This is my landfall

My grounding after seven years at sea. Seven years at the whim of the elements, calling a sailboat home. And with this return to terra firma, I bring stories – of doldrums and squalls, of far-flung atolls and the delicious isolation of ocean crossings.

It was 2015. I was twenty-one, fresh out of college, and in search of adventure. Thankfully, I was also naïve. And brave; but maybe the bravery fell beneath the umbrella of naïveté. I hopped aboard a 35’ cutter in Half Moon Bay, California and headed South, switching boats in San Diego, and continuing through Mexico. I carried on and made the crossing to the Marquesas aboard a 30’ steel gaff-rigged ketch. It was slow (48 days), but I was hooked. I had entered the alternate reality of being a tiny speck in the middle of a vast ocean. This venture began to feel less like a trip, and more like a lifestyle. I loved having only time and nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no one to be. Oh, how I wrote, read and drew.

After a few thousand more nautical miles, I arrived in New Zealand where I met the man with whom I would sail for another four years aboard a 1980 Amel Sharki. We slowly worked our way North to the Philippines, and I fell more deeply in love with the lifestyle’s innate freedom, with my growing connection to the sea. I spent almost more time in the water than out of it - freediving and spearfishing, entranced with that subsurface world. We traversed Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, landing in South Africa just in time for the pandemic. We crossed the Atlantic from Namibia to Suriname one year later, and in Grenada I decided it was time for me to make a change.

I spent a year feeling quite unmoored. I struggled with adjusting back to life on land and constantly wondered if I had made a great mistake walking away from my little floating home and the thrilling variability of life aboard. Why would I give up spearfishing on uninhabited Micronesian atolls and summiting active Vanuatuan volcanoes to peer down at roiling lava a thousand feet below? Why would I trade traversing oceans for sitting in traffic? Because something was missing. While the ticking away of nautical miles beneath the keel lends a purpose to cruising life, and I knew I could handle the physical demands of sailing (the frequent misery of grimy, sweaty, salty sleeplessness), I was yearning for a different sort of challenge; something that demanded my mind and my creativity. Landfall Leatherworks is my landing; the tangible result of my desire to make sense of, and make something of, my years at sea.

I may no longer know what phase the moon is in or what the tides are doing, but I’m enjoying a newfound settledness as a landlubber and plenty of challenges as a one-woman, small batch business owner. And who knows, maybe I’ll get back out there someday…

— Emma Casey

The artwork and photos featured on this site are all original.