A Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue
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About the Book
A Sail and Tale
Of an
Emotional Rescue
Part l and 2
Thoughts of a sailor back on land with an assignment in life…
An untold Story
Part 3
“A Final Destination in Mind”… “A tell all”… coming soon
Book description, Book Reviews and Current Press Release
A full color picture gift book, ideal as a coffee table pride and a good read “Some say a page turner”
Men will brave them selves through rough seas of the Atlantic and life, somewhat a metaphor of life...Written for the wannabes, novice and seasoned boater. Even non-boaters…Or even for those looking for a “new slice within life” and want to master something new…… that they never dared before……….
Boating is a hobby that reflects much of life. Everyone has their own boat to sail. Their destination and route is their own choosing, but we all sail on unpredictable waters that are not under our command. Sam Phillis’s A Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue is a book of a man’s adventurous voyage over seas and through life.
A Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue chronicles the thrilling and dramatic experiences of author Sam Phillis and his 30-foot Catalina Yacht and sailing sloop named the Emotional Rescue. Phillis initially preferred the safe enclosure of freshwater, but some dramatic events in his life, and the distant crashing waves of the Atlantic seawater, compelled him to set sail down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and near shore on the Atlantic Ocean. Through many tribulations on ocean and in life, Phillis emerges to tell his amazing tales of daily survival.
A Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue is a factual and humorous narrative of a seasoned recreational sailor with thirty years and thirteen thousand miles of sailing and boating experience. This book makes an excellent gift and enjoyable reading for avid recreational sailors and those wanting to leave their dormant shores of life for adventure.
Some Book Reviews of Interest:
• Every now and then at Savannah Connect we come across a book so unique, so individualistic, so off-the hook that it makes us smile. Sam Phillis’s book is such a book! ………. A glorious hodge-podge of an account of his voyages off the Eastern Seaboard..…Phillis’s book is hectic, a deeply personal memoir of one man’s struggle, depicted by his efforts to tame the sea almost single-handed, although a cancer patient, and a self-professed bipolar sufferer, along with going through a divorce……. Sam writes with a funny, engaging writing style and a great eye for photocomposition. ……A Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue takes you on what is sometimes literally a whirlwind tour of the Intracoastal Waterways and points offshore…the book is much like the author himself: warm, engaging and somewhat chaotic (there is not just one “ending” but multiple closures and endings…. …..It’s a book that despite its many minor flaws, will no doubt remind you of your own personal voyages, large and small….. Most of all, in a publishing word full of self-important, “literary” tomes of questionable human value, Phillis’s memoir is quite a breath of fresh air in your own sail. Jim M. Editor and Chief
• “I honestly didn’t know what to think or what I’d find the first time I set down to read Sam’s “Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue”. But the more I read, the more delighted and curious I was. I found it hard to put down once I got started and felt I was along with him in the cockpit.”- Dennis N. - Reader and CEO
About the Author
Sailing, Personal and Profession highlights:
With an AKA and known to others as:
• "A man on a mission"
• "A unforgetable character of interest"
• "A quantitative sales representative within Healthcare"
• "A man who wins by doing diferently than others, not just better than"
Boating is a hobby. But for some it is an avocation that reflects much about the trials and tribulations of life itself. Sam Phillis´s, "A Sail and Tale of an Emotional Rescue" is a book and chronicle of a man’s adventurous voyage over seas and through life. He states, “it is not all about winning, but how you do it differently than anyone else” that makes you good at what you attempt to achieve. Confidence is all you need”.
Sam had originally focused on day sailing and near-coast cruising, mostly solo and single handling, and considers himself a serious and proficient cruising recreational sailor. He has completed daily expeditions which, cumulatively, amount to nearly 13,000 miles, both under sail and by power. Utilizing ten different models and styles of boats that he has owned at various times, as well on sailboats he has chartered and rented throughout his journeys, (whenever and wherever he could while working within the medical industry and traveling nationally to about every seaport areas) within the States.
Although Sam grew up near Lake Erie in Toledo, Ohio in the 1960s, he had never been aboard a sailboat until moving to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1971. Then, over the next 27 years, he learned and invested time in sailing on Lake Norman (a 50-mile long, reservoir lake with 500 hundred miles of shoreline) and on many sailing trips around the country. In Charlotte, he sailed out of a protected harbor, then named Outrigger Harbor. During that time, he owned many sailboats, i.e. a Thistle, a 32-foot custom wooded Yawl, two O´ Day 27’s, a Catalina 25, and then a Catalina 30.
His role was usually as Captain, or at least first mate. If not at the helm steering, he was just along with others as "rail meat" or an able-bodied crewmember.
He offers a warning, learning much about crew selection, just as a partner in life. He states, “never get involved with anyone who feels they are better than you, faster, smarter, and harder, quicker or a bigger person. It will ruin the cruise as well your personal life and business”.
Sam has ventured both inland and near and offshore, including Lake Norman in North Carolina and Lake Lanier in Georgia, and along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He has sailed in Maine, along the New England coast, Chesapeake Bay (one time single-handedly), and the Caribbean. He has gone west to the Pacific Ocean, sailing out of Marina Del Ray, California, joining a flotilla to venture out to Catalina Island.
He also proceeded further north to Lake Washington and the Puget Sound in Washington along with It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins. In addition, Sam even sailed a Dhow, (sailing boat) up the Nile River in Egypt past the Valley of the Dead. Even that does not compare, he says, with cruising from Little River, South Carolina, down to Coconut Grove, Miami and the Florida Keys aboard Emotional Rescue on two separate attempts.
His sailing experiences began at the age of 24 years. A well organized photo journal that accompanies him as a daily log and documentation which reminds him of the days. Unfortunately, most of the originals and best where stolen by so called trusted friends along with his valued personal property, while he was away on sailing adventure getting settled in Florida. He still grieves of this still today…… but says he has memorabilia and pictures so to remember and fine memories of what he had when living on land rather than a boat.
His first boat, purchased from Sears in 1971 for $100, was a 10-ft. Styrofoam canoe-type boat with a sail. Within two weeks Sam upgraded to a heavy fiberglass 12-ft. Sunfish sailboat. In those days, he also sailed and crewed on many Hobie Cats and Lasers, which at that time were the choices of "hot shot" small-boat racers who had a need for speed! In the 80´s, he bought a 24-foot rowing shell (double rigged) and used the oars to take him another 1,400 miles, single handling! A whole different story he says.
He jokingly says his wives usually didn’t like sailing as much as he does, because back then his smaller boats had no hair blow dryer or even a large enough mirror aboard…and maybe because they thought he was "Captain Terrible"--which, he will tell you, he is not! But since then, he states he knows how to say ‘yes dear”.
In his formative days, he was inspired by watching ice sailing boats on Lake Erie, by attending the 1974 America’s Cup Race in Newport, Rhode Island, and by restoring his 32-ft. custom wooden sailing yawl, the Shangri-La. Another inspiring event was fighting for his lives with his wife Jennifer in heavy weather on a yellow 16-foot planing haul boat called a Ghost in the Charleston Harbor. Sam says his sailing mentors were from the ´70s and were boaters like Mike Jones, Sid Morris, Mike Naramore, Austin Fox, Rex Gleason, Powell Smith, and Ted Turner.
He learned from watching them sail and sometimes by sailing with them on their boats or on his own with them as his coaches. There were always lessons to be learned and appreciated, he recounts. Sailors, just as normal folks rarely ever “know what they don’t know yet.”
While making a transition in life, after a divorce, disease, illness and retiring at 53 years of age, Sam transported his boat Emotional Rescue, a tall rigged Catalina 30-ft. sailing sloop, from The Peninsula Yacht Club on Lake Norman, where she had been berthed for six years, to the Atlantic coast. He says he learned much from members of his local Charlotte Yacht Club, who sometimes had more technical experience than he did, and appreciated their friendship very much and hopes to catch up with them sometime or in the afterlife. There, he gained a passion for day and night sailing on the lake. Never with fear unlike, while sailing off shore.
Eventually, it was time for a new state of mind, and Sam wanted to take on a different level of sailing. He took himself and his boat on a coastal cruising venture. He decommissioned Emotional Rescue and had her trucked to Little River, South Carolina, which is on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), five miles away from the Atlantic Ocean where he resided at Coquina Harbor in Little River, S.C.
He then rejuvenated her after much hard work getting Emotional ready for off shore sailing. After completing the transition from a freshwater sailboat to a coastal cruising vessel, Emotional Rescue completed sea trials offshore and on the ICW. Sam attended a number of formal safety and cruising courses and updated his library with the latest versions of safety and waterway manuals. Then he sailed the 2,500 miles recounted in this book, mostly solo, but also at times with friends and crew, all during an 18-month time frame in which he faced an illness, the cancer, and divorce. What else could anyone want happening in one’s lifetime he says?
Sam’s original orientation to the South Carolina waterways, coastal and Intracoastal Waterways was out the Little River Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean, where he was invited to the bridge of a 160-foot Casino ship by a 20-year licensed and experienced Captain, John, and his First Mate. He was able to listen and observe, learning about navigating the five-mile stretch of the ICW and three miles into international waters. Sam says taking that cruise was like reading ten how-to books on coastal sailing. He says this gave him a c