Brian
I’m 28 years old, originally from a small island off the coast of South Carolina, in the United States. I grew up around boats — my dad shared a Pearson 35 with some of his friends when I was a young child, and I started sailing dinghys when I was about 10 or so. I particiapted in a few races, but never really got into it and in my teens was more interested in conventional sports. After I went off to college, I started sailing with my dad more and fell in love with peace of being on the water.
I’ve always been an explorer by nature. When I was a kid I loved Calvin and Hobbes, their adventurer’s mentality, distaste for authority and fun loving ways are things I could relate to as a child and I can see in myself still. After I graduated from the College of Charleston, I worked for a year to save up some money then went out on what I was hoping would be a bigger adventure then some of the camping trips and summer wanderings I’d done before. In 2005 I went to New Zealand with a working holiday visa and no real idea of when or if I was ever coming back.
In New Zealand, I got my first taste of the traveling and backpacking culture and had a great time meeting people from all over the world but I was looking for someting a little more than the hostel experience. After traveling around the country for a month or so, I settled down in Auckland to work and save up money again — then bought a snowboard and a ski pass and headed to the South Island in my beat up old station wagon to spend the winter learning to ride and then when spring started to come around, take my camping gear and head off into the woods and live away from society for a while. I’d done a few multi-day solo hikes and wanted to do something a bit more, and not having something like a job and rent to pull me back in to the wheel made that pretty attractive.
I did a short four day trek when I first got to the South Island, then headed to the mountains for snowboarding. After a few weeks, one of my friends was leaving the country and I went with him to Christchurch to see him off — we stayed in a hostel that night and the next morning I woke to my car had been stolen along with all my gear. I had some money saved up, but didn’t want to replace everything that was gone because that meant it would only be sooner I’d have to return to the grind.
While I was in Christchurch, I met a girl who had just flown in from sailing as crew on a boat in Fiji for a few months and her stories got me thinking. One of my dreams had always been to get into blue water sailing and what better time then now? I didn’t have anything holding me back, so I started searching the web and found several captains looking for crew. I emailed back and for with a few, but settled on Tom and Karaka — he was about my same age and was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing so who better to learn from? 48 hours later on I was on a plane to Thailand with no real idea of where I was going, how to get there or what I would find when I did.
I managed to find Karaka, even though I was stalked by a Chinese street girl and spent the next two months or so cruising Thailand and Malaysia — safe to say I was hooked. I left Karaka knowing that as soon as I could, I would have my own boat and that I’d damn well be doing some more of this. I found a crew position with a family who was doing a circumnavigation for the Indian Ocean leg and made the crossing from Darwin, Australia to Richard’s Bay, South Africa (with some incredible stops along the way) before going to spend a few months in Tanzania with a friend of mine working in the Peace Corps in a small village in the Southern Highlands (Karibou!). Then the following summer, served as crew for a delivery from Spain to Greece, before returning to Chareston to work and find my own boat.
I probably have a little over 10,000 miles of bluewater experience on boats ranging from Tom’s steel ketch, to a brand new Catamaran and one ocean behind me. I definetly don’t know it all, and Illusion is a way for me to grow as sailor, share my love for the sea and continue traveling the way I want to — untethered.