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Spotlights Mary Wingerter-Anglin Blair ’69 University of Dayton Quarterly, Spring 2005 You’ll need your sea legs to keep up with Mary Blair. Since moving to Hawaii in 1987, she and husband, Bob, have logged more than 20,000 miles exploring the Central Pacific on their 36-foot sailboat, Nepenthe (from Greek, meaning a changer of moods and curer of all ills). To save for their adventure, the couple worked for several years on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, where “I had my best ever job as a sailmaker — a bit of a misnomer as I didn’t sew many sails, but mostly huge tarps and covers for the boats that ferried the Marshallese workers,” she said. They mapped their course of the places they would visit: “Tuvalu, Wallis Island, Abemama ... they all looked like little dots out there in the middle of the ocean.” Their yearlong cruise made memories: Fiji’s fresh fruit and curries. Children in Western Samoa sailing out to greet them with gifts. … And waiting two months in Pago Pago for hurricane season to end before sailing windward back to Hawaii, a 30-day trip, perhaps. “The first day out was our fastest ever — 160 miles in 24 hours. Bob joked that we’d be in Hawaii in a week. The lesson here is never joke with Mother Nature.” Soon faced with 40-knot winds and higher gusts, they doused the sails and stayed a couple of days below a leaking deck. On day 10, Blair injured a disc. On day 29 she radioed her doctor, who advised them to head for medical help to Johnston Island, then a nuclear dumping site. “We arrived five days later. They met us at the dock and took me to the hospital.” Blair flew back to Honolulu for physical therapy, and a friend flew in to crew the cutter back to Hawaii. The Blairs now live on the Big Island, dock Nepenthe in Honolulu and have logged enough time on land for Mary to become a master gardener. “Many nights when we’re sitting on our lanai looking at the waves and feeling the wind on the ocean, we both say, ‘we’re sure glad we’re on this boat tonight.’” —Deborah McCarty Smith

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