Eric Forsyth was born in England, served as an RAF pilot, and emigrated to Canada, where he obtained a commercial pilot's license but was unable to find good flying opportunities. After obtaining a degree in engineering, he joined Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, and was eventually appointed chair of the department that developed the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the most powerful nuclear physics research tool in the U.S. On Long Island, Eric took up sailing in local waters and soon advanced to ocean sailing on his 42-foot cutter, Fiona, which he built himself from a bare fiberglass hull. His accomplishments with this boat, including global circumnavigations and cruises to polar waters and through the Northwest Passage, resulted in many awards and are recounted in his book, An Inexplicable Attraction: My Fifty Years of Ocean Sailing, which was included in Kirkus Review's 100 Best Memoirs of 2018.