Yacht Ownership and a Life Reinvented: Howard Scott’s Journey Beyond the Courtroom
For former Georgia trial attorney Howard Scott, years on the water brought new responsibilities, unexpected friendships and the experiences that would eventually become fiction.
Howard Scott came to Florida looking for a second home, somewhere to enjoy the sunshine and a different pace of life. A fixed address, however, began to feel like another limitation. Yacht ownership offered the possibility of moving with the seasons, spending summers along the New England coast and winters exploring the Caribbean, while discovering what lay between those destinations.
After three decades practising law in Athens, Georgia, Scott had begun to question the direction of a career rooted in generations of family history. He had worked in his father’s office from the age of 13, absorbing courtroom stories and learning the business long before becoming an attorney himself. Leaving that profession meant stepping away from an identity he had spent much of his life building.
The alternative developed through property investment, travel and an increasing commitment to life on the water. Over time, the sea became both a place to live and a source of material for a new creative career.
Yacht Ownership Through a Different Lens
Scott owned three Burger yachts, drawn to their classic proportions and the opportunity to preserve a particular style of American boatbuilding. His longest relationship was with an 80-footer, which he owned for 13 years and valued for its practical layout, straightforward machinery and enduring character.
His approach combined respect for the original design with improvements that made the yacht more comfortable and capable. Traditional interiors could accommodate contemporary details, while equipment upgrades supported the realities of travelling and living aboard.
There was considerable pleasure in that process, but ownership also introduced a different kind of education. Machinery, maintenance, passage planning and the people responsible for a vessel became part of everyday life, alongside the freedom to choose the next destination.
For Scott, the value lay in having time to move between places and get to know them, exploring different cultures through their food, music and people. A yacht made it possible to follow those interests without returning to the same address after every journey.
When Freedom Comes With Responsibility
Some of Scott’s clearest memories concern moments when the comfort of life aboard disappeared.
During a passage between the Turks and Caicos Islands and Puerto Rico, his yacht lost propulsion in rough conditions. He recalls dishes falling from cupboards, furniture moving and the unsettling experience of having limited power while the crew worked to understand what had happened.
The problem, he explains, involved fuel being transferred out of the main tanks rather than into them. The incident exposed how quickly a routine operation could become consequential offshore, and how much depended on the crew remaining composed.
A later passage brought an entirely different emergency.
While keeping a nighttime watch, Scott noticed what appeared to be fireworks several miles away. With no island shown in that direction on the charts, he woke the captain, who decided to investigate. They eventually found an overturned freighter.
Scott recalls rescuing three people from the water and learning that two others remained trapped beneath the vessel in an air pocket. The survivors said they had been there for approximately 20 hours, watching vessels pass without stopping.
Without the equipment to reach those underneath, the yacht’s crew sought help from authorities, and Scott says a rescue team subsequently recovered them.
The encounter depended on a sequence of decisions: noticing something unusual, questioning it, investigating and recognising the limits of the equipment aboard. It also explains the depth of Scott’s appreciation for the captain and mate whose actions helped save lives.
The People Who Become Part of the Journey
Life aboard a smaller yacht can bring owners and crew into close contact, creating relationships that extend beyond the work itself.
Scott speaks warmly about people he welcomed aboard, including those learning their roles, and about being present when crew members faced difficulties in their personal lives. Shared passages and daily routines created a familiarity that he describes as becoming something of a family.
He also acknowledges that those relationships could be complicated. Trust did not always lead to a positive outcome, and some experiences ended with difficult staffing decisions.
Both sides belong in an honest account of ownership. A yacht is a workplace as well as a private space, and the quality of life aboard depends heavily on the people sharing it.
Scott’s recollections repeatedly return to that human dimension, whether he is describing a member of crew, someone working on a dock or a stranger whose conversation opened an unexpected door.
Turning Experience Into Fiction
Long before he became a novelist, Scott had accumulated stories from courtrooms, family life and years of travel. A chance encounter with people working in the film industry encouraged him to begin developing those experiences into a screenplay, giving him a creative pursuit he could continue between destinations.
That work eventually contributed to Rascal on the Run, followed by Rascal’s Redemption. His fiction draws on legal cases and experiences at sea, bringing together the two worlds that have shaped his adult life.
The books also explore addiction and personal change. Scott lost his father to alcoholism and later chose to stop drinking himself, a decision he credits with greater clarity and a broader engagement with art, literature, music and travel.
His involvement in the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise grew from another unexpected meeting, this time with a man promoting a blues event outside the New Orleans Jazz Fest. A conversation developed into further meetings and, eventually, a music venture at sea.
“But if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”
For Scott, reinvention was a series of decisions whose full significance became apparent over time. Buying a boat, speaking to a stranger and attempting to write each created possibilities he could not have mapped out in advance.
His experience gives yacht ownership a personal measure of value: the opportunities it created to learn, contribute, build relationships and discover work he had never imagined doing. The stories he now writes carry those experiences forward, preserving something of the life he found after leaving the courtroom.
Discover Howard Scott’s novels
Drawing on his years in the courtroom and experiences at sea, Howard Tate Scott brings legal intrigue, family secrets and personal reinvention into Rascal on the Run and its sequel, Rascal’s Redemption.
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