Explorers Club to host its annual Sailing Stories
by Sean J Holland 26 Mar 2019 14:53 UTC
6 April 2019

Frank Blair - Annual Sailing Stories © Erwin Christian
On Saturday, April 6, 2019, the Explorers Club will host its annual Sailing Stories, a day focused on sailing-based exploration and conservation at its global headquarters in New York.
Speakers include:
Frank Blair, a true Southern Ocean circumnavigation, around the great capes, Mr. Blair built a 63-foot wooden schooner in Nova Scotia and with an all-volunteer crew, set off on a two-year maiden voyage around the world. Mr. Blair will share his dream voyage aboard the schooner Maggie B; from breakdowns to recoveries, great ports, gales and the apprehension and joys of his blue water passage.
Tami Oldham Ashcraft, is an American blue water sailor, author and speaker. She has decades of sailing experience, having accumulated 50,000 offshore miles and is a one-hundred-ton licensed Captain. In 1983, she survived a category four hurricane and spent 41 days alone in the Pacific Ocean.
Her book, New York bestseller Adrift (formally Red Sky in Mourning), tells of her terrifying ordeal which was the inspiration for the 2018 film ADRIFT. She uses her story of survival as a foundation for her motivational speaking engagements. She continues to be an avid sailor and lives with her family in the beautiful San Juan Islands, Washington.
Captain Donna Lange, along with her partner and Sail Twice Around team leader, Bob Philburn, will present about Captain Lange's two-time solo circumnavigation. As a 55-year old, musician and registered nurse from the mountains of New York, a mother of four, grandmother of 11; Captain Lange heard destiny's call to offshore sail solo where she would find her inward healing path to overcoming challenges in her life by sailing around the world in her Southern Cross 28' double-ender.
John Rousmaniere, author-sailor-lecturer Mr. Rousmaniere left more than 40,000 miles of blue water in his wake, including ocean passages and yacht races. His books about sailing history, the America's Cup, maritime photography, yacht design, and storms have been widely praised as classics. His Fastnet, Force 10 (about a brutal killer storm in which he sailed) was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "A gripping book of hair-raising, sometimes heartbreaking anecdote and cool analysis." His Annapolis Book of Seamanship is a standard instructional manual.
Dave Rearick, took his first sail on a Sunfish sailboat on the southern shores of Lake Michigan at age 12 and dreamed of one day competing in a singlehanded race around the world. 40 years later, that day arrived. Onboard Bodacious Dream, a Class 40 commissioned in Wellington, New Zealand to compete in the Global Oceans Race, Mr. Rearick set from Jamestown, Rhode Island on an eight and a half month solo circumnavigation.
Mr. Rearick competed in sailing events in the Great Lakes and raced on the Atlantic and Pacific including a series of Class 40 events in North America and Europe.
You may make your reservation online here.
For more visit explorers.org//events/detail/sailing-stories-2019