Schooning in Seattle

Marlinspike chatted with Captain Noah Waldman in June, as his sailing season was beginning. This is the second full season for Waldman and his schooner Bay Lady in Seattle. Bay Lady had formerly sailed out of San Francisco for many years after coming over from the East Coast.

Marlinspike: Noah, tell us how you got roped into this crazy world of ours. I notice you have a Milwaukee phone number!

Noah Waldman: I grew up in the Midwest, grew up in a family of sailors. I was really grateful to have a father who was a boat captain, who really put me on this career trajectory. He ran big ships around the Great Lakes, and he dragged me off to sea when I was a kid. Of course, I was resentful then. But it turned into a career after all my kicking and screaming.

MS: Uh... “resentful”?

NW: Well, I wanted to be at home playing. I was get- ting pulled off onto these big boats with a bunch of scary sailors. But we did have the dream of building a little sailboat in the garage, when I was like five or six. We built a little stitch-and-glue sailboat. So about the same time that I was learning to ride a bicycle, my father was teaching me to sail on this little boat, and it was just like the most freedom in the world. I could take a bike and ride around the block, or take this little 12-foot sailboat and go on an adventure on the Milwaukee River, and there was nothing like it! I think I’m still kind of chasing the thrill of sailing that little tiny sailboat, even to this day.

MS: What kind of boats was your dad running that were so off-putting to you as a little boy?

NW: He worked on ferries on the Great Lakes, and on dinner-cruise boats. You know, it was always fun when I was out there [laughs], but being a kid is just full of the fear of missing out and wondering what your friends are doing.

MS: When did you start sailing professionally?

NW: I went to work on the ferries with him when I was in high school. I had a lot of fun doing that, and it paid my way through university. I was studying computer science and finally got an internship as a software engineer. All my guidance counselors said that computer science was the future, that was the big money. And I bought into it. But when I went to do that internship, I just realized immediately that I did not belong in a cubicle. So I had to go back to sea.

I already had the sea time for a captain’s license. So I went and got my masters and decided to head off into the world and make my way as a sailor. I launched a kayak in Chicago and kayaked away from Wisconsin and the Midwest, and figured wherever I ran out of money, I would start a new career!

MS: Literally, you set out in a kayak?

NW: Literally, put a kayak in and paddled as far as New Orleans, where I ran out of money and looked at the job market. I decided I didn’t want to work on the crew boats running out to oil rigs. So I sold the kayak for a bus ticket to Fort Lauderdale, where I went to work on sailing yachts. I had a ton of fun, got a lot of great experience, made a lot of friends… and then the 2008 market collapse happened, and all the boats laid everybody off.

So [laughs] I started working on a sailing catamaran, which eventually led to working out of Key West, where I discovered tall ships.

MS: Key West, that den of iniquity.

NW: Yep. Yep. It’s, uh, [laughs] it’s a great place to become a sailor. And that’s all I’ll say about Key West. I had so much fun down there.

MS: Which boats did you run on out of Key West?

NW: I worked on the catamaran Echo quite a bit but I also got started sailing with the Western Union, as one of the deck crew…

MS: Those must have been just about the final days for the Western Union.

NW: It was, yeah, one of her last seasons. Such a tragedy. That boat carries such a legacy. I’m sorry to see where the Western Union is today,

MS: You were also doing deliveries on the Appledore II, running back and forth between Key West and Camden.

NW: Yeah, yeah. And that crew is one of the most fun crews that you can possibly be a part of. I fell in love with the community that tall ships brings.

So, a friend of mine in Wisconsin started a tall ship business, bought the Appledore III, and renamed her the Edith Becker. I jumped on his crew to help him deliver it through the Erie Canal out of Gloucester, into the Great Lakes, into Lake Michigan and Sister Bay, where he was starting up that operation. I took on a full-time captain’s position driving the Edith Becker.

That was really my first time as the captain of a schooner, of a tall ship, and I had so much fun doing it. The owner of that operation, Peter Nelson, became an absolute mentor to me, and really helped me learn to be a schooner captain, helped me learn to manage a crew, and then eventually encouraged me to start a business,

I spent a season up there, picked up a delivery job moving a catamaran down to Key West, helped the new ownership build a program with their new boat, and got a taste for what it’s like to build an operation from the ground up, which was really exciting and a great experience.

MS: When you say “build a program” you mean, developing a business plan?

NW: Exactly. I hired all the crew, got the boat all set up with the Coast Guard and in her new zone. And we were crushing it, we were doing really well — until we weren’t. We went through some hard times with that program, and since I had hired all of my friends as captains and crew, I wanted to keep them employed and keep them making money.

So I went into a bit of credit-card debt to try and keep that thing afloat. I started taking jobs, doing deliveries while still sending the crew out make whatever we could. But we finally gave up on that operation. And the ownership sold the boat.

MS: How did you get from crushing it to not crushing it? What happened there?

NW: We lost our operating rights at the dock that we were using. We had a really nice, central location, with a hotel, so it was perfect. But then the hotel brought in their own boat.

MS: They saw you crushing it and said, ah ha!

NW: Yeah, yeah. We tried to recover from there and set up a new operation out of Stock Island, but it never thrived in the way that it had before. It was really heartbreaking.

But during that time I took a bunch of delivery jobs and hooked up with the Liberty Fleet of Tall Ships and took over command of the Liberty Clipper, which was a great opportunity, cause we’re operating with a really big crew there. I sailed with the Liberty Fleet until I was able to get out of debt and get my feet back underneath me, and had an amazing time sailing in the Bahamas. Such an amazing opportunity, getting to do the windjammer thing out there, in the tropics!

MS: How did you get from the Liberty Fleet to the opposite side of the country?

NW: Well, I followed a romance, as you do. The romance didn’t work out, but I took a quick shift with the Lady Washington and sailed her up into the Puget Sound. And when I saw the Puget Sound and the nature and the mountains, and met the people up here in the Pacific Northwest, I fell absolutely in love with it and said, I am moving here.

I was still working for Liberty Fleet at the time, going back and forth from Seattle to the Bahamas, when the pandemic happened. I was up in Seattle, and the Liberty Clipper was making a run for Florida, to get out of the Bahamas before everything was totally shut down.

And then I was stuck in my small apartment in Seattle, and I was just looking for my tall ship community, just looking for the local tall ship. I went and I walked the Seattle waterfront, and I was walking next to the aquarium, and I was looking over at the Space Needle, and I was just wondering where our tall ship was. And that’s when I got it in my head that I wanted to build that program here.

MS: Tell us about your acquisition of the Bay Lady

NW: Actually, I built the business plan around another boat. It was basically a motorboat with masts that was down in Oregon. I was never too in love with that boat, but I thought it was a foot in the door.

I was doing some work for a charter company on Lake Union, and I was talking about how cool it would be to bring a tall ship to Seattle. And the guests on the boat worked for the Small Business Administration, and they said, “That sounds like something the SBA would be interested in financing. Why don’t you send your business plan to us?” And within an hour of sending in this business plan, I got a phone call from the SBA and they said, “Let’s build this. Let’s get a tall ship in Seattle. This sounds amazing.”

We kept moving forward with this motorboat down in Oregon, with the masts on it, that kind of looked like a tall ship, but was never gonna be much of a sailor. And then I heard that the Bay Lady had been listed for sale down in San Francisco. My brother lives in Oakland, so I just went to visit my brother and take a tour of the boat and [laughs], she was so cool! Just perfect. And obviously a capable sailor.

When we went for a sea trial, I think we were doing like 13 knots in San Francisco Bay. We had a little bit of current helping us, but we were flying, and the main was reefed, and we were just sailing so hard out there, and it was like, I needed that boat! I went back and revised the business plan for it. The bankers loved it. So, we bought a schooner!

Seven of us went to pick up the boat and we were like, camping, rolling out sleeping bags and hammocks. It was wet and cold, but it was seven days. You can do anything for seven days!

Anyway we sailed it up to Seattle and got all of our certifications and got through all the red tape, but by then it was the end of July. So we missed a big part of 2021, which was a pretty hard start. I was pretty nervous about it. Getting through that winter was hard.

MS: Were there more obstacles, in terms of the Coast Guard and certification in your new zone, than you were expecting? Did the Bay Lady have a current COI when you bought her?

NW: Yes, Bay Lady had a current COI. But we had our fixed suppression system discharge, and we couldn’t carry passengers without it. We had to get a new one installed. And with the supply chain in shambles in 2021, it took a month before our new cylinder arrived.

For a while, we were just running free sails. Anyone who wanted to come out for free was welcome, and we just went sailing every day. It was a hard start, and we didn’t have a marketing engine in place. It surprised me how much marketing it takes to make this work.

I figured, you bring a big, beautiful boat into a big city and you tie it up to a dock and people see it and say, “I want to go on that.” But that was not the case. We didn’t drive as much traffic as I was expecting.

MS: Tell us a little bit about the Bay Lady

NW: She was actually built in Maine in 1988, for a whale watching program, and she did so well that the ownership went and built a really big boat. So Bay Lady was looking for a new job.

A business in San Francisco picked her up, about the year 2000, and they put her on a truck. She is an 85-foot schooner [laughs], draws eight feet, she’s 19.5 in the beam. They put her on this enormous truck with like 64 tires and sent her across the country to San Francisco. As the legend goes, the truck driver got halfway across the country, put it in park, and demanded double the money!

They could have taken him to court, but the business in San Francisco wanted the schooner there yesterday, ‘cause it was summertime. So they just paid it. And they ran her down in San Francisco for 20 years, from Pier 80, near the Giants stadium. It sounds like they had an amazing time, and they had a successful business.

But during the pandemic they decided that they had done it. They wanted to downsize and and slow down a little bit, and ease into retirement. So they listed the boat for sale and that’s when I came along.

It was really a product of the pandemic, that all of this came together, having time on my hands and them reevaluating what they wanted to do down in San Francisco. Yeah, the stars kind of lined up to bring the Bay Lady into my life!

MS: Looking at the pictures of her online, she looks very passenger-friendly. She’s got high rails, and bench-type seating. She looks comfortable.

NW: She was purpose-built for the passenger trade, which is really unique. And yes — the railing is one of my favorite features of the boat. With a lot of the operations I’ve been involved with, our guests sat on cabin tops, and there was just a thin lifeline around the perimeter, and I was nervous the entire time. But Bay Lady has this railing that you can lean against and kids can come aboard, families can bring kids, and I always feel really confident that everyone’s going to be safe.

The cockpit runs the entire length of the boat. It’s got seating for 50 in the cockpit alone. Overall it seats about 70, so she does have that enormous COI for 90 people aboard. But we cap the ticket sales at 65 to make sure that it’s comfortable, that everybody has a place to sit, and you can still walk around. It doesn’t feel like you’re packed together. Even with a group of 65, it still feels really comfortable aboard.

MS: You decided to keep the name, rather than pick something more specific to the Seattle area. Superstition? Laziness?

NW: Right? Well… she has been the Bay Lady her whole life. She sailed in San Francisco Bay and now she sails in Elliott Bay. I’ve played around with changing the name. I wanted to name a schooner after my parents, but “Bay Lady” kind of fits for this boat. I’m keeping it.

MS: You seem to have a good location, right by the Aquarium, near the downtown… but as I recall there are a lot of ferries going in and out.

NW: Elliott Bay is an amazing sailing location for us. The ferry lane is south of us, and we just stay away from it.

It would open up a little bit more sailing room if we crossed the lane, but then we would have to worry about the ferries, and they are out there moving fast and getting work done! But we’ve got lots of room to sail. There’s surprisingly little traffic in Elliott Bay. If you get around to the lakes in Washington, they’re packed. There isn’t room to set a sail. But the Puget Sound has surprisingly little traffic, especially relative to Key West or Boston Harbor. There’s just nothing but open spaces. Our regular wind direction is northerly in the summertime, so we can just set a course west for Bainbridge Island and sail for eight miles and get up close and cross our fingers that we’ll see some orcas out there.

MS: Yes! I noticed your website mentions seals, sea lions, dolphins and whales. How often do you see them on your sails?

NW: We see porpoises and seals pretty regularly. Orcas, whales, or large dolphins, that’s really rare. Maybe 10 times in six months of sailing last year? It’s always really special when we do see them.

MS: Certainly the skyline and the mountains, it must make for some amazing photos.

NW: It’s unreal. it’s the most beautiful sailing that I’ve seen in all my travels. The Olympic Mountains make for spectacular sunsets. When Mount Rainier is out, it’s just staggering. And then you’ve got the skyline of the city. Everything out here is so big! The city is big. The mountains are bigger than anything I’ve seen anywhere else. The trees are big. It’s all so big and it really makes for magnificent sailing.

If you say “Seattle” to people, they think rain. So I have to ask: how have you found the weather affects your operations?

NW: [Laughs] Yeah. Our summertime weather is amazing. It’s perfect. Seattle gets its reputation for rain from the winter months. In late October it gets cloudy and it starts raining and then just keeps raining until April or May. And it’s just dark and rainy and cloudy that entire time. But then in May, the sun comes out and it’s ideal. It’s 70 to 80 degrees and it’s a nice dry heat, so it never feels hot. It’s always cooler out on the water and it’s blue skies! I’m gonna knock on wood, but for our summer months are just perfect. We usually have a nice northerly, light in the mornings, but then it picks up in the afternoons. It makes for some really nice sailing.

MS: From a marketing standpoint, having learned your lesson that first season, what have you done to let people know where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re offering? What does your marketing effort look like?

NW: Google Adwords — that’s where it’s at. We’re doing the social media thing too, and paid social media marketing is a powerful tool too. I don’t know what AI’s going to do to this, where the robots just have all the answers, but right now, Google Adwords is where it’s at.

MS: People who are looking for things to do in Seattle, they’re getting out their phone or they’re sitting down at their computer and looking and booking online?

NW: Yeah, I find that most of the bookings are booked well in advance. It’s folks that are still at home in Texas that are buying tickets.

MS: Would you say visitors are the biggest part of your market, or local people?

NW: I’m hoping to increase our reach in the local market here. But we’re driven by tourism.

MS: Do you anticipate building up a charter business to complement your public sails?

NW: Yeah, the public sails are our bread and butter. The corporate events and private events, that’s the cherry on top. This year I was a little nervous, with all the tech layoffs this past winter. That’s a big player in our private events, all these tech companies here. But it looks like they’re continuing doing the team-building events with us. I’m optimistic. We don’t have any education-type stuff right now. That is a program that I would be excited to build, especially as we get our foundation really solidified here. But at the moment it’s three or four public sails a day, with the occasional private event mixed in there.

MS: I notice you allow infants on board for a dollar. That’s astonishing to me.

NW: Actually, it’s free now. We’re doing infants for free.

MS: You’re a madman [laughs]. Admittedly, the boat I run is not as big as yours. There’s nowhere to go with a screaming infant where it’s not going to impact everyone else on board.

NW: We don’t have many issues with screaming infants. And since we’ve got the space, I want to be the family boat. I want to keep our prices reasonable, so that if a family wants to go sailing, they have the opportunity. I got to go sailing when I was a little kid and I want to make sure that other little kids get to come out sailing, too.

MS: That’s a wonderful sentiment and I honor you for it. Anything else we should talk about, Noah?

NW: A big goal when I started this business was, I felt as though tall ship sailors across the board were abused. I felt like there was opportunity with these programs to create jobs that pay a livable wage and where people can make careers out of being tall ship sailors. And that’s a big goal of mine. I’ve tried to keep that in the forefront of every decision that we make with this program.

I feel so lucky that I was in a place where I had the opportunity to build something like this. And I want to share that with my community.

MS: That is a noble goal, but your boat doesn’t have any berthing accommodations and downtown Seattle is an expensive area to live in. Is this a reachable goal, that you’ve set?

NW: I think we’re doing it right now! We’ve got eight employees right now, and I hope to continue building that, and all of our crew are living in Seattle. So we’re doing it.

MS: What does everybody do on October 31st when you stop running trips?

NW: Last year a good number of ‘em hooked up with Liberty Fleet.

MS: So you’re like Liberty Fleet West.

NW: [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah. And I’m working on some ideas for the offseason. Nothing that I’m gonna pull the trigger on this year, but I’ve got big ambitions to figure out a way that we can continue our season through the winter.

MS: How far down the West Coast do you need to go before you can have a winter season? Los Angeles? San Diego?

NW: I think we’d have to go all the way. Yeah.

MS: I love the idea of partnering up with another boating operation that has an opposite schedule, like you in Seattle and the Liberty Fleet in Nassau. That’s good for the crew — who don’t have go work in a shoe store during the offseason — and good for the operators, who don’t have to find and train new crew every season.

NW: I’m always dreaming that we can make enough money in the summertime that everybody can just go and ski through the winter [laughs].

MS: Yeah. That usually works out for the owners of the boat, but maybe not for the deckhands. ❂

For more info, visit SeattleSailingShip.com