Captain is a word with multiple meanings. In certain branches of the military, it can indicate the rank between first lieutenant and major. On a boat or plane, it’s often used to describe the person at the helm, no matter the official number of bars on their epaulets. In its broadest use, the word captain describes a person of influence or importance in any field. Our editors went with that last definition as we considered which captains have made an impact during the 60 years that Soundings has been published. Our criteria included not just being in command of a vessel, but also inspiring people to broaden their thinking about what boating can be. In our estimation, the following individuals exemplify the possibilities that come with taking hold of a wheel or a tiller, and setting a course that just might change history.
Peter Wright
The people who are fortunate to experience the thrill of landing a big marlin from a boat sometimes take a step back, look out at the endless ocean waters, and think, maybe I was born to fish. Peter Wright figured this out while he was still in elementary school. Growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, he took to working aboard the local charterfishing boats before he even reached his teenage years, putting him on a track that would help him to catch more marlin over 1,000 pounds than any captain or angler in recorded history.
For several years, Wright owned and operated charter fishing boats, including a 37-foot Rybovich in Hawaii, and he has guided other anglers to numerous records, including the Australian men’s record for black marlin on 130- pound line (a 1,442-pound fish), and the women’s 80-pound-class world and Australian black marlin record of 1,323 pounds. That’s about the weight of a grand piano or an adult male polar bear—and it takes a heck of a lot of skill to operate a boat in a way that helps an angler land a game fish of that size. When the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) inducted Wright into its Hall of Fame in 2007, it noted not only his fishing skills, but also his boat-handling abilities, as well as his generosity in sharing his techniques in numerous publications and at seminars with anyone who wanted to learn. Wright was, as our sister publication Angler’s Journal noted, “quite possibly the best heavy-tackle captain of the modern era.”
Wright’s skills also extended to making equipment that improved the fishing experience. Bill Shedd, chairman and CEO of the American Fishing Tackle Co., said he talked to Wright about nearly everything new that Aftco produced, “as no one better understood the mechanics, physics and fish behavior involved with fighting big-game saltwater species.” As just one example, Wright helped to develop Aftco’s Wire Max leadering gloves, because he realized anglers needed their hands to be better protected while taking wraps on large marlin and gamefish. That product alone, according to Shedd, “set the standard for anglers and mates across the globe.”
Wright died in 2023 after battling Alzheimer’s disease. He was remembered by his peers as one of the most influential big-game captains in the world.
Kenneth Boda
Historically speaking, the name Ernest Shackleton is associated with the dangerous mission of leading expeditions in icy waters. In modern times, U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Kenneth Boda has earned an impressive reputation as a polar explorer and oceanographer, spending eight years assigned to polar icebreakers where he has led scientific expeditions, rendered assistance to vessels trapped in the ice, and rescued other mariners in distress.
As just one example of how broad his influence has been, in November 2022, Boda commanded the 420-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy as it returned home to Seattle following a historic 17,000-mile, 124-day deployment in the high Arctic latitudes. Boda and his crew had, among other things, transited to the North Pole to provide security and expand research about the impacts of environmental change. It was only the second time a U.S. surface vessel had reached 90 degrees north un- accompanied. The deployment included patrols of the inter- national maritime boundary line between the United States and Russia.
“The crew of Healy is proud to have completed this mission to the North Pole and back,” Boda said at the time, “advancing American interests across the Arctic Ocean.”
Dawn Riley
Dawn Riley has been more intentional than any modern competitive sailor about broadening participation in the sport. Many people would have rested on their laurels after becoming the first woman to manage an entire America’s Cup syndicate, or after becoming the first American—male or female—to sail in three America’s Cups and two Whit- bread Round the World races. Riley, on the other hand, has built a second career around teaching and encouraging all kinds of people to try and surpass her achievements.
Riley served as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, which helps women and girls to reach their potential in sport and life. And she’s executive director of Oakcliff Sailing in Oyster Bay, New York, whose goal is to build American leaders through the sport of sailing.
In 2019, the film Maiden chronicled the story of Riley and the first all-women’s entry in the Whitbread race that proved females could compete in bluewater racing. (Riley was the watch captain on Maiden). The National Sailing Hall of Fame inducted Riley in 2021, quoting her in a way that makes clear she is far from done: “Women in leadership with decision-making powers is where we need to go. The next step is for more women to own their own boats.”
Lee Rosbach
Before the first season of the reality television show Below Deck, most people didn’t know that crewed yacht charter existed. Lee Rosbach was a personable captain whose career seemed mostly routine, with his resume listing various yachts he’d delivered or commanded throughout the years.
Then, in 2013, Rosbach became known to the world as captain aboard the 164- foot Cuor di Leone, a 1999 Benetti that Hollywood producers had rechristened Honor with a goal of creating a television-ratings phenomenon. Rosbach, along with his first officer and engineer, remained on board to protect and operate the yacht, while the rest of the professional crew was sent on vacation, making space for the series cast to move into the crew quarters.
An average of 1.4 million people tuned in to that first season of Below Deck, spawning an entire franchise of shows that remain on the air today. Many charter professionals, at first alarmed by the sometimes unprofessional portrayal of the industry, ultimately came to thank Rosbach and welcome the increased interest in chartering overall. People who watch the show now want to book vacations, as well as learn about the professional lives of a ship’s crew, particularly its captain.
Lin and Larry Pardey
“Go small, go simple, but go now.” Such was a motto of this North American couple—Larry was born in British Columbia, while Lin was from Detroit—who circumnavigated the world twice aboard the 24-foot, 7-inch Seraffyn and the 29-foot, 4-inch Taleisin. Their boats were wood- en and cruised with no engines, and the Pardeys built them on their own. Accord- ing to the Cruising Club of America, the Pardeys hold the record for the smallest boat to have circumnavigated contrary to the prevailing winds around all the great southern capes.
The duo had no sponsors. They just went. And then, they shared their experiences of sailing to some 77 countries, producing a dozen books, hosting countless lectures, and creating films that taught other people how to get out on the water and embrace their own version of the liveaboard cruising dream.
In 2022, two years after Larry’s death at age 80, the couple were inducted together into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, which expounded upon, among other things, their keen sense of humor. “At home in California,” the Hall of Fame noted, “they once had a pet cat that they named Dog.” That kind of creative thinking no doubt helped the Pardeys immensely as they embraced the challenges of a life beautifully lived on the water.
Lin remains an active sailor today, and she’s still passionate about inspiring and educating others to get out and experience big adventures on boats. She is currently working on a new book to launch next fall, and recently created an online course called Storytelling For Sailors, which teaches boaters how to share their bluewater experiences on print and digital platforms.
Dennis Conner
No person in the history of sailboat racing casts as polarizing a long shadow on the sport as Dennis Conner. To some people, he is the champion of champions, having earned the nickname “Mr. America’s Cup” by winning more than 100 trial races and the Cup itself four times—in 1974, 1980, 1987 and 1988. He was inducted into the inaugural class of the America’s Cup Hall of Fame, and then into the National Sailing Hall of Fame located in Newport, Rhode Island. In 2012, US Sailing held a public vote, and Conner was named America’s Greatest Sailor.
To others, though, Conner’s ego was simply too much to bear. He’d be described as “Big, Bad Dennis,” and would repeatedly center the sport on himself as its star. He said that his finally losing the Auld Mug was the best thing that ever happened to the America’s Cup, because it made everyone else in the world appreciate the Cup more. He also said the New York Yacht Club could not mount a good campaign without him. Even so, to this day, Conner continues to inspire people to get out and race on sailboats—with him as their mind’s eye inspiration, or nemesis.
Richard Bennis
If you feel safe while cruising into a U.S. port, or into any type of waterfront facility that’s subject to U.S. Coast Guard maritime security regulations, the reason might just be this man. The Coast Guard named an awards program after him—the Rear Admiral Richard E. Bennis Awards—to honor facilities that create a “culture of security.”
Why name the awards after him? The backstory is that Bennis was U.S. Coast Guard command- er of activities in New York during security planning for OpSail 2000, a July Fourth event with the largest-ever peacetime assembly of naval and training ships. He earned a job extension that had him in a command position on New York’s most fateful day: September 11, 2001.
When news broke that airplanes had crashed into the Twin Towers, Bennis, then a captain, was Florida-bound to rest and recover from surgery. When he heard about what was happen- ing back in New York, he turned around on the highway, found a boat he could get aboard in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and im- mediately began to organize what became a flotilla of more than 100 boats that ultimately evacuated nearly a half-million people from Lower Manhattan.
“Some of the people were absolutely terrorized,” he says. Within hours, the White House was calling him to get the Port of New York reopened so supply chains would not collapse. Today, the lessons Bennis learned continue to impact military planning.
John Tomlinson
In the sport of offshore powerboat racing, most people consider the throttleman to be the captain, and quite a few people consider John Tomlinson to be the best throttle- man in the world. Since 1986, Tomlinson has earned more than 50 national and world titles, with more than 160 individual wins. His current speed record was set with the Nauti Marine 50-foot Mystic. He was officially clocked at 208 mph (more than 180 knots), and he saw 218 mph (just shy of 190 knots) as he crossed the finish line at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Missouri.
What’s it like to control a boat’s speed and trim angle at such high velocities? Tomlinson told reporters that the trick is to establish a rhythm: “You always want to feel like you’re moving forward at a constant speed or accelerating. You don’t want to feel like you’re on the gas, then on the brakes. You are essentially skipping across the water from wave top to wave top. You’re flying across the water and timing your application of throttle. That’s all about reading the water.”
Tomlinson also co-owns and runs the high-performance boating company TNT Custom Marine in North Miami, Florida. The shop, established in 1984, offers new and brokerage boats, engines, rigging and service. Its technicians, of course, have special expertise in high-performance powerboat racing, allowing customers from all walks of life to inject some of Tomlinson’s high-octane know-how into their own boating experiences. As he once said about getting out on the water and testing all kinds of limits, “The more time you get in any raceboat, the better.”
Victor Vescovo
Oceans are vast and deep. Texas-born Victor Vescovo, after 20 years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Re- serve, decided he wanted to become the first person to reach the deepest parts of five of them.
Vescovo’s Five Deeps Expedition, chronicled in the television series Expedition: Deep Planet, detailed the ex- traordinary challenges of underwater exploration. In 2018 and 2019, Vescovo reached the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean, 27,480 feet down; the bottom of the Southern Ocean, at 24,388 feet; the bottom of the Indian Ocean, at 23,596 feet; the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, which he dove twice to a world-record 35,853 feet; and the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean, down to 18,210 feet. There he was the first human ever to reach the location.
The Five Deeps Expedition, Vescovo noted, was something no government or organization had ever attempted. He championed the Triton 36000/2 submersible (capable of diving to 36,000 feet with two people aboard) that helped him achieve the goal. What was important to Vescovo when working with Triton’s team was that the submersible—called Limiting Factor—could make not just deep dives, but repeatable deep dives. And, unlike Triton submersibles whose predominant trajectory is forward, the Limiting Factor’s movements had to be primarily descent and ascent.
As big of a success as his efforts were, he endured at least one frustration: He saw what appeared to be trash on the bottom of the ocean floor. “Can there be one place on Earth that is so remote that it is not touched by contamination?” said Vescovo. “The answer is no. And you’ll have to tell people, and maybe that will help.”
This story was originally published in the March 2024 Issue.
