Quick Take
Jack O’Neill believed every child should have the chance to experience the ocean. Land-use attorney Monica Hammer, who sits on the planning commission for the City of Santa Cruz and the board of O’Neill Sea Odyssey, learned about the ocean’s power from her Danish father, an avid sailor. Once we form a relationship with the natural world, we have a reason to care for it, she writes. Today, a lack of transportation – about $950 in school bus fare – is keeping some classes of local children from making that connection, and from discovering an ocean that is waiting less than an hour away. O’Neill hopes to change that by providing up to 85% of the transportation costs.
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My dad grew up sailing on the small Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. He was born so close to the harbor that his earliest memories are the sound of the fog horn. For the love of my American mother, and perhaps for the love of adventure, my father agreed to move to America after my sister and I were born.
We lived over an hour drive from the Chicago harbor, but my dad made sure to make the water a regular part of our lives. My dad’s sailboat was a humble Rhodes 19 stored on a trailer at the dock. To get the sailboat into the water, we wheeled it to a crane at the water’s edge. While one of us operated the machinery, the others pushed and pulled the boat toward the water as it hung in the air from enormous chains.
Once the boat was finally afloat, hoisting the sails seemed easy — or not, depending on the wind that day. Either way, I knew that my dad would soon be skillfully tacking our little sailboat out of the harbor. And with each pull of the main line and adjustment of the jib, I was learning more than how to sail; I was learning to feel the shift in the wind and sense the currents. I was developing the kind of relationship with the water that my father had known all his life.
As everyone here in Santa Cruz knows, there is nothing quite like being out on the water.
Whether we swim, surf or sail, we are lucky to have the ocean so close. Surf icon Jack O’Neill understood that not every child is so fortunate. In 1996, he founded the O’Neill Sea Odyssey because he believed that every child should have a chance to understand and experience the ocean, regardless of where they live or what they can afford.
My father passed away in 2018, the same year I moved to Santa Cruz. As the storms of grief raged, the turmoil of the ocean gave me comfort. And as the waves of grief eased, I found myself wanting to give other children what my father gave me on the water: a sense of peace, freedom, wonder and belonging.
I joined the O’Neill Sea Odyssey board this year, after I saw a Prunedale fourth-grader who had never been on the ocean before going out on the O’Neill Sea Odyssey’s 65-foot catamaran. At first, she refused to look up from the trampoline netting. She was understandably overwhelmed.
On average, half of each class that goes out on the O’Neill Sea Odyssey has never been out on a boat before, and on average 15%-20% of the class have never been to the beach. Her teacher encouraged her to look toward the horizon, but she seemed to be bracing for the worst. I wondered if seasickness would become part of the lesson.
Then an O’Neill volunteer asked the students to close their eyes and take turns naming what they could hear: “Waves … seagulls … wind …” Slowly, the girl’s face relaxed.
Curiosity began to replace fear. By the end of the sail, she was gleefully leaning over the railing, eager to learn about the wildlife around her.
When she spotted a sunfish, I was reminded of what my father had shared with me as a child. He taught me to look toward the horizon and see the natural world not as something distant, but as a place of beauty, kinship and connection. Watching that little girl discover the ocean for herself, I realized how deeply I wanted every child to have that opportunity to experience a connection to the natural world.
Over 135,000 children have sailed on the ocean with the O’Neill program, which is free for students and teachers. The big challenge now is transportation to Santa Cruz Harbor.
School districts are dealing with shrinking bus fleets, driver shortages and rising fuel and insurance costs. From Prunedale, Pajaro or King City, a school bus to Santa Cruz Harbor costs about $950 per class. While O’Neill Sea Odyssey raises over $50,000 annually for transportation scholarships, rising costs mean we can now cover only a fraction of the need. Increasingly, classes have to decline an invitation to sail simply because they don’t have any way to transport the children.
Last month, the O’Neill Sea Odyssey celebrated 30 years of ocean legacy by launching a new goal to cover 85% of each school’s transportation costs. My dad never met Jack, but the two men shared a belief that the wonder of the natural world should belong to everyone.
Thirty miles should not prevent a child from being able to experience the ocean. Those long drives to the Chicago harbor taught me that sometimes you have to drive to find beauty and connection with the natural world. When a child who has never been on the ocean watches a sunfish rise beside the boat, the ocean becomes something personal and worth knowing and protecting.
For me, ocean stewardship is not only about protecting the waters we love. It is also about ensuring future generations know that they, too, belong in our natural world.
Monica S. Hammer is a land-use attorney and mediator at Berliner Cohen, where she helps clients navigate development while balancing environmental considerations and long-term sustainability goals. She is a published author in the areas of environmental noise, serves on the planning commission for the City of Santa Cruz, and recently exhibited in “The Art of Flowers” at the Radius Gallery at the Tannery.
