Sandusky yacht sails the world

SANDUSKY — Sandusky resident George Steinemann is waiting for a slot to open up so he can rejoin the Sandusky Yacht Club. But when he joins again, he'll have pretty good credentials. He and his son used a yacht from Sandusky to sail around the world, crossing the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. At one point, Steinemann was hit with a huge rogue wave as he stood on deck navigating the waters. He also had to deal with being locked down in the Caribbean as he tried to finish his journey home and had a couple of engine failures. "It was the most amazing thing I'd ever done in my life," Steinemann said. "The personal growth was tremendous. Nothing bothers me anymore." Steinemann, 70, retired from Civista Bank and had a previous career selling yachts in California. He wanted to sail the Caribbean after retirement. But his son Travis, 29, had a more ambitious idea: sailing around the world. Travis said sailing the world was a big dream, and he wanted to try it when both he and his father could do it. "It was incredible," Travis said. George's voyage was in a 44-foot one-masted sloop, the Nor'easter, currently at Cedar Point Marina. It's a fast, sturdy Swan boat made in Finland. The voyage begins The trip started in 2019 when the Nor'easter was taken by truck to California. The two Steinemanns, father and son, set sail on March 3, 2019, sailing into the Pacific from San Diego. Jamie Steinemann, George's wife and Travis' mother, had helped with the planning. Tessa Steinemann, Travis' sister, stayed on dry land, working at Civista Bank. The father-son team alternated five-hour shifts, with one on deck sailing the boat and the other below deck, getting some food and trying to sleep. They went to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands in the south Pacific, then to Papeete to get an engine fixed, then to other islands and then Darwin in northern Australia. From there, they took a long shot across the Indian Ocean to Cocos (Keeling) Islands, midway between Australia and Sri Lanka, where they got the boat's alternator fixed. "For me, that was the low point of the trip. There aren't any mechanics on the island," George said. Fortunately, he found a Hewlett Packard electrical engineer on another boat who could make the repair. From there, the Nor'easter went to Mauritius off the east African coast while the Steinemanns coped with low food supplies. "We were pretty much starving," George said. "I lost about 40 pounds on the trip." They went on to South Africa, the remote island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic — where Napoleon spent his last days after losing the battle of Waterloo — then to Barbados and various Caribbean islands, where George endured delays and COVID-19 lockdowns. Travis left and Jamie, who had joined George in South Africa, flew in to join her husband in Grenada. When COVID hit and travel restrictions kept another companion from helping George sail home, Jamie was pressed into service as a second crew member. The boat sailed to Newport, Rhode Island, and eventually returned to Sandusky via the Erie Canal after being trucked to Buffalo after COVID restrictions blocked a plan to sail up the St. Lawrence Seaway. The boat arrived home in Sandusky on Aug. 13. The big wave Perhaps the most exciting moment of the trip came fairly early when a huge rogue wave hit the boat in the south Pacific while George was at the wheel and Travis was in the cabin with a young Frenchwoman Travis had met on the island of Nieu. The woman was a stunt diver and mixed martial arts fighter who was getting her first sailing experience. "It was the worst three days I'd ever had sailing," George said. With winds hitting 70 mph, Steinemann saw a big wave, between 25 and 30 feet tall, twice the size of the other waves. "I thought it was going to kill me," said George, who was clipped into a safety harness. He thought the impact might break his arm. He was hit by the top part of the wave and was soaked but uninjured. The wave slapped the boat hard, but the keel kept it from rolling over. Steinemann was underwater for a brief moment but had taken a deep breath. Below the deck, Travis watched as his guest flew across the cabin after the wave struck, hitting her head. After checking on her — she was bleeding a bit but OK overall — he excused himself, explaining, "I need to make sure my dad is still on the boat." He discovered his father was soaked but all right. Jamie sails into adventure The trip proved to be more of an adventure than expected for Jamie, the former executive director of Firelands Symphony Orchestra. She had mapped out the trip, scheduling it to avoid hurricanes. She was happy to fly to places such as Tahiti and South Africa to meet her husband during the trip but had planned to avoid sailing across oceans. But when a planned sailing companion could not come to the Caribbean, Jamie helped sail the boat across the Atlantic to Rhode Island. Being at the helm in the middle of the night, with no lights in sight on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, was a new experience. For part of it, she had to deal with bad weather. "There was nothing about it that I liked," she said. "I was basically terrified I would be responsible to do something with the sails I didn't do right." There were good moments, too, when the weather was fine. "You would see the moon rising up at night. It was kind of magical," she said. For more on the trip, see George Steinemann's blog at sailingnoreaster.home.blog.