Our presentations may revolve around marine journeys, but they are oriented to relate to all audiences, be they hard-core mariners or folks who have never seen the sea. They touch on issues with universal relevance and provide conceptual lessons useful to both individuals and organizations.

The sea and the dramas that play out on it give us the chance to get away from the "normal" everyday and hectic society to gain a clearer look at our life and to reevaluate our values and priorities. Voyaging also demonstrates that Murphy was an optimist. It demands that the crew learn to solve problems with limited resources in isolated environments. Each of our speakers has the ability to reach within his experiences to find powerful and important messages that educators, business people, and everyday folks can appreciate and incorporate into their lives.

We've delivered presentations to corporate, museum, yacht-club, and government audiences, as well as to many other marine-oriented and general-interest groups. These presentations have been customized to suit an audience and have run from hour-long talks to week-long seminars. We would be pleased to provide you with further information and develop a program for you.

Talks for general audiences usually run from an hour to two, but we can work with you to design a program that best fits your needs. Costs depend on audience and location. To book an appearance by one of my associates, please email me. If you are interested in one of my presentations, please contact Sandra Goroff at 617-750-0555 or via email at sgma@aol.com.

One of my presentations is rooted in my 76-day survival drift and other's diverse survival experiences. I reveal stages of survival, strategies and techniques that successful survivors use to solve problems, and how we can transcend our traumas and crises to build a foundation for a meaningful life. My other talk provides an insider's view in the making of the Academy-Award–winning film Life of Pi and how my survival and other offshore experiences helped to make the ocean into a major character in order to bring authenticity and believability to this allegorical fantasy and ground-breaking movie.

John Otterbacher opens some of his speaking presentations with these words: "I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be dead." With candor and passion, he talks about how he survived 8 heart attacks, doctors probings, and his 6 years of adventures halfway around the world with his wife and 2 children on their sailboat Grace. With his self-deprecating wit, John told his wife, Barbara: "If I'm gonna die, I'll be dead by June [1998]. Let's make a deal, if I'm still alive by June, we go sailing." Sailing became a healing force, despite the storms and sea-tossed reality of living aboard and caring for the family's well-being.

Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, have taken spectacular photographs of and written widely about their life aboard their first boat, the Zenie P, and their present boat, the Roger Henry. Alvah presents their slides and stories with serious eloquence and great humor, emphasizing his quest to become culturally and environmentally literate. He relates how native peoples have guided him in his quest to understand their practical ways of living in harmony with nature. To diverse audiences in many countries, Alvah vividly illustrates how these indigenous societies employ the tools that their surroundings offer in the most remote and beautiful habitats around the world.

Michael Tougias is the author of 19 books published by Simon and Schuster. Overboard, his latest, relates how a skipper and mate who are swept over the side of a sailboat struggle to stay alive in mountainous seas while the crew they leave behind tries to save themselves. Michael offers a program on "Survival Lessons: Decision Making Under Pressure" and shares the techniques that survivors of his true-life sagas used, which can help all of us in challenging times and with difficult projects and situations. He has put together a gripping lecture with slides and has spoken to groups across the country from Fortune 500 companies to smaller associations and military groups.