KEEP CALM AND
SAIL ON After OCEAN STAR was dismasted and the company’s equipment was destroyed by Hurricane Irma, Sea/Mester doubled down and built VELA — only to have a pandemic raging when she was commissioned in 2020. How did they save themselves? They went sailing. As fall began, we caught up with Travis Yates of Sea/Mester. Sarasota-based Sea/Mester ran their college semester and gapyear programs on the steel schooners Vela, Argo, and Ocean Star right through the worst days of the pandemic, keeping their business afloat and earning Tall Ships America’s Sailtraining Program of the Year Award. Yates supervised the building of Argo and Vela in Thailand’s Marsun Shipyard, and is currently overseeing an extensive updating of Argo, which was launched in 2006. Marlinspike: Travis, it’s great to talk to you again. Tell us what’s happening with Argo. 12
Travis Yates: Argo’s been in the yard since January. This should have been a four-month refit, because I’ve done almost all the same work on Argo previously in four months, but with COVID and shipping and everything else, we gave it through the summer. We haven’t had students on that boat in the spring semester or the summer semester, and we’re fighting really hard to get them on in the fall. The boat was supposed to be done on August 8. Finally the yard agreed that they weren’t going to finish on time, so they extended it to September 30. We have to leave Thailand on October 5, if we’re going to get to Bali to start our trip on October 20, which is Bali to
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