centerboard.
I I found that I found out whythat slot was there the hard
way, right?
If you sail it without it, youjust keep flipping over, or you

(19:32):
just get a lot of leeway, youdon't go where you want to go.
And I had to build a rudder andall these things.
And I was kind of crafty, andI've always been kind of
McGyverish to try to put thingstogether, and I'll boys, you
know, I would take the remotecontrol car that I got for
Christmas and tear it apart justto see how it works, right?
So it's been the same way withboats all along, too.
And then graduating up fromthat, um, you know, later on I

(19:57):
figured out what uh what carsand girls were, and so.
So the boats kind of went thethe boats kind of went aside for
a while.
I ended up uh you know getting anice job uh later on in life um
when I was around 20 at DeltaAirlines and I was a computer
technician and traveled quite abit.
Um and in that traveling I endedup in uh in Asia and and kind of

(20:20):
worked over there some and endedup kind of needing a hobby and I
remembered the boating part,right?
I still had that draw to thewater.
So I ended up volunteering on abunch of boats that were moving
between Lang Kawi and um andPhuket.
And it's it's an overnight sail,it's not very far, uh, it's not
very treacherous waters, they'realways nice trips, and I would

(20:41):
just volunteer as a crew to justride along.
And so that was what got me intothe big boat sailing world.
Uh and when I say big boatsailing world, at the time a
45-foot boat was a big boat,right?
A 48-foot boat was a big boat.
Anything over 50 was was justmassive, you know, a massive
yacht.
Um, you know, boats haveprogressively gotten longer uh

(21:03):
as the years have gone past.
You know, now a 50-foot boat'spretty normal for a lot of
people to just go buy a 50-footboat.
Uh but back in the day it wasn'tquite like that.
So sailing there and kind ofgetting that sailing bug back in
my system, I realized that Ikind of had a passion for it.

(21:24):
Um I moved moved back toAtlanta.
I was working there with Deltaagain.
Uh I had a few other littlebusinesses on the side that I
was able to kind of move awayfrom Delta.
I ended up buying an Irwin 37,which is which was a great boat,
but a pig, right?
It was a catch, center, centercop, center cockpit.

(21:46):
I would I would not take itacross an ocean at all.
It wasn't built for that.
It was a shallow draft, it wasuh about four and a half feet.
And so it was a coastal cruiser.
It it was a coastal cruiser.
It was built to go to theBahamas.
That's exactly why Erwin builtall of those boats back in the
70s, was so they were sellingpeople the dream of going in to

(22:07):
the Bahamas and all that shallowwater.
So they they sold a lot of shoaldraft boats, and and I got one
of them.
And then that uh boat that Ibought, I think I bought it in
about 2020 or I'm sorry, 2002.

SPEAKER_03 (22:22):
What did you keep it?

SPEAKER_01 (22:24):
Uh at first I kept it over in uh cotton bayou at
Orange Beach at a friend'shouse.

SPEAKER_02 (22:29):
So so you somehow, oh, were you living here uh in
Orange Beach?

SPEAKER_01 (22:33):
So so I I I was back and forth between Atlanta for a
while, right?
So my grandparents always livedin Gulf Shores when I was
growing up.
So that's how I was familiarfamiliar with the Orange Beach
Gulf Shores area, right?
So I've been vacationing thereas a child, spring break with a
family, you know, go to thebeach, just like a lot of people
would vacation, you know, thenicest beach to the middle of

(22:56):
the country.
It kind of starts in GulfShores.
Anything to the west gets alittle dirty, and then anything,
anything to the east gets a lotmore populated.
So, you know, that area was areally nice area.
I liked it.
Uh, so when I bought my boat, Ihad it transported on a truck uh
from Charleston, South Carolina,uh, and had it taken to the

(23:20):
Pensacola shipyard, and thenthey kind of put Humpty Dumpty
back together again, and I endedup taking it over to Cotton
Bayou and tying it up at afriend's dock.
And she was nice enough to letme keep it there for several
years, and you know, but you butbut you know, this was the dream
that a lot of people have.
I've bought my boat, I have myjob.

(23:40):
How do I do both, right?
So I lived in Atlanta, my boatis six hours away, so that you
know, now I'm burning thehighway up almost every weekend
because I want to go play withmy boat, and it wasn't even
necessarily that I wanted to gojump on the boat and untie the
lines and go sailing.
I, you know, boats are alwaysfull of projects, right?
So I I wanted to just go doprojects on the boat, you know.

(24:03):
I would spend all week at workdeciding what I was gonna do,
would you know, haul tail downto the beach, work on the boat
for the weekend, maybe take itout for a sale.
Uh and one lucky thing that Ididn't didn't even really check
before I bought the boat was themast height, uh, because that
boat was also a catch.
Um, the Orange Beach bridgethere, the height limit is

(24:27):
fifty-five feet.
And that and that boat was aboutfifty-three.
So just by the grace of God, Iwas able to buy a boat that fit
under the bridge, so I couldactually take the boat out into
the gulf right there, just amile from the dock, uh, which a
lot of people that's why kind ofOrange Beach in that area, most
of the boats that you see are onthe bayside, right?

(24:48):
This the larger sailboats.
Uh because they can sail in thebay back there and they can
transit the intercoastalwaterway to get to Pensacola.
Yeah, yeah, they can go outPensacola Pass, or if for some
odd reason anybody would everwant to go west, they could go
out, they could go out MobileBay or over into Mississippi
either way.
Um so having that boat and doingthose little projects, uh I was

(25:15):
able to move out of Delta, uh,was able to buy a house at
Orange Beach um in about 2006,five or six.
So I lived there, I had theboat, and then the economy
happened as it always does, andI decided that I probably needed
to start doing uh charters.

(25:37):
And so I had had plenty of seatime.
You know, your C time countsfrom the time that you're 15
years old.
Uh, you can go back and documentall your C time from 15 years
old.
So I got my master's license,uh, which I didn't even have to
have because I wasn't planningon running an inspected vessel,
right?
You only need a master's licenseif you're gonna run an inspected

(25:57):
vessel.
Um, and in that area, a six-packwould have been just fine.
But I went ahead and got themaster's license because it's
just another, I don't know,weekend or 10-day class or
something like that.
It wasn't much added on.
Um got my license, and then Iopened up uh Orange Beach
Sailing Adventures uh calledSail OB, and that business is

(26:18):
still in operation to this day.
I actually sold it back in uh2020, um, kind of late late
2019, right before COVID hit,which would have been a which
was which was a great business.
The business really took offwhen COVID hit because I always
sold private trips, right?
So I never put familiestogether.

(26:40):
The boat was your boat for yourtime, right?
So people would show up and theywould take a two-hour trip.
This is on your Irwin.
This is this is on the Irwin.
This this is the yeah, this isway back.
Um, so I did day sales, and Idon't even know how many miles I
ran, but during that time, andthis is seasonal, right?

(27:00):
You and I know that you're fromthat area, so you know that in
the summertime we getvacationers that show up by the
hordes, right?
And so you put your telephonenumber on your sail and you kind
of run up and down the beach todo a beach run, the phone rings,
people book a trip and you takethem sailing.
So it's kind of perpetualmotion, right?
So if you're out sailing, thenthe phone's probably gonna ring.

(27:23):
And this was kind of before thea lot of the internet also.
Um I remember I even remembertelling people on our sunset
cruises when we would be out inthe Gulf, uh, there was just
nobody, there was no sailboats.
The only sailboat was was in thebay.
Um where did you keep your boat?

SPEAKER_02 (27:41):
Was this still at your friend's house?

SPEAKER_01 (27:43):
Yeah.
Uh no, I ran out of uh at HudsonMarina.
So just if you know where OrangeBeach Elementary School is, it's
just south of that.
And that's on Wilson Boulevard.
And that marina grew over time.
When I first started there, theyjust had a couple of deep sea
fishing boats that would takepeople, you know, take tourists
out fishing and things likethat.

(28:03):
You know, Orange Beach is knownfor the fishing.
So we started doing the sailingthere.
Uh the guy that owned theproperty there was very nice to
me, um, let me just run mybusiness and enjoyed watching me
do my boat projects.
And you know, I would learn, I Iwould learn from them with them
maintaining all their huge,massive fishing boats, and then

(28:24):
I'd be over there working on mylittle sailboat.
Uh, but I ran that business forclose to uh 10 and a half, 12
years, something like that.
Um, and it became it became anactivity that people came back
every year for.
So I built a clientele, and youknow, so much that there was one

(28:44):
season that it never rainedbecause it's either gonna rain
all season or it's not, and itthere's it there's a hard middle
ground there.
So I I ran about 70 sunsetcruises in a row.

SPEAKER_00 (28:57):
Wow.

SPEAKER_01 (28:57):
Every like so so there is no weekends, right?
I I don't get uh time off, youknow.
It's a it's a summertime job,and you just work seven days a
week.
Yeah, and so there was a lot ofdays that we would start at
eight in the morning and I wouldend after sunset, you know, nine
in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 (29:13):
Did you have a crew?

SPEAKER_01 (29:14):
No, so all of those trips I just ran solo.
The boat was was very easily setup to run just by myself.
And then I would, you know,obviously a lot of these trips
are for kids, right?
They were for children, peoplewere getting an activity to do
for um for their family.
So I'm taking mom, dad, youknow, some 12-year-olds, maybe

(29:36):
an eight-year-old, you know, andthen after a while that that
kind of started to eat on me alittle bit toward the end.
I felt more like Santa Claus,right?
Where you know, I'm kind of partof the show, and they kind of,
you know, they want to sit inyour lap and hold the wheel and
take the picture with thecaptain, those types of things,
right?
So so so now in the in the thatand that was in the summer, and

(29:56):
then the entire time that I ranthat business, I also did uh
deliveries in the winter.
So when that when that businessshut down, then I would just go
move boats, right?
So anybody that needed a boatmoved, I would, I would try to
get jobs uh, you know, here andthere, and then finally my name
got out a little bit more towhere I was moving some of the
same boats around, either to theeither either to the Caribbean

(30:20):
or over to you know just toFlorida, South Florida, just
repositioning boats basicallybecause people wanted to have
their boat in the sun in thewinter.
Uh New England boats, everybodywants to move.
You were you're either going topack your boat up in New England
and put a cover on it to keepthe snow the snow off of it, uh,
or you're gonna take itsomewhere south.

(30:42):
And so that was where I came in,right?
Was just moving the boats.
And sometimes the owners wouldcome along, uh, and that's where
I got, you know, because I hadalready been with so many people
before instructing people how tosail.
And and this is not somethingthat I'm an ASA certified
sailor, I'm not an instructor,I've just got the miles, and

(31:03):
I've seen a lot of people onboats and how they act and how
they respond when certain thingshappen.
So having that already under mybelt and then doing the
deliveries, especially withespecially with an
owner-assisted delivery, which Iwhich should have always been
charged more for.
Um, you know, there's there'sthere's always that thing when

(31:24):
you when you would when youdeliver a boat for somebody and
they're like, hey, I'd I'd liketo come along, you're like,
Well, you can, but it's justgonna be more money because then
I have to deal with you.
Yeah, because because then itturns into a training session,
right?

SPEAKER_02 (31:35):
You you're and do you have rules like you can't
get drunk or you can't yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (31:41):
So well anyway, any any kind of uh any kind of uh
offshore passage, especially,um, there's no alcohol or
anything like that on the boatthat you know that we're
consuming underway.
Uh and on my current vessel onLibra, there's no drinking
underway at all.
I mean we do if we if we're atanchor or we're at a bar in

(32:02):
town, or if it's before webefore our trips, we always have
a crew dinner, and I telleverybody like, look, you're on
vacation, you know, let loose,have a good time, uh, but it's
not spring break 1985 in DaytonaBeach, right?
So let's let's keep it a littlea little sane.
Um, but you know, a lot of theseguys come from say they're

(32:23):
coming from uh Minnesota orWisconsin, and they're coming to
the Caribbean in January andFebruary.
They're coming from zero degreeweather to 85 degree weather, so
it's it's a huge difference forthem in climate.
It's interesting to see how theydeal with it too.
I also have a a very longcaptain's letter of everything

(32:45):
that I've uh dealt with over theyears, and one of them is thou
shalt not take their shirt offever in the cockpit.

SPEAKER_02 (32:55):
What guys and girls?

SPEAKER_01 (32:59):
Well, yeah, let's just keep it as guys and girls.
Because what happens when youlive in a windy environment?
Everybody's little chest hairsjump off and start flying in
people's food.
It's just Are you serious?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (33:16):
I didn't know that.
Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (33:17):
So like you know, when you're so when you share so
on so on Libra, there's alwaystypically eight of us, uh,
myself, a mate, and then uh sixguest crew members that are
along to do training.
And that's just part of mymessage.
So one of them is you gotta geta pedicure.
Everybody has to have apedicure.
If if you've never had apedicure and it's your first

(33:39):
time, you're gonna love it andyou're gonna go back and get
more of them because there was aspecific time that I had a guy,
so I had so Libra, you can't seeit now, but you can you can see
kind of the walkthrough uh on uhsome of the Facebook videos that
I've done here recently.
I had a guy step over into thecockpit because it's kind of a
deeper cockpit, and his heactually stabbed another guy

(34:01):
right in his thigh with histoenail.
And it was hard to get it tostop bleeding.
And talk about disgusting andgross, right?

SPEAKER_02 (34:10):
That couldn't have happened very much though.

SPEAKER_01 (34:12):
I mean it only it only needed to happen once for
me to for me to create a rulethat says if you want to join
the boat, then you need to getit pedicure.
And I've actually I actuallylisted three times in a row and
it says something like uh notjust clip your toenails and just
Well, it's like if you you know,if your feet look like a

(34:33):
creature off of a Harry Pottermovie because you've been hiding
them under a desk for the last30 years, then you probably need
to get them done.

unknown (34:41):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (34:41):
So okay, so so you saw we talked about, you know,
when we were texting yesterdayor whenever you saw a gap that
you could fill, right?

SPEAKER_01 (34:54):
Yeah, I did.
So one of my inspirations um wasuh John Kreshmer.
So John Kreshmer writes sailingbooks.
Yep.
John Kreshman writes sailingbooks, wonderful sailing books.
Uh, if you haven't heard ofthem, look him up, buy all of
his books, they're really great.
And John Kreshmer has been iskind of the grandfather of this
industry.

(35:14):
Um and we have become friendsover the years.
I actually met him um right whenCOVID started.
Uh, because in this industry wetravel internationally almost
every trip, right?
We're typically changingcountries uh as part of the
process, you know.
So part of my training ischanging countries and teaching

(35:35):
you how to check into anothercountry.
What do you do?
How do you do it?
You know, what are the do's,what are the don'ts.
So and John runs very similartrips.
We we almost run exactly thesame trips.
Uh it's and but he's been doingit for I don't know, early 90s.
It it's been a really, reallylong time that he's been doing
it.

(35:55):
And he started, I believe, Ibelieve that he started when he
was doing it originally, he wasdoing deliveries.
Uh where is he out of?

SPEAKER_02 (36:02):
He may have said it.
I I missed it.

SPEAKER_01 (36:04):
So so right, so currently he's in the South
Pacific right now, um, runningpassages there.
So so he kind of he works justreally all over the place.
He has a place in Florida, um,and his uh his wife has a place
in Paris that they go to quite abit.
But for the most part, John'sboat is always on the move, just
like Libra.
So we're always going somewhere.

(36:26):
If if we're not moving, thenwe're not making money.
And I have I got two kids.
I got a I have a 15-year-old anda 17-year-old.
So this is by no means a way forme to round on my yacht, because
that's what that is exactly whata lot of people think that uh
happens out here on the water.

(36:48):
It it couldn't be any furtherfrom the truth.
Um, but back to my inspiration.
So John does these trips anddoes training passages, and
since I had done a bunch ofdeliveries and I had had lots of
offshore experience uh just onmy own, and also have had the
people experience, which is ahuge part of running an offshore

(37:09):
passage.
Um, you know, all of the daysales that I ran for that 10 or
12 year period, I learned how toread people, how to understand
how to understand if they'recomfortable, if they're not
comfortable, if they're turninggreen, if they're about to puke
on somebody, if I need to holdtheir hair back, if I need to go
get a wet paper towel, if I needto get them a ginger rail.
You learn all of these thingsjust by being there in that

(37:32):
situation, and you get to seehow people react in different
conditions.
And so all of the first tripsthat I was taking, that those
day sale trips with justfamilies, those were little
trips, right?
I I never went more than youknow five or ten miles offshore
because it was not an offshoresale.
This was mainly let's go showthese people what a sailboat

(37:54):
looks like, take them to seesome dolphins.
It was just a tour boat.
And it run that way, andeverybody had a great time.
You know, Ray reviews, you couldgo look at Sail OB on
TripAdvisor, and they're stillrunning five-star reviews.
It's one of the uh still stillone of the top rated things to
do in Orange Beach.

(38:14):
But just having the just havingthe ability to kind of read the
room is more than the sailingpart.
Because I can take anybodysailing, but I make sure that
they come out the other end withwhatever expectations that they
wanted to get out of the trip,and I want to make sure that I

(38:35):
put them in the right situation.
Uh there was a you know, we canget into some of the weather
things that I've been through,but in some circumstances
sailing into the wind offshoredoesn't work.
We're not all in Volvo oceanracing boats, right?

(38:56):
We're in heavy displacementboats, we are in cruising boats,
we're in lighter boats that justtake a pounding.
So if you get into an oceancondition where you have and you
need to go somewhere, but thewind is 20 knots on your nose,
just say you're running truewind speeds, well now you're up,

(39:16):
you know, now you're trying topoint into this stuff, and the
ocean is not like the bay.
The ocean will have waves, sothe waves just keep pushing you
back.
So no matter how many times thatyou think that you're gonna go
upwind and you're just gonnatack to your location, that's
fine in the bay where it's niceand smooth.

(39:38):
But that doesn't alwaystranslate the bay is not always
smooth.
Yeah, yeah, and the bay is notalways smooth, too.
But yeah, you're you're notgonna you're not going to tack
up through you're just not gonnago and tack in the six to eight
foot sea state and not beat thecrap out of everybody on board.

(39:58):
It's gonna be scary for them.
Them, right?
It's gonna be they're not gonnabe able to go to the head, they
they're gonna have to sit on thefloor and scoot to wherever they
need to go, and it's just notworth it.
So I always teach uh my mysaying is SCS over SOS, and the
SCS stands for safety, comfort,and then sailing.

(40:22):
And so as long as you keepeverything in that SCS order,
then you should be able toprevent an SOS, right?
So safety first, always, whichshould be everybody, right?
That no matter what you're doingin life, you know, safety should
be first.
There's always an element ofrisk in everything that we do,
but let's be as safe as we can.

(40:44):
Comfort, there's no reason to beout there if you're not going to
be comfortable, right?
So bashing into 10 foot seas,trying to go upwind between
islands in the Caribbean, it'sjust not fun.
It's gonna be fun for about thefirst four minutes, yeah.
And then and then the the next12 to 18 hours across that

(41:08):
channel are just gonna suck.
And when you get to the otherside, you've probably broke
something.
The entire boat's gonna looklike it had a tornado that run
through it, things are gonna beflying open.
So that's why that sailing, youknow, gentlemen never sail to
weather.
That's why.
Because it doesn't really work,not in cruising boats.

(41:29):
Like I said, these Volvo OceanRacing guys that are 20 years
old, 30 years old, go for it.
If you want to go and be in anexposed cockpit and just take it
in the face, and by all means,do it.
But the guys that I take.

SPEAKER_02 (41:45):
Well, so what would you say?
What would you say of that youuh are trying to offer your
clients just in a nutshell?

SPEAKER_01 (41:53):
I'm trying to offer them a realistic experience,
which I I can't express any morethan once you join a trip on
Libra, it is the real deal,right?
We're gonna get there one way orthe other, and I'm gonna teach
you how to get there using thatSCS system, right?

(42:14):
That way, if we need to motorfrom point A to point B because
we're gonna tear, you know,we're gonna just gonna beat
everybody up, there's no reasonto beat everybody up.
It's not worth it.
So if it's five miles and we'reand we need to tack up wind in a
60-foot boat and we have a seastate coming at us, let's just

(42:35):
get there in about 45 minutesinstead of taking all day
tacking back and forth into itinto a sea state, right?
So, and that's what mostcruisers should do.
Most cruisers either are goingto wait until the weather window
is so good that they're gonnamotor anyway in very flat seas,

(42:56):
or it's gonna be rough andthey're not gonna go anyway.
So on Libra, our trips arescheduled out you know, a year
or two years in advance.
We always sail in areas of theplanet that are typically nice
for the season.
And and so, like right now.

SPEAKER_02 (43:15):
Do you ever delay and say we get we need to wait
until tomorrow or the next yeah?

SPEAKER_01 (43:19):
So I so I always have at least two days built in
for weather just in case thereis some type of little system or
uh just say a uh you know areally squally day or something
like that, or it's blowingreally hard.
You know, down here in theCaribbean, we get Christmas
winds, they can blow 30, 35knots all day long, which is
lately.

SPEAKER_02 (43:38):
Let's say where you where you are, where are you
right now?

SPEAKER_01 (43:41):
I am in uh Christmas Cove in uh St.
Thomas in the US VI, right offof uh Epstein's Islands, which
is which is Little St.
James and Great St.
James.
It's actually a beautifulanchorage here, and uh when I am
when I uh frequent St.
Thomas, I'm usually either herein Christmas Cove or in Water

(44:05):
Island.
The prevailing winds are out ofthe east and the Caribbean.
We always have the trade windsout of the east, and so you're
gonna want to be on the westside of something.
Um, and so there's a nice littlecove here on the west side of
little St.
James.

SPEAKER_02 (44:16):
Oh, okay.
So um what do you thinksurprises most people about
offshore sailing once they stepon board?
Or the newbies, the dreamers?

SPEAKER_01 (44:26):
The motion.

SPEAKER_02 (44:27):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (44:28):
The mo the motion never stops.
Right.
So if you if you join a trip,there's so I run really two
types of trips.
Uh half it's about half andhalf, and most and my Caribbean
trips all have an aspect ofoffshore sailing to them.
But remember, we can see everyisland from every island, right?
So it's not like we're out ofsight of land going across the
horizon.

(44:49):
You just can't get far enoughfar enough away from something
down there to make it disappear.
Um, so those trips we always addnight sails, so we sail at night
uh you know along the coast ofthe islands.
Um, and then the offshoreaspect, like just so just the
trip that you just showed thevideo of where we were in light

(45:10):
air.
So that trip was from Bermuda toSt.
Thomas, which is where I'm atnow.
That was about 900 miles.
So I mean that's a that's aproper ocean passage, right?
And we did that in super lightair.
Uh we we didn't have any windover 15 knots the entire time of
that trip, which was which theprevious trip where we had you

(45:34):
know winds up to 60 knots, thiswas a break.
It was I I deserve to have alight air sail for 900 miles.
It was really nice.
And you know, some of the daysthere's no wind.
So what do you do?
Are you just gonna sit there andbob around?
No, you're gonna crank the motorup, charge your batteries, and
drive on south.

SPEAKER_02 (45:52):
So did people enjoy that trip?

SPEAKER_01 (45:55):
Yes, yeah, it's extremely.

SPEAKER_02 (45:57):
That trip was uh You'd get spoiled in something
like that.

SPEAKER_01 (46:01):
That that was a that whole trip was a champagne trip.
Um the boat was never healed,there was never any galley, you
know, food came flying out ofthe galley, breakfast, lunch,
and dinner, everything wasprepared and cooked.
Nothing had nothing had to bepre-made.

SPEAKER_03 (46:18):
Who's making it?

SPEAKER_01 (46:18):
So I have uh so right now, currently I have a a
Brooke uh name uh mate namedBrooke.
Um she works on tall ships inNew York City, and she tumps she
comes on probably I'd say 80% ofthe passages right now.
And then I have another guynamed Gio that does some of the
other passages with me, justdepends on how their schedules

(46:40):
work out because it's it's hardfor me to keep somebody full
time on the boat.
Um, you know, I you know I livehere, right?
This is kind of my dwelling andmy home.

SPEAKER_02 (46:49):
Um you want it to go away once all the cut claims.

SPEAKER_01 (46:52):
Well, yeah, you know, once everything's with,
everybody kind of goes theirseparate ways, and then I kind
of get my house back.
Which then I'm usually liketearing something apart just to
fix it, you know, just from theprevious trips.
So so yeah, it's uh so it's areal experience.

SPEAKER_02 (47:07):
I mean, they're getting they're getting three
meals and and they're workingtoo, like the the people, this
is a working trip, right?

SPEAKER_01 (47:15):
This is yeah, this is a working trip.
They they learn by eitherobserving or doing uh,
especially like this light airtrip.
So this light air trip wherewe're flying these spinnakers
way out and trimming thesethings, um, and when I say
spinnakers, nobody really fliesa symmetrical spinnaker much
anymore unless you're on acatamaran.

(47:35):
I'm talking about anasymmetrical spinnaker, uh,
which is just like a big codezero or or or however you want
to define your sails on yourboat.
So getting those up in the airwith a kind of a green crew,
everybody has a job, right?
So I don't use a sock.
Uh if you are a cruiser and youwill fly your asymmetrical, I

(48:00):
recommend getting a sock.
It's an easy way to to hoist anddouse your spinnaker, and it
makes things very easy whenyou're short-handed because if
you're cruising, there'snormally just a couple of you,
maybe two or three.
Uh but on my boat, yeah, oryeah, or like you just one,
right?
So a sock is is a great tool.
Um and but we don't use one, andI'll and the reason that I don't

(48:25):
use a sock is so people canunderstand the physics of
actually deploying a sail, usingthe main sail to block the wind
off of it, right?
So you can hoist it, and thenyou know, some sometimes I blow
people's minds because I say,remember, we're not really on a
sailboat.

(48:45):
There is a motor here, too.
So if we need to get the sailup, we don't have to be, you
know, we're not out there toprove anything, right?
We know how to we know how tosail, right?
So if I want to get thespinnaker up in the air and it's
blowing a little bit, you know,obviously if we're gonna be
flying these things, that theair is gonna be kind of light.

(49:06):
So why not use the motor just alittle bit, right?
To speed the boat up, put thespinnaker behind the main, hoist
it and in very little to no windbecause you're kind of matching
it with the motor RPM, and thenback off and then come up into
the wind and let it fill full ofair that way, instead of trying

(49:26):
to go out there and fight thingsand winch and handles and all
these other things.
So I teach people how to operatetheir boat, operate their vessel
safely, um, and you use all thetools that you have.
If somebody falls overboard andyou're in the middle of the
ocean, you don't go do a figureeight.
You're in a motorboat at thatpoint.

(49:46):
That's it this is another ASAthing.
But they teach that on killboats, and I understand that
there are no motors and in thebay.
But there's a lot of people thatthink that if you have a man
overboard, that you're thatyou're gonna take this 60-foot
boat and start doing figureeights out there.
Man, if if you if I if I felloff the boat and you started
doing figure eights out there,if I got back on the boat

(50:09):
safely, I'm just gonna beat theshit out of somebody.
You're not there sailing arounddoing figure eights.
Look, man, heave to rightimmediately.
If somebody goes overboard,heave to immediately, turn your
bow through the wind.
You should never be more thanlike 30 yards from your from
your victim.
Uh heaving to is the way ofdoing.

SPEAKER_02 (50:30):
All right.
So tell me about you've seenyou've taken a lot of people
out, a lot of type differenttypes of people, different
levels of skills and everything.
Tell me about a transformationyou've seen in somebody that is
like, oh, this guy or this thisgirl, this couple, they're gonna
they're gonna be into it.

SPEAKER_01 (50:48):
So the so one of the so one of the best feel goods
that I ever have is because I'min the Caribbean every year.

SPEAKER_02 (50:57):
Um and you spend the winters there and then you go up
north, right?

SPEAKER_01 (51:01):
For yeah, so so I'll either go to New England or
we'll go to the med.
So one of the two.
Since COVID, since COVIDhappened, I haven't been back
over to the med.

unknown (51:08):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (51:09):
Um I started running out of New England because it
was US, I'm U.S.
flagged, it was easy to easy tooperate there.
Um, and the best thing abouthaving people on on board my
vessel that I teach how tocruise is seeing them anchored
beside me on their boat.

(51:30):
Right.
So yeah, yeah.
So they they have come throughmy program, which is when when I
say program, I mean they havethey have come with a sale with
myself or maybe multiple sales,just depending on, you know, I
have a lot of guys that don'tsell Caribbean sales, to be
clear, you're it's not a it'snot an official school, they're
not gonna get a certification.

(51:52):
Nope.

SPEAKER_02 (51:52):
Um, but they're gonna they're gonna have the
skills.

SPEAKER_01 (51:55):
Right.
And most there there are sothere's only two people that do
this.
So myself and John Kreshman.

SPEAKER_02 (52:02):
They're in Ireland Spirit who's watching, he says
um you and John are uniquecaptains, so I think that yeah,
he must have heard of John.

SPEAKER_01 (52:11):
Yeah, and when I when I say that we're the only
two, that that's not a hundredpercent accurate, right?
I mean we're the only two no noU.S.
flag vessels.
Okay.
So in the industry itself in theStates, it's very hard to kind
of get an offshore sailingprogram going.
And it's and it has to do withlicensing and the Coast Guard

(52:32):
and all these other things.
And that's a whole notherhour-long conversation about
STCWs and the licensing that youhave to have to be able to take
a paid trip from point A topoint B across international
waters and more than 200 milesoffshore because a hundred, you
know, a regular captain has ahundred-ton master captain, it's

(52:54):
near coastal, they're all nearcoastal, they're all 200 miles
from shore, and it doesn't mean200 miles from Taiwan, it means
200 miles from a U.S.
Coast Guard district.
Uh, so it doesn't mean 200 milesout in the ocean, it just means
coastal America.
Uh, so that's what all thoselicenses are for.

(53:17):
To get an oceans endorsement,which you can, uh, you can get
an ocean endorsement on yourlicense, you just have to take a
few more tests.
It's no different than getting aship's license.
The only difference is tonnage.
And so those things are not formost people, it's expensive.
It's expensive to do.
I probably have somewhereupwards of about$30 something,
thousand dollars in my license,uh, you know, over a period of

(53:40):
time, too.
Um, so there so there's othercompanies that are all foreign
flagged, and the reason thatthey flag foreign is because
they don't really have anyonethat they report to.
Um, and I say that looselybecause they do.
So they use Yachtmaster's MCAcommercially endorsed to carry

(54:03):
paying passengers, but there'snot a whole lot of oversight,
uh, and they run all over theworld with these licenses.
And it's more of a I don't wantto insult anybody that has any
of these things, but theYachtmaster program is a group
for a great program, um, and itis very comparable to an ASA
type training program where youhave tests, schools, practical

(54:28):
experience, you have to go outon a boat, you have to show
people all these other things.
The only problem is ASA is not acommercially endorsed license,
right?
You can't go get your ASAlicense and then take paying
passengers.
But with an MCA or yachtmasters,you can.
And so as the the boats areflagged internationally, like

(54:48):
the Cayman Islands, any kind ofUK area, right?
Um you're not limited to six,which is the biggest hurdle.
I wouldn't say hurdle, butthat's the biggest limitation to
being US flagged, is I'm limitedto six.
And I wouldn't want to take morethan six anyway.

(55:09):
So all the European operatorscan take up to 12.
So there are boats.
Yeah, there are boats no biggerthan Libra that have 14 people.

SPEAKER_02 (55:21):
Six is a lot.
Yeah, 14 people are responsiblefor six lives.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (55:25):
Yeah, it is.
And so and some of them are outthere right now across the
Atlantic in the Ark.
Uh, there's uh, let's see,there's a Pangea Exploration.
Uh they're out of California,but they're flagged Cayman
Island.
Um Andy Shell, which used to bestateside, he's now you know
moved to uh Sweden and has hisboats all English registered, as

(55:47):
far as I know, and just from youknow browsing around.
Uh and then there's Rubicon 3,which has two old race boats
that they run.
Um and these are all, like Isaid, these are all foreign
operators.
So in total, uh there's likeSkip Novak, if you want to do
some really hardcore sailing andsome really remote places, then
you can join Skip Novak.

(56:07):
Um and Skip Novak's a verysimilar person to like John
Kreshmer.
He's been in it for a long time.
Uh he knows what boats need.
He's a great resource.
Uh, so if you haven't heard ofSkip Novak, look him up.
Um, and I've had guys that comewith me that have sailed with a
majority of a majority of all ofthese operators.
Um and because that's what theydo.

SPEAKER_02 (56:30):
It's it's that's that's all they want to do, is
just they don't want to own aboat or anything.

SPEAKER_01 (56:34):
They don't want to own a boat.
They they've already owned theirboat.
It's uh so to give you anexample, if you were in New
England and you wanted a typical40 foot, 45, 42 foot cruiser, so
you're you have a season there,which is about five or six
months max, and you have a slipand you store it.

(56:59):
You're in without any boatprojects for just your slip and
your insurance, you're infifteen, eighteen grand a year
on the low end.

SPEAKER_02 (57:12):
And you can't use it for all those months.

SPEAKER_01 (57:15):
Yeah, and it's and half of it it's covered, right?
Yeah, so to own a boat just toown it, that doesn't this is no
maintenance, this is no fuel,this is no taking it out and
putting new sails on it.
To just own the boat, you'regonna spend at least fifteen
thousand dollars a year in theNew England area to have a boat.
That's before you even take itout of the slip and go sail.

(57:37):
And so a lot of people look atthat amount, and so most of my
trips are around you know,anywhere from 3,500 to up,
right?
I mean, our Atlantic crossingsare somewhere around 135, I
think, or 14.

SPEAKER_02 (57:50):
But you know, yeah, give me give me some time frames
on that.
Like um this is the and you saidyou've got a couple of uh places
that to be filled on yourCaribbean, on your next
Caribbean trip.

SPEAKER_01 (58:04):
Yeah, I have if you if you pull up celllibra.com,
um, I have the on the passagespage, it gives the amount of
bunks that I have available.
Some of them are uh waitlisted,uh, which just which just means
that they're booked and peopleare waitlisted, you know.
Right.
Um and usually what happens isthe closer the time to the trip,

(58:27):
they get filled up by peoplebooking last minute.
But for the Caribbean trips,those are the ones that people
think are hard logistically, butthey couldn't really be any more
easy.
You fly into one location andyou fly out of another location,
and so I base these trips ongoing to populated areas and

(58:51):
populated airports, uh, and thenso like Grenada is the most
southern island in the easternchain besides Trinidad and
Tobago.
Um, so that's where we kind ofstart there, and then we go to
St.
Martin.
So these Caribbean trips arearound 500 miles a trip.

(59:11):
We stop, you know, at leastthree times up and down the
island chain.
It just depends on which islandI want to stop at at the time.
It could either be Dominica, itcould be Martinique, it could be
anything.
Um, and then we're in St.
Martin, so I so I kind of do St.
Martin to Grenada about sixtimes the season because you can

(59:32):
see the entire Eastern Caribbeanin one week.
And currently with and currentlywe're the operator that I know
of that that does that, right?
There's a lot of other sailingschools in the Caribbean, and
you're gonna and you're gonnafly into Antigua and you're
gonna go sail around Antigua andmaybe go over to Montserrat or
maybe go down to Guadalupe, andthen you're gonna go back to

(59:54):
Antigua and fly out.
So being able to take a adestination trip, right?
So your destination trip is Ifly into Grenada and I don't
once I leave Grenada I'm notcoming back.
I get to I I really get to sailoff over the horizon.

(01:00:16):
And and then we get to St.
Martin and then it's a whole youknow it's a whole nother
experience.
So it's it's kind of like when Idid my day sale business where I
was in and out of the dock, samedock, same place all the time.
And it's just like a lot of ofbay sailors that are on the
Chesapeake that are in NewEngland they're going to go and

(01:00:38):
they're going to sail in an areabut they're typically always
going to end up going back towhere they started from.
And that's what one thing thatsets us apart is we're going to
pick you up in one spot and thentake you to a completely
different one.
And most and my shortest tripsare my little seminars that I do
here in the Virgin Islands whichthese are not really I would say

(01:00:58):
an offshore trip.
This is just like an intro tocruising in the Virgin Islands.
I have one of those startingnext week and then I have a New
Year's trip which is typicallymy New Year's trips are
typically full of uh alumni thathave been on sales with me in
the past and they just want toget away from the cold and come
be on the boat for a week uhjust around the Virgin Islands.

(01:01:19):
And then after that things get alittle bit distance.
Yeah and then we go to Grenadaand and now we have warships and
we have uh aircraft carriers andall kinds of stuff south of us
here to hang out with.

SPEAKER_02 (01:01:29):
Okay so um Island Spirit wants to know in St.
Martin do you check in Dutch orFrench side?

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:36):
So we we have done both um I prefer the Dutch side
it's uh it is a little bit moreexpensive on the Dutch side the
French side I typically stay atuh at a marina um you there is a
mooring field out there that youcan stay in you can anchor uh
but things have been a littlebit more restrictive over the

(01:01:56):
past few years so St.
Martin in the Caribbean isprobably one in my opinion is
probably one of the best placesto get shit done on your boat.

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:09):
That's what they say that's what that's what um
Island Spirit says because thereyou can buy things there they've
got people there.

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:15):
There's people there to do things there's material
there there and it's allreasonably priced it's not you
know it's not extravagantlyexpensive or anything.
And then if you wanted to go fora day sale or something you
could go to St.
Bart's St.
Bart's is only like 20 milesaway you can go there.
So the Dutch side I I go to aplace so the cruisers that

(01:02:36):
frequent St.
Martin typically always end upat Lagoonies and Lagoonies is a
restaurant slash marina and ifyou if you pull up uh if you're
able to pull up Lagoonies onyour Google Earth there I can
show you when you zoom in howmany boat uh supply places there

(01:03:04):
are and and think of think of aWest Bream but it's not West
Marine we have island waterworld we have budget marine we
have electro we have there's aYanmar there's a North sales
distributor there's FKG riggingsince I already have this pulled
up I want to go ahead and showyour your um anchorage so this
is where this is where you areright now yep right there yeah

(01:03:28):
and so that little uh thatlittle orange dot is the pizza
boat that's pizza pie yeah thatthat that's something that
Island Spirit just mentioned yeppizza pie is I actually had some
uh pizza for them yesterday I'mjust out of here I mean honestly
I'm out here by myself on theboat uh just enjoying the the
weather um a little downtimebefore I have my next crew that

(01:03:53):
comes in uh next on the 11thokay and that's just a long
weekend trip so we're going toSt.
Martin here yeah so go to St.
Martin and then I'll I'll showyou kind of where to zoom in
there so you can see thoseborders so that border one's the
French side the north is theFrench side the south is the
Dutch side so that bay that'sright in the middle that you see

(01:04:17):
there that little cove that'scut out that's the entrance so
move your mouse down just a tadand this is the lagoon.
Yeah that that in there is thelagoon and then out north of
that outside is a mooring fieldyou can moor in the lagoon also
yep and then up to the right ofthat screen there's a marina and

(01:04:40):
that's usually where I um keepdragging a little bit more and
you'll see it there.
So that little round marinathere.
Yep yeah so I stay I stay inthere quite often it's a
beautiful place.
They haven't had power therethey haven't had power there in
quite a while because of thehurricane they're redoing it all
but they got it sorted up bynow.
So this is the French side it'sand it's it's very French.

SPEAKER_02 (01:05:03):
You can go down get your baguettes and pastries and
but don't you get your stuff inthe Dutch side don't you buy
your stuff down here?

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:12):
Yeah there is an yeah there's an island water
world there so on the Dutch sideif you just keep going down a
little bit I'll show you whereLagoonies is.
If you type in Lagoonies it'lljust take you right to it's
bistro and bar yep is that itokay yeah that's it and so

(01:05:34):
Lagoonies is the cruiser hangoutso if you zoom in kind of right
there you can see it all ofthese little bubbles will start
popping up around there andthey're all marine related
services there's rigging shopscustom welding there's a North
sales uh dealer there you knowland and and they have like swap

(01:05:56):
meets on Saturdays wherecruisers bring in you know all
of the stuff that they've dugout of their boat that they've
been hauling around for the last10 years that they finally
decided they didn't need so theyhave kind of like a little swap
meet there.
And so I'll stay at that marinaand uh and I try to if you if
you see the pier that goes outthere there's a T dock on the

(01:06:17):
end.
So scroll you you kind of lostit it's back no no it's the back
uh right no right there yeah sothat T dock right there is this
you right here that yeah that'syeah it probably could be so
this is a concrete that's aconcrete dock and I actually

(01:06:38):
like the slip that's on theinside of that T right there.
And so when I say yeah so when Isay uh St.
Martin is a great place to getshit done if you needed to have
some dock time boat at a placewhere people could access it
either to fix rigging fix yourengine uh you know anything this

(01:06:58):
kind of maintenance oriented youknow they're not gonna let you
sand the deck of your boat thereand paint it right it's not it's
not that type of place but it isa great place to work on stuff
and have access to all of thosebuildings that you see over
there are all marine latermarine related buildings and
they all cater to uh cruisersmostly cool and then Lagoonies

(01:07:20):
is a great restaurant so notonly are you at a good spot
there's 24 hour security andthey have a good restaurant on
site and there's other there's amarket walking distance there's
a huge ace hardware that wasbasically like a Home Depot uh
but it's probably one of thelargest ACE hardware that I've
ever seen and that's withinwalking distance everything's

(01:07:42):
kind of within walking distanceif you like to walk uh if you're
gonna be hauling a table sawback to the dock then you might
rent a car and renting andrenting cars in St.
Martin is very easy and it's notvery expensive at all.
I think when I when I rent a carmy kids come for spring break so
I always try to line up myschedule to where when my kids
are off for their spring breakand everybody goes to Orange

(01:08:04):
Beach they leave and they cometo St.
Martin um your kids are inOrange Beach?
Yeah my kids uh yeah my kidsstill live in Orange Beach.
Like I said they're 15 and 17and uh my daughter is a senior
in high school this year and sothey're actually going to come
to St.
Thomas for Christmas which hasbeen kind of a tradition for
about the past five years.

(01:08:26):
And my son likes to dive so mybrother has a dive shop here in
St.
Thomas divers and so so he'shere uh you know riding around
I'm I'm here anchored in thecove and he's out here almost
every day bringing his uh tourgroups out to you know either do
dive instruction or uhsnorkeling or something like
that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:46):
Well it's good that you've got family there.
Yeah it islands for it saysLagoonie stuff is French that's
why it's so good.
It is it is good okay so tell meabout when you get new people on
the boat how do you um you saidyou're really good at at reading
people which is a good trait tohave in this situation.

(01:09:07):
So do you ever um how do youinstill confidence in people?

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:12):
You must be really interested to begin with but
then you probably get peoplelike wow this is not really what
I expected right and usually theones that are that think that
it's not what they expectedbecause I am either the creator
or the destroyer of dreams it'sone it's one of the it's one of
the two right so so I so you'reeither going to come along and

(01:09:35):
have the bug already and enjoythe trip or you're probably
gonna be drug along with yourspouse thinking that I'm gonna
force this into them and it'sjust not going to be what I need
right so and and I try to vetthose types of people out even
before it happens.
Oh how do you do that?

(01:09:56):
I always have a phone call so soI always so anytime somebody
signs up for a treat so rememberI only take about a hundred and
twenty people a year um totalright if I'm if I have if my
schedule's just wall to walltrips then that's about 120
people a year.
So I most I mean half of thepeople that come with me have

(01:10:18):
already sailed with me so I knowthem so I'm not really that
worried about them.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:21):
You have that many repeats?

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:23):
Wow yeah it's probably somewhere in the 30 30
to 40% at least range.
At least almost every trip Ihave two guys that have sailed
with me.
And and that says somethingthere.
I mean I at least they're comingback you know that's that's one
good thing.
But the people that it's notreally for are the people that

(01:10:46):
typically get they're on a tripthat's shorter like the passage
the trip may be a week long butthe Caribbean trips may be where
it's rough between the islandsright because you're gonna sail
in the lee of the island andit's gonna be smooth water.
And then between the islands youget the full force of the trade
winds and the current and thewaves and everything else and

(01:11:06):
then maybe they're sick duringthat time.
So I can't really controlpeople's motion sickness
although we do recommend lots ofuh remedies for it that they can
either take or not but the youknow the the spouses are
probably the ones that they iteither creates a spark where

(01:11:31):
they're totally engaged becausethey've been watching YouTube
videos they're wanting to reallygive it a try they're getting
close to retirement maybe andthey want to say okay before we
go drop I mean nowadays beforewe go drop a half a million
dollars or more on a boat let'sgo see what it's like you know

(01:11:52):
and maybe ASA classes.
I I have a ton of people thathave gone through ASA um but you
know there's limitations to allthe ASA schools so you can only
do so much and most of the ASAschools that do their I forget
the number of the class but justthe offshore part it's an

(01:12:13):
overnight sail right yeah itthey the offshore part of the
ASA is we leave the dock we goout sail overnight and then we
come back to the dock the nextday that's most of what the ASA
training is for the offshoreoffshore part and so when you
get put on a boat that's goingto leave from one location and
end up at another destinationyou're going to get different

(01:12:34):
weather you're gonna get squallsyou're gonna get things that
aren't controlled because wesail on a schedule but we do
sail on a schedule during thetimes of the year where it's you
know nice um so we wouldn't bein the Caribbean in the
summertime sailing around duringhurricane season we're gonna go

(01:12:55):
somewhere where the hurricanesdon't go which is like New
England or Europe to the med orsomething like that.
But these people that come alongmost of the time leave with that
was a very spectacularopportunity to be able to
experience this point A to pointB destination they feel like

(01:13:16):
they've conquered somethinginside them right because even
the normal sailors that sailevery weekend they're still
going back to the same spot theystart and stop at the same dock.
Right.
And so taking that leap to whereyou're going from one location
to another flying out of adifferent airport checking into

(01:13:38):
another country and doing all ofthe things that you would do as
a cruiser doing all of thosethings in a week for the first
time is either awe inspiring orway too much.
You know so and also tell peopleyou know because we do cover a
lot of miles I mean we coveranywhere from 15 to 1800 miles a

(01:14:00):
year mostly and out of that timeyou know this boat is just
constantly in motion and thepeople that get sick are the
ones that have the roughesttime.
And it's not it's not that it'slike 20 foot seas either right

(01:14:21):
it's just the rhythm of theboat.
So every sailboat rides a littledifferently no matter what boat
it is it could be the sail planit could be the sail shape or
the hull shape but if you're ifyou don't get sick on your bay
boat even in three or four footseas in the Chesapeake and three
or four foot seas on Libra maybeyou get sick because it's just a

(01:14:44):
different feel.
So they come with theexpectation that it's going to
be similar to what they've beendoing and in some circumstances
it is but sometimes it's not andso that's that's the ones that
they step back and they go wowyou know I was just sick for
three days and then I'm always Ialways tell them I'm saying well
it doesn't matter if you gotsick for three days the fourth

(01:15:06):
day is going to be the day thatgets better because most people
take at least two days to getinto the rhythm of a passage
right we do a we do a three onsix off 24 hours a day so every
day you're you're on watch forthree hours and then you're off
for six hours and we do it inpairs.
And so you have a watch partnerand that's your watch partner

(01:15:27):
for the trip.
On long passages where for doingAtlantic crossings or like a
Bermuda to St.
Thomas you know aftereverybody's familiar with the
instruments the gauges theautopilots the sail plan and how
the boat operates then maybe wedo individual watches where we
do three on eighteen off I meanyou know so you're really you

(01:15:48):
can really stretch it out whenyou have a large off wow yeah
when you when you when youdouble the amount of people it
it's uh 12 off but yeah we we'vedone the Atlantic uh where we
did four hour watches and thenwe had like 24 hours off it was
what gets what gets you excitedlike I mean you've been doing

(01:16:09):
this a while now so you youobviously are are happy with it
what is what's what excites youwhen you're teaching these
people what when so when whatmakes you happy what makes me
happy is when I can see a sparkignite in somebody and it's very
for me it's very noticeablebecause I've seen it so many

(01:16:30):
times so I'll put them behindthe wheel um and turn the engine
off yeah the the engine theengine's off and then that first
good puff of wind especiallydown here in the Caribbean where
we're sailing in 20 knot tradesall the time and the boat heals
over just a little bit and theyget that little that that little

(01:16:53):
jolt of nervousness because ofthe heel and I say look that's
just how right the this the boatis shaped to ride that way you
know Libra has kind of a a shearup bow and a shear stern right
so when it heals over the waterline's longer right that was the
way that Bill Tripp Jr.
was able to kind of cheat therules back there in the CCA

(01:17:14):
rules um was by using the heelto you know because to make a
vessel go to make a displacementvessel go faster you have to
have a longer water line andthat's a way to cheat the rules
right so when the when the boatheals over it instantly gets
longer so as it sits flat in thewater maybe you have a this boat
has a 42 foot water line butwhen it heals over then I can

(01:17:37):
get 57 foot of water line.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:40):
Well when you you were talking about that moment I
remember I remember that momentwell I was uh I was taking uh
101 and 103 in Pensacola rightand we turned off the engine and
uh was that was that with Lanierno I didn't do um but it it and
then it caught the wind and Iwas at the the helm and I was

(01:18:03):
like oh my gosh yep I know Iknow exactly what you're talking
about.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:07):
Yeah so it's like we are moving and the it's wind it
the the wind moving it there'ssomething about that the power
of mother nature is amazing anduh and and being able to kind of
an independent feeling it waskind of yeah empowering and a
lot of times I just stand backand shut up and let people enjoy
it which sometimes it's hard forme to do but um you know that

(01:18:32):
first big puff thank you Jessicajust wanted to comment on
somebody yeah that that firstbig puff of wind that somebody
feels especially when they'rebehind the wheel and they and
they feel you know Libra is alarge vessel but we don't have
hydraulic steering we have cablesteering so you can feel the
rudder and the the rudder is thesize of a barn door.
So did some do you ever seeanybody go what's the big deal

(01:18:58):
no not not really I've neverI've never really seen I've
never really had that I have alot of people that you know hand
steering is the devil right youknow like who who in their right
mind would want to hand steeranything when you have an
autopilot yeah of course we havean autopilot and we use it all

(01:19:18):
the time because hand steeringis fun and it's great but it's
not great to do your whole watchbecause then you just get wore
out and I always feel like arested crew is a more responsive
crew.
Sure.
So you can hand steer all youwant on Libra.
You can come on a trip if youwant to hand steer your whole
watch go for it.

(01:19:39):
I'm not gonna hold you back butif you want to use the autopilot
I'm not the one that's gonna gono no no no we're learning you
got to hand steer see I'm notteaching I'm not teaching you
how to sail right I'm teachingyou how to navigate your boat
safely from point A to point Busing All of the available tools

(01:20:01):
that a normal cruising boatshould have.
One of those, which most peopleforget about, is an engine.
Right?
Just like if you have a manoverboard situation, heave to
start the engine.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:14):
Save the person's life.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:16):
Yeah, save the person's life.
Don't go shooting off, startdoing figure eights because you
think that that's what you'resupposed to do.
Right.
And and in a lot of times thosethings have just been beat into
people's heads for so long thatthey they really do forget that
cruising boats are motorboats.
You really are on a motorboat.
We're not all out here to proveanything.

(01:20:37):
Um it's just like, yeah, so yes,we do celestial navigation, we
can I can teach you how to do asun sighting, and we can get
really close to where we're at.
But it's 2025.
So if I get hit by lightning,right, and every piece of
electronic device on this boatgets fried, then I probably have

(01:20:58):
a phone in my pocket.
You probably have a phone inyour pocket.
The other seven people probablyhave a phone in their pocket.
And it's a few.
So I'm not saying that you don'tneed to know how to navigate.

(01:21:20):
Right.
And guess what happens?
You're not gonna run over anisland in the middle of the
night.
Because there's people onthere's people everywhere now,
and there's streetlights andcars and all kinds of things
traveling up and down the road.
So it's not like it's master andcommander, right?
You're not just gonna happen uponto something in the middle of

(01:21:41):
the night that's not reallyMark.
You're always gonna kind of knowgenerally where you're at.
And just if I had to do say Iwas in if I was transiting
between Bermuda and theCaribbean, Bermuda's a really
small island to hit.
Uh just say I was halfway, soI'm about 400 miles.

(01:22:02):
I just know that if I just drovewest, that in about three days I
should see some lights of theTurks and Caicos.

SPEAKER_02 (01:22:13):
Sound like Captain Ron.

SPEAKER_01 (01:22:14):
Nassau.
Yeah.
Pull over and ask fordirections.
You don't know how to get there,just pull over and ask for
directions.
You're not ever going to getlost.
I did have a guy that was reallyworried about getting lost, and
he was on the Caribbean trip,and and we would get to the end
of the island, and I would pointand I would say, Look, the next
island after Guadeloupe isMontserrat.
And you can see Montserrat fromGuadeloupe, right?

(01:22:35):
I've I'm eating my Frenchbaguette that I got from De Gea,
which is the most northernanchorage there.
So we're pulling out, and I cansee Montserrat, and there's you
know, a little smokestack comingout of the volcano.
And then to the right, just alittle bit.
Yeah, is Antigua.
And Antigua is a little a littleuh shore of an island, but you
can still see it off in thedistance.

(01:22:56):
And when you're sailing throughall these areas at night,
because we do do a lot of nightpassages and a lot of night
sailing, because that'ssomething that people want to
experience that they don't getto experience.
Night sailing is mystical to alot of people, and the Caribbean
You see the stars.
You you do get to see the stars,but you also see the lights of

(01:23:16):
all the islands, and then yousee every cruise ship on the
planet does circles all nightlong.
All the cruise ships do circles.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:26):
Circles?

SPEAKER_01 (01:23:27):
Because yeah, because going from St.
Martin to just just say thatyou're going from St.
Thomas to St.
Martin, it's 75 miles.

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:40):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (01:23:40):
Everything is so like if you're going to St.
Thomas to St.
Croix, right?
It's 40 miles.
So you have to sit there and runthat casino all night long.
And so to do that, they justliterally do circles.
And so you'll be in theCaribbean sailing around, and
you'd be like, okay, now, youknow, we're navigating in this
area where we have these cruiseships, and and they're just

(01:24:02):
changing they constantly arechanging course, not necessarily
going anywhere, they're justrunning the clock because they
want to give the people on thosecruise ships the perception that
they've been on a long voyage,and now they have arrived at a
new destination in the morningwhere they get up and they go do
their yeah.

(01:24:23):
I don't I don't know what peopledo on cruises, but apparently
they get on buses and get on.

SPEAKER_02 (01:24:26):
I've never been on one.

SPEAKER_01 (01:24:27):
Yeah, they've been able to.

SPEAKER_02 (01:24:28):
Okay, so Sail Libra has a reputation for creating a
tight community.
And you've just talked aboutsome of the things like you have
your trips where everybody comesback and and you stay in touch,
they they they continue to askfor advice and everything.
So what do you think?
You might you're doing somethingright to do this.

(01:24:49):
So w what do you think makes thecrew uh of the guests connect so
deeply offshore?

SPEAKER_01 (01:24:56):
So I'm not a uh so you're not ever gonna see me
with a pen and a piece of paper,you know, uh telling you, giving
you notes on what to do.
Right?
I I teach by doing or by showingyou how things are done.
So there's a lot of people outthere that once you're shoved,

(01:25:17):
you know, once a book getsshoved in your face, you just
lose interest.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, you you you justlose interest and you're like,
you know what?
I I mean I I I learned how toread when I was five, but how
many books have I really pickedup?
Now technical manuals, I'm allin, right?
But like stories and you know,this, that, and the other.

(01:25:37):
I never wanted to create aprogram that was based on me
handing you a pamphlet to startthe trip, right?
I have a captain's letter thattells you to get a pedicure.
That's really the extent, right?
And that you know, and then itsays that in there, and it says
the reasons why.
So there's there's that aspectof I teach by doing and putting

(01:26:02):
you in uncomfortable situations.
So if you call or you contact meand you say, Look, I want to get
this type of experience, then Ihave a trip that will probably
fulfill that, right?
Given the right weatherconditions and everything else.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:17):
So you you might tell someone that trip doesn't
sound like it's good for you.
So I think each other exactly.

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:23):
Yeah, like so so the two trips that are coming up.
So I have a weekend seminarstarting on the 11th, and then I
have a New Year's trip.
Those two trips are strictlyaround the U.S.
Virgin Islands.
We don't go to the BVI, and thenwe choose our destinations, and
I can see every US Virgin Islandfrom where I'm sitting, right
here in Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:42):
More pleasurable.
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:44):
Yeah, the longest trip that we could do would be
to St.
Croix, which is about 45 miles,which is a lovely sail, right?
45 miles, you know, your sixhours, right?
You know, this boat goes sevento ten nights, you know,
depending on the seven to ten,really, yeah.
And then and then and then thatway you can get a good feel for

(01:27:05):
what ocean sailing's like,because between here and St.
Croix is the proper CaribbeanSea.
I mean, there's not a whole lotprotecting you out there.
So you do get those, but it'sstill close.
So in that week, during theseminar, I probably won't go
more than 150 miles, which isstill about four times as much

(01:27:25):
as most of the boats that arearound here go.
So, so I don't if if you'venever really been in the Virgin
Islands, it's like a litter box,right?
There's cats everywhere.
There are very few monoholesthat do anything anymore in the
Caribbean.
The whole place is a giantlitter box.
The BBI is nothing but a litterbox.

(01:27:46):
There's cats everywhere.
And so you pull into a cove, andit's gonna be all cats on
mooring balls.
And those those those are calledterm charters, and term charters
are you get a captain and amate, and they peak, you know,
you get your little umbrella andyour drink, and you know,
they're kind of wooing you forthe whole week and showing you

(01:28:07):
all the sights and things, butyou're typically going from one
bar to the next or onerestaurant to the next.
You know, that that's your week.
And it's not very far.
Most people go less than 50miles uh in their Virgin Island
trips.
And Anagata, for a lot ofpeople, especially first timers
that have come that come to likethe BBI, um, that's a big trip.

(01:28:29):
So Anagata is about, I thinkit's about 25 miles or so north
of Tortola, north of VirginGorda.
And so it's just and it's kindof flat, so it's just out of
sight of land, or just out ofsight until you get you know
most of the way there.
Um, and that's a big deal forpeople to to do that.
Um, but those trips are verydifferent than what I do.

(01:28:52):
So what sets me apart from thosetrips is you're participating on
my boat, you're gonna be the onepulling up the sail, you're
gonna be the one trimming thesail.
And when I say trim the sail,you know, uh I mean adjust the
sail, whether it needs to comein or out, and we'll talk
through those things.
So if we're in a certain Cstate, so there's so there are

(01:29:16):
telltales on sails, right?
And they tell you how the wind'sflowing across your sail.
And most people don't know thatthey don't always have to be
right, right?
Because if you're sailing andyou're heeled over and
everything's perfect, except foryou're heeled over, and it's a
little uncomfortable, just easeoff, ease off the seats a little

(01:29:37):
bit.
Yeah, ease off the main, easeoff the jib, stand your boat up
a little bit more upright.
Maybe you lose a half of speed,but we're not in a race, right?

SPEAKER_02 (01:29:48):
The BBIs are okay.
I I don't know if you can see atthe bottom of your screen.
The BBIs are wrecked by chartercuts.

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:54):
Yeah, yeah, not to not to mention we are we
arrested the uh one of the headsof government there a couple of
years ago, and they sent in awhole nother interim government.
The uh the BBIs are are atotally different topic.
They've they've raised theirrates this just this past year
for as the Bahamas too.
For yeah, it's very similar towhat the Bahamas have done.

(01:30:17):
Uh I think it's a little bitmore.
So for me to take my group to uhthe BBI on this boat, with it
being 60 feet, with eight of ustotal, I would have to pay
somewhere close to about$1,500for that week for just that one
trip.
If I leave and then come backwith another group, I have to

(01:30:38):
pay that all over again.
So it's not like you get sixmonths, right?
I'm I'm not a cruiser, I'm notcoming in on my own boat, I'm a
commercial operation as far astheir computer.
So, and there's a lot ofoperators that were in the USVI
uh because the airport is in theUSVI, and now they've moved
their operation over to the BBIstrictly because once you're

(01:31:00):
there, you don't pay the fee.

SPEAKER_03 (01:31:02):
Right?

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:03):
So they're just they're basing out of the BBI
now.

SPEAKER_03 (01:31:05):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:06):
Uh the only bad thing about the BBI is there's
no airport.
I mean, there is a littleairport, but it doesn't take the
amount of traffic that St.
Thomas does.
So people fly into St.
Thomas, they take a taxi over tothe ferry terminal, they get the
ferry terminal, and then they goto the BBI on a ferry.
It takes two hours and you'redone.

SPEAKER_02 (01:31:23):
Okay.
All right, so we have been onhere now for an hour and a half.
So I'm gonna before we wrap itup, I could we could sit here
and talk forever.

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:33):
But yeah, I think I got a whole list.
We hadn't even we hadn't even wehadn't gotten to Cuba, we hadn't
got the to the Guadalupeseasickness uh thing.
We'll do another one.
Yeah, we'll do another one.

SPEAKER_02 (01:31:46):
Yeah, yeah.
So I want to do a little just ashort rapid fire round.
Some quick, simple, simpleanswers.
Um favorite passage you've eversailed.

SPEAKER_01 (01:31:58):
Uh favorite passage I've ever sailed.
So there's that's a two-partquestion.
And I think that they justhappened.
So my new port to Bermuda, thatdocument that I had that you
were reading, right?

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:12):
It's not it's not a quick answer, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 (01:32:14):
So that so that passage was a heavy weather
passage, and it sold as a heavyweather passage, and the people
that signed up knew it was aheavy weather passage, and and
we were able to sail in fiftynights of wind, and um we had
seas, we had seas over twentyfeet, such and which is a lot of
people would sail their wholelife and never find themselves

(01:32:38):
in that experience.
And it just happened to be thatI had the exact right
combination of crew members thatwere able to take everything in
stride, keep a very positiveattitude, no matter what was
happening around us.

SPEAKER_02 (01:32:51):
Um these were probably experienced sailors
that were on on board, right?

SPEAKER_01 (01:32:55):
Not at all.
So, you know, they they're oneof the guys is a one of the guys
is a repeat.
Now, some of them have, youknow, they're lake sailors,
right?
They're they're bay sailors,lake sailors.
They're not uh some of them havesmaller boats in the 20 to 30
feet range, but not anythingthat they that they've ever
taken over the horizon.
So these are all you knowcoastal and bay sailors.

(01:33:17):
So these guys got their money'sworth.
I mean, they really got theirmoney's worth.

SPEAKER_02 (01:33:22):
So being able to sail and yeah, you said the
winds were up to 70 knots.

SPEAKER_01 (01:33:27):
So when we left, uh our highest ghost, our highest
gust was 74 knots.
Um, but that was we were on amooring ball in Black Island,
uh, waiting for this.

SPEAKER_02 (01:33:38):
Isn't that Rhode Island?
That's off of Rhode Island?

SPEAKER_01 (01:33:41):
Yeah, yeah, Black Island's off of Rhode Island.
Yeah.
Um, just directly across fromMontauk, which is uh the tip of
Long Island, New York, there.
So we were actually planned andstationed up there waiting for
this weather system to pass, andthen we rode that that front
down to Bermuda, and then therewas a lull between, and then we
got another front.
We were totally expanded.
Uh we just straight line, youknow, we just had more winds for

(01:34:05):
a long same period than we weregoing to.
And so that built the sea statewell over 20 feet.
And so, and so during thatstorm, that's the one that uh,
you know, there was a cat thatsank, um, that they were all
life flighted off.
The Coast Guard came and pickedthem up.
But they were I don't know, theywere hundreds of miles away from

(01:34:25):
us, uh, kind of coming down thecoast uh when that happened.
But it was the same system.
So we so we had you know 400,500 miles of fetch for that sea
state to build on us.
We'd already crossed the GulfStream, we'd already passed
that, and that's a greatarticle.
I'll I'll put that on thewebsite for people to uh read.
There's actually a Facebook postabout it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:34:46):
So seeing all who you wrote that article for?

SPEAKER_01 (01:34:49):
Uh well I've I wrote it for my followers, so I don't
do a whole lot of writing, um,but I do have a lot of
experiences, and so later inlife, I mean, I don't even know
where I left my toothbrush,probably in the bathroom
somewhere, but I'm not sure,right?
So later in life, I'm forgettingall of these experiences that
I've there's so many, yeah.

(01:35:11):
And so, and so I've I've startedto keep what's called a story
log.
So instead of just, you know,the wind's blowing 15 knots in
this direction, instead of yournormal log, which I do a digital
log anyway, if you ever if youever see six new sailors trying
to fill a log book out in a Cstate, it doesn't work.
They just puke.
That's all they do.

(01:35:31):
Give them a pen and a piece ofpaper and tell them to write
something in a six-foot C-state.
So I'm comfortable.
So we so we do digital logkeeping.
Uh so anyway, that that storywas was fantastic.
Everybody came together in theend.
We had very little damage to theboat.
I had a paddle board that wentoverboard of the same tank that
went overboard um by choice justto save it uh from rattling

(01:35:55):
around on the deck.
And then immediately after thattrip, now there are slews of
boats coming in after us thatare just wrecked.
There was a catamaran that wasdismasted, there was a guy that
his anchor got loose uh duringthe sea state that he was in,
and it just damn near cut thefront of his boat off.

(01:36:16):
So, you know, you see all ofthis carnage come into Bermuda,
and Bermuda is just a reallyjust a little rock in the middle
of the ocean, but they do agreat job there of taking care
of everybody that transitsthrough.
And so that crew happened, theysurvived, uh, they're gonna be
best friends for the rest oftheir lives.
They had a huge experiencetogether, and then the next trip
that came in was a 900-milespinnaker run, which is almost

(01:36:43):
unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02 (01:36:45):
So did your boat get damaged at all in these 20
season?

SPEAKER_01 (01:36:50):
Yeah, so so the one thing that I had that I don't
normally have was I have a buddythat's moving to a Grenada uh on
his boat, and he had a uh he hada nice paddleboard.
So he had a nice paddle board.
We'll stress that part.
So he went and I said, Hey, gobuy those little racks that go

(01:37:11):
on the stanchions, right?
And you know, where yourpaddleboard kind of hangs off
the side.
And so he did that, he installedit.
Uh we go to leave.
I never thought about it, it'sjust ride around back there.
And we kind of went down one ofthe waves and rounded up a
little bit, and that paddleboardjust grabbed half of it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:37:29):
Wait, you were you're breaking out.
Oh, I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_01 (01:37:32):
Yeah, so we we we kind of surfed down a very large
wave, and the boat heeled overand listed, and that paddle
board acted like a giant shoveland scooped up half of the ocean
and uh snapped it in half.
It looked like jaws bit it intwo, and I watched it took a
gunshot.
So when I turned around andlooked back, I could see like

(01:37:53):
the pieces of the board, youknow, just disappearing into the
ocean.
Um, but so Libra is purposebuilt for what I do, so I don't
have stanchions like a sailboatdoes, right?
I have hard railing all the wayaround the boat for safety.
I'm almost six foot four on mostsailboats.
The stanchions are gonna hit meright above my knees.

(01:38:14):
They're death traps, right?
Lifelines to me are just deathtraps.
Yacht designers put them onthere because they keep the line
of the boat, right?
They they don't get in the way,they don't mess things up.
But if you look at pictures ofLibra, you'll see her hard rail
system.
Um so it bent that rail a littlebit, popped one of the
stanchions out of the deck, andso all we did was take a come
along in Bermuda and bendeverything back into place and

(01:38:36):
bolt it back down.
Uh, we didn't really take anydamage on that.
Yeah, and then we had a propanebottle that got loose uh during
that same process, and I made aquick executive decision that
said I I carry uh two 40-poundbottles, so I have plenty of
propane for six months, and soone of them was donated to the

(01:38:58):
sea because it got knocked outof the wreck and it was rolling
around on the deck, and I'm youknow back there and off the you
know, off the side it went, andsomebody's gonna find it, and my
tackle box.
I I have a cooler that's uh hasall of my fishing gear in it,
and it rides around on the boatperfectly fine and for years and

(01:39:18):
years and years, and then itjust put it off the boat.
Yep, it went with it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:39:23):
Donated it to the sea.

SPEAKER_01 (01:39:24):
Yep.
But on that trip right beforeBermuda, we caught three Mahi,
and so we had uh ceviche, thenwe had fried mahi, broiled mahi,
all to that last night dinnerwhen we arrived, it was great.

SPEAKER_02 (01:39:37):
All right, so these are the kind of soft questions,
but um what's the one food itemthat you won't leave the dock
without?

SPEAKER_01 (01:39:48):
I mean, besides chocolate bars and things like
that.

SPEAKER_02 (01:39:52):
It could be that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:39:53):
All right, so let's see.
So one of my favorite things isthat they have A so Walmart
sells this indulgent trail mix,but you gotta keep it in the
refrigerator because it haschocolate chips on it.
So that's because that's myfavorite like hand snack.
Um mayonnaise, uh, Duke'smayonnaise.

(01:40:18):
I'm not gonna I'm not goinganywhere without Duke's
mayonnaise on the boat.
If I have to if I have to stockup Duke's mayonnaise for the
entire Caribbean season becauseyou can't buy it down here, I'll
do it.
You can get it in St.
Thomas, but I I like Duke'smayonnaise.

SPEAKER_02 (01:40:31):
You know, if you if you get a good tomato sandwich,
that's well someone justcommented that about Duke's.
So that that brought this personout of the out of silence when
you talk about Duke'smayonnaise.
Yeah, must really be good.

SPEAKER_01 (01:40:46):
They have they have a following.
Go to their websites, you canbuy all kinds of t-shirts and
everything.
Um so yeah, so Dukes mayonnaise,and then I'm I'm a hot sauce
contour, uh, just adds a littlespice.
I like to pick up hot sauces indifferent spaces.

SPEAKER_02 (01:41:00):
Um but food wise, uh pretty much you can you can eat
the same thing over and over.
I can.

SPEAKER_01 (01:41:09):
I mean, if I have to, I can, but the way that we
operate, we we have you've gotguests, so you can't Yeah, we we
have our galley, so I have threeyou can't see it, but I'm doing
another tour one day.
I so I have three full-size uhwell full size under-the-counter
refrigerators, and then also alarge deep freezer.

(01:41:30):
So we can carry a ton of freshproduce.
Uh I have a pantry that I if Iwas if I was just by myself, I
could live on the boat for ayear and never go to the dock.

SPEAKER_03 (01:41:40):
Wow.

SPEAKER_01 (01:41:41):
Um and we have a water maker.
We have everything that a propercruising boat should have, and
we try to keep it all in workingorder.
But but yeah, food-wise, I havehad MREs on here, you know, like
the little military ones thatthey hand out during hurricanes.
So I I've had those on here too.
But yeah, I mean, just aboutanything I'll eat, but yeah, my
intention is.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:02):
When you're worrying about guests, you have to that's
a different thing.

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:04):
Yeah.
So um these are salads and freshstuff is what we usually try to
try to do.
And we do eat meat.
There's a lot of boats in thisin this industry that are all
vegetarian, but we uh we dosteaks.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:17):
Yeah.
I mean, there's nothing like asteak on the uh grill.
Yeah.
Um, so one piece of offshoreadvice, five words or less.

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:27):
Man overboard, heave to.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:30):
Okay.
No figure eights.
Dream destination you haven'tsailed to yet.

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:36):
Uh Dream destination that I have not sailed to yet.
Um Diego Garcia.

SPEAKER_02 (01:42:49):
Where's that?

SPEAKER_01 (01:42:51):
The middle of the Indian Ocean.
You gotta have kind of specialpermission to go there, but is
it in the northern part or theit's almost dead in the middle.
It's more northern than it is,than it is uh center.
But if you typed up DiegoGarcia, you would you would see

(01:43:12):
it.
It's a it's a military base, butthere are a few other islands
around it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:16):
Pirates, sir?

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:18):
No, no pirates.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:19):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:20):
So my pirate, so so here's the pirate story.
If you want to get rid ofpirates, there's no there's no
pirate stories, right?
So I'm usually I'm usually haveit's it's usually myself and a
mate and you know four, four orfive guys, maybe a gal.
Anyway, pirates start comingnear the boat, all the guys get
on the rail, strip down naked,hold hands, and just wave them

(01:43:43):
on over, right?
You just say, We need more, comeon over.
Just just get naked and wavethem over.

SPEAKER_02 (01:43:52):
So the Somali pilot will discuss to you later.

SPEAKER_01 (01:43:55):
Yeah, exactly.
So in most of those situations,they're gonna think, man, those
people are nuts.
We're not gonna board that boat.
So that's my pirate deterrentthere.
It's just everybody strip downnaked and hold hands and wave.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:08):
Okay, last question.
One thing all sailors shouldpack, but hardly anyone does.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:15):
Earplugs.
They don't bring that sailing isnot quiet at all.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:23):
Oh, you mean like uh I thought I was thinking
earbuds, but no you're talkingearplugs.
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (01:44:30):
Earplugs, yeah, because if you're now right now
in anchor, of course, it's it'snice and quiet, but if you're on
passage, yeah, it's it's loud.
You know, things are bangingaround, sails are banging, gears
banging, and if you're on awatch rotation to where you're
doing your three on six off,during that six-off, you really

(01:44:50):
need to get some good sleep.
And most people never thinkabout earplugs.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44:57):
So um heave two sailing says earplugs go right
in my pack, my pack first.
Love it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:45:03):
Yeah, yeah, because you can get on this boat, so
it's not like everybody hastheir own cabin either.
So I have guys tap machines, Ihave guys that you know, there's
all kinds of guys.
I get I take just about damnnear everybody.
It's loud.
I mean, you're living withstrangers, they're snoring
around you, and I have I havesome really good recordings of

(01:45:27):
some really, really loud snoringpeople.
And what I'll do is I'll takethat recording and then I'll put
it on the stereo, and then I'lljust wake them up with it.
So I record them snoring with myphone over their nose, and then
I Bluetooth to the stereo andjust crank it up until until
they wake up and go, What thehell is going on?

(01:45:48):
I was like, That was you, that'swhat you sound like.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45:51):
That is hilarious.
So is it I gotta have a goodtime?
Is it mostly guys?

SPEAKER_01 (01:45:58):
It's mostly guys.

SPEAKER_02 (01:45:59):
I'd say in your pictures, you know, I saw it.

unknown (01:46:04):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:46:04):
Oh really?

SPEAKER_01 (01:46:05):
Okay, yeah, 80, 80% guys, maybe 70% guys.
I'd say on every trip that Ithat I have uh that I have a
woman, at least one.
Um on that trip that we had theheavy weather on from Newport to
Bermuda, there was a a lady on,and it was a couple, and uh, and
she was just fantastic.

(01:46:26):
I mean, it was everything abouther was uh exceptional um from
just from just the way that shehandled herself and the
situation and the positiveattitude that you have to keep
when you're in a mixedenvironment like this with other
people.
And we have so I I have thiswhole Catherine's letter, we
could just do another one aboutthat, but uh we don't do

(01:46:49):
politics, we don't do religion,and I have a whole list of
things.
I'm like, if I hear the words socool.
If I hear the words Trump,Biden, Kamala, Jesus, Muhammad,
if I hear any of these words,then you get put in timeout.
If I hear them twice, you get towalk the plank.

SPEAKER_02 (01:47:06):
Because it's just gonna start something.

SPEAKER_01 (01:47:08):
Because we're out we're out here to go sailing,
right?
So we're not out here to talkabout current events.
If you want to talk aboutcurrent events, go home and talk
about current events.

SPEAKER_03 (01:47:16):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:47:16):
If you want to talk about your kids and your family
and your sailboat and thosetypes of things and boat
projects and navigation, that'sall perfectly fine.

SPEAKER_02 (01:47:25):
And that's the way that's my podcast, too.
I've had people when I because Igo and I farm, I I you know, I
find people on social media, soI see what they're posting, and
so um, but that stuff nevercomes up.

SPEAKER_03 (01:47:38):
Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 (01:47:39):
And it shouldn't teach their own.
This is about sailing.
Nobody knows my opinions.

SPEAKER_00 (01:47:45):
That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:47:46):
That's the way it should be.

SPEAKER_01 (01:47:47):
That's that's exactly right.
And aboard the and aboard Libra,that's exactly the way it is.
It's uh it's actually inwritten.

SPEAKER_02 (01:47:56):
That's a great advertisement for your boat
trips.

SPEAKER_01 (01:48:00):
Let me uh I know that I know that we're running
tight on on uh time here, butlet me there is this one little
uh thing that I can pull up realquick.

SPEAKER_02 (01:48:09):
This is my longest podcast ever.
I love it.
It's gonna take a long time toupgrade to upload the audio.
That's all right.

SPEAKER_00 (01:48:18):
Let's see.

SPEAKER_02 (01:48:19):
So this is the captain's letter.

SPEAKER_01 (01:48:21):
Do you get can you share the captain's letter?
Yeah, I'll send it, I'll send itto you.
I usually send it to the group acouple of weeks before their
trip.
Um, because you know, somethings may be a little different
between trips, but uh that'ssuch a good idea.
So so so here's so here's onethat is should should be on just
about everybody's list uh ifthey're gonna take people on

(01:48:44):
their boat, no matter whetherit's their friends, their
family, or strangers.
It says the most important thingis attitude.
No one wants to be stuck on aboat for a week with a Karen or
a Chad type personality.
And uh no offense to anybodynamed Karen or Chad, but that's
but that's the best way todescribe that type of
personality, right?
So asshole, no at alls, andbusybodies, right?

(01:49:07):
We don't need those on the boat.
I do reserve the right to bootassholes off the boat.
It's just my rule.
Everyone gets along all thetime.
So to do this, we eliminate afew conversation topics like
religion, politics, COVID, andvaccines.
Those push people's buttons.
So it's a rule on most boats.
We are here to sail, let's keepthe week on topic.

(01:49:29):
And then it goes the big redwords say if I hear the words
Trump, Biden, Harris, Bernie,the Pope, Jesus, Muhammad,
Israel, Palestine, Ukraine,Russia, or basically anything on
the news other than your normallife, like kids, family, and
sailing talk, you'll be put intotime out or will have to walk

(01:49:51):
the plank.
We are in mixed company.
Don't think that your politicalhumor will outweigh this.
And then it moves on to if youare sexful, an asshole, a
sexist, misogynist, or just aplain old dickhead, have a full
refund, so please don't come ifyou fit the above description.
Really, don't come, and that'skind of underlined.

(01:50:13):
Uh, this is your out for a fullrefund.
If you fit that description,don't ask yourself.
If you do, ask your friends.
If you don't have friends, thentalk with a little voice in your
head and ask why you don't haveany friends.

SPEAKER_02 (01:50:29):
Am I an asshole?
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (01:50:31):
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (01:50:33):
And then uh tell me about the tell me about the
drinking, your rules about that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:50:39):
Um, so so that was so we touched on that, right?
So I said don't, you know, it'syou know, we get to uh we get to
drink and port all we want.
We just don't act like it's uh1985 spring break and Daytona
Beach.
Um you know I have people bringtheir own cup so we're not
washing dishes all the time.
This letter is uh if you printedit out, it's probably six pages,

(01:51:03):
but it's just things that I'velearned throughout you know,
throughout every trip, just likethe guy that got stabbed by
somebody's big toenail.
So I have a 3A, a 3B, and a 3Csection, and all of them have
get a pedicure in it.
Um it's do people follow theserules?
Yes.
Yeah, and and what and anotherone is I haven't had to put

(01:51:26):
anybody in time out now.
Um I've just said, you know,everybody's like-minded that
joins these trips.
Everybody is here for some typeof common purpose.
We're not all different, right?
Most sailors or people that arelooking to get into this
lifestyle are like-minded.
And so I've never had a tripwhere everybody didn't really

(01:51:48):
get along.
There's been some weird peoplehere and there, and that's fine.
Everybody has their ownpersonality, but we just work
through it, right?
We've never I've never hadanybody for this.
You're yeah, I've never yeah,I've never had anybody where I
said, Look, man, I'm kicking youoff at the next port because
you're just a dick.

SPEAKER_02 (01:52:06):
Are you like Captain Lee?
Like, I'm gonna give you a planeticket home or Captain Lee on
below deck.

SPEAKER_01 (01:52:13):
Yeah, well, they could, yeah, they could.
I only had I did I did have amedical emergency one time and
uh and he did get a ticket home,but uh, but that was for a
medical evaluation.
That's a whole nother story.
Um, but yeah, you know, like Isaid, like-minded people when
people sign up for these trips,even brand new people never
sailed, never stepped foot on asailboat, they come with me

(01:52:34):
because they have the dream, andthen I can show them the reality
of their dream.

SPEAKER_02 (01:52:39):
Yeah, yeah, and that's smart.
I mean, all those that that issuch a good idea because if you
wait till they're there, thenthey're like, What are you
talking about?
I want to talk about the currentevents, I want to talk about
Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:52:55):
And you know, these weekline charters, we do have a
lot of downtime, right?
When the autopilot's running andwe're sailing in nice weather,
it'd be hours and hours andhours and hours.
But but we talk about all kindsof other things too.
We talk we you can't always talkabout sailing, that would just
get you know, but we have wehave games we play.
I always tell people, I'm like,you know, that there's whales

(01:53:16):
everywhere, but if you're notlooking at the water, you're not
ever going to see them.
Because most of the time we'rein the cockpit under the shade,
you know, how people sail aroundin open cockpits with no top,
have no idea.
They would just get crispyburnt.
But so we spend a lot of time inthe cockpit.
The cockpit on Libra is kind oflike a living room.
You know, we have upholstery, wehave pillows, we have things

(01:53:39):
that are comfortable, unlike alot of other operators that have
maybe some form of littlefiberglass seat with a little
throw cushion on it orsomething.
So we try to make it verycomfortable because especially
with the demographic that'sgoing on with me, I get a lot of
older guys, older ladies thatare getting close to retirement
age.
Let's keep it.
I'm not out here, I'm not outhere to uh to make anybody

(01:54:01):
suffer.

SPEAKER_02 (01:54:02):
Sure.
All right, we should probably weshould probably end it there.
Let's see.
One hour 54 minutes.
So I I love it.
Okay, so we're gonna have youback, okay?
Okay, because yeah, a lot ofthis stuff on the whole list of
things.

SPEAKER_01 (01:54:19):
Yeah, we got Cuba that I do uh almost two days.

unknown (01:54:26):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:54:27):
Yeah, we could come here with it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:54:29):
I've got several that would probably really enjoy
it talking with you.

SPEAKER_02 (01:54:33):
Yeah, so we we could have you and uh one or two of
your clients, and they couldgive both you could give both
sides of the story.

SPEAKER_01 (01:54:41):
It is, it it is.
I've I've had a couple that havedone podcasts with them with uh
like ones, and and that theirstories are always great from a
different hearing their storyfrom their perspective about my
operation is always you knoweye-opening to me a lot of
times, right?
With the things the things thatpeople that that I don't get to

(01:55:05):
hear with their right, but whenthey're asked the questions and
they say, Well, how did how didyou feel during these moments?
And then I get very, you know,sometimes very heartfelt
comments.
I bet and it it it mean and itmeans a lot.
There was so that the paper thatI sent you, that short uh story
log that I wrote, uh, one of theguys that was on there has sale

(01:55:28):
with me extensively over thepast two or three years,
probably more than eight times.
And uh and so h his wife handlesall of his stuff for him.
And so I sent the I sent thearticle to him and uh and she
sent me she sent me this, andnow he was on this trip, right?
So the heavy weather trip thatwe went through.
And so he's she told me that bythe time he was finished reading

(01:55:51):
the thing that he was in tears.
And so, you know, for him torelive that experience, even
though it had only been a week,you know, it was very heartfelt.
It was uh, you know, hearingthings like that, you know, keep
me in the business.
That th those are the thingsthat excite me.

SPEAKER_02 (01:56:07):
Well, you pick out a couple people that you'd like to
come back with and we'll putthem on.
How about that?

SPEAKER_01 (01:56:12):
All right, I'll find them.

SPEAKER_02 (01:56:13):
Okay.
So Port Tac Approach says,Thanks, Ryan.
Thanks, Tinsley.
Thank you, Port Tac Approach,for watching.
All right, let's do it.
We're gonna we're gonna end itnow.
We're at 156.
And I'd like to end thesepodcasts by saying Assaulty
Abandon.
Ow.

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