To: Friends, Family and Colleagues,

Wednesday, March 2, 2005

In any individual's given lifetime there are a finite number of life-altering experiences. Some come slowly, others like an avalanche, but most never come at the same time. In the last few years, I've had the unique opportunity to witness the intersection of three of them in my life: the birth of my beautiful daughter Keeli, the births of two other children to others in my family, and my decision to enter into a sailboat race known as The Pacific Cup. While birth and sailing don't seem to go together, they do just that in a charitable project I call Project LifeSail, an educational, awareness and fundraising effort for the March of Dimes set against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.

With that in mind, I'm proud to announce the launching of Project LifeSail. Project LifeSail is a unique fundraising campaign that coincides with Pacific Cup '06 - a biennial sailing race from San Francisco to Hawaii. I'm racing out into the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 2006 with a good friend of mine, Jeff Duvall, on a 24-foot sailboat and using the opportunity to raise awareness about the problems of prematurity, birth defects and low birth weight, and the pioneer in solving those problems, the March of Dimes. Yes, you read correctly - a 24-foot sailboat to Hawaii...that's 2,100 miles in straight line or 462,000 lengths of the boat...and a big opportunity to support the March of Dimes, an organization that has had a huge impact in my life.

How did the seemingly unrelated experiences of sailboat racing and births come to intersect? Let's start with the births. It's amazing how a new daughter has affected my life over the last 8.5 months. From Day One, Keeli has continually challenged and amazed me. Of course, Day One was about 6 weeks earlier than she was expected to arrive. You see, the risk associated with premature birth has been a challenge for a number of people in my family. It began with the premature birth of my nephew, Ethan - 8 weeks early - and then the premature birth of my cousin's daughter, Regina - 15 weeks early.

With the birth of Keeli and the three-times-a-day visits to see her in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit those first two weeks of her life, I witnessed first-hand the daily, sometimes hourly fights for survival being waged by the other premies in the NICU. It made me realize that Keeli and the other 460,000 babies born prematurely each year in the US alone benefit greatly from the pioneering research efforts and work of an organization dedicated to fighting premature birth, The March of Dimes.

And, of course, there is the race. This adventure began in Spring '04 when Jeff and I made the decision to enter the race and use it as a platform to do more than simply race; we've chosen to use it as a platform for raising awareness about the issue of premature births for a worthy organization. So, you can probably see how the birth/sailing intersection came about...Keeli's early arrival helped pair the March of Dimes with the Pacific Cup. So from now until the end of the race in July of 2006, Jeff and I will be busy preparing for an incredible sailing challenge, signing on sponsors, educating people about the problems associated with premature births, and raising awareness and funds for March of Dimes.

From a family-of-the-month feature to our latest training and race logs to quarterly e-mail updates, we've put together a site @ Project LifeSail that we hope will draw visitors back to it during the course of the campaign. Ultimately, we hope it inspires you and others to rally around a great cause.

How can you help?

• E-mail: Please forward this e-mail on to those you think would be interested in the effort, we're counting on the viral potential of e-mail to get the word out and to widen the distribution of our campaign message.
• Sign up: Please let me know if you would like to receive the quarterly electronic updates and I'll get you on the list. I promise you they'll be fun!
• Sponsor: Let me know if your company might be interested in sponsoring the effort or of any other potential sponsors (while you're at it, check out our current list of sponsors).
• Contact : Please help us get in contact with families you know who might be interested in telling their story in the family-of-the-month feature, we're looking to feature families from around the US and around the world since the problem of premature births knows no state or national boundaries.
• Communicate: We'd love to know what you think about the site and our efforts, and your ideas on how we can help further the mission of ProjectLifesail.org.
• Donate: Every contribution, no matter the size, helps us reach our goal of ending the dangers associated with premature birth.

Thanks in advance for listening and for your time, help and support. I hope to hear from you soon.

Warmest regards,