SOLOMONS, Md. — Local sailor William “Bill” Marshall may be back on Maryland soil, but his sailboat is still marooned on a Florida beach almost a thousand miiles away.
In late April, Marshall was sailing along the Florida coast and navigating a tricky inlet when surprise storms overturned his sailboat, a 1984 Ericson 30+ called “Arien.” Marshall began encountering storms and large swells around 9 or 10 p.m. and fought for hours before he eventually was forced to abandon his vessel around 2 a.m.
“There were a lot of parts where I was scared and I had to think in a different way. Once I realized I was going to crash, and it wasn’t avoidable, that changed how I made decisions,” Marshall said in an interview with The BayNet.
He called the Coast Guard to alert them that he was abandoning the vessel and filled a dry bag. He washed ashore concussed and sore, but not without optimism.
Marshall has been sailing since his childhood in the Boy Scouts, but recently got back into sailing with the help of a local sailing school and some friends. Originally, he bought the Arien and planned to fix it up and sell it. But after some personal difficulties, he was eager to get out on the water and admitted he was feeling downhearted and stuck before the trip.
“I wanted to get that little bit of freedom you don’t get elsewhere,” Marshall said about his decision to go on the trip. “Being able to get away from everything probably saved my life.”
His plan was to explore the East Coast of the United States, and he began preparing his plans and gathering provisions. The only drawback, Marshall said with a sigh, was that he had to leave his dog behind — she didn’t take as well to boat life as he’d hoped.
In November 2025, Marshall set out alone and spent the next six months traveling down the coast. His challenges included nighttime navigation, isolation and trying to find the best way to make coffee without depleting his power supply. But Marshall said he met plenty of friendly faces on his trip, especially all of the people who supported him once he was shipwrecked.
“I couldn’t have shipwrecked in a better spot,” Marshall said. He ultimately wound up stuck on New Smyrna Beach in Florida.
As soon as he came ashore, Marshall said people were reaching out to help him, including a group of people who raced 45 minutes around the inlet to see if he was OK. He wound up in the hospital with a concussion, and once he was released, he was tasked with trying to figure out how to get his boat back in the water.
The Arien was sailable, but stuck. The storm that took the Arien down was what Marshall describes as a “freak” nor’easter that brought huge waves and extra-high tides, and once it ran aground, the vessel was too far from the water to be picked back up by regular high tides.
Marshall decided to wait with the Arien and track the tides, with the hope that they would rise enough to allow him to sail back out.
As he waited, more locals and visitors came to his aid; one woman acted as a liaison for everyone who came by with questions or demands for Marshall, a service he found incredibly kind and useful as he was healing from his injuries. Another couple he clicked with let him stay briefly in their room at a nearby resort.
Eventually, Marshall realized that he’d likely have to wait until hurricane season for the tides to get high enough to get the Arien back out to sea. He decided to sell the vessel to a salvage company and head back to Maryland. He looked into hiring a tug to get back out to sea, but because of the location, all the estimates he received were out of his price range. Plus, he had received an offer from someone back in Maryland to take a sailboat off the man’s hands for free.
Looking forward to another project like the Arien, Marshall headed home. The sailboat in question didn’t work out, but Marshall is looking for another and is hoping to work through some of his anxieties about the ocean as a crewmember on a friend’s vessel this year. But, he says, he absolutely plans to get back out there one day.
“I’m still healing,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy. But this whole experience made me believe again. I don’t want to leave anymore. I’m fed up, but I figured I might as well try to do something to fix it.”
Marshall described his goals for his artificial intelligence company to help consumers safeguard and take ownership of their data and cybersecurity, a mission he believes will help build equity in technological advancements.
“There’s a long list of people I’d like to thank,” Marshall said. “So many people helped me out. Too many to even list. People were awesome and deserve that recognition. All this really reaffirmed my belief in humanity.”
Marshall is busy planning for the future both on land and at sea and has reunited with his beloved dog, MoMo.
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