Who is Captain Bruce Leeming?
Word of Captain Bruce. Adapted from Blue World Expeditions
I do not profess to have a lot of long ocean passages under my keel. I have sailed to and from Haiti many times from North America over the last 15 years. Many of those trips taking 10 – 12 days depending on weather. I am at home on the water, feel comfortable out there and enjoy sailing. I have been sailing since I could walk and taught sailing at summer camps for many years. I am an avid scuba diver but have not sought out extra certifications past my open water training. Most of my diving has been swimming along lonely reefs looking for shipwrecks and have had some great success with that plan. I’ve seen some 400-year-old wrecks that no one else has ever seen. My trip around the planet is just the beginning I hope for my new home at sea. I am considering sailing the NW Passage and after exploring the Mediterranean a few years. I also love the land and have a cottage in the Lake District north of Toronto and it will be hard to be away from there in the late summer and fall. Family is key to me too. Hopefully I will be able to drag all of them along for a leg or two. Finding good people to sail with is not easy. Compatibility is key and all of us humans have our own quirky ways. Finding common ground is difficult at sea. You get to know each other too well. Space on a boat is not easy to find and there is no hiding things. Sometimes I will walk for days on beaches just to get off the boat and find some room. People must be very honest with each other. It is best if people come and go and to me a success is when people are after you to come back.
One of my strengths in life is living on the ocean and overseeing a vessel. I seem to have an instinct for danger and navigation. I have done weird things I do not even know why to suit my intuition. Like diving out of the boat once during a sound sleep and cranking the wheel hard over to only find out we were feet from hitting a reef. I must have heard the bottom coming up in my sleep. My crew thought the water we were in was pretty. I love finding private anchorages off white sandy beaches, with no one around, and just hanging out. Scouring the beaches for shells and flotsam. I love taking photographs beautiful scenery, writing stories, and hanging out on the hook somewhere. I have a few books I need to finish. I take my vessel seriously. I keep it in excellent shape so that it breaks down a little less. Boats are terrible for breaking things. The worklist is never ending. Sailing well is very important. It is something I just have to do or I am not a whole person. I consider myself an English “Sea Dog”, with ancestors known to be joiners in Hull Yorkshire back in the 1700s, and even links to the “Vikings” thru DNA. But all this does not matter. Crew are important for without them you do not go sailing. A good crew means a safe boat. A good crew means fun. A good crew can turn a sailing adventure into a magical time full of good times, learning, and great memories. On all voyages you get to paradise but generally that can be thru hell and sometimes those moments are minutes apart. I need people who know how to keep us in paradise.