KEVIN DE RUYTER
Writer. Memoirist. Former seafarer who traded structure for sovereignty.
About the Author
Kevin DeRuyter was raised on a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin, where early mornings, heavy chores, and a family held together by effort shaped his first sense of who he was.
At nineteen, while struggling in college, he took a job on a Great Lakes ferry that led him toward the world of yachting. He spent more than sixteen years on the water as a deckhand, bosun, and chief officer, crossing lakes and oceans and watching sunrises from wheelhouses, carrying the question that followed him everywhere:
Who could I become?
His debut memoir, Jump Ship—Let Your Spirit Rip, traces his life up to age twenty-seven. The memoir captures the boy on the farm, the Green Bay Packers employee chasing a polished future, the college dropout, the ferry hand, and the young mariner trying to understand himself inside a world that demanded more than he could give. Everything after that point became its own unpredictable chapter.
Kevin left his seafaring career behind in 2022 and committed to building a life guided by agency over obligation. He sold the rental properties he worked so hard to acquire and chose a path that demanded clarity, discipline, and self-belief. He now writes and travels with his wife, Chelsea, learning through immersion, culture, and lived experience. He prefers to do the work long before life forces the issue, building himself into someone who can stand firm when things shift. He believes being a leader does not require followers. It requires going first.
The farther he steps away from traditional work, the more he is energized by the questions that stay with him. What matters? What is possible? Who is he becoming? What is he capable of? These questions shape his writing and the life he builds between Wisconsin, Oregon, and the places he travels to. He filters each moment through lived experience with a sense of neutrality and curiosity, letting the world teach him instead of letting his biases decide for him.
He spent his first real period living abroad in 2021, in Mexico City, where he heard a question that stayed with him:
¿A qué te dedicas?
What do you dedicate yourself to?
He prefers the way Mexicans ask this compared to how Americans do. In Spanish, the question leaves space for the parts of life that give a person meaning. Parenthood. Caretaking. Art. Craft. Ambiguity that opens room for purpose beyond job titles. Curiosity that helps a person understand what matters to someone else. It made sense to him. It matched the life he was building.
Kevin continues to dedicate himself to clarity, freedom, and the kind of wonder that keeps him moving forward. He writes to understand his life and to offer readers recognition and courage through his own. Jump Ship is the first of many books he plans to bring into the world.
Kevin DeRuyter is a writer and memoirist exploring agency, intuition, and sovereignty. He left a career at sea to build a life guided by lived experience, clarity, and curiosity.
© 2025 Kevin De Ruyter. All rights reserved.