Living One's Dream ...To Cross the Ocean 

From her earliest memories as a child, Captain Violeta Ivanova dreamt of ocean crossings.

Someone once told Violeta “you have the sea in your heart and bluewater in your veins,” and he was right! She first saw the Atlantic Ocean as a graduate student in Boston in the 1990s. Over the years, Violeta sailed on rivers and lakes, in bays and harbors, along the New England coast, and among islands in the Caribbean. Finally, in 2017 her dream to sail across an ocean came true, when she sailed from the British Virgin Islands via Bermuda to the Azores, Portugal. From joining the crew in St Martin, through the quirks of sharing 40 feet of boat with three men, to standing solo watches in Force 7 (15 foot) seas hundreds of miles away from land, until her night arrival in Horta Marina on the island of Faial, she will recount the story of her first ocean crossing. It is also a story of following one’s dreams. 

 Captain Violeta M. Ivanova is a Master USCG-licensed captain and a certified sailing instructor of the American Sailing Association. Prior to pursuing a mariner’s career, Violeta worked as an educational technology consultant and an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, and as an engineer in industry. She holds a Ph.D. in geoenvironment and geotechnology from MIT, and has also studied in the MFA program in film production at the University of Texas at Austin. Violeta is a freelance photographer and videographer, and will use her own original photographs in this presentation. When not sailing across oceans or traveling elsewhere in the world, she lives on Staten Island. 

Join us on May 10th to hear Captain Ivanova's amazing story. Tickets are $10 for guests and $5 for members.