Nikki Henderson // Writing, Racing and Life
On the Wind Sailing
Andy Schell
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Friend of 59º North Nikki Henderson returns to the podcast to talk with me about a wide-ranging list of subjects on sailing, life and philosophy. This conversation was initially inspired by my own curiosity about Nikki's writing process. We talked about how each of us think about writing about sailing, how we go from idea to words-on-the-paper, how our experiences shape our writing and more. Then we delve into racing, recovery time after a long passage and lots more. If you want to read more of Nikki's writing, subscribe to 'SALTED', her weekly newsletter on Substack!
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This season of ON THE WIND is supported by our friends at Offshore Passage Opportunities and Rutgerson Marin. Support the show by supporting our sponsors!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Education and learning is about curiosity. |
| 0:03.0 | So you've got to fire someone's curiosity or fire their drive to want to ask a question or find the answer. |
| 0:10.0 | And the issue is school, I think, for possibly a lot more kids than we give credit for, is that at some point learning a formula in, you know, physics or math class, with no understanding of when you would ever use it, at some point, that just, that just, that just, kind of kills you inside. |
| 0:28.6 | I mean, you have to give kids something, give kids a reason, or encourage that, that flair, that flair of asking, you know, rather than squashing it. |
| 0:44.3 | I don't know why we do that, honestly. And it happens in sailing education too. |
| 0:49.6 | On the Wind is presented this season by two old friends of the podcast. Rutgersen Marine, a hardware company |
| 0:55.7 | in Sweden, close to home for me, and OPO, offshore passage opportunities run by our good |
| 1:01.2 | friend Hank Schmidt, fan of the podcast, friend of the podcast, former guest of the podcast, |
| 1:06.0 | which is a place where you can join Hank's mailing list and basically sail for free as a crew member |
| 1:12.3 | on various deliveries that Hank organizes. It's a great way I kind of started my career doing |
| 1:17.1 | deliveries and obviously we'd love for you to come sail with us at 59 North, but if you don't |
| 1:21.7 | have the time or can't afford it, you can pay, I think it's up to 150 bucks a year now to join |
| 1:26.5 | OPO and you get lots of opportunities |
| 1:28.2 | to go on deliveries as a crew member. So check that out. That's saleopo.com. As for Rutgersen, |
| 1:35.1 | I am in the process of ordering a new rig for Spica, new rig and sales. And part of that project |
| 1:40.8 | is going to include installing a bunch of Rutgersen stuff on the mast and |
| 1:45.8 | sales. So we use the Rutgersen Batcar receptacles for the sales. We use Rutgersen clutches for the |
| 1:50.7 | mast and a bunch of other hardware items. A good friend of ours, Ludwig is the designer at Rutgersen, |
| 1:56.2 | so it's really cool to basically have access to that. And unlike most other hardware companies, |
| 2:01.9 | everything at Rutgersen is designed and built in Sweden. Ludwig's office is upstairs at the factory, |
| 2:07.7 | and the factory is downstairs. So when there's like a design question, |
| 2:11.7 | Ludwig walks downstairs to the production floor and they can sort stuff out. It's really cool. |
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