From The Navigator to the SS Navigator — How a 1991 Newsletter Became a Brand
Some things are meant to find their way back to you.
It started with a cold, rainy morning in Auckland, New Zealand. November 1991. A 40-foot yacht. A race. And a first mate who shouted four words that changed everything:
"We've got too much sail!"
We were winning. Riding the right board, making few mistakes, the fleet behind us. Then we rounded the point and the wind stood up. The 40-footer felt suddenly small. The jib sheet snapped. The mast bent. The sea and wind pounded. Somehow we got the sails down, got control, and crossed the line — miles ahead of everyone else.
The prize was a trophy and a bottle of rum.
That night, anchored out with the other yachties, something settled in me. Not the victory — the feeling. That particular mixture of fear and exhilaration and freedom that only happens on open water. I'd felt it on Lake Erie as a kid, watching my dad work the lines at 55th Street Marina. I'd feel it again years later sailing my Cape Dory 25D. But that night in Auckland it became undeniable: the water wasn't just something I enjoyed. It was something I needed.
Before I left New Zealand I did what any self-respecting 26-year-old with a communications background and access to a desktop publishing setup would do.
I made a newsletter.
I called it The Navigator. Tagline: The Adventures of Frederick Von. Issue #1, November 27, 1991. I laid it out by hand, printed it, and mailed it back home to let people know I hadn't fallen off the end of the earth. It was part adventure dispatch, part mission update, part love letter to the water life I was living.
I didn't know then that I was writing the first chapter of something.
Thirty-five years is a long time. Long enough to sail a lot of water. Long enough to surf in Hawaii, New Zealand, and San Diego. Long enough to crew on a 36-foot Farr, earn a degree from the University of the Nations, and eventually find a way to build a brand around the one thing that had always been true about me.
Salty Shirts™ started the way most real things start — not with a business plan but with a feeling. The feeling that time on the water is the answer no matter what the question. That water is life. That life is better on the water.
And when it came time to launch a blog — a place to tell the stories behind the shirts, the history behind the designs, the life behind the brand — there was only one thing to call it.
The SS Navigator.
Some things are meant to find their way back to you.
Welcome aboard. Pull up a piling and stay a while. The SS Navigator logs are where the stories live — the water, the history, the designs, and the people who belong out there.
👉 Explore the full Salty Shirts™ collection at saltyshirts.com
Water is Life. 🔱