Max Campbell // ELIXIR Sails Halfway Around the World
On the Wind Sailing
Andy Schell
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
AUDIO ISSUE FIXED :) Max Campbell returns to the podcast, talking to Andy from New Zealand where he's been in refit-mode on his Swan 37 ELIXIR. Since Max was last on the show in 2019, following his solo Atlantic Circle, he's rebuilt and sailed the ELIXIR halfway around the world, taking friends and strangers across oceans as part of his "Untide" project. Max is truly living the dream, funding his cruising through clever partnerships and occasional charter yacht jobs. We talked about how far he's come since 2019 and what's next for him and ELIXIR.
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This episode is sponsored by Orca. Visit getorca.com to modernize your onboard navigation with the Orca Display and Orca Core. We've got them on SPICA & ISBJØRN and so far are LOVING the experience of proper tablet navigation, waterproof wireless charging, logged passages and slick charts and instruments.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's like people have a cooling at some point in their life. Like they become dissatisfied for whatever |
| 0:05.0 | reason and they just have this desire to hop on a boat and across an ocean or do some cruising |
| 0:13.6 | or whatever, but they're so sure of it. On the Wind is presented this season by Orca. Check out |
| 0:19.5 | getorca.com to look at navigation for the modern |
| 0:23.5 | boater. I have been advocating tablet navigation, iPad navigation, since at least 2017, long ago |
| 0:32.8 | on the podcast. I've been doing this forever. In fact, when we built Falcon, we didn't |
| 0:36.2 | install any chart plotters at all. |
| 0:38.4 | But there's not been a good solution because the iPads, there's not a great charging solution to keep them waterproof outside. |
| 0:45.5 | There's no way to mount them properly. And finally, somebody has almost answered my prayers. |
| 0:51.0 | I've been working with Orca now on Spica for my trip I did last week, |
| 0:54.7 | and they have a really awesome maronized tablet that has an induction charging mount that |
| 1:02.7 | plops right at my helm station on Spica. And then included paired with that is called the |
| 1:08.8 | Orca Core, which is basically a GPS antenna |
| 1:11.6 | with a bunch of other sensors in it that you mount below decks. |
| 1:14.0 | It was simple plug and play right into the N2K network. |
| 1:16.9 | And it talks to the ORCA display. |
| 1:20.1 | And then the same charting software that ORCA uses on their own display, you can get |
| 1:25.1 | on your phone, on a regular iPad, on your laptop, whatever. |
| 1:28.9 | And the whole thing syncs to the cloud. So I was able to record all the voyage data from our |
| 1:34.1 | week on Spike. We sailed 100 miles in the Swedish archipelago. But it basically does everything |
| 1:40.1 | I've always wanted an iPad to do in a much more modern and slick interface. It's |
| 1:47.0 | really, really cool. I've been talking to Christian, the founder of Orca. It's a small startup |
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