A FAMILY MATTER

WHEN 16-YEAR-OLD CAL CURRIER, WITH NO REAL SAILING EXPERIENCE, GOT THE NOTION TO SAIL ALONE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, HE HAD THE SUPPORT NOT ONLY OF HIS TIGHTKNIT CLAN, BUT ALSO OF SOME HELPFUL MARINERS HE ENCOUNTERED ALONG THE WAY. THE FINAL OUTCOME? AN INSPIRING COMING-OF-AGE WALKABOUT AT SEA, AND LESSONS LEARNED THAT TRANSCEND YEARS AND MILES.

- HERB MCCORMICK

This past summer, at age 16 and with his sophomore year of high school just a few weeks behind him, Cal Currier knocked off a solo west-to-east crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and in doing so may well have become the youngest sailor ever to accomplish the feat.

At first glance, his straightforward 3,400-nautical-mile journey was textbook: a tidy 28 days from Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, to Lagos, Portugal, including a 24-hour layover in the Azores. It seemed to require the sort of easy effort some of his classmates probably expended while scooping ice cream during their summer vacations in his hometown of Palo Alto, California.

But initial looks, of course, are almost always deceiving. As is the case here.

Tall, lanky, and with the sort of flowing locks old men dream about, Cal most certainly classifies as a young buck. But you need only to spend a few minutes talking to him to understand that he also bears an old soul, and maturity beyond his tender years. Moreover, he had the wisdom and guidance of a makeshift council of elders who helped turn his bold dreams into buoyant reality. And that actual dash across the mighty Atlantic? It was old-school, mates. What else would you call a trip undertaken on an S&S-designed Tartan 30 built in 1976 and purchased for the princely sum of $12,000?

Cal also had some serious familial support along the way. In fact, Cal's voyage was, if nothing else, a total Currier family affair; after all, Cal's father and grandfather were transatlantic veterans who knew more than a thing or two about what he was getting himself into. But wonderful and unexpected revelations also happened along the way go ahead and call it kismet-beginning with a salty 90-year-old New England sailor who harbored his own open-ended ocean aspirations that Cal ultimately fulfilled, extending the tight Currier clan in the process. 

But we're getting ahead of things.