ABOUT

ANASAZI RACING is James Burwick, Somira Sao and their six children:  Tormentina, Raivo, Pearl, Tarzán, Jade & Atlas.

With their first four children, they made long distance ocean passages on a Finot-Conq Open 40 race boat called Anasazi Girl.

They began sailing in June 2011 with two children & finished their circumnavigation on Anasazi Girl with four kids aboard in May 2017. 

In July 2019, they shifted to a multihull- a Peter Bosgraaf 50' cruising trimaran called Thunderbird.

JAMES BUWICK is a professional climber, sailor, & independent marine consultant with a vast foundation of experience in extreme environments. He sailed 30,000 miles solo around the world and sailed another loop around the world with his family aboard. He was an alpine mountain guide for 32 years (6000m+ peaks), trained & worked search & rescue dogs (cadavers/explosives), did avalanche rescue & recovery, and developed handicap adaptive sports programs in Colorado and Norway.

SOMIRA SAO was born in a Khmer Rouge work camp during the Pol Pot regime. She escaped & immigrated with her parents to the United States at age 3 as a Cambodian refugee. She worked in Cambodia with AUSAID & the Australian Red Cross to document their landmine survivors program. Somira has sailed long ocean passages, mountain biked dusty dirt roads, and floated remote rivers with her kids in tow.  She is a freelance writer, pro photographer & working mother of six with a mobile office.

TORMENTINA and RAIVO were both born in Jackson, Wyoming. They are surfers, rock climbers & seasoned sailors. Tormentina has been to 26 different countries and Raivo to 18. They started sailing full time at ages 2 & 9 months. They have circumnavigated the world by sailboat, crossed the equator five times & sailed over 30,000 ocean miles.

Before sailing, they descended Argentina's Rio Santa Cruz (320km from the Patagonian ice cap to the sea); cycle toured dirt roads in Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the Atacama Desert, & Southern Iceland; and horse-packed through the rainforests of the Cocahomó River Valley in Chile.

The two oldest kids spent the first years of their lives surrounded by a tribe of world class athletes – climbers, skiers, base jumpers, high-liners, pro surfers, & pro sailors.  They have never lived regularly in a house. Their gypsy homes have been expedition tents, cargo vans, cargo trailers, hotel rooms, converted garages, a carbon-fiber composite race boat, and now a high performance cruising trimaran.

PEARL was born in Auckland, New Zealand. In the womb, she made passages through the Southern Ocean, Australian Bight, Bass Strait, and the Tasman Sea. She moved onto the boat when she was less than a day old and her first passage was at age 1 in the Southern Ocean - 21 days Auckland to Cape Horn.

TARZAN is a child of Cabo de Hornos, conceived while shipwrecked on Navarino Island and was born in Puerto Natales in April 2016. He has dual USA/Chilean citizenship and his first experiences sailing began with passages age 9 months from the Beagle Channel along the entire Atlantic coast of South America to the Caribbean Sea. He has crossed the equator four times and the Atlantic Ocean once.

JADE was born in Puerto Natales in December 2018, another child of the Ultima Esperanza. Her first outdoor experiences were in the sub-polar forests beneath the Austral skies. Starting at 8 months, she has navigated through Dutch & French canals, the English Channel & crossed the Bay of Biscay. At age 1, she crossed the equator and the Altantic Ocean.

In utero, ATLAS sailed through the Canaries, Cape Verde, crossed the Atlantic, then sailed along the coast of  South America between Brazil & Uruguay. He was born August 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic in Ubatuba, Brazil.

The crew sailed & lived aboard Anasazi Girl from June 2011 until July 2019. (From June 2017 to March 2018 - they did a refit and delivery project on a Chuck Paine Bougainvillea 62' called Smoke, sailing the vessel from Grenada to Uruguay.)

The family of 8 are now sailing & living aboard Thunderbird, a Peter Bosgraaf 15m cruising trimaran. Their current location is the South Atlantic.