Article by Michael Murgatroyd, St. Michaels University School
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
—The character Rat in “The Wind in the Willows,” by Kenneth Grahame
I first sailed in the early 1970s, when as a young South African expatriate I was working in London as a chartered accountant. A good friend had a 27-foot sailboat and invited me to join him on it one summer on the Mediterranean, from Sicily to Italy and the South of France. The next summer we tackled the French Riviera. A year or so later, as a newlywed living in Canada, I was thrilled to discover the fabulous cruising grounds of the Pacific Northwest, so my wife and I bought our first sailboat in 1973.
We have been sailing ever since—racing as well as cruising—and together with our three children and dog went on to sail a long list of waters that includes the Gulf Islands in Canada and the San Juan Islands in the U.S.; down the west coasts of Canada and the U.S.; and, on chartered sailboats, in the Caribbean, Greece, Croatia, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Tahiti.
By the time we neared the Mexican Coast we discovered we had another child on the way. So rather than continuing our planned route through the Panama Canal, we made a right turn and sailed to Hawaii.
For a time in the 1980s, we lived on our 40-foot offshore sailing vessel docked in an area of Vancouver called False Creek. My wife walked to her work as an obstetric nurse at Vancouver General Hospital and I would drive to my job as financial director at a steel fabrication plant on the outskirts of Vancouver. Then we took a full year off, and with our six-year-old son took that boat from Victoria down to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, with many spots in between. By the time we neared the Mexican Coast we discovered we had another child on the way. So rather than continuing our planned route through the Panama Canal, we made a right turn and sailed to Hawaii. My wife and son eventually flew back to Canada and I, along with a hired crew member, began a difficult 28-day haul into the wind to join them. We arrived home in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the baby’s due date.
Our boat now is luxurious by comparison to those early days—a 37-foot Beneteau—and to this day I find the time to sail it by making the time. I have a competent staff in our school’s finance office, and together we get our jobs done in the normal workweek. Moreover, three or four times a year I take groups of five or six students (grades 6 and up) out for a day’s sailing. For many, it’s their first time on a large sailboat and a real adventure. The younger students are too busy chatting to be of any help, but I put the older ones to work. For lunch, we usually anchor in a quiet bay by a small island.
Beyond question, sailing is integral to my work-life balance. When I’m on the boat, I can focus on the job of running it and the beautiful surroundings. When I’m in the office, I am relaxed and focused—and I can always look at the photos of sailboats on my walls and think of the next weekend’s sail or our next dream cruise. Alaska is on the list, as are the coasts of Turkey and Thailand, and the Baltic Sea.
