In the past year, Shari Bennett-Speer has faced both life-threatening liver disease and aggressive breast cancer. Just 56, she has undergone a liver transplant, a double mastectomy and months of chemotherapy, with a total hysterectomy scheduled this fall. Yet on the afternoon of June 22, Bennett-Speer didn’t think about any of it.
Instead, the Richmond resident spent three hours sailing on the York River, soaking up the sunlight, feeling the wind against her scalp, laughing with her husband and friends and sharing her homemade almond-butter coconut cookies.
Simply feeling human again. “It was such a gift,” she said. “I felt so free and empowered, like I could breathe again.”
Sail Beyond Cancer
Shari Bennett-Speer and husband Geoff enjoying the cruise and celebrating the moment.
Bennett-Speer was among the first local cancer patients welcomed by Sail Beyond Cancer Virginia (SBCVA), the newest of four chapters of Sail Beyond Cancer USA (SBCUSA). The nonprofit hosts free private sails to patients living with cancer, no matter their disease type, age, income level or background. Each can invite up to five passengers.
Founder Suzanne Snyder, a Connecticut native and breast cancer survivor, launched the mission SBCUSA in 2014 in Vermont, originally under a different name. She since has created chapters in Massachusetts, Maryland and, this summer, Virginia, based at the York River Yacht Haven in Gloucester. She plans to expand to Rhode Island next summer.
A sailor since childhood, Snyder has long understood the healing, stress-busting power of time on the water, especially without a motor.
“We can go wherever the breezes take us and also let patients take control at the wheel,” she noted. “It brings them into the present and relieves the gerbil wheel of anxious questions: ‘When’s my next treatment or appointment? What are my margins? Am I on the best possible treatment? Will I survive?’ It’s hard to articulate the importance of that break.”
SBCUSA has served more than 3,500 patients to date, each nominated by family, friends, caregivers or providers. Snyder expects the Virginia chapter to complete 40 to 50 excursions in its first season on a Beneteau 41-foot sailboat, “SOLACE,” gifted by an anonymous donor.
For patients, the chance to honor their loved ones is among the greatest rewards. “I invited people who have been there at my sickest,” said Sabrina Sklute, a Virginia Beach resident battling head and neck cancer, “and we never even thought about anything medical.”
Sail Beyond Cancer
The group finds a spot before they set sail.
Snyder, 63, grew up with parents who loved boating. She was a crew member for many of her late father’s cruises and yacht club races, and her family regularly took two- or three-month sailing vacations.
After graduating from Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, where she majored in French and minored in business, Snyder enjoyed a successful career as a real estate agent and restaurant owner while raising three children.
In 2010, Snyder, whose mother had breast cancer, discovered a malignant lump in her right breast when her kids were only 6, 10 and 12. She struggled with fatigue, hair loss, damaged taste buds and painful fluid buildup through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
The emotional isolation was equally upsetting. “People don’t know how to be near you when you’re bald,” she shared. “It meant so much when someone would simply walk up and say hello and ask how I was doing.”
Sailing, once a recreational hobby, became therapeutic, she added: “Just as with cancer, you don’t really know where you’re going on a sailboat. The winds and currents take you, and you get to just BE. It’s magical.”
Sail Beyond Cancer
Shari Bennett-Speer and Suzanne Synder, founder of Sail Beyond Cancer, share a big hug.
Warm, bubbly and energetic, Snyder is now cancer-free. She builds each SBCUSA chapter from the ground up, temporarily relocating from her Vermont home to form a board of directors, present her mission and train dozens of volunteers as crew, captains and schedulers.
In Gloucester, Snyder moved into an Airbnb in early June with her small service dog Mizzey, a friendly, boat-loving pet named for a mizzen-mast—a type of sailboat mast found on older vessels—and expects to stay through October.
Each chapter has a dedicated sailboat, most of them donated, with support from privately owned sailboats of at least 40- to 60-feet long. And every sail is a little different. The crew for Bennett- Speer’s trip, for example, played several sailing tunes that they learned she had been singing around her house for weeks.
“I started crying, it was so sweet,” she recalled.
On Sklute’s trip, the group brought a cake and recorded a “Happy Birthday” video for her 20-year-old daughter, who couldn’t attend. Sklute’s once-long hair had grown back enough to ruffle in the wind, and the river was almost empty of other boats.
“It was just me and my family with wind, water and sunshine,” said Sklute, 65, a retired pharmacist. “It was so quiet and beautiful.”
SBCUSA’s seasons typically run daily from mid-May to the end of October. Bennett-Speer heard about the nonprofit at a Gloucester Daffodil Festival booth and was selected by early June. “Getting that date on my calendar brought so much joy and anticipation,” she said.
Bennett-Speer was only five months past a liver transplant for a degenerative genetic condition when a routine mammogram uncovered her cancer. She later learned she has a gene mutation that puts her at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer.
A leadership coach and trainer for the County of Henrico, Bennett-Speer has lost her long, red hair and dealt with fatigue, stomach upset, brain fog and bone pain during a whirlwind of doctors’ appointments, lab tests and worry.
On her SBC sail, Bennett-Speer brought her husband, Geoff, and four close friends. She left on such a high that she quickly planned a fall sailing outing with a new friend. “I felt so shy asking since we haven’t even gotten together socially yet,” she said with a laugh. “But I wanted another date on my calendar.”
Sklute’s cancer odyssey dates back to 2014, when doctors found a tumor in a salivary gland, a small organ in the mouth.
Postsurgical radiation damaged her taste buds, burned the skin on her neck and triggered dramatic weight loss, but she was cancer-free for nine years.
In 2023 a new, rare form of the disease invaded Sklute’s left cranial nerve and ear. Today, she has numbness and limited function on the left side of her face, with symptoms that include deafness in that ear, double vision, dry eye, lockjaw and vocal cord damage.
While Sklute’s cancer isn’t curable, she has planned another short course of radiation and consulted a facial plastic surgeon. For now, she often holds up the drooping side of her mouth into a grin for photos. “I miss my smile the most,” she said. “I was a very smiley person.”
A mother of four and grandmother of four, Sklute had owned a 42-foot sailboat with her ex-husband but hadn’t been on the water in 15 years. The leader of a cancer support group in Norfolk told her about SBCVA.
Sail Beyond Cancer
On her July 12 sail, Sklute brought her brother, one of her sons and his husband. After 2½ hours on the water, they went to her brother’s house in Yorktown and grilled burgers. “The party continued,” she said. “I haven’t stopped talking about it yet.”
An amateur painter, Sklute has sent three watercolors of sailboats to SBCUSA as a thank-you. But to Snyder, nothing beats the stories of delight and newfound hope that she witnesses in person or hears from her volunteer crews.
“My dad would be beside himself that his love of the water led to this,” she said. “Every single time out is absolutely amazing.”
For more information, visit sailbeyondcancer.org.
