From Sick to Smiling, Transforming the Boating Experience

Kelsey Albina is currently the Communications Manager for Seakeeper, Inc. Seakeeper is the global leader in marine stabilization. Seakeeper’s innovative technology changes the boating experience by eliminating up to 95% of all boat roll, the rocking motion that causes seasickness, fatigue and anxiety. Kelsey is responsible for all internal and external communications for Seakeeper including: 

Public Relations, social media, email, their ambassador program, corporate communications, and corporate responsibility. Prior to Seakeeper, Kelsey worked at Bonnier as the Marketing Manager of the Fishing Group.

Kelsey grew up on and around the water and always knew she wanted to find a career that harnesses that passion. In fact, she has enjoyed boating trips with three generations of family members aboard so she never really had much of a choice! Kelsey’s mother grew up boating in the Bahamas and passed that passion right down. Kelsey was racing sailboats with her mother at a young age, became scuba certified and still enjoys big diving trips. She currently has a boat of her own with her fiancé, and truly lives the boating lifestyle.

We discussed her days spent on the water as a child, great boating and diving trips she’s had, the incredible innovations happening at Seakeeper that are allowing more people to enjoy boating, and more! Enjoy!

 

Growing up Boating.....

I’ve been on the water longer than I can actually remember. The first thing that really comes to mind was when I was five years old and my mom had a Hobie 16 and we were going camping off one of the little islands where I grew up. This was Easter weekend and I was devastated that the Easter bunny wasn’t going to be able to find me. She assured me that the Easter bunny has a canoe and I have nothing to worry about and of course I woke up that morning and the Easter bunny had found me on the island and the basket was waiting for me!

Learning Boating Skills.....

My mom has a passion for boating as well, she grew up in the Bahamas so it’s been something that’s been a part of my life for my entire life. I did sailing lessons when I was little. We’ve always had boats. We started out in sailing then became traitors and got into power boats. She’s the one who taught me everything pretty much. We became this well-oiled machine of me crewing for her on our own boats. By the time I got old enough to do it myself, I knew what I was doing.

Boating in the Bahamas.....

We went to Freeport, Nassau, and Eleuthera growing up and more recently she took me to the Abacos and we rented a boat over there and did some snorkeling and saw the Green Turtle Club. It’s a big boating and fishing club on Green Turtle Quay. Her mom and dad ran it for over a year.

Life Below the Water.....

My favorite thing is scuba diving. I now have my advanced open water certification and try to plan a trip every year. This past year my fiance and I went to Belize to do the Great Blue Hole which is just about the depths of recreational diving limits. It’s this big sink hole where when you get down to the right depth there’s these big stalagtites that hang down and stalagmites and you can swing among them and then maybe 20 feet below you there’s sharks circling this giant black pit. It was a little bit scary but exhilarating. There's something called the Wreck Trek which you can do in the keys. You go from the upper keys to the lower keys and they stop at all the different wrecks on the reefs there.

Favorite Places to Boat and Dive.....

Diving it would be Belize, there's just so so much life there. My favorite place to boat is in my home waters. Somewhere where you know what the weather has done to the landscape, and you can predict when a storm is coming through and you just know the area. That’s the easiest and most comfortable place for me to boat so just being home on my boat is my favorite place.

Current Boating Lifestyle.....

We have a 15’ Boston Whaler. We adopted it from my mom. She upgraded from the Whaler and has a 25’ Rosborough which is a more Northern Trawler style boat so she can spend the weekends on the boats. I think the people who live on their boats are so, so awesome. Having the ability to just go out whenever you want and all your stuff fits in this compact place. I think that lifestyle, even if it is just for a short period of time, would be such a challenge and you learn so much about boating and yourself, I think it sounds awesome.

Seakeeper's Role in the Boating Experience.....

Seakeeper is the global leader in marine stabilization. It takes all the side to side roll out of your boating trip at rest or under way. It is a gyroscopic stabilizer so it has no external appendages. We can stabilize boats as small as 27 feet up to over 200 feet. It has an active computer control so it can automatically detect the sea conditions and react instantaneously, there’s nothing you have to set.

Seakeeper's Growth.....

The growth is booming. It’s hard to keep up with how fast we are growing. In February we launched the Seakeeper 2 and that’s our smallest Seakeeper to date for boats 27-32 feet. We launched the Seakeeper 5HD which is our heavy duty model mostly for commercial and military applications in July. We expanded the factory and added twelve new assembly lines. We opened an office in Italy and grew out of our headquarters in Maryland and got a larger office there. And have had a couple of OEM manufacturers that have standardized Seakeeper. Bertram standardized across their entire fleet and Scout standardized on some of their models as well. Our goal is to get down to about 21 feet. We want to make the water accessible for as many people as possible and make Seakeeper a reality for the average boater. We even have somebody on the Keys who is going to be one of our Ambassadors this year. He has a 23 foot Sailfish and he has a Seakeeper on it. The lengths are a guideline but if you have the space that thing will work on a smaller boat.

Seakeeper's Corporate Responsibility.....

We’re going to have two different areas that we want to give back to. One of them will be the more environmental organizations that are making sure that our waterways are around for future generations so that everyone can continue to enjoy them. The second factor will be focusing on the ways that we can give access to everybody and making sure that their time is enjoyable on the water.

How to Join the Lifestyle.....

For a lot of people, and I speak from a woman’s perspective - just start small. You don’t have to go out and buy a brand new 27 ft center console and launch it by yourself the first day. There are so many ways you can start small. Whether that’s getting a kayak or canoe or something you can manage yourself, or something like joining a boating club where you have help and assistance and somebody to do some of the work so you can get used to being on the water. Inevitably when you start small, you’re going to want to get bigger and bigger as you learn more. You’re going to want to go farther and stay out later and break those boundaries and that’s when you get the confidence to take the next step.