Getting more sailors offshore

For the past 30 years, Andrew Burton has been trying to put himself out of a job—because he doesn’t want owners of the boats to miss out.

“A lot of delivery skippers won’t have the owner on board,” he says. “I encourage it, because for me, the fun part is the offshore sailing. To take that away from the owner doesn’t seem right.”

He wasn’t always so concerned about sharing his biggest joy. He can remember, long ago, listening to a single-sideband radio to check in with other captains.

“Six o’clock every day, we’d catch up with weather and see where everybody was,” he says. “And every now and again, we’d hear the Coast Guard in a conversation with somebody abandoning the boat. I was young and not particularly empathetic: ‘These idiots, going out there with no experience.’”

He shakes his head and adds, “As I matured, I started thinking about why those people were getting off their boats, usually giving up on a lifetime dream of sailing to the Caribbean.” – Full report