Rod Scher received his MEd from the University of Oregon. He is a longtime boating enthusiast and former English teacher, as well as an experienced writer and editor with multiple books and dozens of magazine articles to his credit. The former editor of Smart Computing magazine, Scher is also the author of Sailing by Starlight: The Remarkable Voyage of Globe Star and Leveling the Playing Field: The Democratization of Technology, and the editor/annotator of an edition of Joshua Slocum's classic nautical memoir Sailing Alone Around the World. He lives in Depoe Bay, Oregon.