ADVENTURE HELL OR HIGH SEAS

Taylor Grieger and Stephen O’Shea faced pirates, navigated the Furious Fifties and came to blows during a life-changing voyage from Florida around Cape Horn

- Katy Stickland

We were in Roatán, Honduras heading back to Ole Lady when a comment from Taylor about my mishandling of a line resulted in us punching each other in the face. He knocked me onto my back, and I knocked Taylor off the dinghy. He didn’t stop, though. He got me in a chokehold from the water, pulling me down from below. We both thought the trip was over then, that we were going to pack it in and return home. However, we came back together in the cockpit that same night. We cried a little, laughed a lot, drank even more whiskey, and finally, made a pact to not punch each other in the face again, no matter how drunk or angry we got.’

SOLACE IN A SAILING MISSION

Sometimes voyages can test any close friendship but add post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) into the mix and it is easy to see why emotions sometimes ran high for Taylor Grieger, the skipper of the leaking 1983 Watkins 36CC, Ole Lady, and his crew Stephen O’Shea, 29.

The pair spent 15 months sailing the 36ft sloop-rigged yacht from Pensacola, Florida, through the Panama Canal and down the South American coast to Cape Horn. For Grieger, a 28-year-old retired US Navy rescue swimmer living with PTSD, the voyage was not only a personal odyssey to face his demons but to raise awareness of the difficulties veterans face moving from the military to civilian life; a battle many of them lose including four of Grieger’s friends.