Woman to Admire: Captain Liz Clark
She sailed 20,000 nautical miles over 10 years (many of those miles solo).
Welcome back to the Sunday Reads interview series. I’m now workshopping the name “Woman to Admire.” Your thoughts?
Today my conversation is with Captain Liz Clark. When I first heard Liz’s story, I instantly needed to learn more. In 2006, when she was 22 years old, Liz set sail from Santa Barbara; ten years later, after 20,000 nautical miles traveled, her trip (much of it alone—or with her cat) came to a close. She has sailed some of the most turbulent waters, surfed in some of the most untouched coves, and explored the world in the process. Liz now lives in Tahiti, which she fell in love with during her sailing adventure. Needless to say, I was instantly in awe of a woman living in such a free spirited and adventurous way.
Liz wrote a book about her years at sea—Swell: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening—which is filled with both incredible stories and photographs but more importantly left with me the profound reminder that our lives are ours to design. The well-worn path need not be traveled.
I Zoomed with Liz—me in Brooklyn, her at home in French Polynesia—our (condensed) conversation is below.
You do so many different things, how would you introduce yourself to my readers?
I’m hard to sum up in a sentence, but I would say that my name is Captain Liz Clark, and I am a surfer, and a sailor, and a writer, and a dreamer, an environmental activist, an animal welfare activist, someone who cares very deeply for others and for the planet. I’m just trying to make the world a better place.
Your book Swell came out a few years ago now (the paperback came out earlier this year). What was your intention or goal when you sat down to write it? What did you hope people would take away from reading the story of your life?
At that time I had lived so many adventures, and challenges, and had so much personal growth, the journey was kind of to sit down and and distill all of that and figure out what I had learned. When I reread the book I think the biggest thing that I hope people will take away is to feel empowered to take steps towards living a life that they really love and believe in, even if it seems scary or hard to not have the same forms of security that our society wants us to pursue.
How did you find the strength within yourself to trust what you wanted to do and to do it?
Looking back, I had blinders on towards my dream. I really only saw that one path for myself as a young woman and I was so focused. Even though there was so much risk and so many factors that I couldn't control, it was all that I wanted.
Sometimes when you do have those big, unlikely dreams, that's what it takes to keep going in the face of everyone telling you, “are you crazy?” “This is completely unrealistic.” You have to be so dedicated that there is no other option.
What was your dream initially?
My dream at the time was to see the world by sailboat and be the captain of my own vessel. At the time I wasn't planning on sailing solo, but that did become a goal along the way. To surf was a huge goal of mine. I wanted to find different waves in these remote places and have more exploratory surf experiences out there off-the-beaten path. A more personal goal was to grow within myself, to learn who I was and learn to love who I was, and free myself from some of the pressures that I felt society was placing on me as a young woman; to lean into a freer way of seeing myself in the world.
There's so much in the book that's very romantic—tropical life, beautiful islands—but what really fascinated me were the very intense moments: days and days of storms at sea, sailing alone through rough waters at night. I often felt afraid and I was only reading. Did you ever feel fear?
Absolutely. I even look back now after being on land for a while and I think, oh my gosh, I can't believe what I did and how brave I was at that point in my life. I wouldn't want to relive some of those moments but at the time it was it was part of making that continued dream carry on. Every time that it got really hard and really scary, I did learn that you think you have this limit, you think you have this max where you'll just implode because you're so scared, but there's always a reserve. Knowing that’s there—it’s helped me build a foundation of confidence that's really strong.
As you say, you’ve been on land for a while, what does your life look like these days?
Through the book, I share my journey with my concern for the planet, and for the direction humanity is headed. Throughout the journey I was figuring out how, on a personal level, I could lessen my impact and always try to do a little bit better for the planet. Over those years, I raised a lot of awareness and I did a lot of work through social media, and I think I had a positive impact on people's considering their own choices.
As I finished writing I was at this point where I wanted to give back to the world in a more tangible way. With the nomadic life I had done everything I could, and it was great, but I wanted the challenge of being part of a community and trying to make change on a tangible level. So I co-founded a nonprofit organization, in the community where I'm living now, with my husband and several of our friends here who were also concerned citizens looking to change some of the issues in the community. We formed the foundation in 2019, and we've had a really positive impact. It's been a whole different adventure.
What sorts of issues are most urgently impacting your community in French Polynesia?
We decided on three big pillars of our organization because there was really no other organization addressing much of anything. We took on environmental protection, animal welfare, and youth education.
We've worked a lot in marine conservation, also protecting the coral through developing a system of anchorage zones in our area so that people know where to anchor without dropping their anchor on live coral. Also creating marine protected areas and working with the fishermen to curb overfishing. As far as animal welfare, we've been working towards spay and neuter access for people of all economic levels and just more education around spay/neuter, because 95% of the people who live in this community had never sterilized their dogs or cats before. We've spayed and neutered almost 1,300 animals in the last year and a half. We also do international adoptions.
The youth programs are really fun. We're mostly doing outside of the classroom educational excursions, where kids are learning about the native biodiversity and becoming aware of local ecosystems and how they function, and what animals have which role, and giving more context to their experience here locally out in nature. The curriculums here in French Polynesia are the same exact curriculums for the children in France, so there's no context to what these kids are seeing around them every day. We saw that as the biggest gap in the education system here, and something that we could do to help kids understand more and care more about their island ecosystem.
I have one more question about the book. In addition to the adventure, you wrote about a lot of very difficult personal situations. I was curious why it was important for you to share that part of yourself.
I could have omitted some of those truths, but I don't think that would have served the book’s purpose. It became clear that sharing some of those experiences was going to help others or serve others and make people realize that I'm not a superhero. I'm actually really human and just worked really hard at something.
It’s true, it can be easy to forget that someone who sails around the world alone is not superhuman.
I wanted people to see that I face really hard things that everyone else feels and deals with. Maybe sharing that helps people think, “oh man, she did this, so maybe I should go for my big dream too.”
In her book, Liz writes that most people today only experience nature through screens (which haunted me). Here are some her tips for experiencing nature, even if you live in a city like I do.
Follow the local weather patterns
Get a local CSA box
Be mindful of things like, what you put down the drain
“Look up and remember that you’re part of this big, blue planet.”