Despite resembling the unlikely offspring of Kramer and Liam Neeson, Ben is the closest our team gets to having a real yachtsman. He boasts over a decade of sailing experience with a solid foundation in racing and cruising a plethoritude of boats. In high school, he raced in the Sheboygan Yacht Club and in College with Hoofer Yacht Club. He mentioned a few other yacht clubs but the names of those midwest towns sound so made up that we’re just going to skip them. He also organized and skippered annual, week long sailing trips through the Apostle Islands of Lake Superier on five separate occasions.

After midwest lake-sailing for far too long, Ben made it to the West Coast and bought/moved aboard a boat. And then bought a better boat. Over the next three years, he would sail his C&C 34’ regularly in the Duck Dodge, Goosebumps, and Sloop Tavern races. Fun fact: He currently holds the honor of fastest home after taking first place in the 2018 ‘Race Your House’ regatta.

When not busy being a corporate robot and mechanical engineer, he cruises extensively and recently took Katherine hostage on a sailing trip to the San Juans. After eight days of unsuccessfully putting SOS messages in Miller High Life bottles, Katherine accepted Ben’s proposal of marriage. Hurrah! Would have been an awkward cruise back otherwise.

In September of 2017, Ben helped some friends move their Pearson 30 from Seattle to San Francisco. The trip was eight days total with six of those being offshore. Glenn was allegedly there too.

When Ben isn’t sailing, he claims to be on extended hiking and camping trips. we suspect he may be secretly murdering people like many wisconsinites before him but he says he’s not so like, whatever.

The only physical evidence Ben has for any of this experience is a WA state boaters safety card.

Having moved aboard the aforementioned fastest home with Ben, Katherine is the newest addition to the Canal Marina live aboard community.

Her bootcamp of sailing lessons stemmed from a Tinder date three years ago. Since then, her enrollment to Ben’s “School for people who don’t sail so good” has proven a resounding success. And while her seatime doesn’t rank her among the most experienced on the team, her introduction to offshore boating began far before any of ours. In High School, Katherine spent three weeks working on her dad’s commercial fishing boat in the Bering Sea which brings her time spent offshore up to more than any of us combined.

As well as having her sea legs, Katherine also has land legs. Two powerful, well-chiseled meat tractors compose her lower limbs and are often used to propel the rest of her to marathon distances at competitive speeds. Katherine is such a machine that upon getting married, Ben will receive a user manual and warranty* from Yanmar.

She’s a collegiate track & field athlete and when not competing she can be found biking, backpacking, long distance hiking, snow camping, skiing and casually pedalling a boat to Alaska.

It must also be stated that her sense of humor is as finely tuned as her fitness. Her manner of processing information and problem solving has earned Katherine the team’s vote of most likely to smile during an emergency.

Katherine is suspected of being unbreakable.

Former farm boy with wholesome, landlocked upbringing traded in his trowel and pitchfork to become a certified (maybe even qualified?) marine industry guru. With not one, but two engineering disciplines, this makes Sam our teams‘ resident rocket scientologist.

In fact, instead of carrying on the family legacy pursuing rocket science like his father, Sam followed his uncle into marine engineering. Trained in his chosen profession at the prestigious Webb Institute, Sam took courses in everything from fluid dynamics and ship propulsion systems to, you know, lots of other fancy math stuffs. During winter and summer breaks he assisted constructing mega yachts at a shipyard in Connecticut, served as cadet aboard an 840’ roll on/roll off vehicle carrier operating between Tacoma and Anchorage, and provided design and support services from Virginia to Rotterdam.

Sam learned to sail during a summer spent up in Seattle. He started racing on lazers, 420s and longboats through his college years and graduated to 30-40 ft cruisers after. Despite his own residence being a power boat (or power yacht as he calls it), he’s enjoyed cruising up and down the Sound.

Outside of sailing, Sam imposes on himself an annual fitness goal that ranges from climbing Mt. Adams to riding centuries on decrepid bicycles. This goal almost calorically balances his affection for beer.

Despite having to leave his foundry, welding units, and 90% of his horder-level quantity of other metal and woodworking tools at home, we are counting on Sam to fix what breaks on this trip.

Sam’s favorite adventures are culinary. He’s motorcycled the length of Vietnam searching for the perfect pho. He is the team’s self-appointed gourmand and food snob. Despite the limitations of a raceboat galley, Sam refuses to accept freeze-dried meals as adequate sustenance.

Glenn is a part time sailor and full time vagrant. At 18, a backpacking trip to Europe turned into a six year long odyssey that includes:

Teaching English in Spain

Being falsely arrested for fraud

Running with the bulls

Getting deported from England

Sneaking back into mainland Europe

Riding a bicycle across Italy

Crashing a Polish wedding

It wasn’t until his move to Seattle that sailing entered the picture. He bought and moved onto a boat and learned how to sail somewhere between Seattle and Port townsend on his first time leaving the dock. Having moved into Canal Marina not long after Sam, the two of them formed a duo whose shenanigans would eventually reach undisputed notoriety. For five years, Glenn cruised the Puget sound from gig harbor to the San Juans with crew comprised of friends, couchsurfers, and occasioinally total strangers shanghaied from the bar the night prior. He also sailed leg one of the 2016 R2AK on a neighbors boat.

In 2017 he helped his Aunt move her C&C 40 up to Nanaimo and joined Ben helping move a neighbors boat to San Francisco. He’s a hoarder of professions and has worked as a teacher, salesman, yacht broker, designer, and photographer until finally setting a career course for the marine industry. He became a certified splicer at West Marine and later moved on to rigging at Ballard Sails. He presently works at a sailboat charter company as a deckhand and has obtained his USCG Captain’s license. In 2018, he sold everything he had (boat included) and rode his motorcycle to South America. Then he ran out of money and came back and borrowed money for another boat that he lives on again.

Unrelated but he's hustler level godlike at Mario Kart and is four time champ in Seattle.