M/T Samho Dream

The shipping industry has certainly seen better days, which for some shipowners, has put them in a financial bind.  A recent example is the VLCC Samho Dream which was recently sold at auction after the owner defaulted on it’s bank loans.

So what happens with the crew in that situation?

In Thome Ship Management’s December newsletter, they talked with two of their captains on that very subject, here’s what Captain Jeevan N Thombre of MT HERO 1, and Captain Lakshman Kumar of MT Leander had to say:

Both vessels, being part of the same fleet, were arrested on 12 August 2011.

1. What happened when the vessels were arrested?

Captain Jeevan N Thombre (JNT): Once arrested, a security guard was placed onboard our vessel. He was joined by a Solicitor and an officer from the Sheriff’s office. In accordance with the High Court of the Republic of Singapore, a warrant was issued against the vessel and a copy of the warrant was given to me and a copy was displayed on the bridge.

2. What does it mean when the ship gets arrested?

JNT: It simply means the ship is not allowed to move from its present position. A security guard is kept onboard to make sure the vessel does not leave the port and no one is allowed to visit the vessel without prior approval from the sheriff’s office.  However, there were no restrictions for the crew. Shore leave / Sign-on sign-off can be carried out after getting approval from the sheriff’s office.

Captain Lakshma Kumar (LK): It also means that the Owner, Master and Managers all have no authority to make any decision over the ship, crew and even the supplies of provisions.  Fortunately our own Owners/Managers have taken the initiative to request for provisions, bunkers and urgent stores at a fortnight interval applying through the Sheriff’s Office for approval.

3. What did you do onboard while the ship was arrested? How did you pass your time?

JNT: Although the ship was arrested, we were still carrying out our routine jobs and trying to keep the vessel ready for trading at any time when required.

LK: For me, other than carrying out my usual duties, most of the time I was trying to find ways to boost the morale of my crew. I assured them that no one is going to lose any money working with Thome. I have been working with the company for a long time and I have never experienced any irregularities in the settlement of monthly wage or final BOW. For this tenure though, they might expect some delays in getting their MPO/Allotments.

4. How was Thome supporting you as the Captain when the ship was under arrest?

JNT: Thome supported me as the Captain to sort out all the requirements for the safety of the ship and the crew.

LK: Thome has been supporting me as and when I require their assistance that is why I am with them for the last 10-11 years and proud to be part of them.  However in this kind of situation, I know their hands are tied as everything requires the approval of the sheriff or the solicitor.

5. What advice would you give to other captains in the event their ship was under arrest?

JNT: Keep up the morale of the crew

LK: I agree. Let your crew understand that you are in the same predicament as the Master is part of the crew as well and help your crew meet their basic needs (i.e. wages owed, food and fresh water and bunker).

Headquartered in Singapore, Thome Shipmanagement is a niche provider of personalized, high quality, and specialized shipmanagement services.  Thome manages vessels and and provides officers and ratings under the flags of Singapore, Bahamas, Panama, Liberia, UK, Marshall Islands, and Indonesia, as well as the NIS and DIS registeries.  

By Alexander Rose, Wall Street Journal

On April 28, 1789, mutineers commandeered HMS Bounty, en route from Tahiti to the West Indies with a cargo of breadfruit (intended as cheap, nutritious fodder for slaves). Led by master’s mate Fletcher Christian, they condemned the captain, William Bligh, and his loyalists to certain death by setting them adrift in a small boat in the middle of nowhere. The skeleton Bounty crew, after stopping to abduct their Tahitian paramours and seize a few slaves of their own, set course for the very edge of nowhere—way out there in the deep, uncharted Pacific blue.

In a fine and measured biography, “Bligh: William Bligh in the South Seas,” Anne Salmond penetrates the wooden world of the Bounty to show us a microcosm of British society at the time, with all its social, political and economic fermentation. This was an era, after all, when the debate over the rights of man versus the prerogatives of kings was much in the news, not least in America and France. Across the Atlantic, the Americans would go so far as to swear in their first president two days after the mutiny, and across the Channel, two and a half months after Christian dared overthrow his captain, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille, hulking symbol of royal absolutism.

It is understandably tempting to interpret the struggle between Bligh and Christian in polarizing terms—Bligh as the paragon of deference to the state, Christian as the embodiment of freedom unfettered—but, really, this was a very English fight. In the matter of the mutiny on the Bounty, the traditionalists won an overwhelming victory.

Bligh made it back to Britain after an epic, 47-day, 3,618-mile voyage in a 23-foot launch that he navigated using only his incomparable seamanship skills. Scarcely a soul died under his stern command, testament to Bligh’s paternalistic responsibility for the men’s lives and his crew’s obeisance to hierarchy. Fletcher Christian and his conspirators, by contrast, eventually settled on the paradisiacal Pitcairn Island, where life descended into a Hobbesian hell when the new inhabitants turned on one another. All but one of the British would be murdered. Meanwhile, those mutineers who had taken their chances by remaining on Tahiti were implacably hunted down by the Royal Navy and transported to Britain.

Some of these fugitives were hanged, but a few escaped the noose owing to some clever lawyering—by Christian’s brother, Edward. It was he who created the myth of Bligh’s savage “tyranny” aboard the Bounty, from which Fletcher understandably sought liberation. So potent was this image that the burgeoning Romantic movement sanctified Christian as a symbol of heroism and damned Bligh as a symbol of despotic rule. It is a view that continues to prevail, though Ms. Salmond does not share it: Bligh’s “reputation for brutality,” she admonishes, “was a triumph of rhetoric over reality.”

The truth was rather more prosaic. Bligh’s hydrographical and charting talents had once impressed even so exacting a sea dog as Capt. James Cook (a more enthusiastic flogger than Bligh, the author notes), but Bligh had been, I think, over-promoted. He “had a gift, almost amounting to genius, for insulting and infuriating his immediate subordinates,” Ms. Salmond writes. More disconcertingly still, after yet another of his volcanic eruptions he would often suddenly slather miscreants with kindness. His was a temperament ill-suited to captaining a long-distance voyage. Bligh should have been given a mapping job at the Admiralty, not command of a vessel. As for Christian, he could not bear to be bellowed at and humiliated, making him an unlikely candidate for a successful naval career in any case; but when he put out to sea with Bligh, the voyage had all the makings of a high-seas human-resources fiasco.

In short, unlike the fall of the Bastille or George Washington’s choice to be a president rather than a king, the Bounty affair proved inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. A freak event, the result of a clash of personalities, it remains nevertheless riveting owing to awe at Bligh’s journey home and our empathy for the dilemma that led Christian to revolt. Small wonder that Hollywood, knowing a great story when it sees one, has made three movies—of varying factual fidelity—based on the Bounty episode, as well as a cartoon, “Mutiny on the Bunny,” starring a certain Brooklyn-accented rabbit.

Nevertheless, Ms. Salmond periodically attempts to make Bligh’s misadventures seem more portentous than they were by focusing on the ethnography of the Polynesian islands. To that end, she argues that Bligh’s and the mutineers’ interactions with the natives make this “an episode in the history of the world, not simply the history of the West.”

Ms. Salmond here mistakes a forest for the (breadfruit) trees, equating the assuredly powerful impact that the arrival of the Bounty had on these isolated islanders with global historical significance. To reinforce this already dubious argument, she includes chapters on South Sea rituals that may be fascinating for specialists but for general readers may achieve the singular distinction of making even human sacrifice boring. Fortunately, most of “Bligh” does not suffer from such postcolonial anthropological overload, and when Ms. Salmond hews to the astounding story at hand, her otherwise old-fashioned biography is a model of depth, style and scope.

Mr. Rose is the author of “American Rifle: A Biography” and “Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring.”

Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Solitude at Sea

Three years, 30,000 miles

Reviewed by John Rousmaniere, edited by Gene Epstein, Barrons

Anybody hoping for a happier second act in life will find inspiration—as well as caution—in the story of Captain Joshua Slocum (1844-1908). Praised by Theodore Roosevelt as the hero “who takes his little boat, without any crew but himself, all around the world,” Slocum stimulated thousands to change their lives with his 1900 book, Sailing Alone Around the World, which recounts that adventure.

That Geoffrey Wolff tells this story knowledgably and sympathetically should be no surprise. He is, after all, the author of The Duke of Deception, Black Sun and other books about tipping points in the male ego. Wolff is also a fine writer who understands how another fine writer could produce one of the very best books ever about going to sea.

Slocum initially went to sea not for romance, but to escape his father’s beatings and the tiny Nova Scotia island of his childhood. For years he thrived as a captain of commercial sailing ships. But by his fortieth birthday, steam was supplanting sail, so he lost his livelihood. Then he lost his wife—the only person who ever loved and understood him. At 50 years old, the former clipper-ship captain was working on shore as a carpenter when a friend offered him an ancient and decrepit 37-foot fishing sloop. As Slocum rebuilt Spray, he devised a daring plan.

Ever since Magellan, large crews of sailors had been sailing around the world for cash. Slocum, already the accomplished author of short pieces, would make the trip alone and sell his words about it. This scheme led to a great voyage and a masterpiece of maritime writing.

Before setting out, Slocum faced two crucial questions: Was Spray up to the job? Was he? Without another sailor, Spray would have to steer itself for days on end. Unsure that this was possible, Slocum kept delaying his departure. After he finally got under way, in July 1895, Spray showed a wondrous ability to steer any course without his hand on the wheel. Modern boats are as flighty as butterflies; Spray was as steady as a whale.

But could her skipper cope with the loneliness? He confessed that loneliness first got to him when he dreamed up the ghost of an old seaman who identified himself as a pilot of Columbus and assured Slocum that all was well. After that, wrote Slocum, “The acute pain of solitude experienced at first never returned.” He was a contented man as he sailed through the Straits of Magellan to Australia, and then to South Africa and home. Like so many solitary men, Slocum found it a little too easy to cross the line from the social world to the lonely world. Loneliness was his identity. He credited it for his fame and success, bragging that his navigation was precise because he had no shipmate to distract him.

After three years and 30,000 miles, Slocum’s journey was over. But he loved solitude too much to be at home on land. Happy only at sea, unable to resume domesticity with his second wife, he sold himself cheap as a sideshow exhibit at the Buffalo World’s Fair and spent his winters in the West Indies, collecting conch shells to sell to American yachtsmen. He reached bottom when a scandal involving a girl ended with a term in a New Jersey jail.

Ironically, as Slocum the man declined, his reputation only grew. Even after the sex scandal, President Roosevelt sent his son Archie off sailing with Slocum in Spray for a tutorial in heroic manliness.

Yet that one word, alone, at the heart of his reputation, also undermined him for keeps. In 1908, lonelier than ever, he sailed off in Spray and vanished in the Atlantic.

JOHN ROUSMANIERE’s maritime books include Fastnet, Force 10, After the Storm and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship.

Following a visit by Davey Jones the night before to announce the upcoming festivities, the event went off perfectly as we crossed zero-degrees latitude, complete with a stockade, electric eel, whales belly, and of course King Neptune and his court.

One of the Floorhands on the drill crew decided that he was going to fully immerse himself in the experience and savor it for all that it was worth.  It was a remarkable and sickening sacrifice, yet one that pleased King Neptune greatly.

I feel sorry for the Wogs who one day finds themselves heading toward the Equator with this crew of Trusty Shellbacks…

Feel free to share your Crossing-the-Line experience with us on the Forum…

“I asked Ed Cooke, a competitor from England — he was 24 at the time and was attending the U.S. event to train for that summer’s World Memory Championships — when he first realized he was a savant.

“Oh, I’m not a savant,” he said, chuckling.

“Photographic memory?” I asked.

He chuckled again. “Photographic memory is a detestable myth. Doesn’t exist. In fact, my memory is quite average. All of us here have average memories.”

That seemed hard to square with the fact that he knew huge chunks of “Paradise Lost” by heart. Earlier I watched him recite a list of 252 random digits as effortlessly as if it were his telephone number.

“What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly,” Cooke said.

…At the time, I didn’t quite believe Cooke’s bold claims about the latent mnemonic potential in all of us. But they seemed worth investigating. Cooke offered to serve as my coach and trainer. Memorizing would become a part of my daily routine. Like flossing. Except that I would actually remember to do it.“

Foer provides details on how to improve your memory in his book (a great summary of tips can be found HERE) but the important lesson is that memory is a skill learned through hard work and practice… not through naturally born talent. This is important for mariners because having good memory leads to good seamanship, especially when “snap” decisions need to be made. But it’s also important because countless studies of great CEO’s and managers show that top performers have all developed great memories.

But memory is not enough. A study of historically great Chess Grand Masters found that many had only average IQ scores and some even had bad memories for remembering facts. In one example a master won the world chess championship and, when leaving, could not remember where he left his umbrella. This is because chess masters have a different kind of memory… situational memory.

Aboard my first ship the Captain told me that “Traffic situations are like chess games, you need to understand the flow of the game and predict the moves of your opponent long before he steals your first pawn.” He, of course, was right but how do chess masters know what moves their opponent are going to make?

It turns out the best don’t remember tactics they studied in books, although this does help, they remember stories from their earlier matches. They talk of past games as you and I would tell the story of a close call at sea and stories are things that stick in our brains better than anything. This is why experience counts, master’s with long careers have more stories stored in their memory than the rest of us and some of these memories stick in your brain.

But which ones stick? It turns out the ones that stick are the ones we tell others the most, it’s this repetition that build memory. Think back to the traffic situations you remember best. It was probably a close call right? Now think how many times you told the story of that near collision to others.

A common phrase is “I’ll never make that mistake again!” and this is correct but not because you remember the close call itself but because you built a story around the collision and retold that story many times in your career… a repetitive act that makes it “stick” in your mind.

Homework:

We can all learn from this lesson by purchasing Foer’s book and working hard at the practice of memory skills but a far simpler solution is to simply tell more stories. For this reason I suggest that all cadets, as part of their summer seaterm project, write the stories of their traffic situations on paper and recount these stories in class.

For the rest of us, those of us long out of school, we too can start writing stories around traffic situations we encounter by starting a journal. But it’s not enough just to write, you have to go back and re-read your stories and make a point of sharing them verbally with others. And remember; the most memorable stories are the most interesting so… get creative!

And note… it’s important to be truthful in telling your sea-stories! Otherwise your memory of events, memories you will need the next time you encounter a similar traffic situation, are based less on the facts and more on the stories you have built around them!

Image: Helix Q4000 on location of MC 252 as it prepares for “Top Kill.” © 2010 BP p.l.c.

I met up with a friend recently who works as Chief Mate for Hornbeck Offshore.  He described a situation regarding one of his coworkers that I thought deserved recognition…

“The Centerline was working alongside Helix’ Q4000 providing the mud for BP’s top-kill attempt on the Macondo Well, and the Chief Mate, John Holesha, recognized that the Q4000′s engines had started revving up unexpectedly.  For one reason or another, the rig’s GPS system was telling the dynamic positioning system that it was in the wrong place and was now trying to correct itself as quickly as possible.”

The Q4000, however, was hooked up to the Macondo well’s BOP stack 5000 feet down on the sea floor.”

“Grab that reflector and get out to the bridge wing quick!”, John told the AB.

The Q4000 was now in imminent danger of severely damaging or destroying the subsea equipment that it was hooked up to, not to mention possibly colliding with one of the dozen ships in close proximity to her.

“Q4000, Q4000, this is Centerline, switch over to Fanbeam-mode on your DP system immediately and reference off me, you’re driving off station”

The Q4000 then switched it’s DP reference system from GPS mode, to a mode that kept the rig on a relative bearing and range to the Centerline. Within seconds, the Q4000 was back on station and the crisis had been averted as quickly as it had developed.

Had it not been for the quick actions of Chief Mate John Holesha, catastrophe may likely have ensued resulting in significant delay to BP’s well kill operations and further environmental devastation.

Well done John!

By Rob Almeida - 8 March 2006

It was quite a day out here in the Gulf of Aden, the 600-mile stretch of ocean separating Somalia and Yemen, but we’re finally moving again and making tracks west.  Calypso, my parent’s Valiant 40, had been in Salalah, Oman for almost two weeks before departing with six other sailboats of various sizes and nationalities two days ago.

My parents had been sailing for the past eight years through the Caribbean, across the Pacific, Indonesia, and now the Arabian Sea.  With constant reminders of pirate activity in the area, they were happy that I had been able to meet them in Sri Lanka for this leg of their voyage.  They were also relieved that they weren’t the only couple trying to get their boat to the Mediterranean that spring.

During our stopover in Oman, there was much discussion among the boats regarding piracy and how to mitigate the threat. Daily skippers meetings were held over pints of beer at the expat club discussing how best to sail as safely, inconspicuously, and as expeditiously as possible through these pirate-frequented waters. The uncertainty of what lay ahead was front and center on everybody’s mind.

Last night our internationally-flagged sailing convoy, collectively called “Dexy’s Midnight Runners”, established contact with the USS Decatur (DDG 73) on VHF radio who gave us a position to avoid, due to recent pirate activity.  Unfortunately, that position was directly in between us and where we were going.  Having good communications with Decatur, we felt comfortable that if our safety was ever in doubt we would be able to contact them and help would be on its way in a hurry.  Unfortunately, soon after talking with them, they fell out VHF range and we were once again, alone, and fending for ourselves as we entered Pirate Territory.

As the night went on, endless chatter on the VHF and HF radios about contacts in our vicinity kept us all awake and the stress levels high. “Sir George”, a boat skippered by a direct descendent of the man who discovered Mt. Everest, was having difficulties with its engine and was unable to keep up with the rest of the squadron.  By morning, Sir George had fallen behind and was nearly 4 miles from the rest of the fleet, and dead in the water in need of mechanical assistance.

Soon after discussion began as to how to fix Sir George’s engine, high speed boats appeared on the horizon heading directly for us and soon two issues were on everyone’s mind, how to fix Sir George’s engine and what the intentions were of these boats.  Ideas came flying across on the radio, one of which was proposal to have me simulate being a US warship on the radio.

A proposal that I quickly squashed.

I then reminded the group that the issue at hand was to fix Sir George’s engine problem, and not crazy ideas of talking on the radio to people who don’t understand English and don’t listen to the radio.

Minutes later, a fishing boat came alongside Sir George and the utterly terrified Thai wife of the Kiwi skipper began screaming into the cabin. The skipper, who was on the radio with us, quickly dropped his radio and went topside to assess the situation.  With the rest of the squadron listening intently on the radio for any hint of what was transpiring, the skipper came back on the radio and advised us they were fisherman looking for whiskey and directions to where the fish were.

With Sir George’s engine issue now getting critical, we all turned around and my dad hopped on board Sir George to lend a hand.  While he was gone, a half dozen more fishing boats appeared and two of them started coming toward Calypso.  Going very slowly, they actually rafted up with each other, appearing to discuss what they were going to do.  The two boats had nearly 8 people on board and as they drifted closer to within 40 feet, I started to wonder what exactly their intentions were and started the engine to back away.

They began to shout at me, asking for the typical handouts such as cigarettes and whiskey.  I replied saying that we were all out.

They then yelled, “Fish! Fish!”

Assuming they were asking for directions to the fish we had seen earlier that day, we pointed in the direction from which we came, and they were soon out of sight, heading east.

Sir George ended up having to limp back to Salalah due to a blown head gasket and the rest of The Runners continued on without incident.

[Image (c) Robert Almeida Photography]

(c) Kurt Arrigo Photography

By Nat Spencer

Two summers ago, after the finish of the 2008 Newport-Bermuda Race, three of my buddies and I were delivering a 45-foot Swan back to Newport, Rhode Island.  It was a typical two or three-day turnaround involving a steady stream of Dark and Stormy’s served up by the bar staff at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, provisioning at Miles Market, and preparations that involved turning this high-tech raceboat into a safe cruising boat capable of being sailed safely by myself and three of my friends.

After the hangover final wore off, the delivery began under perfect conditions… blue sky, moderate southerly breeze, and waves on our port aft quarter.  As the sun’s rays gave way to an incredibly dark, star-filled, sky, the wind built steadily up to 20-25 knots. We were making some serious ground toward New England and we were having the time of our lives.

By the morning of the third day, the wind hadn’t let up at all, and was in fact getting stronger with gusts up to 30 knots.  With spotty weather forecasts coming in from our weather routing service the two days prior, we attempted to call the weather routers via satphone.  No luck getting through on two attempts and it was clear we were definitely on our own.

The wind had held at 30 knots all day and through the night and we were sailing with two reefs in the mainsail and our large delivery jib.  The clouds had moved in and it was squally with occasional rain showers, but it was still manageable.  The weather had covered up the stars, and the rising sun gradually intensified the once missing horizon.   Deeply exhausted from the constant buffeting of 35 knot gusts in my face, and the suspect weather tossing the boat about, my watch finally ended and I passed out into my bunk.

I woke up to my buddy’s voice, he was on the satphone, giving the weatherguy a guilt trip about our lack of attention from the forecasters.  I also heard the captain banging his foot on the cockpit floor.  If I were awake I would have immediately realized he needed help, but in the exhausted, suspended-animation, incoherent state I was in at the time, I could hardly tell which way up, much less what was going on topside.

The second time the captain banged his foot on the cockpit floor, the guy on the sat phone (with his abnormally high pitched voice) turned around and told the captain, who was on deck steering the boat, to shut up.  He said something along the lines of  “you’ve been yelling at me for three days to contact the weather guy and now I have him on the phone!…Deal with it!”

Thankfully, I woke up.  I was in boxers and that was it. I grabbed a harness and sprinted up the companionway steps and saw a green sky and wall of clouds that had to be twenty or thirty miles wide, and the captain was freaking out.  With lightning cracking all around, the captain and I wondered how long it would take before the wind instruments on top of our carbon mast disappeared in a blinding flash and puff of brown smoke.

The wind had picked up to 50kts, more than I wanted while sailing.  Thankfully, the captain and the other guy had taken the jib down that morning, and we didn’t have to deal with it.   However, we were now faced with attempting to cut across the front edge of the squall line and it was too windy to jibe with out fear of breaking the boom.   The storms path was directly towards us, moving in from the North East, so we decided to run as fast as possible on a West, Southwest line.  The day before, our speed record was 13 knots with a main and jib on a beam reach.  With only a double reefed main, and almost dead down wind we were blasting along at 18 kts.

Now the storm was almost on top of us, we had lightning all around us, and golf ball sized hail began to pound the deck.  I swear the hair on my neck was standing on end.  The water had gone completely white with foam, and the wind built to 65kts.  As a side note, the night before I left for Bermuda, my girlfriend made me watch White Squall.

My buddy was driving and I was trying to control the main, just keeping the boom off the shrouds so there was still something to ease, in case we had even more wind.  My buddy wanted to hand me the wheel, he had been driving for about 30 minutes just getting blasted, but we were too afraid to unclip our harnesses.  The fourth guy who is not in the story, had never been on a delivery before, he was an inshore power boater and I am positive he was praying in the companionway.

The lightning was striking everywhere, it seemed like the wind had actually blown the ocean flat.  There was foam flying, but really the only thing we noticed was the wind and the sound of the raging sails.  Completely focused on keeping the boat upright, and not losing our mast, time seemed to stand still.  If I could have focused on my college experience as I had in that storm, I could have owned the world.  For the next 45 to 50 minutes, we experienced sheer terror and witnessed a fantastic display of the ocean’s fury.

As quickly as it came, it passed, and the sea state was the remnant of our epic battle.

We made it home to Newport a day or so later physically unscathed from the experience but with a deep, personal respect for the power of the ocean seared permanently into our memories.

Nat Spencer, a former sailing yacht captain, is a law school graduate currently seeking employment in the NY Metro area.  He can be reached at natlspencer@gmail.com

When I was a kid, I remember being mesmerized by  a 2-hour TV special about a man who spent 150 days sailing his 60-foot sailboat, American Promise, 27,000 miles around the world non-stop.   His name was Dodge Morgan.

As I pondered romantic visions of sailing the open ocean with nothing but the sound of passing waves slapping the hull, dark, star-filled skies, and the hum of the wind in the rigging, I thought, ”What an amazing adventure”.

Before casting his dock lines ashore in Portland, Maine, the start of Dodge Morgan’s 1985/6 record-setting circumnavigation, his friend (and my former neighbor) Max Fletcher handed him something… It was a copy of the journal he kept while sailing his Westsail 32, Christopher Robin, double-handed around Cape Horn a few years prior.

He later told Max that he read it during his voyage and remarked, “if these two idiots can do it, so can I.”

While battling fierce storms, intense loneliness, and the challenges associated with managing over a thousand square feet of canvas, Dodge Morgan pioneered the sport of long distance singlehanded sailing, advanced offshore sailing technology, and inspired countless individuals to get out on the ocean and explore for themselves.

Soon after returning from his circumnavigation, he donated American Promise to the United States Naval Academy for their offshore sail-training program.  A well-built boat with attractive lines and substantial living space in her cabin, American Promise was an ideal training platform for the Midshipmen.

Summer sail training sessions by the Naval Academy brought the Mids up to Maine on occasion to visit Dodge, but he never again set foot on her.  Perhaps he just preferred to remember her how she was.

Years later, while a member of the Offshore Sailing Team at the United States Naval Academy, I was afforded the opportunity as Navigator/Watch Captain of American Promise during the 1997 Marion-Bermuda Cruising Yacht Race.  I could hardly have been more excited to be racing a boat that had been the platform of such an inspirational voyage 10 years earlier.

Although in later years he lived a bit of a recluse lifestyle, he will always be remembered by his friends as a wonderful and interesting gentleman and saavy businessman.

Fair Winds and Following Seas Mr. Morgan.