Emily Caruso has spent 18 years and counting as a professional sailor, though only first learning about the sport in her late 20s. Growing up in the countryside in England, Emily had an epiphany one day during a weekend sailing excursion and hasn't looked back since. Andy & Emily sat down in person onboard FALKEN in Cape Verde to talk about her career path, what motivates and scares her, leadership, skippering Sir Francis Chichester's legendary GYPSY MOTH IV, working for 59º North, 'deep feeling' and so much more.

Jens Joachim Hiorth is the Captain of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl, the largest and oldest tall ship in Norway. The ship recently completed a circumnaivation around the great capes. August joined the Captain onboard the ship for a conversation on the particulars of running such a large ship on the high seas.

Bill Strassberg literally wrote the book on the Viking Route, authoring the latest edition of the Cruising Club of America's guide to the far northern route across the Atlantic. Andy first got in touch with Bill when researching FALKEN's Greenland passage last summer and caught up with him late last year for the podcast. We talked about Bill's custom 60-foot cruising boat, his own sailing through the fjords of Greenland, what inspired him to write the guide and how he balances a career as a surgeon with his long-term sailing goals.

Cosima grew up on the Puget Sound where her family nurtured a love of sailing and old classic boats. In college she worked on tall ships in the PNW but eventually she landed on the east coast where she found a community of friends who worked on private classic yachts. She spent her twenties pursuing positions and racing aboard big rig schooners and other classics throughout the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Today she is Captain of a 108’ sailing yacht based in Europe and running her charter business, Olympia Sailing Company, with her family.

Ben Doerr sat down with Matt from The Duracell Project YouTube channel. Matt and his wife Janni are refitting Mike Plant's famous Open 60 "Duracell" into a comfortable cruising boat. Sitting in the cockpit of Duracell outside of Port Townsend, Matt and Ben discuss Matt's cruising and boatbuilding past and the many challenges of building the boat and the channel.

Captain Jan Miles returns to the podcast! Andy first sat down with Jan onboard Maryland's flagship PRIDE OF BALTIMORE II tall ship way back in 2015 for a fascinating interview tracing Jan's career at sea. We return to the Captain's Cabin onboard PRIDE for this second, meandering chat about seamanship, life on tall ships, the leadership structure on traditional ships and a whole lot more. This episode was recorded onboard PRIDE II at the Annapolis Sailboat Show in October.

Elliot Rappaport has been a captain of sailing ships for the past three decades. He currently is a faculty member at Maine Maritime Academy, where he lives nearby with his wife and their dog. Elliot also sailed as a captain for many miles with Sea Education Association, an organization that offers shipboard programs in ocean science and leadership to undergraduates and high schoolers. He recently published a fantastic book called Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships.

Emma and Elliot were shipmates on the Robert C Seamans, SEA's Pacific-based vessel, in New Zealand in 2018. We talked about the impact of sail training, leadership, teaching, being a captain, writing a book, and weather.

Mats Grimsæth is a professional skipper, photographer and lecturer. He’s the youngest person to ever skipper a boat around the island of Spitsbergen on Svalbard, which is where he first met August. He has a great passion for the sea and for his fellow human beings. Having had a difficult time in his teenage years, he’s now using his considerable energy and outreach to help others in the same situation.

Wendy Mitman Clarke is the editor-in-chief at SAIL magazine and a long-time cruiser herself. I work with Wendy regularly as a columnist for SAIL, but had never actually sat down to talk about her own background. I caught up with her at the Annapolis Sailboat Show in October, and from the Captain's Cabin onboard the Pride of Baltimore II, we discussed her history as a sailor, 'failure' in the cruising lifestyle, what it's like running a magazine, the writing process and lots more.

Last week Mia, Bosun Adam Browne and Chief Mate Alex Laline and I sat down in the salon of FALKEN to reflect on what's been a busy, stressful and ultimately successful first season on our newly refit Farr 65. We've truly come a long way since one year ago this time, when we were scrambling to get the boat out of the shed, sea-trialled and out of the UK. Since then, FALKEN has sailed over 16,000 nautical miles (!) with over 120 crewmembers. The four of us reflected on this past year and what stood out most to each of us, and how we feel about the future.