- December 22, 2024
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When Jan Hamel Solomon was weary and ill, she found the strength she needed by taking a voyage home.
She and her husband, Tim, the owners of the sailboat charter company Key Sailing, are retired Christian missionaries who have worked on every continent except Antarctica and have traveled to every U.S. state except Alaska. Yet when they returned to their childhood home of Sarasota and established their company in 2007 their mission didn’t end.
Part of the business model has always been giving back to the community, Jan said. Their tours of the tranquil bay waters are complemented with charity initiatives as well as sharing their story, a story whose most recent chapter includes what Solomon calls a miraculous event in which she was suddenly healed, in 2022.
The Solomons have followed in the footsteps of a community service icon.
Jan’s father was J.D. Hamel, the chaplain for the Sarasota fire and police departments and sheriff’s office, from 1960-1997, the individual for whom J.D. Hamel Park at the bayfront was named.
“Jan and I were both fortunate to be raised by parents who taught us clearly that we were not placed in this world to take, but also to give back, to try to leave the world a better place than we found it,” Tim said.
Jan’s mother was Jean Hamel, a violinist for Florida West Coast Symphony, while Tim’s father was Rev. Ken Solomon, a Christian missionary and friend of J.D. Hamel. Tim’s mother was Jeanette Solomon.
Jan and Tim spent time together intermittently as children, but their decadeslong love began after Tim, who moved many times due to his parents’ mission trips, persuaded them to come to Sarasota for his senior year. There, he and Jan began sailing together.
After marrying in 1977 and traveling throughout the U.S., the couple continued missionary work abroad, moving to Colombia in 1988 as missionaries for First Brethren Church in Sarasota.
It was in 1989, while living in Colombia, that life changed for Jan.
She was serving as a flute player at Luis Palau Festival and was headed to a rehearsal when a drink from a hot dog stand, which had been drugged, rendered her unconscious. Although the kidnapping attempt was foiled, she was left with chemical poisoning and trigeminal neuralgia, a disorder involving sudden, severe facial pain.
Yet she pressed onwards through life, stepping onstage to play for the 160,000 people at the festival over six days.
The couple went on to perform more mission trips, spending time with the Waodani people in Ecuador and helping to build a clinic in the Dominican Republic. The Solomons' parents died without knowing the full story of what had happened to Jan.
When Jan’s health declined to a point of crisis in the early 2000s, the couple headed to Sarasota.
“When you get hurt, you run home,” she said.
Despite her health issues, the couple started Key Sailing in 2007, purchasing their 41-foot Morgan sailboat from Tom and Sally Reed. They have since embraced a lifestyle spent on the water that involves meeting interesting people and enjoying plenty of chocolates.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of a day you have had when you step onto this boat,” Jan said, noting the experience tends to quell all worries. Or, as she prefers to put it, “People who eat chocolates on sailboats don’t start wars.”
Then, on March 16, 2022, Jan’s life changed again.
At a Sarasota Prayer Breakfast, Mary Irwin Vickers, the widow of astronaut James Irwin, began to pray for Jan, who had a speaking engagement ahead of her.
At first, Jan felt sick to her stomach, then the sensation progressed to a strong pain in her head.
“It felt like it was surgery without anesthesia. And then it went across to the other side and it kind of sewed up like the doctor's surgery, and then all of a sudden I had no more pain,” she said.
The couple is eager to tell the story in full, which is why Jan is working on a soon-to-be completed autobiography titled “Sailing Home,” while she and her husband also work on a documentary.
“The whole purpose of this is that if anyone looks at our stories, we can point upwards towards the heavens and outwards towards others. It is never about us,” she said.
Tim and Jan generally live on the fees for boat tours, serving charities with the gratuities they receive, affecting the community through Sailing Home Sarasota, the charity arm of the business.
For the past few years, they have directly supported the local organization Hope Fleet, which sails supplies to other countries to help children and families in in need. They also partner with the interdenominational organization Cru and many others such as High Flight Foundation and Agape Flights. Their family has offered the official prayers at city events since 1960.
The partnership with Hope Fleet began four years ago when the Solomons were searching for faith-based charities and found its president and CEO Danny Moroney.
The first act of Hope Fleet was offering relief at the time Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas, leaving 60% of Grand Bahama Island submerged and causing $3.4 billion in damage. The organization has since branched into offering services in the Dominican Republic.
It has also come to serve a new purpose, as it aids in the prevention of human trafficking through its program, Hope Watch. Boaters in its network can make anonymous reports through a highly encrypted system, while the organization partners with responders who assist with the reports.
“It's not going to law enforcement to put a target on your back in another country,” he said. “We get it, and our partners respond immediately.”
“We were just really impressed that a young man like Danny, who wasn’t 30 yet, was so entrepreneurial in his vision,” Tim said. “He really has a heart for helping people in a way that it wasn’t being done.”
This year, the Solomons recorded their story with Trans World Radio, a Christian radio station in Bonaire, and visited Israel with a group of Jews and non-Jews, for whom Jan played the flute. In a few weeks, they will head to Ecuador, where they will be reunited with the Waodani tribe and will dedicate a new church house whose construction they have aided.
They also have opened the boat at times to organizations like Wounded Warrior Project and Make-A-Wish Foundation.
“It’s a feel-good thing, so it’s really not a sacrifice,” Tim said. "It just feels good to give back.”
The community has taken notice. In 2022, then-mayor Erik Arroyo had a proclamation signed, designating April 10 as Tim and Jan Solomon Day.
Key Sailing Charters is also the current Siesta Key Chamber Small Business of the Year award winner and maintains a rating of five stars on TripAdvisor.
The Solomons continue to remember the service of their parents and their generation and are planning a “Friends of Chaplain Hamel Reunion” at the park in celebration of Veterans Day. A love of community is embedded in Sarasota, Jan said.
“I believe it’s the spirit of our community, that makes it so unique,” she said.
