CYC Home
By Herb Holley
Monday Lunch Chairman
Mark Schrader, skipper of Ocean Watch and the Around the Americas campaign, will be featured speaker at CYC's Monday Lunch on September 20, 2010. The social hour commences at 1130.
The Ocean Watch rounds Cape Horn during its circumnavigation of the Americas
Ocean Watch, a 64-foot cutter-rigged sloop, returned to Shilshole in June after circumnavigating the North and South American continents.
She sailed from Shilshole on May 31, 2009, traversed the Northwest Passage late last summer, rounded Cape Horn with her spinnaker flying in January of this year, and docked back at Shilshole just before noon on June 17, 2010 after logging more than 27,000 miles.
Peter Jennings, Wally McKay, and I were on Peter's boat Challenge, among the boats welcoming Ocean Watch home on June 17 as she approached the Meadow Point buoy that morning.
Mark Schrader is a veteran sailor who twice has circumnavigated the globe single-handed. In 1982-83 he was the first American to circumnavigate solo via the Five Great Capes of the Southern Ocean. In 1986 he finished 6th in the Around Alone Race, and in 1998 he was race director for that same race. He is co-director of Sailors for the Sea, an organization he founded together with David Rockefeller, Jr.
Mark Schrader and the Ocean Watch weave their way through Northwest Passage ice.
Around the Americas is a sailing circumnavigation of the American continents with the mission of "inspiring, educating, and engaging citizens of the Americas to protect our fragile oceans." The idea originated with Schrader, Rockefeller, and Sailors for the Sea. Among the organizations participating in the science aspects of the endeavor are UW Department of Atmospheric Science and the Pacific Science Center.
Schrader spoke at Monday Lunch in May 2009 before this historic voyage departed, and at that time he promised to come back to tell us about the trip. It should be an interesting presentation.