A friend died. And this wasn’t just any friend. The death of Bruce Kessler should be of interest to everyone with even a droplet of passagemaking in their blood. He was, in a way, like a butterfly that flapped its wings in Ecuador’s Oriente rainforest, alerting us all to events on the Mongolian steppe. Bruce changed our world just by existing.
I met Bruce when we were both racing sports cars. He was already a legend, winning the Sebring Grand Prix in 1958 and the International Grand Prix at Riverside in one of Lance Reventlow’s (heir to the Woolworth fortune) Scarabs. Bruce crashed in flames in the Ferrari he was co-driving with Dan Gurney one rainy night at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He stopped racing after a couple more crashes, but remained friends with fellow drivers James Dean and Steve McQueen.
The crashes, and perhaps his Hollywood racing cohorts, encouraged him to return to California to launch an equally difficult career: film and television directing. First as an assistant to legendary director Howard Hawks, Bruce’s racing background gave him the cachet with other directors to help with car-chase footage, perhaps most memorably in Bonnie and Clyde. He was soon directing on his own: Diagnosis Murder, MacGyver, Mission: Impossible, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Hunter, Baretta, CHiPs, McCloud and The Flying Nun were just some of the shows bearing his name at the top of the credits.
When he had time in his busy schedule, Bruce loved to fish. Just like many of us, he bought a series of boats, larger and larger. First, a 34-foot Hatteras. Then, a 48-foot Pacemaker with long-range tanks. Bruce could often be found chasing marlin off Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
But he wanted a boat with longer range, so he commissioned naval architect Steve Seaton to create a full-displacement offshore cruiser. As the builder, the two chose Delta Marine, which, at the time, was known for burly commercial fishing seiners. The 70-footer, named Zopilote (Spanish for turkey buzzard), hit the water in 1985 and Bruce was off. He gunkholed the entire West Coast. In 1990, he cruised and fished from the Pacific Islands to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Though he and his wife, Joan, an actress, never intended to circumnavigate, the price of shipping Zopilote home made them decide to keep on keepin’ on. Theirs became the sixth recreational powerboat to circumnavigate, returning to the United States after three years.
In 1994, Bruce had been filming The Commish and was cruising on Alaska’s Prince William Sound when Zopilote hit an uncharted seamount west of Ketchikan. Zopilote sank quickly. All aboard were rescued from the liferaft, but, after some 11,000 hours and 88,000 miles, “Zop” was gone.
Kessler and Seaton then designed and built a 62-footer, Spirit of Zopilote, at Northern Marine. Bruce and Joan were soon cruising from Alaska to Maine, where Spirit was kept. The Kesslers enjoyed cruising for seven to nine months (about 3,000 to 4,000 nautical miles) of every year.
Bruce was friends with Nordhavn founder Jim Leishman, and filmed the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Gibraltar in 2004. That documentary, Living the Dream, has been viewed more than 700,000 times on YouTube, and Nordhavn has distributed 10,000 copies of the DVD.
He also wanted to encourage people to go cruising on powerboats, so he founded the FUBAR cruise, which drew 50-plus cruising powerboats in 2007 for a group adventure to Baja. What does FUBAR stand for? Kessler once told me it was for “Fun in Baja Rally.” Uh-huh.
Bruce truly lived the carpe diem lifestyle. He loved race cars, custom boats and world cruises—which he found ways to share with everyone. What I remember most about Bruce is how encouraging he was to every skipper who dreamed of faraway places. His attitude was simple: Go. Do it now. Don’t wait.
In Marina del Rey, California, I could always find Bruce by stopping in at the local Starbucks, where he regaled and encouraged a never-ending stream of admirers and friends.
Bruce died just after celebrating his 88th birthday and his 54th wedding anniversary with Joan. I imagine that he has charts spread out in heaven, and that he’s planning his next cruise.
Fair winds, my friend.
This article was originally published in the September 2024 issue.
