David Burch is the author of the courses and director of the school. He has more than 60,000 miles of ocean experience ranging from the Arctic ice edge to Tahiti and Australia in the Pacific and from New York to Panama in the Atlantic. He has sailed across the Pacific to Hawaii ten times, three times winning the Victoria to Maui yacht race, and in 1984 setting the elapsed time record for that passage for vessels under 38 feet long (the record lasted sixteen years, but was beat in the 2000 race). The latest trip was the 2004 Pacific Cup. In powerboats, he delivered a 65-foot fishing vessel from New York to Seattle, via Panama and has made numerous coastal deliveries between WA and CA, AK, and Mexico. He navigated the only American entry (72-foot Cassiopeia) in the storm-ridden '93 Sydney
to Hobart yacht race and has since navigated that vessel on the '96 Vic Maui and Swiftsure
Lightship Classic when she won first overall in the latter. He holds a USCG masters license, 100 GT.
He is the author of nine books on marine navigation and his magazine articles have appeared in Cruising World, Ocean Navigator, Sailing, and Sea Kayaker. His latest book is Radar for Mariners from McGraw-Hill, 2005; forthcoming is the second edtion of Emergency Navigation, also McGraw-Hill. His work has been recognized with the Institute of Navigation's Superior Achievement Award for outstanding performance as a practicing navigator, and by a USCG citation for his successful weather and vessel performance analysis used in a search and rescue operation. On the academic side, he is a past Fulbright Scholar with a Ph.D. in physics. Looking ahead, his goal is to sail the Northern Sea Route over the top of Russia. The trip has been planned in much detail for some years, but still hangs in limbo, waiting the proper conjunction of events.
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