Alan Olson Wins Tall Ship Award

At the end of February, the Bay Area’s Alan Olson won the 2018 Leadership Award from Tall Ships America. The award is bestowed “to a member of Tall Ships America who has made a significant contribution to sail training through the demonstration of leadership at executive or senior levels,” Tall Ships America said, “and whose impact has been felt by the sail training community at large, beyond that of their own organization.”

Surely, there could be no better description of Alan Olson, whose unrelenting vision and leadership has given birth to the Matthew Turner.

The award was given to Olson at the 46th Annual Conference on Sail Training anf Tall Ships in San Pedro “As usual, Alan was very humble about it,” wrote John “Woody” Skoriak. “As you can see in the photo [below], someone made a beautiful little model of the Matthew Turner, out of glass and brass (like stained-glass art). Alan said he had no idea that was in the works — he was very surprised.”

We think that the Matthew Turner — and the work done by Call of the Sea — is the most exciting thing happening in the Bay Area. You might be wondering, when is she finally going to sail? We don’t have an exact answer on that, but here is a hot little rumor.

“We hope that Matthew Turner will be able to at least sail around the course at the Master Mariners, but just to ’round the buoys’ as it were, not as a race participant,” Skoriak told us. “We also plan to have MT sail to Mexico next winter for sure.”