Buckets of Water, Waves of Change: A Father-Son Bond Forged Offshore

Steve Burzon works the cockpit of the Swan 411 Albireo, offshore somewhere between Virginia and Bermuda. Matthew Burzon

Matthew Burzon was at the helm of the Swan 411 Albireo, offshore somewhere between Virginia and Bermuda, getting smashed in the face every few minutes.

The boat was making 7 or 8 knots in seas of 8 to 12 feet. Albireo is a well-cruised 1978 Sparkman & Stephens design, and this was happening in 2018, so there were no worries about whether the boat could handle the beating that Mother Nature was doling out. 

But the humans on board? That was a different story. 

“There’s big water out there,” Matthew recalls with a nervous chuckle. “You get wet. Every once in a while, a wave would hit, and it was the equivalent of taking a 5-gallon bucket of water to the face.”

Down below, his father, Steve Burzon—the boat’s owner and captain in charge of the trip—was out cold. Whatever had befallen Steve wasn’t seasickness, but it was something more powerful than a ­5-gallon bucket of water, and it was debilitating enough that the old salt decided that this journey on Albireo would be his last one offshore.

Steve Burzon has been cruising offshore for years, but when he fell ill on this passage, his son, Matthew, had to step up and help get them both, as well as the rest of the crew, to safety. Matthew Burzon

“I don’t know exactly what it was—­maybe just old age creeping in,” says Steve, who was 77 at the time. “I couldn’t perform. I couldn’t do anything. I would be in my bunk, back aft, and I remember Matt coming in. He’d say: ‘Dad, don’t get up. I’ll do your turn at the helm,’ or ‘I’ll cook dinner.’”

It’s not exactly how Steve or Matthew imagined that their first, and likely their last, father-son offshore sailing journey would be, especially after so many years of trying to make it happen. 

Steve and his wife, Nancy, had been ­sailors for what felt like forever, but Matthew’s experience on the boat with them was limited to coastal cruising, both as a kid and as a young adult. Steve had long wanted his son to join him out in bigger water, but Matthew was always in school or at work, running his recruiting business or volunteering as a firefighter. 

Finally, when Matthew was in his early 30s, this window of opportunity appeared. Steve needed to bring Albireo down from Lake Champlain in the Northeast United States to Sint Maarten in the Leeward Islands, which would become the boat’s new home. The plan was for Steve to cruise south to the Chesapeake Bay, then pick up Matthew and a few other hands, and from there, point the bow toward the warm ­waters of the Caribbean.

“I was pretty excited to get the call. It started this whole process of getting offshore foul-weather gear and all this stuff. I got all decked out,” Matthew says. “I was very excited. Dad had brought the boat down the Hudson River to Norfolk, Virginia. I was getting updates, which was building up the level of stoke.”

The plan was for 11 to 14 days at sea with no stops. The weather had other ideas, forcing Albireo and its crew to divert to Bermuda just as Steve’s health took a turn for the worse. 

And whatever was ailing Steve meant that Matthew and the rest of the crew would have to play bigger roles than any of them had anticipated, especially for his first time cruising offshore. 

A Lifetime of Learning

Fans of catamarans might recognize Steve, who is now 83, as an organizer and ambassador for the Caribbean Multihull Challenge on Sint Maarten. But for many, many years prior to that event being created, Steve was a monohull sailor based in the Northeast United States. 

He got started around age 16, while growing up in New England, and bought his first boat—a wooden 19-foot Cape Cod Knockabout—before he turned 20. That led him to a bookstore to find a title that might teach him to sail better. He brought the tome with him on the boat so that he could look things up along the way. He ended up having a blast.

As a young ad salesman, Steve kept ­sailing. He learned celestial navigation, figured out how to use a sextant, took jobs as a delivery skipper, and made his first offshore passage­—from Bermuda to Newport, Rhode Island. After doing a round-trip delivery from Connecticut to Maine on a Swan 411, he knew that was the boat of his dreams. He and his wife, Nancy, ended up buying it in 1984. 

That boat was Albireo. The couple would sail it from Maine to Grenada and all points in between, eventually with little Matthew in tow. Quite a lot of the time, Matthew would be asleep below, zonked out from the motion on the water.

Steve Burzon says: “Sailing is long hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer panic. That’s what they say, and it’s true.” Courtesy Steve Burzon

Which was actually a relief to Steve and Nancy, given that the boy had, let’s call it, a relentless amount of energy. 

“Matt’s nickname is ‘Action Jackson,’” Steve says. “He’d swing from the handhelds like it was a gym.”

Matt played hockey. He liked stuff with engines that made noise and went fast. Being out on the sailboat, well, it quite ­literally put him to sleep.

“That was a lot of my childhood,” Matthew says. “But I loved going from destination to destination. I rode my bike all over the place—Nantucket, Stonington, everywhere. I think it was a mix of seasickness and trying to make a kid sit still.”

Steve adds: “My wife and I were into the romance of it, the beauty of it, and we brought our kid. We were forcing him to be with us, and he’d probably rather be driving his four-wheeler out in the yard.”

It wasn’t until Matthew got older that he realized the sailing itself could be exciting. Albireo was on Lake Champlain, and Matthew was between jobs trying to relocate back to Vermont, so Steve and Nancy let him live on board.

“Toward the end of that time, I would take my friends out and sail on Lake Champlain,” Matthew says. “That was the first time I realized, there’s something to this.”

So, when Steve called about the chance to head offshore together aboard Albireo, Matthew was finally ready to embrace the opportunity. 

Now, all they needed was the rest of the crew. Three more guys ought to do it, Steve figured, and a distant cousin of Matthew’s might be perfect.

Making It Happen

That cousin, Ben Fletcher, had gotten to talking with Steve at a family gathering. As it turned out, Ben and Steve had sailing in common. Ben had done the RORC Caribbean 600, as well as a big race in the Mediterranean, and had taught sailing too. 

“He’s a sailor,” says Steve, who figured that between Ben’s sailing know-how and Matthew’s mechanical brainpower, the two of them could figure out just about anything on the boat. “Matt is a mechanic. On this trip, Albireo was like 35 years old. Things go wrong. And Matt is agile. He’s an athlete. He can do anything physically. Ben was that same way.”

For the final two crewmembers, Steve tapped a couple of guys who used to work for his landscaping company. They, ­forevermore, shall be known only as “the two yahoos.”

“These guys used to dig holes for me, plant trees,” Steve says. “It turned out to be a big mistake. They were too immature to go away from Mommy and Daddy.”

But nobody knew that when Albireo set off for the Caribbean, and then Steve got sick. Matthew and Ben realized that they had to rise to the occasion as they looked out across the rising seas. 

“Ben was a competent leader, so he’d be on deck and I’d be down below,” Matthew recalls. “We’d get food together or whatever we had to do. We had to make all these adjustments—the lines that lash down the dinghy would come undone, and we’d have to keep an eye out for things like that. You build trust quickly with your crew. You wake up and say, ‘Good job.’ After that happens a few times, there’s camaraderie and trust.”

The two yahoos, well, they “kept you awake and entertained,” Matthew adds.

“Matt was watch captain for his watch, and Ben was watch captain for his watch,” Steve says. “They had brainpower and ­management skills.”

Ben and Matthew needed those skills for things such as navigating at night—again, not something that was part of Matthew’s typical program. He was at Albireo’s helm under pitch-black skies at 2 o’clock in the morning when the boat came upon a cruise ship.

Matthew lost his night vision. He was blinded.

“It was so bright—so bright,” he says. “I couldn’t tell which direction it was going. I couldn’t pick up on the red and green lights because there were just too many lights. I was close enough that their crew put the spotlight on me, so, yeah, that’s something when it happens.”

But finally, mercifully, they made it to Bermuda. They arrived at night, cruising in through the Town Cut and tying up at St. George’s. 

The two yahoos rented motorbikes and got themselves into a bunch of drunken trouble. That was the end of them. Ben was happy to get some sleep, as were Steve and Matthew—who later headed ashore for a shower, some lunch, and a couple of beers at the White Horse Pub & Restaurant. 

“It was like a little holiday. We stayed for a few days,” Steve says, adding that for the first time in their lives, the father and son seemed to have a better understanding of each other as people. “This was a father-son bonding experience. It was something I wish all the fathers in the world could have, that experience. It’s really special.”

And it will remain a special memory, never to be replaced, because Albireo—for the first time in Matthew’s life—is no ­longer part of the family. 

After owning the boat for nearly 40 years, Steve decided to sell it. After settling the boat in Sint Maarten, he found himself out in the waters around the island in 18 to 22 knots of steady, strong heavy wind. For the first time in a long time, he felt a little scared.

He’s experienced both during his years of offshore cruising, including on this trip, which became the last offshore journey he thinks he’ll ever do. Matthew Burzon

“I know I’m hooked in and everything, but going forward, I began to think, Maybe I should quit while I’m ahead,” he says. “It was a member of the family—two daughters, a son and a boat. That was the family. But that Swan is a very athletic boat. You need a lot of strength to be able to crank the winches. The gennie is gigantic in that design. I kind of began to feel like my balance wasn’t as good as it was. I was thinking that one of these days, I’m going to fall off the boat, and my poor wife is going to have to come back and get me.”

Helping to organize the Caribbean Multihull Challenge is now Steve’s passion. He and Nancy are getting to experience how the ocean feels from aboard catamarans—which are easier, stability-wise, on their aging bodies. 

Matt, meanwhile, is often out cruising aboard a 23-foot Boston Whaler Dauntless that he owns with his girlfriend, and looking forward to a time when he can share the family’s passion for offshore adventures with her.

“I’d love to get a sailboat,” Matthew says. “I think I’m not in the right phase of my life to get a sailboat—it would be challenging to be in southern Vermont with a sailboat. We like the Whaler. We trailer it around. We’re toying with the idea of doing a sailing photography outfit.” 

That’s definitely one thing that the Burzon men have in common: They find a way to get their boating fix. Steve is also a member of the Sint Maarten Yacht Club, which gives him access to all its boats from about 20 feet down to tiny dinghies. 

“I was thinking the other day,” Steve says, “I could get in a little boat and sail around Simpson Bay Lagoon.”

Matthew smiles. That sure sounds like fun to him too.

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