Tom is a retired US Naval Officer and Engineer. Despite the fact that he is "landlocked" in Iowa, he gets to sail several months out of the year on other peoples boats and writes about his crewing experience in his blog "The Competent Crew" (www.competentcrew.org)

Tom loves sailing and everything about life at sea from manning the helm to cooking a meal for the crew. After 12 years of being away from sailing, in February 2011, bored with retirement, he decided to get his sea legs back and sought out a Royal Yachting Association (RYA) course to obtain his Day Skipper certificate. By the end of the year, he had sailed as crew in four different sailboats and covered 4700 miles of open ocean.