Tom Harkin // US Senator
On the Wind Sailing
Andy Schell
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2015
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
#98. Retired Senator Tom Harkin invited me and my dad to his house in Hope Town, Bahamas, a place he's been going to since the 70s to escape the rat race in DC, and which he'll spend a lot more time at now in retirement. We took the ferry over and had lunch with Tom and his wife Ruth on the dock overlooking the sea of Abaco and Tom's new sailboat, a 26' lifting keel Seaward. We recorded the podcast on the deck behind Tom's house, overlooking the Atlantic ocean. My dad was there as well, listening in the background. Tom's got an amazing life story, a lot of which includes his love of sailing. We discussed his younger days in the Navy ROTC, how he became a fighter pilot, what it's like to takeoff and land from the deck of an aircraft carrier, how he built a trimaran in Japan, how he survived ejecting from a fighter plane on a training mission gone wrong, and much more. This is a good one, so listen up!
Come ocean sailing with Andy, like Tom did, on Isbjorn, our classic Swan 48. Book a trip at 59-north.com/offshore!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And then I felt this jerk and then I saw this fireball. |
| 0:07.0 | Huge fireball because I had a full bag of fuel. |
| 0:11.0 | And the plane hit the ground and blew up. |
| 0:15.0 | Hey, this is Anna Viner's live from Sweden. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome back to the 59 North Sailing Podcast with your host, Andy Schell. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:23.5 | Greetings. Welcome back to 59 degrees north, a podcast about sailing. I am your host again, |
| 0:30.3 | Andy Schell, and this is episode number 98. No sponsor this week, that is, except for you guys. Like I said, last week, one of the accidental |
| 0:41.1 | consequences of starting with this podcast of mine was the way that it connects myself to my listeners. |
| 0:47.4 | The biggest way, of course, was if you listen to last week's episode, Jim and Les, two longtime |
| 0:53.5 | listeners signed up for one of my |
| 0:55.5 | expeditions, bringing Sojourner back, and I got to meet those guys in person and enjoy a fantastic |
| 1:01.7 | passage with them, which you can hear about if you listen to last week's episode. But those of you |
| 1:06.9 | haven't yet met, thanks to everyone who emails in, donates to the website, buys my coffee, and especially like Les and Jim, those of you I haven't yet met, thanks to everyone who emails in, uh, donates to the website, |
| 1:11.5 | buys my coffee and especially like Lesson Jim, those of you guys that have met at workshops |
| 1:16.2 | and on passages. Uh, to that end, we've got a lot of exciting stuff coming up this year and |
| 1:21.4 | next, which has been updated on the website. Another celestial workshop, September 11th to the 14th |
| 1:27.3 | in Annapolis, and a full calendar |
| 1:30.0 | of sailing passages on East Bjorn, our classic Swan 48. Next up on that is the Lunenberg passage. |
| 1:38.6 | The first leg is sold out, but the second leg sailing from Nova Scotia from Lunenburg on July 15th, is still open. |
| 1:46.0 | We've got two spots available. |
| 1:47.4 | We'll leave Lunenburg on the 15th, be back in Annapolis by the 22nd. |
| 1:52.2 | And it's a 600-mile non-stop passage, so that's going to be a good one. |
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