Hi, I'm Herb McCormick and I'm here today to talk about a new project that I'm doing
for Paradise Key, an anthology of my favorite writings over the years of my career as a
sailing journalist called Gone to the Sea.
Well, I'm just back from a 27,000 mile trip, 13 months at sea that started in Seattle and
went up through the Northwest Passage down the east coast of North and South America
around Cape Horn and back to Seattle.
It was an expedition called Around the Americas, tried to bring awareness to some ocean conservation
issues and some of that storytelling about that trip will be included in Gone to the
Sea.
Well, Gone to the Sea was actually the name of a story that's in the book, it's a story
about a single-handed sailor called Mike Plant, who was lost to sea in the early 80s aboard
his yacht Coyote on route to the Vendee Glow, it was nonstop single-handed around the world
race.
Mike's story was always a tough one for me to write because he was a buddy, but an interesting
story that was kind of a cautionary tale about the dangers of solo sailing and sailing for
sponsors and adventure because Mike Plant was the ultimate adventure and ultimately
kind of a tragic story, so the title comes from that piece, but it was also just kind
of describes once my career got going and I got into sailing and writing and crossing
oceans myself, I was kind of gone to the sea as well, that's a big part of my career.
Well, I never ever thought I'd be a professional writer, I was mad about football when I was
a kid, I was a captain of my high school and college football teams and thought I'd go
into coaching and life got in the way a little bit and I ended up taking a job in my hometown
as the receptionist answering phones at Cruising World Magazine and it was kind of a gopher
and went from there and got the opportunity to start writing a bit about it and reporting
and sailing and it was kind of a dream job, everything fell into place for me and once
I started on that path I was hooked, but really just sort of in the right place at the right
time I was very fortunate.
Well I started at the ground floor and ultimately got kicked all the way upstairs and served
as editor-in-chief at Cruising World for about five years from 2000 to 2005 and also had
the opportunity during that time to be the yachting correspondent for the New York Times,
so very fortunate and but yeah I went literally from the ground floor up to the corner office.
Well there's three distinct sections of the book, I've just titled Places, Races and
Faces, the faces are profiles, races are some of the races that I've done over the
years, Sydney Hobart, Pacific Cup, Transpac and also some of the races I've covered, some
of the America's Cups, I covered a lot of America's Cups early in my career and then
places which are some of the places I've sailed over the years and foraging to Cape Horn,
to Antarctica, the Caribbean and you know Thailand, so it's got a nice mix of I think
travel and adventure and some of the interesting people that I've had the opportunity to talk
to over the years and write about.
Well we go from guys like Dennis Connor, Mr. America's Cup, the winning skipper in America's
Cup history to some of the real characters of our sport, guys like Don Street and Jimmy
Cornell, well-known cruising authors and sailors and some of the industry folks over
the years, Charlie Carey, you started the Moorings and Frank Butler, the longtime builder
at Catalina Yachts and then some quirky guys too like Reed Stowe who just finished a thousand
days at sea set a record for a marathon sailing.
So there's a nice cross section of some people you people will be more familiar about and
some that you might not know as well but interesting people all the same.
Well I hope everybody gets a copy to pick it up and will enjoy it but I think sailors
are going to like it, people who like a good travel story, a good travel yarn or adventure
yarn will like it and you know it sort of captures an interesting part of sailing over
the last 25 years because of the places I've been and people I've seen so I think anybody
who likes a hopefully a good story, well-told, Dutchwood or a travel or adventure and sailing
you know I mean it's all about sailing that's the thread that ties it all together so hopefully
sailors will really enjoy the book.
Well for now I'm going from my editing days to I'm an editor-in-large now for cruising
world and sailing world magazines I've really got the dream job really very very fortunate
so I'm going to continue to keep sailing and writing and hopefully meet interesting people
and tell good stories that's what I want to do now.
