DEAD GUY: Nim Marsh

April 4/2026:  A part of me thought this would never happen. When I first met Francis “Nim” Marsh III in Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain, during Jimmy Cornell’s America 500 rally in 1992, I was amazed when I found out he was 20 years older than me. For if anything, he seemed younger. And as the years marched on, this remained true. He was, eternally, a child, and it was easy to think he might be immortal.

Just this past Monday, Hank Schmitt and I remarked on this. How we hadn’t seen or heard from Nim for some time, and how he somehow never really seemed to age. This after the 10th anniversary of the PAYS Yachting Festival down in Dominica, of which more later.

Hank and Nim and I all met at the same time back in 1992. Nim was covering the rally for Cruising World magazine; Hank was skippering his Tayana 37 Hunk-a-Schmitt in the rally; I was crewing on a big Alden schooner named Constellation. For Nim, I suspect, this was just another assignment, but for both Hank and I our participation in the rally, and the chance to connect with Nim, were formative.

In my case, it was partly thanks to Nim that I was able to transition from the regional boat magazine I’d previously worked and written for to more widely circulated national sailing magazines. He had an astounding depth of experience as a marine journalist. Besides his three separate tenures on the editorial staff at Cruising World, Nim was also involved in the founding of Blue Water Sailing and later was for 13 years the editor-in-chief of Points East. Previously, he had worked with Motorboat, National Fisherman, and Salt Water Sportsman. Despite all this experience, Nim was never presumptuous when it came to boating and sailing and would sooner die than hold himself out as any sort of expert.

It was with Nim, on his Bristol 29 Breakaway, that I took my first fall cruise down the ICW. Not much later, Nim also helped me pull together my first bluewater cruising boat, an old Alberg 35 yawl named Crazy Horse. I spent several nights crashing on his living room floor in Middletown, Rhode Island, as we plotted her refit. He also crewed for me, helping to sail Crazy Horse in 1995 through the skirts of a tropical storm from Newport to Bermuda, and then on to the Azores. Fittingly, much later, after he took the helm at Points East, Nim also spent time crashing at my place in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as he put the magazine to bed each month.

Nim aboard Crazy Horse at St. Georges, Bermuda, in July 1995:

As a writer and journalist, Nim was both adept and self-effacing. He never made himself the center of a story, wore his deep background as a sailor and sportsman on his sleeve, and possessed an amazingly apt vocabulary, always sticking the right word in exactly the right place. He was amazed by adventures both large and small, and for him a challenging transit across a river or lake could be just as significant as a long ocean passage. He had a delightfully impish sense of humor to go along with his childlike demeanor and was also a fitness freak, forever bicycling, running, or hiking.

As it happened, just as Hank and I were discussing Nim down in the Caribbean on Monday, Nim, sadly, was busy dying of cancer up in Rhode Island. I got the news from another mutual friend on Wednesday. There was a service for him in Providence on Good Friday, at the church he and his wife Naomi had attended for several years. Alas, I was traveling again by then and could not attend.

Today, on Saturday, I have finally found time to collect here some thoughts of Nim. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and I will not be too surprised if he somehow manages to rise again. He was that kind of guy.

RIP: Francis Marsh III, February 2, 1939 – March 30, 2026

UPDATE (April 11): Back from my travels, I sit at last at a computer fully capable of managing this website, and can share some links.

First, a formal obit for Nim.

Second, this is the story by Nim I think of first when remembering him. It captures both his spirit and his integrity as a journalist.