Steven P. Callahan

Steven Callahan is has been messing about in boats for over half a century.  He taught himself the basics of boat design and celestial navigation, and helped build a 40 footer prior to graduating high school.  As an adult, since 1974, he first built boats before turning to designing boats, teaching design, and writing about all aspects of the marine world.  He’s lived aboard for five years, raced offshore, captained boat deliveries, and sailed more than 80,000 offshore miles, most shorthanded and much on unusual craft.  These experiences have inspired most of Callahan’s creative work.  He’s authored Adrift, Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea (Houghton Mifflin), which chronicles his life-raft drift across half the Atlantic in 1982, became a NY Times Bestseller, has been translated into 15 languages, and remains in print.  He also wrote Capsized (HarperCollins) for survivor Jim Nalepka who spent four months with four other men on an overturned, half-flooded boat.  Callahan has contributed writings, illustrations, and photos to more than a dozen other books, many about seamanship and/or survival, such as Michael Greenwald’s Survivor, as well as authoring hundreds of articles for the marine press worldwide.   He’s served as contributing editor to Sailor and Sail magazines, and senior editor at Cruising World for which he continues to do special projects such as testing new boats and lifesaving equipment.  He also speaks publicly and consults for marine and other businesses, most recently for director Ang Lee on an upcoming film adaptation of the novel Life of Pi.  His web site is www.stevencallahan.net

Roger C. Taylor

Roger Taylor as crewed in about 300 different vessels, avaeraging about 60 days afloat per year for the last 60 years. The vessels range from a 27# canoe to a 2,200T. destroyer. Roger has had his US Coast Guard license since 1987. Roger has written numerous books from seamanship to boat design. Presently he resides with his wife Kathleen on his barge in Paris.

Alvah Simon

Alvah Simon completed a thirteen year year, 65,000 mile circumnavigation on a 31′ plywood sloop, that included rounding Cape Horn. With his wife Diana, he then sailed their 36′ steel cutter, Roger Henry, from South America to the high Arctic. Their year in the ice is chronicled in his critically acclaimed book, “North To The Night”.

Diana and Alvah have been awarded the Outstanding Seamanship Award for these sailing accomplishments. Alvah is a contributing editor for Cruising World Magazine as well as a judge in The Boat of the Year contest. He conducts off-shore seminars across America. Alvah and Diana have shared their experiences with schools, corporations, civic institutions and yacht clubs around the world. They have appeared on television, radio and in newspapers and magazines internationally, including CNN, NPR, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and People Magazine.

Their voyage from Maine to Panama and Alvah’s solo exploration of the remote Darien District, was the subject of a two hour Travel Channel documentary “To Survive”. Alvah’s extreme sailing experience coupled with extensive boat testing and delivery has honed a safe, practical and holistic approach to matching crew to vessel andbudget to equipment and systems.