Sausalito nonprofit sets sail for veteran healing

By Lidia Wasowicz

An all-volunteer crew captained by a former Navy pilot has anchored hopes for helping fellow veterans combat anxiety, depression, post-traumatic-stress disorder and other mental scars of military service in a donor-funded program of sailing and restoring vessels.

Over the past decade, Wooden Boats for Veterans, rechristened VetsBoats in a Jan. 1, 2024, retrofit, has plied the seas with more than 1,000 men and women who, statistics show, often encounter a tempest of trials and tribulations after returning to civilian life.

With the New Year’s Day refining and restructuring aimed at expanding and elevating its impact, the Sausalito-based nonprofit anticipates more than 500 veterans and their families will get on board during the scheduled 18-outing, April-to-October season in Northern California.

“Today we live amidst a silent crisis: over one million veterans are battling some form of addiction, and each day as many as 17 veterans are taking their own lives,” noted Terry Moran, the organization’s founder and executive director.

“At VetsBoats, our purpose as a foundation is to reverse this trend, to raise awareness, provide hope and community and to make a difference that sends ripples outward to veterans and their families all around us.”

The only child of Irish parents who immigrated to the United States when he was two sees the cause as a ministry and mission rooted in lessons learned and events experienced growing up on a boat in Sausalito, attending Catholic schools, flying the supersonic fighter jet F-14 Tomcat (immortalized in the 1986 movie “Top Gun”) and completing two tours in Iraq.

Accomplished in an array of fields, including his current career as a consultant to Collins Aerospace Corp., one of the world’s largest suppliers of aerospace and defense products, “my true calling lies in giving back to those who have sacrificed so much for our country,” said Moran, whose eldest son Terence, a staff sergeant in the Marines, represents the family’s fifth uniform-wearing generation.

His wife Jen, administrative assistant at the couple’s parish of St. Mary Star of the Sea in Sausalito, gives back as VB’s marketing director. “We’re always thinking about how to better serve veterans and how to reach more veterans,” she said.

The couple exemplify “the teachings that Terry and I experienced at St. Ignatius College Preparatory: being men and women for others,” said VB donor and volunteer Tony Maffei of Reno, the father of a naval aviator and a retired battalion chief from North County Fire in Daly City who suffered post-traumatic stress injury.

Partnering with commercial boat owners and agencies, VetsBoats “has exposed dozens of veterans to the joy of sailing and the healing effects of being on the water.”

Both benefits appeared on deck in the season opener April 20 aboard the Derek M. Baylis, a sleek, 65-foot craft particularly attuned to San Francisco Bay’s whipping winds.

Splashed with saltwater, sprinkled with sunshine and supported by sympathetic shoulders, the 21 guests “were super happy with the experience and are looking to sail again,” said Ed Sanchez, a VB outreach coordinator from Penn Valley, California.

The experience helps break down walls and build up connections, he said.

“That camaraderie promotes strength and resilience, especially in our at-risk veteran population that might be suffering from military trauma, post-traumatic stress, survivor guilt, addiction or any number of other personal demons,” said Sanchez, semi-retired from a part-time job at a residential treatment center for emotionally troubled youth.

“Strength promotes healing, and healing is what many of us veterans need most.”

Among the volunteer deckhands on the rebranded group’s first voyage, Air Force Maj. Travis Bellicchi of Napa hoped to meet that need.

“I showed up thinking I was just going to help out on the boat, but it turns out I became one of those being helped in completely unexpected ways,” said Bellicchi, who had sampled sailing’s soothing effects following intense training as a maxilofacial prosthodontist (specializing in reconstruction, restoration and replacement of tissue and teeth ravaged by cancer and other disfiguring conditions) that had left him “exhausted” and “broken.”

“Being out in the beautiful, safe, stable setting of the sea all day is magnificent in and of itself, but add a shared military background, and it becomes a therapeutic experience you can’t get sitting in a conference room in a hospital,” said Bellicchi, who operates a clinical practice for service personnel and trains newly minted dentists entering the armed forces.

His observations correlate with pilot Veterans Administration studies published in the March/April 2022 issue of Military Medicine that point to benefits of supplementing conventional mental-health treatments with sailing and other recreational therapies.

As another adjunct, VB — with a non-salaried staff of 22 advised by a VA psychologist, two recreational therapists and four social workers — offers a place at the restoration table of wooden vessels.

Steeped in the spirit of those who have sailed them, these craft point to the rehabilitative powers of communal efforts to remove rusted joints and replace rotted mechanisms, said Moran, a member of the charitable Order of St. John, Knights Hospitaller in the Commandery of St. Francis, descended from a medieval order of chivalry founded in Jerusalem to guide and protect pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Since 2016, volunteers have been scraping, scrubbing, sanding and spiffing up the historic World War II cutter Clover, built in England in 1938, forgotten and forsaken for a decade and sinking precipitously when VB bailed it out.

“In 2026, 10 years after Clover was donated, it is our goal for her to set her sails with veterans aboard and to once again provide relief for those affected by their service,” Moran said of the 68-foot gaff-rigged sloop that, among other duties, rescued wounded, weary men off cargo ships and tankers barraged by German U-boats while crossing the Atlantic.

Work remains to realize the ultimate dream of transforming Clover into the foundation’s flagship making biennial trips to Hawaii.

“She still needs a mast and many other expensive parts and systems restored or installed to make her operational,” said Kevin Houchin, a Rancho Cordova truck delivery contractor and VB contact person, who joined the Navy at age 18 in a failed attempt to kick his drug habit.

“If we’re lucky, our VetsBoats sailing program will grow to where we just can’t charter enough boats every season, and when Clover comes online, we will have demand enough to sail her every week,” said Houchin, 61, who this year celebrates 18 years of staying clean and married. “That would be amazing!”

What many colleagues and customers consider amazing is the progress Moran has made since starting the venture on his yacht Valiant, built in 1962 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Refurbished, repainted and revarnished by Moran, his father Fergus, who passed away in 2020, and his children Terence, Sean and Megan, the 45-foot winsome sloop designed by Sparkman & Stephens took to the seas with its first set of veteran voyagers in August 2014.

Their enthusiastic evaluation prompted expansion of the program, acquisition of Clover and, in 2021, sale of Valiant as a cost-saving measure.

Budgeting remains a crucial consideration, according to VB Director Tom Gilheany, the current commander of the St. Francis Commandery, which raises seed money for projects supporting the San Francisco Bay Area’s wounded warriors.

“The restoration and repair work on Clover is time- and capital-consuming so we are taking care not to overextend ourselves,” said Gilheany, a cybersecurity executive and long-time parishioner at St. Dominic Church in San Francisco.

“As we grow, additional staff is something we are also focused on addressing immediately.”

To address the challenges and augment awareness among benefactors and beneficiaries, Moran hired Ashley Matchett Woods, owner of Branded by EQ (Excellence Quotient), a business consulting and marketing company.

“I hope more and more people get involved, perhaps setting up VetsBoats chapters beyond California, like McDonald’s franchises,” said Woods, the strategist behind the foundation’s recent rebranding. “I know people who would love to do it.”

Already, VB board member Matt Cline, a Springfield, Ohio, cinematographer, filmmaker and videographer, has purchased a boat to host veteran sailing excursions “for our own little branch project here in the Midwest under the VetsBoats mission.”

Among the worthy organizations competing for time, talent and treasure, VB stands apart as a “practical realization of the faith-based calling that Terry especially inspires in all of us,” said Cline, who has been spreading information and invitation through his Cline Cinematography, a company with a global reach.

“There will never be a shortage of people in need of other people’s assistance,” he said.

“But as we look upon the devastating epidemic of veteran suicides and destroyed lives among those who have chosen to serve us, how can we not be inspired to contribute to their restoration and reclamation?”

Award-winning journalist Wasowicz, former West Coast science editor and senior science writer for United Press International, has been writing for Catholic San Francisco since 2011.