Salty Podcast: Sailing Stories

Send us Fan Mail To buy James' book: https://bethecaptain.com/ A keel leak that grows the harder you sail is the kind of story that rewires how you think about “good boats.” We sit down with James from Sailing Zingaro, a longtime delivery captain and former Navy submariner with roughly 90,000 miles at sea, to talk about what holds up offshore and what quietly fails until it’s suddenly your em...

Send us Fan Mail The romantic version of sailing is easy to sell. The real version is what Suzy and Sput live every day aboard their 1992 Island Packet 44, SV Validated It, as they pause in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and prepare to push south toward Grenada for hurricane season. They started in Washington, DC, met online, and turned a brand-new partnership into a full-time cruising plan...

Send us Fan Mail Sorry for the music overlap of the audio at 34:40 til 34:57.  I inadvertently failed to mute the b-roll video and noticed it after I uploaded it.  It last 17 seconds but is a very good song so enjoy! A 12-year-old on night watch, clipped in, steering a 46-foot catamaran through real offshore conditions while his friends back home are doing homework on the couch. That’s Atticus, th...

Send us Fan Mail This is an update to Salty Podcast #91.  The sea can be glassy at sunrise and still hand you a monster at 10:30 p.m. We’re calling in from two different corners of paradise and chaos as Bill and Catherine share a boots-on-deck update from their Bahamas to Dominican Republic crossing and their new home base in Luperon Harbor, one of the best-known hurricane holes in the Caribbean....

Send us Fan Mail They bought the dream with zero sailing experience, then paid for it with patience, sweat, and a willingness to live with less. I sit down with Captain Ken and Miss Kelly from The Crooked Anchor, liveaboards on a 1990 Gemini catamaran, to unpack how two Florida landlubbers sold the house, refit a fixer-upper boat, and turned “we could never do that” into seven years of cruising th...

Send us Fan Mail Georgetown, Exuma has a reputation among sailors and cruisers, but the real story is how it feels when you drop anchor and start meeting people. From Stocking Island, we sit down with Kurt Allmeyer of the 46-foot catamaran “Sailing Jeep” for a candid update on day-to-day life in Georgetown, why the anchorage can feel unusually safe, and how a tight cruising community changes every...

Send us Fan Mail In Salty Podcast #91, I sit down with Bill and Katherine of Mi Salida Sailing in Black Point Settlement, Exumas, Bahamas. They share how they met on a dating site for sailors , bought an Island Packet 465 , and made the leap into full-time cruising .  We talk about their origin story, why they chose this boat, what it’s really like cruising full-time as a couple, and the balance b...

Send us Fan Mail The Bahamas looks effortless on Instagram until you’re the one staring at a forecast that says 25 knots and realizing your entire plan depends on a weather window. From a sandy hangout at Big Majors Cay, we sit down with Roger and Kristen, liveaboards on their 1995 Island Packet 40 Shamala, to talk through the real decisions that shape a cruising day: when to stay put, who to trus...

Send us Fan Mail I haven't had a chance to do any interviews lately but I DO appreciate the feedback from the audio podcast followers as well as the social media followers...asking for more interviews!  I should be in Georgetown by this weekend and there will be all kinds of sailors to interview there!  I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, please follow Salty Abandon on Facebook,...

Send us Fan Mail Salty Podcast Sailor Shirts:  https://saltypodcast.myshopify.com The wind doesn’t just move a boat; it moves a life. Captain Tinsley sits down with her longtime friend Mark to chart the real story behind her voyages—from Atlanta freeways to the Gulf’s passes, from small-boat frustrations to bluewater confidence, and from a hurricane’s chaos to the quiet, stubborn act of healing af...

Send us Fan Mail Forty-knot gusts, nine-foot swell, and a mooring field packed with boats waiting out yet another front—welcome to a real-time snapshot of Georgetown, Exumas. We bring on Curt from Sailing Jeep, currently anchored in the thick of it, to share hard-earned lessons on reading models, picking safe anchorages for relentless north winds, and staying sane when the forecast keeps slipping....

Send us Fan Mail A quiet dinner at anchor turned into the kind of emergency every cruiser dreads. Within hours, pain escalated into a misdiagnosed crisis, a midnight dash to a small clinic, and a fight to secure an air ambulance before pilots timed out and the airport closed at dark. What followed was necrotizing pancreatitis, weeks in U.S. ICUs, and a hard lesson in how evacuation insurance reall...

Send us Fan Mail A seven-hour U-turn at the border, a raw water pump that turned engine oil to gray sludge, and a squall that flipped the wind from 15 knots to 35 in minutes—this catch-up with Lizzie and Billy is the kind of salty storytelling that turns lessons into confidence. We reconnect in La Paz to trace their route from Drake’s Bay down the California coast, through the Channel Islands’ mag...

Send us Fan Mail What if your diesel’s lifespan is mostly in your control? We sit down with sailor and mechanic Vanessa Lindsley—who has hand‑cranked everything from classic Yanmars to race‑ready engines—to unpack the habits that keep a marine diesel reliable for thousands of hours. No fluff, just the precise routines that prevent glazing, carbon buildup, overheating, and charging headaches. We co...

Send us Fan Mail The sky stayed gray for most of 26 days and the wind rarely dropped below 30 knots. That’s the stage for Olivia Wyatt’s non-stop crossing straight from Sumatra to northern Madagascar—3,400 nautical miles on a 34-foot full-keel cutter, riding the edges of tropical depressions and threading the risk lines of the Mozambique Channel. We invited Olivia back to unpack the tactics, the f...

Send us Fan Mail Salt air, guitar strings, and a catamaran that doubles as a tour bus—this conversation sails straight into the heart of Gulf Coast life. We sit down with Captain Matt, a charter captain turned songwriter who chose six knots over forty and found his voice again between sunrise watches and storm-tossed nights. From a generous offer on a 2002 Gemini 105MC to dockside concerts after H...

Send us Fan Mail Scroll below description for Chapter Markers Tonight’s episode of The Salty Podcast is tailor-made for two types of sailors: The Dreamers —the ones scrolling YachtWorld at midnight imagining bluewater passages… and The Salty Veterans —those who’ve owned boats, love the lifestyle, but don’t necessarily want the responsibility of ownership again. Captain Ryan of Sail Libra joins Cap...

Send us Fan Mail A quiet walk to the store turned into a life-changing moment—and a complete rethink of how we cruise. When Stephen was hit by a car during a shoreside errand, our family of five had to answer hard questions: How do we keep the dream alive without setting back his recovery? What gets upgraded, what gets cut, and what truly matters when health, teens, and time all collide? We share...

Send us Fan Mail Planning to sail from Miami to Georgetown without a single overnight? We lay out a proven, day-only route that respects winter weather, leverages the best anchorages, and removes guesswork from every leg. Think Biscayne Bay as your patient launchpad, South Bimini for an easy check-in, a smart pause on the Banks before Northwest Channel, and short, joyful hops all the way down the...

Send us Fan Mail A thousand miles from Hawaii, the chainplate ripped out and the mast went over the side. That sleepless night in the Transpac didn’t just test seamanship—it planted the seed for a weather platform that now helps a million sailors make safer choices at sea. Olympian and two‑time America’s Cup winner John Bilger joins us to share how a jury rig, a weatherfax, and a hard-earned finis...

Send us Fan Mail A single upgrade can change the way you move through the water. We just installed a below-deck autopilot and walk through what it means for safety, stamina, and real backup when steering cables or hydraulics fail. From the bypass pin to the rudder feedback sensor, we get hands-on with the hardware and talk about keeping linkages clean, joints aligned, and fuses easy to reach when...

Send us Fan Mail The docklines aren’t off yet, but the journey’s already begun. From a quiet slip in Orange Beach, we walk through the exact work it takes to ready a 1998 Island Packet 320 for a run down Florida’s Gulf Coast, across the Keys, and over to Georgetown in the Exumas—repairs, routing, weather calls, and the steady courage to go. We start at the masthead with a rigorous rigging inspecti...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever found yourself desperately checking multiple weather apps before casting off, still uncertain if you're making the right call? In this episode, we dive deep into the technology that's revolutionizing how sailors make weather-based decisions with Karen McMaster from PredictWind. Karen brings extraordinary credentials to this conversation – she's not jus...

Send us Fan Mail What does it take to completely transform your life? For Brian of Sailing Delos, it was a moment of clarity in his manager's office, staring at a corporate org chart and realizing he wanted something entirely different. After walking away from his software career, selling everything he owned, and buying a sailboat, Brian embarked on what was supposed to be an 18-month adventu...

Send us Fan Mail The transformative journey from land to sea captures the imagination of many adventurers, but few make the leap quite like Billy and Lizzie of Two Brits, One Box. In this captivating conversation, they reveal how they traded their RV lifestyle for life aboard their 1980 Pearson 365 sailboat, Stephney Thames—with absolutely no sailing experience. Their story begins on the highways...