Beth and Evans
We left international management consulting jobs (at Mckinsey & Co.) in 1992 and set sail aboard our Shannon 37 ketch, Silk (photos from prior life). We approached sailing as we had approached consulting: We had owned the boat for less than six months and sailed her a half a dozen times when we set off to Bermuda on the first leg of a planned circumnavigation. Neptune quickly humbled us in a Force 10 storm in the Gulf Stream, and by the time we made it to Bermuda we understood how ill-prepared we were to deal with the realities of handling a small boat at sea.
Against long odds we continued. Over the course of the next three years and 35,000 miles, we completed a voyage around the world that changed our values, strengthened our relationship and taught us to tread much more lightly on the planet.
Within a few months of returning ashore in 1995 we realized that fitting back into our old lives would mean giving up many of the things our voyage had taught us to value. We determined to set sail once again with the goal of spending a year in the archipelago of channels and islands extending 1,000 nautical miles up the west coast of Chile from Cape Horn.
Beth sailing in the Tropics
Over the course of the next four years, Evans ran an IT services business at General Electric, and Beth wrote two books (The Voyager's Handbook & Following Seas), while we designed and built a new 47' aluminum fractional sloop called Hawk.
It took us four years to design and build a boat capable of sailing the high latitudes. When we set off in 1999 aboard Hawk, we knew we had much to learn about high latitude sailing. Before heading south, we spent three years exploring the northern high latitudes from 45°N to the Arctic Circle.
In July of 2001, we embarked on an 8,000 nautical mile voyage down the length of the Atlantic that took us from Iceland to the Beagle Channel just north of Cape Horn. We spent the next 18 months cruising the Chilean channels from Cape Horn at 57S to Puerto Montt at 42°S and back. We then set off on a 60-day, 9,000 nautical mile, nonstop, east-about voyage from the Beagle Channel to Perth, Australia.
Over the course of the next two years, we passed under all five of the mariner’s “Great Southern Capes.” After a catty-corner run across the Pacific from New Zealand to British Columbia and then down to Chile, we have now sailed Hawk 65,000 nautical miles and completed our second circumnavigation
Evans at the helm in 50kts in the Beagle Channel
We both write for the US and UK sailing magazines and have had recent articles in Yachting World, Cruising World, Sailing and Practical Sailor. Beth is the author of The Voyager’s Handbook, a how-to guide for those who want to head offshore in their own boats; Blue Horizons, which chronicles our high latitude voyaging aboard Hawk; and Following Seas, a photo-narrative of our circumnavigation aboard Silk.
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.