Boat History
Songlines Around the World
Songline is more than a sailboat—it’s a vessel shaped by story, travel, and life lived at sea. The boat was named by Joel’s late father, Captain Marc Hersch, after the 1987 book The Songlines written by the English author Bruce Chatwin, which explores an idea rooted in Aboriginal Australian culture: that the land was “sung” into existence through ancient pathways called songlines.
These songlines are routes across the landscape, remembered as ancestral knowledge and passed down through stories and songs—guiding movement, preserving memory, and connecting people to place. To travel them is to stay connected: to history, to survival, and to a deeper understanding of the natural world.
In 1999, Marc moved his family aboard Songline and set off from Santa Cruz on a four-year ocean voyage. The boat carried them south along the Pacific coast through Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal, into the Caribbean, made port in Cartagena, Colombia, where Joel turned 14, and eventually up the East Coast of the United States.
In 2002, they crossed the Atlantic to Portugal, where they made their way south along the Algarve coast, and sailed through the straights of Gibraltar. the family settled in Barcelona, Spain, making home at Port Vell in the historic barrio of Barceloneta.
From 2002 to 2003, the family lived aboard the boat and Joel, at the age of 16, attended his sophomore year of high school at The Benjamin Franklin International School. The following summer, they sailed out of the Mediterranean and south to Portugal’s Madeira islands, located off the coast of Morocco. The boat and crew then hopped further south to Spain’s Canary Islands.
In the last three weeks of 2003, Joel, his father Marc, along with family friend Howard Wright, sailed from Isla Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canaries back across the Atlantic for 17 days to the eastern Caribbean, making landfall in Saint Lucia on New Year’s Eve.
After returning home to Santa Cruz, Joel went on to university in Northern California and later worked as a reporter for various Santa Cruz County news outlets. While Joel kickstarted a career in journalism, his father, Marc, operated Songline as a charter vessel, running sailing trips out of the Santa Cruz Harbor, team-building experiences, and expeditions to the Channel Islands.
When Marc passed away in 2014, Joel returned to Songline—taking over responsibility for the boat and continuing its next chapter on the water.
Today, Joel is a U.S. Coast Guard–licensed 100-ton captain, credentialed through the Maritime Institute. He’s spent years maintaining and upgrading Songline, and now shares sailing experience with others on Monterey Bay.
For Joel, sailing isn’t just about getting out on the water—it’s about sharing knowledge, collaboration in high-stakes environments, and sharing experiences that most people never get the chance to.