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As a child in West Baltimore, Donald Lawson joined a program called Living Classrooms, which takes disadvantaged kids to places they normally wouldn’t go, for adventures they might otherwise never have. One day in the early 1990s, he found himself aboard the schooner Lady Maryland in the city’s Inner Harbor.
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The youngster was enthralled.
“When I was out there, I actually asked the captain, ‘How far can you take a boat like this?’” Lawson said in a radio interview last fall, recalling his first excursion on the water. “Again, I’m 9 years old. The captain says to me, ‘You can go around the world.’ And so that was it. My poor parents were stuck with me dreaming about boats.”
Lawson, who grew up to be a top-notch professional sailor and founder of the nonprofit Dark Seas Project, which seeks to promote the sport among African Americans and other minorities, is now the focus of a search by the Mexican navy far off the country’s Pacific coast. No one has heard from him since mid-July, a week after he set sail alone from Acapulco, Mexico, headed toward Panama, on his 60-foot trimaran, according to his wife and the U.S. Coast Guard.
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A Mexican navy spokesman said Tuesday night that searchers in an aircraft had spotted a boat “with the characteristics of the missing vessel,” about 275 nautical miles south of Acapulco. But it was not immediately confirmed to be Lawson’s trimaran. The spokesman did not describe the condition of the boat or say whether anyone was onboard.
Lawson’s wife, Jacqueline Lawson, said in an email Tuesday night that she is aware of the sighting. “We are not giving up hope,” she wrote. “We are continuing to pray that Donald will be found and will soon return safely to his family, friends and sailing supporters.”
Jacqueline Lawson said in an email Monday that when she last communicated with her husband on July 13, he was about 285 nautical miles south of Acapulco. She said his tri-hulled racing vessel, dubbed Defiant, had lost engine and electrical power. His coordinates at the time put him well out to sea, beyond sight of land. She reported him missing late last week, and the search began.
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In an email, she said of her 41-year-old husband: “We’re HS sweethearts from [Baltimore County’s] Woodlawn High School. We have been together for a long time, and I pray we can continue moving forward.”
Capt. Edbert Sanchez Mijangos, with the Mexican navy press office, said that after the aircrew spotted a boat resembling Lawson’s, “we sent out some surface units — ocean patrols of the Mexican navy — to do a search.”
As of Tuesday night, the search vessels were still looking for the boat. “Bad weather is a factor,” Sanchez Mijangos said. “But it was an airplane that spotted the boat that we believe could be the one, and because it’s an airplane, it couldn’t do more, just identify the location. And those who are continuing in the search at this point are surface craft.”
On the first part of a voyage to Maryland, Jacqueline Lawson said, her husband intended to sail along the west coast of Mexico and Central America from Acapulco to Panama Bay, a journey of nearly 1,700 nautical miles. She said he planned to transit the Panama Canal to the Caribbean Sea and sail north to Baltimore.
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Unlike a catamaran, which has two narrow hulls, a trimaran has a middle hull flanked by two outrigger hulls. Lawson’s boat, built for a world-class French ocean racer, was launched in 2004 and christened Groupama 2, Yachting World magazine reported. The Robb Report, a luxury-lifestyle publication, said it was “the most highly technical raceboat of its day.” When Lawson acquired the craft last year, renaming it Defiant, Sail-World magazine called it “a pedigreed trimaran that’s ready to go and rewrite ocean records.”
By then, Lawson had come a long way from the Inner Harbor. He is now chairman of the diversity, equity and inclusion committee of U.S. Sailing, the sport’s national governing body, and has taught sailing to midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.
In the radio interview, with Baltimore’s WIYY-FM (97.9), Lawson said that after his day on the Lady Maryland, he learned how to sail, then taught at the city’s Downtown Sailing Center as a high school student. He later dropped out of Morgan State University as a senior to take a job testing boats and ferrying them long distance to their new owners. In another interview, he said he has sailed alone across the Atlantic dozens of times through the years.
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His nonprofit, the Dark Seas Project, “is built around education and the quest for diversity in the sport of sailing,” Jacqueline Lawson said. She said the group offers sailing classes and “real-time science, technology, engineering and math opportunities for both schools and sailing-affiliated organizations” all over the country.
Lately, Donald Lawson had been preparing to attempt to set a record aboard Defiant. In the fall, after his journey from Acapulco, he said that he hoped to become the fastest person (and the first African American) to circumnavigate the globe alone in a sailing vessel no longer than 60 feet. The world record is 74 days, and the record by an American is 107 days. He said he was confident he could do it in less than 70 days.
He said he planned to complete the journey nonstop — napping in half-hour intervals with Defiant on autopilot — setting out from Hawaii, rounding Cape Horn in South America, then crossing the Atlantic and Indian oceans to Australia before heading back to Hawaii. “There’s tons of safety gear onboard,” he told the radio interviewers. “I have two life rafts, for example. I have tons of life jackets,” as well as a survival suit and emergency beacons.
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The first sign of trouble for Lawson off the coast of Mexico came July 9, four days into his voyage to Maryland. “Donald texted me and said he was having engine issues, which prevented him from charging his batteries from the engine, and [he] was relying solely on the wind turbine to charge his batteries,” Jacqueline Lawson said in an email. The boat’s wind turbine is a generator with propellers that captures the ocean wind and converts it into electrical power.
Then, on July 12, “he told me he was in a storm and lost his wind turbine, leaving him no way of charging his batteries,” she said. “As he was texting me while he was out there, we decided that it would be best for him to turn back around and head back to Acapulco … instead of continuing to the Panama Canal.” In their last communication, the following day, her husband told her that he had only 25 percent battery power remaining “and no way of charging.”
Marie Rogers, vice president of U.S. Sailing and a friend of Donald Lawson’s, said that as the search goes on, the mood among his professional sailing acquaintances is grim.
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Without engine or battery power, if the boat’s sails are also damaged, then Lawson could be adrift, if he is even still afloat, Rogers said. “It’s possible he got caught in some really bad weather and his sails are ripped up. And it’s possible that he’s lost his rig. So the mast, the boom, the whole structure that holds up the sails could be knocked down. The other thing is, he could be upside down. Because multihulls are famous for suddenly going end-over-end in weather.”
If Lawson is adrift, he is likely headed in a bad direction, said Rogers, a licensed captain who has sailed across the Pacific three times.
“The Pacific current goes south there,” she said. “So if he’s floundering around, he’s going to go south. And south of Acapulco, the weather is typically horrible, and especially this time of year.”
She said: “It doesn’t look good at all. My heart goes out to Donald and his family.”
Mary Beth Sheridan and Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.
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