The University of Vermont Magazine, Fall 2023

UVM PEOPLE ADAM NAGLER '89 LIVING (AND PADDLING) ON THE EDGE On the night of July 28, 2023, Adam Nagler ’89 was crossing the mouth of Delaware Bay and then heading north—an open-ocean passage of 53 miles. Suddenly, the wind gusted to 35 knots, tossing big swells. Pea-sized raindrops smacked his head. For most of the night, the water and sky were tied together with lightning. Nagler clipped himself in with an emergency tether, put out a sea anchor, lay down on the deck, “and held on for dear life.”

By Joshua Brown

provides post-traumatic stress support for veterans and other mental health services. Nagler suffered depression after 9/11 and is grateful for the help he got at that time. Another reason: to be present in his life. In 2009, he got a rare infection that required open heart surgery. Then, in 2013, his mom died. Nagler was her caregiver. “I looked in the mirror one day and said, ‘If you don't do something about how you're living your life, you're going to die young from bad eating, tons of stress, sitting on the couch.’” So Nagler began creating adventures that push him to the edge of his abilities, even to the edge of survival. He calls his project the “Sufferfest Tour” and has no plans to stop.

His boat is no Coast Guard cutter. It is, he says, “a little piece of foam,”—a battered, off-the-shelf, 14-foot paddleboard like those you might see wobbling along the shore of Lake Champlain— except Nagler, 56, uses his as a seagoing vessel.

“It’s all DIY and on the cheap,” he says.

Since 2018, Nagler has covered some 3,500 miles in the Atlantic on this paddleboard. Last summer’s trip aimed to be his longest and most complex. He began at Little River Inlet, S.C., on June 25. His destination: north to Martha’s Vineyard and then finish near Montauk Point on the tip of Long Island—a passage of more than a thousand miles through dangerous shoals and currents, navigating past three capes— Fear, Lookout, and Hatteras—crossing some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

Sometimes, Nagler lives on his board for six straight days, paddling for hours, catnapping when he can. He carries two rubber fenders to keep from rolling off. He wears a winter wetsuit with his GPS and other electronics strapped to his chest.

Sometimes he’s out of sight of land. He survives on liquid nutrition—and watches for sharks, whales, and quarter-mile-long container ships.

Why does he do this? One reason is to raise money for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, which

18 | U V M M A G A Z I N E

That July night he was wide awake. He took down his light mast and stopped paddling. “You don’t want to show the sky anything,” Nagler says. “I was like, ‘If I live through this, I’m indestructible.’”

After surviving cellulitis (contracted in the first leg of the journey while portaging through an oyster-filled salt marsh for eight hours when he was blown off-course); crossing the six shipping lanes into and out of New York City; being pushed out to sea as far as 30 miles offshore by an eddy coming off the Gulf Stream; landing on Martha’s Vineyard; and, finally, making a 39-mile nonstop paddle from Rhode Island—fighting rips and standing waves tossed ashore by Hurricane Franklin—Nagler arrived at Three Mile Harbor, Long Island, on September 2, waving to his friends and living his dear life—69 days after launch.

ABOVE: SHERPA PRODUCTIONS; RIGHT: ROBIN LONDON PHOTOGRAPHY