Steve Thomas

Steve Thomas is familiar to television viewers as the two-time Emmy award-winning host of This Old House, Renovation Nation, and Save Our History. But he is also an experienced sailor. Beginning in 1977, he sailed a 43-foot wooden sloop from England to San Francisco via the Panama Canal, Galapagos, Marquesas, and Hawaii. In the early 1980’s, he journeyed to the remote Micronesian island of Satawal to learn the ancient technique of star path navigation, an experience that resulted in a book as well as a documentary for the PBS series Adventure. Abbeville Press has just published a beautifully revised edition of The Last Navigator with fully restored photographs from his time in Micronesia.

It was in 1989, in between research trips to the Alaskan Arctic for a second Adventure book and film, when he received a call from the series's publicist, who also worked for This Old House. The show's producers were conducting a national search for a new host, and the rest is history.

Steve now lives in a small fishing village in mid-coast Maine, where he is a builder and writer and oyster lover.