Moored

in West Bay, Traverse City’s largest private sailing yacht is a queen among the charter boats and daysailers with a poetic stature and an easy grace. Her name is Althea, a classic two-masted yawl with more than six decades behind her. In Greek mythology, Althea was the daughter of a king, a queen in her own right and, in some accounts, the mistress of Poseidon, god of the sea. A fitting name for this boat that shines like revered royalty, small waves lapping affectionately against her hull.

The low evening sun sets the water to sparkling and the teak deck gleams as the last few passengers climb aboard for a sunset cruise. Captain Brett Derr uses the massive wheel to steer deftly past the tall ships docked at Discovery Pier, then raises the mizzen as first mate Jack Smiley preps the main. Once under sail, the boat glides toward Power Island, the turns so smooth I hardly notice. “She tacks on a dime,” Derr notes; the bay’s consistent winds make this region one of his favorite places in the world to sail.

Derr is no stranger to the North’s waters. He captained the iconic Tall Ship Manitou, a replica of an 1800s cargo schooner, for seven years before founding Compass Rose Sailing Company with his wife, Heather, in 2021, a longtime dream inspired by a childhood where summers meant living on a boat.

Derr is a child of the sea.

Born prematurely, Derr spent his first few weeks in an incubator. His parents, anxious to get on the water for their inaugural twomonth summer boat trip, tried again and again to convince doctors to let them take their son home early. Derr laughs while telling the story—and also insists it’s true. His parents’ love for the water was fueled by his father’s childhood, spent growing up in upstate New York and spending family vacations in the he’s the captain of his own vessel—one unlike any other on West Grand Traverse Bay.

The Althea still has its original woodstove, an important feature for offshore racers who’d live aboard for many days at a time. The steel construction is modeled after North Sea fishing cutters. A picture in the cabin shows the original signal flag, written partly in Dutch, and there’s a stack of Hudson Bay wool blankets—what the original crew would have used.

Thousand Islands. Derr’s doctors eventually gave the goahead, and days later the family was river bound.

Each summer, starting with that very first sailing trip in his bassinet, Derr, along with his parents and two sisters, spent six weeks living and adventuring together on a 21-foot Sea Ray, leaving their land-locked home in Wyoming for the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River.

“Growing up, there were two lives—this life in Wyoming where we went to school, and summertime where life was on the boat,” he says. Their days had a simple rhythm: Wake up, island hop, swim. The weeks were spent voyaging to Georgian Bay, New York City, Toronto and Québec City using canals and waterways but always keeping the Thousand Islands as their home base.

And so went every summer, until Derr was in college. He took a break from the Univ ersity of Wyoming t hen and leaned into adventure, buying a Greyhound bus ticket to the last stop on the route: Key West. He and a friend hoped to find a maritime job, but they arrived shortly after a major hurricane had devastated the area and instead did relief work for the American Red Cross. But every morning, bef ore helping at the shelter or moving supplies, the y’d head to the docks to look for a job on a boat.

“This is not a boat where you buy a ticket, take a ride,” Derr says. “It’s more than that.”