Professors Of The Sea

Professors of the Sea Teresa and Ben Carey have sailed and lived aboard their boat for years. Now they teach others to do the same.

- James Lynch

BELOW DECK on the 44-foot sailing vessel Rocinante, you look up and see only a shape of sky. You could be anywhere in the world.

Ben Eriksen Carey, the co-owner and co-captain, washes dishes in the galley’s foot-pump sink and his wife, Teresa, organizes laminated charts (land is mapped; water is charted) at a lap table. A small hammock of apples sways with the rocking of the boat.

Then a loud knock from above, followed by a New York yell. Teresa climbs the steep stairs—more like a ladder—to the deck. The voice again:

“Are you Tuh-ree-suh?”

A pause.

“Yaw preg-nant.” He’s not wrong. She’s due in a few weeks. Behind

Teresa, Ben chuckles.

The boat happens to be in Huntington Harbor, on Long Island, this morning. But through cold winters and rolling summer storms, the Rocinante has been the couple’s traveling home since 2014. Everything they need is stowed in its corners, cubbies, and cabinets, each carefully labeled. “Spices.” “Dishes.” “Creamy Stuff.” They’ve sailed to the Arctic, to Panama, to warm islands and the rainy bays in between, to quiet moorings where Teresa wrote and Ben worked as a tugboat captain. Everywhere they went, people always asked them some variation of “How do you sail this thing?”