Alvah Simon // Happier at Sea
On the Wind Sailing
Andy Schell
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2019
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
#255. Alvah Simon is best known for his extraorindary voyage to the Arctic that he documented in 'North to the Night,' a highly philosophical, almost spiritual book about his over-wintering in the Canadian Arctic, alone, on his steel sloop, the ROGER HENRY, frozen in the ice. Alvah and I of course discussed this adventure, but today's show really covers his whole career and touches heavily on his personal philosphy, not just with sailing, but life in general. Alvah is one of these rare humans who really seems to have it figured out. He's a sailor's sailor, happier at sea than ashore, and our conversation is filled with wonderful anecdotes and bits of advice he's learned through the years.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi guys, greetings from East Bjorn, where I'm recording this in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands right before we set off to cross the Atlantic. |
| 0:07.0 | It's going to be my fourth crossing and me as fifth. So cool times for us ahead. |
| 0:12.4 | Crew arrive in two days and by the time you're listening to this, we're going to be on our way and at sea. |
| 0:17.9 | It's the longest passage I've ever done at a little over 2,600 miles on the rum line, |
| 0:23.2 | and we expect it to take us anywhere between 15 and 21 days, depending on how much the trades |
| 0:28.6 | are kicking in this year. I'll let you know how it goes when we get to the other side in Antigua. |
| 0:34.6 | If you haven't heard through our Instagram, the Arctic Coffee Table Book is in production. |
| 0:39.4 | You can pre-order your copy of 80 degrees north at 59-north.com slash 80-north, and we expect them to ship |
| 0:47.5 | by mid-March sometime. |
| 0:49.5 | We've been working on this all fall and winter, and it's the coolest creative project that I think I've |
| 0:55.1 | ever done. Our designer, Tom, from Man Alive Creative in Pennsylvania, he's created a masterpiece |
| 1:01.9 | with every single detail consciously decided on down to the fonts, the paper choice, the hardcover |
| 1:07.3 | canvas wrap material, and the silver foil stamp. The finished product is going to be |
| 1:12.4 | a 9 by 12 inch format hardcover with 160 pages of photos from us, from ship's photographer James |
| 1:20.1 | Ostroms, from Kirill and Alex of the SV Delos gang. Plus, it's 25,000 words of text that I wrote, |
| 1:37.3 | and all of it together tells the story of East Bjorn's two months sailing above the Arctic Circle, with a heavily focused on Svalbard, obviously, but it includes the whole two months in the Arctic. We even got legendary sailing photographer and four-time Whitbread sailor Rick Tomlinson, who sail with us in Iceland. He wrote the foreword for us, so there's a little bit in there from Rick. |
| 1:48.0 | There's also some very cool hidden graphic design by Steveau, our graphic designer, |
| 1:52.0 | and some special treats for you Delos fans that you'll just have to buy the book to discover. |
| 1:57.0 | We spared no expense in creating this, and we're stoked to finally bring it into the world. |
| 2:01.9 | So we're doing a limited run of 250. Each of them are hand numbered, hand numbered by Tom |
| 2:08.4 | and include some special surprises from us and Delis. Like I said, they're printed locally in |
| 2:13.7 | Pennsylvania and sustainably and they're even shipping plastic free. So it's a really |
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