Remarkable Stories

We are taking a short break while John works the Annapolis Sailboat Show and then heads for the Leeward Islands aboard Ave del Mar.

Over in Mallorca, Mike has a couple of walls to knock down.

Rest assured, we have plenty of fascinating guests and escapades lined up for Season 3. It is going to be the best season yet.

If you need to get in touch, you can contact us via:

john@boatradio.co

mike@boatradio.co

David Gluckman grew up in South Africa when the country was still in the grip of apartheid. He arrived in London at the start of the sixties and spent a great deal of time chasing women, drinking booze and smoking cigarettes.

He was an ad man and, albeit very briefly, he was a copywriter but it was as an inventor of drinks brands that he really found success. There's Baileys, of course, but David also invented Le Piat d'Or, Aqua Libra, Purdeys, The Singleton, Ciroc Vodka, Coole Swan, Smirnoff Black, Sheridans, Tanqueray Ten and many more. Trust us, if you're partial to the occasional alcoholic drink, David's probably got you smashed some time.

These days, David writes books and advises start ups.

He spoke to Mike McDowall from his home in London. 

This week, the dynamic duo talk about in-mast furling, stick shift versus auto cars and impressionist paintings. Because why not.

This is the strange tale of a British family who decided to establish their own nation.

On Christmas Eve 1966, Paddy Bates and his son, Michael, took possession of an abandoned anti-aircraft gun emplacement seven and a half miles off the coast of southeast England. The following year, they declared independence. Fifty-two years later they are still independent despite the occasional hiccup such as an armed invasion by German merceneries.

Mike McDowall spoke to Michael Bates, now Prince Michael of Sealand.

John met Johannes Volbehr in Jamaica a few years ago. At the time, the happy-go-lucky world traveller was making his way from Germany to South America by working his passage aboard private sailing vessels.

Shortly after their encounter, Johannes and an acquaintance called Ine were taken on as crew by the skipper of Our Joy, a sailboat bound for Panama.

The journey did not go as planned.

Johannes tells his tale to Remarkable Stories' John Herlig. Our efforts to locate Rockney Ragsdale have been unsuccessful.

Arlene Limas didn't know who she was going to fight, and she never expected that her toughest opponent would be the governing body of her own sport, Taekwondo. And why did they fight Arlene? 

Because she was simply too good.

Still, there was drama surrounding women's Taekwondo in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Does anybody really know what really happened at the medal ceremony?

In Part One of "WILL THIS KILL ME," Garry Eveleigh joined Remarkable Stories' Mike McDowall as the pair traipsed about the island of Mallorca in search of edible wild food. They found plenty of delicious things to eat—but no mushrooms. And since we all know that mushrooms are pretty much fabulous, they decided to go find some up in the hills. They are joined in this episode by Mike’s friend Corinna Perry.

If you are interested in learning how to find food out in nature, Garry's book is called Wildcook and includes recipes from British celebrity chef James Golding.

And yes, all three of our adventurers are reportedly still alive and kicking, even now.

Garry Eveleigh finds food everywhere—in the front yard, in the hillsides, at the side of the road. He knows which plants are delicious and which may kill you. You see, Garry is a professional forager.

He has been employed by some very high-end British restaurants to devise fresh, sustainable menus, and last year, on a sunny autumn day, Garry took Remarkable Stories' Mike McDowall on a food finding mission that began, conveniently enough, in Mike's own front yard.

We are happy to report that Garry and Mike are both still quite alive.

In a very different edition of Remarkable Stories, John gets together with his friend Dano to tear into some YouTube sailing channels and to recommend alternatives to the usual top five. There's not enough room to list the channels we offend, but a few that we liked included Sailing with the Litzenbergers, Acorn to Arabella, Wind Hippie Sailing, and Christian Williams. Check 'em out.

Let us know what you think of Remarkably Unhinged, and drop us a line if there is a sailing-related subject you'd like John and Dano to tackle.

We are taking this week off for the American July 4th holiday, but we've sent you a message. ♡  

"Posh Pete" — born Pieter Tritton — smuggled millions of dollars of cocaine out of South America, managing to stay one step ahead of law enforcement for years. But eventually his luck ran out, and he was apprehended in a hotel room in Ecuador with 8 kilos of cocaine in his possession. The result was a  12 year sentence in one of the world's deadliest prison systems.

Pieter started young and learned the nuance of the smuggling world quickly. He watched, and he learned how things worked — both before and after he was caught by police. He joined Remarkable Stories' Mike McDowall to talk about his life, from getting his start in the rave scene of his youth to how he later managed to survive a notoriously-lethal prison system. 

While he may have come out of prison alive, he didn't come out without scars from the horrors that he witnessed.

Janine Georgette wanted to learn to sail. She was, in her words, "sea bit." But she lives in New York City—one of the most expensive cities in the US and certainly not an easy place for a divorced woman in her 60s to find a boat on a shoestring budget. But Janine is about as determined a woman as you might find.

As an 11 year old, Janine wanted to learn to ski. She was frustrated by how easy and natural it was for the kids who had been skiing their whole lives, and she struggled to improve. So she joined the ski team at school, and it worked—she dove in the deep end, if you will. And later in life she tried the same approach to learn how to sail—immersion.

Janine tells her story with all of its ups and downs, successes and failures. You can't help but to be inspired.

Mansoor Adayfi was held at Guantanamo Bay for fourteen years. He was never charged with a crime.

Mark Fallon was the NCIS agent in charge of criminal investigations at Guantanamo Bay.

This is the second part of Mansoor's story.

Don McIntyre has spent his entire life engaged in daring exploits. He has sailed the toughest seas, he has led expeditions to the most inhospitable places, he has been an endurance pilot, a rally driver, and an Antarctic explorer. He has won medals and accolades in numerous countries. He has written books and produced documentaries. He has built boats and aeroplanes. More recently, he revived the Golden Globe Race - a solo circumnavigation widely regarded as the toughest sailing event in the world. On October 31st 2021, at the age of 66, he's due to compete in the Globe 580 TransAt, a race across the Atlantic in self-built plywood yachts. Don McIntyre talked with Seabird's Mike McDowall about his extraordinary life.

Jon Martins was a qualified tandem sky-diving instructor, parachute packer, and cameraman by the age of 20. After performing thousands of jumps, Jon met tragedy on New Years Eve of 2012 as he experienced a hard landing that caused a spinal fracture, making him an L1 paraplegic.

In his words, “I see it as a gift, a tremendous blessing in my life, but it is necessary to act quickly upon it. When you have these life changing enlightenments and you don’t act quickly, it will just fade away, go in the background and you forget about it”

Jon turned his focus to sailing, becoming the first disabled sailor to circumnavigate New Zealand, to cross the Caribbean Sea, and to singlehand across the Pacific.

But you won’t find him wallowing in the spirit of tragedy and despair.

Deeply philosophical, self analytical, and curious about the world around him, Jon joins Seabird’s John Herlig from his New Zealand home to talk about his life, accomplishments, struggles and aspirations in a fascinating and moving episode.

This episode of Remarkable Stories has been removed at the request of the interviewee. In its place, you can hear an early trailer from back when we were called Seabird.

However, I am excited to let you know that Imi will be back, on Wednesday, July 20th at 9am Central European Time. Do not miss it. Honestly, Imi's life story will make your jaw hit the floor. It is sensational.

The former owner and captain of a Charleston, South Carolina, charter company, Banff Luther has once again tossed the predictable aside to pursue life in an unconventional way.

Trading the sea for the mountains, Banff recently acquired his contractor’s license and is planning to build a number of luxury rental cabins as well as a garage large enough to let him work on the Porsche 911 that he races on weekends.

Grounded, humble, and thankful, Banff sits down with Seabird’s John Herlig and shares what it is that gets him out of bed in the morning.

And he says he’d be content to go out with his boots on, doing what he loves.

John Barry never knew his father, a fighter pilot who was killed in action in WWII. But John grew up determined to honor his father's memory by living life to the full and not wasting away in the confines of a dusty office.

As a young man, he left his native North Carolina and drove to Annapolis on a lark, hoping to find employment in the sailing capital of America.

He took on work as a broker, and through that ended up scoring a job on the schooner, Harvey Gamage.

Some years later, he became the captain of this storied, romantic tall ship.

In this episode, Captain Barry sits down with Seabird’s John Herlig on the shores of the Intracoastal Waterway in North Carolina, to share tales of years gone by, sailing the Caribbean Sea.

Back in the 80s, Ric Sagarminaga was one of those Greenpeace guys making headlines with their daring attempts to prevent illegal whaling or the dumping of toxic waste. Three decades later, Ric is still defending the marine environment only now he does it aboard his own vessel, the century-old Toftevaag, flagship of his scientific research organisation, Alnitak. Ric is a cool guy with a laid-back manner that hides a steely determination to protect the oceans. The work he does helps conservation efforts worldwide. Mike McDowall joined Ric aboard Toftevaag on the north coast of Mallorca.

Chris and Melody DiCroce have spent the past decade mostly living on boats and partly living on the road. They have sailed the Caribbean and travelled widely in Mexico and Guatemala, all the while maintaining their jobs and making a good living. We figured the first three episodes probably gave you a taste for an unconventional life so it was time to talk to a couple who have successfully escaped the nine-to-five. Melody provides services for small business owners while also giving advice about side hustles and how to keep that bank account topped up. Chris is a musician and writer. By day, he scripts television shows; by night, he writes terrific books, both fiction and non-fiction, all of which can be found at www.chrisdicroce.com

Chris and Melody are living the dream. You could too. Listen to find out how they did it.

Being a lighthouse keeper in the 20th-century might not be the same job that it was 150 years ago, but Meghan Agresto isn’t exactly starving for work in her role as custodian of the beacon at Currituck Beach in Corolla, North Carolina.

Part historian, part events coordinator, part problem solver, Meghan manages not only the lighthouse but also a one-room charter school in this tiny town of just five hundred permanent residents.

Chatting with Seabird’s John Herlig, Meghan talks about all of these things as well as exciting tales of the drama, death, and destruction that was part and parcel of lighthouse life in the late 1800s.

Season 1 begins July 19th 2021. Seabird is stories from remarkable people. We have spoken to some extraordinary individuals who embody the spirit of Seabird—an untamed energy that can not be caged, that does not know how to conform. Their stories are fascinating, compelling and sometimes breath-taking. Travel with us, as we speak with the rebellious souls who make the world a more exciting place. These folks have not followed the rules.