Heyward Coleman is a former submarine officer in the U.S. Nuclear Navy with a Master’s in Nuclear Physics from Duke University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Throughout a career spanning the oil shipping industry, the founding of an environmental radiochemistry laboratory, and the development of cutting-edge cancer therapies, he has remained driven by a dual passion for technical innovation and maritime adventure.

He is the author of the two-part series, The Voyages of Skimmer. The first volume, Where the Wind Blows, recounts the 1989 family sabbatical that transformed a career-driven executive and his family into a seasoned crew in the Mediterranean. The sequel, The Next Port, follows his subsequent five-year circumnavigation—a journey defined by technical resilience and the invention of the "Caliban" autopilot, a Rule bilge-pump-powered system engineered mid-Pacific by his son, Alex.

To bridge the gap between the technical grit of the written word and the reality of life at sea, Heyward has created an exclusive Digital Vault for his readers. This private online gallery contains hundreds of high-resolution photographs documenting the "Caliban" in action, the Turkish and Charleston refits, and the remote horizons of the French Canals and the Amazon River. Access to this visual archive is a reward provided exclusively to readers within the pages of his books.

Today, Heyward lives in Charleston, South Carolina. While his ocean-crossing days are behind him, he spends several months each year navigating the inland waterways of Europe aboard his canalboat, Magnolia—proving that for a true explorer, the journey never truly ends.