I had always been absolutely fascinated with solo offshore racing even when I had never been offshore and had really only sailed on big boats a couple times. When I was fifteen I spent two weeks in the Virgin Islands aboard the Harvey Gamage, a 130’ wooden schooner. I can still remember the first time I sailed through the night and drew a 4-8 am watch. Sitting on deck and watching the sun rise over the ocean while under sail for the first time definitely flipped a switch for me. To this day one of my most favorite moments in life is watching the sunrise on a beautiful morning at sea with nothing in sight but ocean everywhere you look. I came home to Boston after that trip and was ready to drop out of school get a GED and get a deckhand job on a tall ship or schooner. I did end up sticking it out in school and became the captain of my high school racing team learning more all the time but that desire to go offshore stayed with me.

When I graduated from high school I was one of 4 kids out of a class of 350 who didn’t go directly to college. I knew that all I wanted to do was boats and that a liberal arts degree was not what would get me where I wanted to be. I moved out to San Diego with 3 other friends and got a job working in a rigging shop right on shelter island, one of the biggest concentrations of sailboats in the entire country. I began to get involved in racing high performance keelboats and sailing as a semi-professional sailor at the age of nineteen. One regatta I was racing on a Melges 24 on San Francisco bay and we were hitting speeds in excess of 20 kts with the kite up on a day when the bay was doing exactly what it’s known for. Experiences like this only made me want more. There really is nothing quite like being out in a small light sailboat in 30+ kts of breeze with a big kite up just teetering on the edge of control. I also did a few deliveries on a J-160 and knew that a combination of being offshore and going fast as you have the guts to was what I wanted to do.

At this stage I decided that some sort of an education in the marine field would definitely be a wise choice if I had hope of making a decent living working in the industry. I had known about the Landing School for years and decided that I would go back east and study yacht design there. It was an intensive oneyear program which I was very happy about because me being very impatient I felt good about getting it all done in one year. I moved back to Boston in the early spring of 2004 and got a job at the Boston Sailing Center teaching sailing. I spent that summer sailing about 50 hours or more a week. It was absolutely great, I loved spending basically all my time out on the water and taught me that the best way to get better at sailing was to get out and do it as much as possible. I wasn’t exactly excited about going to spend a winter in Maine considering that I hadn’t been in cold weather in almost 3 years but that fall I packed my stuff into the back of my car and was off.

Being at the Landing School was a life changing experience in many different ways. At this stage I knew about the minis and had decided that if I wanted to actually get into singlehanded offshore sailing that was the way to do it, but beyond that I knew very little. I had been outdoors and in very social situations for a long time and all of a sudden I was living alone and spending at least 10 hours a day in a white boring classroom sitting in front of a computer screen. I had to become very good at being alone and entertaining myself and all the while keeping myself motivated to work very hard being that school was extremely intense what with all the students having to pull all nighters in the design studio on a regular basis. I think in this time I almost had a bit of a moment of clarity and really knew from then on out that what I was going to do was singlehanded offshore racing. I started to research the mini class intensely and ended up finding Jack Boye who at the time was refitting his mini and talked a good talk anyway. I came up with the plan to fly to the finish of Mini Transat and buy a boat there. I figured I would not only be able to get a boat for cheap but also see all the boats and skippers in one place and I would sail it back to Boston, the best part of the plan by far.

After another summer of teaching sailing full time I packed everything I would need for about 6 months into a small duffel back and flew to Salvador, Brazil with a reservation for a few nights in a youth hostel. I spent three weeks living in the youth hostel while I spent basically every day down at the marina talking to skippers and looking at boats that people wanted to sell. I finally ended up buying USA 176 a 1997 Romanelli designed carbon proto. I moved aboard immediately and spent the next few days provisioning and dealing with getting all the customs and immigration paperwork squared away. My first leg out of Salvador was 250nm upwind and into current and was one of the most brutal experiences of my entire life. I can remember my first night out feeling pretty good about myself having made an oh so tasty dehydrated meal and settling into the cockpit to eat some dinner watching the sun set. Soon after beginning to eat that meal a good sized wave crashed over the boat not only drenching me but also filling my dish of food to the brim with salt water, a tough way to learn that you eat down below while going upwind in a mini.

Six and a half months and roughly 5000nm later I sailed into Boston harbor after an adventure I could probably write a small book about and most recently a 16 day 1500nm passage. Having friends and my girlfriend come meet me in a powerboat as I entered the harbor at sunset was definitely one of the best feelings I have ever experienced. I felt like it was the end of an adventure but at the same time the start of an even bigger one. I immediately fell to re-rigging the boat and seeing what races I could do that summer. I ended up getting sponsored by hall spars with a huge discount on all new running rigging for the boat and although didn’t have it together for the Offshore 160 I did manage to get down to Newport to race in the Solo-Twin. I finished third in my class (singlehanded monohull spinnaker) of 3 boats but finishing only 3 hours behind a Beneteau 40.7 on a mainly jib reaching and upwind course in quite heavy air and choppy confused seas felt pretty good. It was now just a question of racing against some other minis and seeing how I would do. 

After all the sailing I have done in the past year I feel even more committed to my goal of Mini Transat 2009 and then taking it to the next level. I feel like I discovered a new part of myself alone out there and that the only way I can get that part of myself back is to go back to sea. I think that I will continue sailing offshore alone for the rest of my life as it really is just about my favorite place on earth. I am looking forward to doing the Bermuda 1-2 next summer and fully intend to be on the start line of Mini Transat 2009 no matter what it takes. But even more than that I am looking forward to where this path will lead much further into the future beyond the mini.