Sailor
Randall grew up reading about and dreaming of the sea. He learned to sail on the rivers of central California and took advantage of his father’s frequent business trips to “borrow” the family sailboat for solo ventures to the San Francisco Bay. These turned out to be formative escapades. While in college, Randall interviewed world-famous solo sailor, Bernard Moitessier, for his campus radio station, a meeting that changed his life.
Randall’s blue-water sailing began in 2006 when he crewed on a 40-foot boat for a 26-day, 3,000-mile passage from Hawaii to British Columbia where “what didn’t break went gloriously wrong.” He was hooked.
In 2010, Randall departed San Francisco for a two-year, 12,000-mile solo-loop of the Pacific in his own 30-foot sailboat.
Randall crewed the famous Northwest Passage in 2014, a grueling 65 days over an ice-strewn 5,000-mile course aboard one of only seven boats to complete the Arctic run that year.
Preparations in 2016 have included long passages aboard his new Figure 8 boat from Kodiak, Alaska to Hawaii and back to his home in San Francisco, a total of 7,000 miles.
Randall is unusual among solo sailors in that he is passionate about sharing his experiences.
Using the sea as his canvas, Randall paints the story of his adventures in the hopes of inspiring others to do more than they ever thought possible. Randall has written extensively about his previous voyages and the difficult preparations leading up to the 2017 Figure 8 Voyage attempt.
Randall wants to take virtual stowaways with him on this unprecedented journey, and so, using recent advances in satellite technology, will communicate his experiences in real-time from the deep ocean in formats including blogs and vlogs, Facebook and Twitter chats, and voice interviews.
