“Do the Next Right Thing”: Captain Sandy Yawn on Sobriety, Leadership, and Finding Purpose at Sea

Captain Sandy Yawn has been sober for 36 years—heading into 37—but her path to recovery was anything but linear. Sitting down with Carl Radke at SoftBar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the Below Deck Mediterranean captain described a journey that began in middle school with a neighbor’s Quaalude, escalated through 14 arrests, and bottomed out in a halfway house where the director told her she “wasn’t worth the paperwork.” She kept showing up for meals anyway. That persistence, combined with a sponsor who controlled her paycheck ($5 a week to live on), eventually stuck.

The Mechanics of Staying Sober Without Modern Tools

Yawn got clean at 25, long before recovery had the visibility or digital infrastructure it has today. When she worked at sea for years at a time, there were no Zoom meetings, no smartphone apps, no sober communities on social media. Her toolkit was stripped down: the Big Book, a 24-hour-a-day book, and early internet message boards where she could write about her experience and wait for asynchronous replies. She also hit her knees every morning and night.