Interview with Ben Shaw of Out the Gate Sailing

Here’s the set-up.

Two friends from San Francisco, Ben Shaw and his wife, Lauren Keane, just happened to book a cruise on Ice Bear, 59 North Sailing’s newest boat, that put them in Halifax the week of Mo’s arrival.

I learned of this via a text that read, “Hey, we’re in Lunenburg. Can we buy you a beer?”

I’d not seen Ben since a month before the Figure 8 began, and though we’d chatted for his podcast, Out the Gate, while Mo and I were at sea, I had no expectation whatever of seeing the two of them a whole coast away from home.

As one might expect, that first beer led to a second and then to dinner and, finally, a Figure 8 conversation that Ben, ever the journalist, insisted on recording. By this time it was late. Outside, the rain pounded. We two reclined deeply into the comfortable chairs of the Armdale Yacht Club.

And our talk went like this…