Movie Spotlight: Chasing Horizons

Nine teenagers, three Nacra catamarans, and a five hundred mile round trip from South Florida to a small island in the Bahamas. Chasing Horizons follows a group of boys, ages 14 to 19, who spent ten months training for a sailing trip most adults would think twice about, then went and did it anyway.

Jared Blais co-directed and produced the documentary with Donathan Williams, who founded Called Higher Adventures, a program based in Vero Beach, Florida that teaches kids to sail during the week and works in Bible study on the boats. The trip almost didn’t look like this. “The idea for this trip came about because he’s always wanting to do something big and adventurous,” Blais said of Williams. It started as two catamarans and four guys. Once Williams pitched it to the group, more kids wanted in than anyone expected, and the plan grew to nine sailors split three to a boat across three Nacras.

Learning boats they’d never sailed

Every one of the boys had sailed before. None of them had sailed a Nacra. “It was like starting over,” Blais said. Rigging the sails, fixing gear that broke mid-trip, reading wind conditions well enough to trim without capsizing, all of it had to be relearned on boats that moved faster than what the crew was used to. The film doesn’t skip past that learning curve. It sits in it.

How one boat’s name became the film’s title

Chasing Horizons wasn’t written first and applied to the trip later. Each team of three picked a name for their boat, and one group landed on Chasing Horizons. When it came time to title the movie, Blais said they wanted something that captured doing hard things and seeing them through. “I think the horizon for these guys represents chasing a goal they set for themselves earlier in the year and they accomplished it,” he said. The faith angle isn’t subtext he added after the fact either. He pointed to Matthew 11:28-30 as the verse that framed how he thought about the trip while it was happening, boys carrying a burden they’d chosen, trusting there was rest on the other side of it.

More than learning to sail

Called Higher Adventures is built around mentorship, not just knots and sail trim. Williams runs weekend Bible studies with the boys on the water, and a handful of them give testimony on camera, both during training and later in the Bahamas. Blais didn’t storyboard those moments. “I guess I really didn’t think about how I was going to capture it but just tried to capture it as these moments happened organically,” he said. What the camera did catch, without much planning behind it, was nine guys getting closer to each other over ten months of shared exhaustion and cold mornings on the intercoastal.

Thirteen hours of going nowhere fast

Not every day on the water went well, and the film doesn’t pretend otherwise. One stretch had the boys sailing for thirteen hours with the wind coming from the wrong direction, which meant slow going and one boat falling considerably behind. Blais said the crew on that boat wasn’t mentally ready for a day that dragged that long with so little to show for it. They regrouped. The next day went better. It’s a small moment in a longer trip, but it’s the one that shows what happens to a team when a plan stops cooperating.

From the intercoastal to the open Atlantic

Training happened close to home, on Vero Beach’s intercoastal waterway, with a handful of runs out into open ocean to prepare. Blais said the intercoastal always felt smaller and safer, more within reach if something went wrong. The ocean wasn’t like that. Crossing it changed the tone of the footage too. He described the Bahamas as a different kind of backdrop entirely, clear water, open sky, and an energy that came from having actually made the crossing. More than one of the boys told him afterward that they didn’t want to leave.

What to know before you press play

Blais put it plainly when asked what the film is ultimately about. “Chasing Horizons is a film about doing hard things and accomplishing them,” he said. “Setting goals and working hard to see them through no matter how hard it gets. Not knowing what’s going to be in front of you but taking it and pushing through. It’s also about being a disciple of Jesus. Having a calling on your life and stepping out in faith believing Jesus will provide the way.”

Documentary

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Streaming now on Relay.