I grew up in Palm Beach on Australia’s Gold Coast. It’s a really big small town, if that makes sense. The kind of place that has everything, so you never need to travel more than 15 minutes north or 15 minutes south – and hardly anyone ever did.
My mother, self-employed in the hospitality industry, split with my biological father when I was barely a year old. She remarried, so I and my older brother were raised by my ‘new’ Dad until the age of 13 when he died age 50. I can now see that his passing was a major tipping point in my life, when the status quo suddenly was no more. At his funeral, a family friend, Steve, approached me and said if I ever wanted to get away, he’d teach me how to sail.
Having attended high school, I signed up for an accountancy degree but my heart wasn’t quite in it. I didn’t like university, I didn’t fit in, and I didn’t like being inside the classroom. A friend of mine was talking about going travelling and she asked why I wouldn’t consider doing something similar. Living in the surf capital of Australia, the very same town where global surf wear brand Billabong was founded, daily life revolved around the ocean. I was always at the beach, always on the water, and sailing seemed like a more amusing option than university, so I called Mum and asked if Steve’s offer still stood. Serendipitously, she was having lunch with Steve’s wife at that very moment and six weeks later I was on a 40ft Acapulco Cutter.
The first stop on our little odyssey was big city Brisbane. My mates were out partying, sending me SMSs asking if I’d join them. Steve offered to drop me onshore in the tender but I said no. I remember thinking to myself ‘this is it, this is what I do now’, and for sure that was the moment Steve knew it would all work out. We sailed together for about three months in all, heading north to the tropics, taking it nice and easy and making plenty of stops along the way. Hailing from Somerset, England, Steve was a true sailor. He taught me how to catch fish and tie knots – in fact he wouldn’t let me tie a rope until I could do it blindfolded. In a way, Steve became the father figure I’d lacked in my teens.
One evening, close to Cairns, we were heading back to the boat having watched a big football match in a bar. It was dark, about 10 or 11 at night, wind against current, and the first wave filled the tender – the second swamped it. Despite being a decent size, 10 or 12 foot, the tender went rapidly under and Steve and I were both thrown overboard. I grabbed a foot-long buoy and wrapped the rope round my arm, so tight I got rope burn, while Steve was hanging on a cardinal mark halfway down the inlet. After about two and a half hours, Queensland search and rescue plucked us out of the water. Steve was embarrassed, however I viewed it as another of life’s tipping points.
It was quite an experience for an 18 year old, but in a way I was glad it had happened and it put a lot into perspective for me. 100 dollars in my back pocket, I took the bus back down to Airlie Beach, bought seven nights’ accommodation and looked for a job. Using some new connections, I got an interview with Southern Cross who did sailing adventures around the scenic Whitsundays. I started as a hostie, a glorified cleaner-slash-cook, and gradually worked my way up to deckhand, first mate, and finally captain.
On square-rigged tall ship Solway Lass in particular, I got the best possible training. We had two captains, a master engineer and one of the best sailors in Airlie Beach. Together they taught me the old school way of sailing and engineering, the proper way, and helped me earn my yachtmaster Master Class V at age 22. My career then went full circle as the first boat I hostie’d on was Ragamuffin and the first boat I captained was, you guessed it, Ragamuffin.
After five fun-packed years with Southern Cross, I realised that there was a glass ceiling at Airlie Beach and it was time to step off the merry-go-round. In truth, I’d always been ambitious, leaving the comfort of Palm Beach was already pretty ambitious, and I was ready for the next step on the career ladder.
The catalyst for change came in the shape of a wedding invitation. A friend of mine’s brother was getting married in India and, thanks to her boyfriend being chucked out of Australia for outstaying his visa, I was called upon as a substitute plus one – a true wedding crasher. It was the kick up the proverbial I needed to save up and get going. From India, I flew to London to stay with some mates from high school, and then opted for Mallorca due to its prominence in the sailing market, as opposed to the South of France which has always been an epicentre for motor.
Installed in Palma’s salubrious Hostal Terramar, I chatted to a guy who’d just bagged a job, so his pre-arranged interview slot with EL Crew Co was up for grabs. It was boss Erica Lay’s last interview of the day and a chat turned into a glass of wine, which turned into her matching me with, ironically, a deckhand job on a 180ft Amels motoryacht.
Although I’d been competently running 80ft backpacker yachts, it was clear that I would have to start from the bottom in Palma. Australian tickets weren’t readily recognised, and while I could easily manoeuvre a boat, I couldn’t clean a window to streak-free perfection. My Dutch deckhand counterpart could squeegee like a demon but couldn’t detect a target on a radar. He wanted me to be the butt of all jokes as the new guy, but I thought he was a moron for lacking basic ship handling skills. Having locked horns, we came to an agreement that on the deck I’d learn from him and on the bridge he would learn from me. Unsurprisingly, this arrangement had a rather short shelf life and when my probation was up, I jumped directly into a deckie role on a 105ft sailing yacht.
If I learned practical skills on the Amels, on this boat I learned determination. I took an instant dislike to the captain and decided I would quit at the end of the season. I bust my ass working really hard to ensure he would be sorry I left. As my father said, ‘a wise man can learn from a fool’. I was adamant I would become a captain. I thought, if this guy can do it, so can I. Some months after my departure I heard tales of crew having to drain their private bank accounts to pay for fuel – I made the right decision.
I learned of an engineer position on 110ft sailing yacht Keewaydin, the money was good, so I took it. I flew to Florida in January 2010, spent the summer season in Maine, and by September she was in the shipyard in Newport. At this point the captain said ‘I’m done’ and left. Having caught sight of my CV, the owner called up and asked if I wanted to take over as captain, was I up to the job? After a sharp intake of breath, I said yes, and at age 26 I was at the helm of a 110ft boat. After the death of my father, and clinging on to that buoy for dear life, this responsibility was defining life moment number three.
I recall the sweaty palms, racing heart, butterflies in my stomach – symptoms of nerves which quickly turned into those of excitement as I found my feet. The guys at the shipyard were always by my side, telling me to take a breath and find calm, and I couldn’t thank them enough. My first New Year’s Eve onboard, the owner took me to one side and reminded me I had to manage everything, and impressed upon me the importance of timing, getting the food out at the right moment and so on. A year later he confessed those first few months had been a little rocky, but then heaped me with praise saying I was probably the best captain he’d ever had.
In total I ran Keewaydin for four years, cruising the east coast of the US and the Caribbean, and no expense was to be spared. If something wasn’t working, the budget was there to fix it up and, by the same token, if something wasn’t rapidly put right, he’d nail you to the wall. I learned a lot.
In 2014, the owner felt it was time to downsize and we took Keewaydin to West Palm Beach and put her up for sale. Sat in Rybovich marina with a skeleton crew, we were invited to a Jimmy Buffett concert by the captain of the neighbouring sailboat. We entered into the US tradition of tailgating, having beers and grilled food before the gig, and I asked a good-looking girl for a Cheeseburger in Paradise. It was a great joke, the title of a Jimmy Buffett song, but she didn’t get it. That didn’t stop Grace and I getting together for what we jokingly call ‘the summer of love’ in Rybovich.
Grace was from California, the dive instructor and crew chef on the sailboat next door. When Keewaydin was sold, I got a job as captain on a 90ft powerboat. It was good to get the experience as I was still seen as ‘the sailboat guy’. After a few months, I crowbarred Grace in as stew-cook. She took the position, but only after I met her Dad in California. Then came the offer to go to the South Pacific on a 92ft motor-sailer Hortense. I’d been in the States for years and was sort of over it, Grace too had only done the US and Caribbean, so we chucked our CVs over and, within a month or so we were on a plane to Tahiti. I took some crew from the powerboat and we did our first delivery from French Polynesia to Tonga, a ten-day cruise without seeing a single other boat. Having only ‘met’ me once on Skype, the owner wasn’t keen to hand over his multimillion dollar boat to a total stranger, so that first voyage was done with the previous captain by my side. Handover complete, I was launched back to my sailing roots and exploring beautiful islands.
The owner was onboard very little, perhaps two weeks in every 12, bringing guests from Europe who were unaccustomed to remote locations with no internet access or contact with the outside world. We spent three months in Fiji, and it still stands out as one of my favourite places to be on the planet.
By now, Grace and I had grown very close; I knew I wanted to marry her. As luck would have it, our itinerary took us to New Caledonia and then Brisbane, about an hour’s drive north of the Gold Coast. Grace got to meet my family, albeit at a very strange time. In the space of one week, my brother had had twins and my grandfather on my biological father’s side had passed away. As we were sort of estranged, it was Grace who encouraged me to attend the funeral and stood by my side throughout.
I kissed my grandmother at the ceremony and she turned round and said ‘who was that?!’. When she realised it was me, she barely let my hand go. She said she may have lost her husband but she’d gained a grandson. I reconnected with that side of the family, not least my father who I hadn’t see for the best part of 15 years. We’re now close, I am lucky to have him back, and I am grateful for that perfect storm that reunited us.
Sydney had been next on the agenda, but the owner’s son pushed instead for the Great Barrier Reef. We sailed Hortense into Airlie Beach and, once again, my life had gone full circle. We went out to the Reef, explored the Whitsundays, and Grace got to meet my close friends. It was a special time.
From there we sailed to New Zealand, most memorably the beautiful Fiordlands where we got eaten alive by heinous mosquitos, followed by Auckland for a two-million-dollar refit. I loved New Zealand, I could live there in fact, the scenery is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but after nine months I got itchy feet and convinced the boss to try the paradise islands of Micronesia.
It’s a long delivery, so we stopped in Vanuatu en route to wait for bad weather to pass. The weather here is always worse than you expect due to the sheer volume of the oceans. The boat got pretty rolly in heavy sea and there were some crew who just couldn’t handle it. Eventually, we found ourselves on Ant Atoll in Micronesia. The chief and his son invited us onshore for hog roast and kava, a non-alcoholic drink made from squeezing kava root through hibiscus bark with the slimy gloop served in a coconut shell. It’s mildly narcotic and makes you rather talkative. The chief then waded waist-deep into the ocean, his ocean, his world – it was like a scene from a Disney film.
Chuuk Lagoon was next. A base for Japanese operations in WW2, it’s now a scuba diving paradise with a ‘ghost fleet’ of more than 60 sunken vessels to explore. The diving was incredible but, in the absence of a friendly chief, we didn’t feel quite so safe. We headed to Palau, home to the world’s first national shark sanctuary. If Tonga and Fiji were special, Palau took it to another level, so I took the engagement ring I’d been carrying around for six months and proposed to Grace on the beach. It was February 2017 and we made a plan to marry in September 2018.
Running away from hurricanes, we tracked towards Australia, crossed the equator, caught a huge Black Marlin, and watched a pod of whales and the glow of a volcano erupting over Papua New Guinea – all in a 24-hour period. We ended up stopping in Papua New Guinea to sort out a maintenance issue. It was late evening, and some pirates impersonating officials approached asking us to move and follow them to another anchorage. I kept the female crew out of sight and did the quickest thinking of my career, and instead offered them 500 dollars to keep an eye on the boat, half now and half in the morning. Needless to say we left at first light and I don’t think I would return.
This incident signalled the beginning of the end for me on Hortense. She went back to New Zealand for warranty work and my fiancée and I took six months off. I hadn’t had a break since India some ten years ago and it was stressful running a yacht in and out of the Pacific – although I credit this odyssey with giving me the level of experience and calmness that I carry with me today.
Grace and I travelled through Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and India, and it was nice to be together without being on a boat. We also firmed up those wedding plans. One evening we found ourselves taking the mick out of reality TV series ‘Below Deck’ and realised we were ready to return to boats. We floated our CVs and a job on 107ft motoryacht Reflections came up. They wanted us to start four weeks after interview and, on the proviso we could have a month off in September for the wedding, we started in March 2018.
Reflections has quite a nice routine: eight to ten weeks charter each year and eight to ten weeks private. We joined in St Maarten and hopped to Grenada and St Vincent – nice for Grace as she’d never seen the southern Caribbean islands – and then back up to the Bahamas for the summer months. August, September and October are conveniently ‘off’, so our four-day wedding celebration at an old castle in Italy went without a hitch. It was the best weekend of my life.
We returned to Reflections as newlyweds for the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show in October, and then set off on the US Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, St Maarten, St Barth’s, Puerto Rico, Turks & Caicos circuit, before returning to the Bahamas in March.
Reflections is a pleasure and we plan to stay for a few more years yet. Size, for me, isn’t important. I like a four- or five-crew boat, everyone has their job title, their identity, and, as a captain, more crew feels like more problems. However, as I’ve only really captained three boats, I can envisage doing another European stint in the future – the only region Grace is yet to explore. I am also keeping a close eye on the Australian yachting industry. More and more boats are doing the Pacific run, but tend to skip Australia as it’s not that accessible but, with the 36th America’s Cup coming to Auckland, New Zealand, in 2021, it should open up.
I am really happy with the way the last 33 years has worked out. I’ve taken advantage of the situations I’ve found myself in and also enjoyed a healthy dose of good fortune. Thank heavens that accountancy degree didn’t work out, or I’d probably still be living within a 15-minute radius of Palm Beach not realising that the world (and Grace!) was out there waiting for me.
By Sarah Forge
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