Sailor David Gold, 77, spends every summer in Marblehead and the rest of the year is based in Geneva, Switzerland where he’s an expert on health and safety culture in the workplace. Formerly, he worked for the International Labor Office (a United Nations specialized agency) for 23 years, which allowed him the opportunity to work in many countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the Arab states, North and South America and Oceania. He is fluent in French with a working knowledge of German, Malay, Indonesian and Thai as well as an indigenous language (Passat Chow Lay) spoken by the Sea Gypsies of Thailand.
Throughout a long and fascinating career in occupational safety and health, sailing in some of the most beautiful and challenging places the world has been a lifelong pursuit and passion of his as well. He is also an avid local sailor in boats ranging from the Town Class to ORC racing boats. The Marblehead Current caught up with David Gold just before he and his wife, Marianne, were returning to Switzerland. Laurie Fullerton sat down with Gold, and she wanted to learn more about his expertise in both sailing and safety and how both have become a truly integral part of his life.
Q. How did you get so interested in sailing?
A. I grew up in Swampscott and remember in 1954, Hurricane Carol roaring in. A defining moment for me at 6 years old was working together with my father to pull his boat from a heavy surf up the beach on rollers. This moment tied me to the sea and storms. Not much later, I told my father I wanted to cross the ocean on a sailing ship.
Q. You have a Ph.D. as an occupational safety engineer, which has taken you all over the world. Could you tie in an example of how your knowledge of safety and love of the sea (both sailing and scuba diving) have given you a unique opportunity?
A. Yes. In 1993, I independently started work on a project with indigenous fishermen divers on Thailand’s west coast. These indigenous people are of Polynesian origin and are referred to as Sea Gypsies. I felt bonded with these people, and sometimes dived using their primitive equipment. The problem was that their deep-sea working diving practices were extremely dangerous, but also essential for their livelihood. I wanted to apply my safety and health competencies to help them. In 1992, the Sea Gypsies were dying at a rate of 400 deaths per 100,000 workers. By 1997, my project brought the death toll to zero. For example, I established procedures for avoiding Carbon Monoxide poisoning, as well as reducing the risks of decompression sickness and air embolism while diving. In concert with local public health workers, we developed and they followed the ten rules of safety during diving and passed a lot of this safety knowledge down to the next generation.
Q. Speaking local languages and spending so much time working on safety in the Asia-Pacific region must have given you some local knowledge of the region. How did you spend your free time when there?
A. In the region, when not working with the Sea Gypsies, I took every possible leave day and sailed with other sailing enthusiasts and became a diving instructor. I also windsurfed, so I was on the water a lot.
Q. It seems wherever you have lived, you developed a love of cruising. You are a certified captain who has sailed in the US, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Are there certain things you can compare your professional safety career and cruising on your own?
A. I have logged over 6,000 nautical miles at sea and strongly feel that the fiber of any competent sailor is safety. My work often did overlap with port safety, maritime safety, diving safety and fishing safety so I used my professional competencies to teach others how to identify danger, calculate risk, and implement control measures.
Q. What were some of your most challenging trips as a cruiser when situations arose that were not entirely in anyone’s control?
A. I feel like I am a storm sailor. That charges me up. It gives me energy, and I like having the helm in a storm. But it is never a guarantee that something won’t suddenly happen that imperils our safety. I was sailing in the Caribbean with my family on a 40-footer in 1986. There were 20-foot rollers and the jib hour glassed. I started to go on deck and, while holding on to the safety lines, I was swept overboard. It is something that my wife and I will never forget. I was able to get back on board. The chartered boat had no harnesses nor jacklines.
Another challenging trip was sailing from Normandy into the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands were like second nature, as they reminded me of sailing around Nahant Bay. We were suddenly surrounded by heavy fog and darkness. Due to a drunk and sickly crew member stumbling into the GPS antenna, we lost the electronic navigation system, and simultaneously, the batteries shorted out. As we were under sail with strong tidal currents, strong winds with no lights, and unable to start the engine, the captain was in a state of panic as he could not sail by compass, nor could he adequately estimate a position by reading a chart. At this point, he asked me to take over the vessel. We hoved to, found a bit of stability and shining a flashlight into the binnacle and using another flashlight to plot an estimated position on the chart, I was able to determine a course to a safe anchorage. We used a lead weight and a line to determine depth and estimate the tidal range. We anchored safely until the weather cleared.
Since we had all these factors at play, the boat and crew were at enormous risk. It has since occurred to me that so many sailors today have become complacent and too dependent on electronics. I am still amazed by how many sailors have lost basic navigational skills. Some do not know the difference between true and magnetic north. This all becomes extremely important on the water if systems fail.
Q. Your many sailing experiences led to a recent trip that strikes me as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In December 2024 for one month, you were a member of the crew of the fully rigged, 240-foot Danish tall ship, the Christian Radich, crossing the Atlantic from Las Palmas to St. Martin. How can you describe that experience?
A. It was an amazing time, and I was one of a crew of 93 on the tall ship. We had 27 sails and had the opportunity to climb into the rigging and up onto the yards. Sleeping in hammocks, we manned two four-hour watches per day. On this trip, Norwegian was the language of the ship. I was the only non-Norwegian-speaking person on board, but I had a chance to get to know the captain as she spoke great English and gave me a daily briefing. It was an amazing experience. She demonstrated amazing leadership skills.
My first tall ship experience was in 2021 when I was on the 300-foot three-masted barque-rigged tall ship, the Stratraad Lehmkuhl, sailing from Norway to Spain. The Stratraad Lehmkuhl is a sister ship to the USS Eagle.
Q. Is there any place that you think, above all, you might like to return to as a cruiser and what is it about it that you love?
A. I get a great deal of pleasure sailing in my home waters in Nahant Bay, Marblehead, Salem and Beverly on up through Gloucester, as well as racing Townies as part of the Marblehead Townie Association. I also love the coast, the wilderness and the navigational challenges of sailing the coast of Maine and the coast of Nova Scotia. Being at sea, under sail, anywhere, is part of who I am and what I love to do.
