Around the Americas

When philanthropist David Rockefeller, Jr. and skipper Mark Schrader wanted to find a way to draw attention to the health of the oceans, they hit on a novel idea: Why not sail around the two American continents, a voyage that had never been done before? Rockefeller, who had recently founded an ocean conservation group called Sailors for the Sea, and Schrader wanted to address issues such as ocean acidification, overfishing and the loss of Arctic sea ice, among other things.

"A voyage around the Americas would demonstrate that the continents of North and South America are a single island surrounded by a common ocean, with challenges and solutions shared by all," says Herb McCormick, senior editor at Cruising World magazine. "Mark asked me along to be one of the four full-time crew and the onboard journalist." The team also included scientists and educators rotating through on a regular basis.

At the time, McCormick was editor-at-large for the magazine, so he was able to take the time - which turned out to be a challenging 13 months. "The biggest challenge was negotiating the Northwest Passage, and the entire journey from Seattle to Boston," says McCormick. "The Passage has opened up for the last five summers, but the year we went through, 2009, was the iciest in recent history. So we were forced on several occasions to wait until ice leads opened up before we could continue. There was always the possibility that we would be frozen in and have to spend the winter in the Arctic."

From the beginning, the team wanted to do a book about the experience. So, when the team got to San Francisco, Sally Helme, the publisher of Cruising World, e-mailed Terry Newell, the head of book publisher Weldon Owen, about the voyage. "Terry, who is a sailor, came to see our presentation at a local yacht club and thought we had a good story to tell," says McCormick. "He said that he'd always wanted to publish a book about the environment but had never found the right subject...until he learned about our expedition."

The result is One Island, One Ocean. Released at the end of November, the book retells the story of the trip around one connected landmass through a series of connected oceans, and is a call to action to protect the world's oceans.

"The biggest surprise was the sheer numbers of fish farms in the once pristine channels of Southern Chile," says McCormick. "As the offshore fishing stocks in South America became decimated due to overfishing, commercial fisherman resorted to salmon farming in the canals to make a living. More and more of these farms are being established every year, and because they use antibiotics and deplete the waters of oxygen, they're an environmental nightmare... in some of the most amazing waterways on the planet."