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Born in Westbrook, Conn., Sanderson was sailing Blue Jays by the time he was 8. His assimilation into the sailing world was only briefly interrupted during his tour de UNH, where he followed in the footsteps of his late mother, Anne '42, and father William '40. A zoology major, the younger Sanderson briefly entertained the idea of a graduate degree before he took a right turn to the ocean and never looked back.

Bill Sanderson '70 and his wife, Melaina, with their two dogs, Sauvignon and Bordeaux.

In a single year, he sailed across the Atlantic four times. He also raced in almost every famous sailing event, including the Admiral's Cup, Sydney to Hobart, Fastnet, the Bermuda Race, and the Southern Cross series. In the '70s, he did 75,000 miles worth of global sailing and match racing. "The saying is that ocean racing is a bit of hardship," he notes with a laugh, "between two great cocktail parties." Of course, there were more hiccups than he lets on. Once he went overboard near the Azores during a transatlantic yacht delivery. "I was in the water a long time—maybe an hour—before they finally found me," he says. "I was pretty lucky because it's a big ocean."

At some point, he decided he was tempting fate and that he needed to start thinking about a real occupation. He began his brokering career at a Ft. Lauderdale firm in 1976. Selling yachts, especially large state-of-the-art sailboats, came easy. Sanderson's experience and expertise in sailing gave him special credibility, he says. "I was a sailor," says Sanderson plainly. "Most of my competitors were not."

Over the years, his association with beautiful boats has led to opportunities. He has regularly crewed sleek racing yachts, including a replica of the 1937 America's Cup winner Ranger, a boat he built in 2000. A few years ago he was invited to cruise aboard the legendary 325-foot yacht Christina O, the onetime plaything of Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis.

Sanderson says he was spoiled with so much adventurous racing early in his life. Like many ex-competitors, there is a big difference being on a boat and racing one. On a recent vacation with his wife, Melaina, a restless Sanderson nearly went out of his mind as the cruise ship put-putted with placid equatorial laziness amid the San Blas islands near Panama.

On the other hand, he isn't torn up these days when he can't answer every invite to sail with friends. Instead, he rides a racing bike long and hard as a hedge against complacency and gamely stewards the new four-legged family members, Sauvignon and Bordeaux, two rambunctious toy-breed dogs. One of his two daughters from a previous marriage was recently in town to introduce her fiance. That resulted in an epic, hotly paced bike ride that the family is still talking about. And while the sea is never far away—from the second story of his townhouse, a deck off the couple's bedroom offers a sweeping blue water vista—Sanderson says that a storm the previous week produced gusts of 40 or 50 knots. "I really didn't mind being here and not out there."

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