One of the Ultimate Liveaboard Adventurers

Those damn hurricanes! Interview with an Indie

One of the Ultimate Liveaboard Adventurers

by Tom Tripp

Ultimately, the only tragic thing about Mike Harker's life was the young age of 64 at which he died, alone in a Caribbean anchorage, last April. The rest of his life was nothing but grand adventure, from his days as a water-skiing record-holder, to the years he spent helping to develop the sport of hang-gliding and para-gliding, to the final years of solo circumnavigation aboard his sailboats. And just to put the final touch on the grand image of this ultimate adventurer, he also happened to be a paraplegic; the result of a horrific hang-gliding crash in 1977 that broke 33 bones in his body, left him in the hospital for more than a year, and left him without the use of his legs.

I got to meet Mike Harker at the Miami boat show a couple of years ago when he returned from a 53-week solo circumnavigation aboard a production Hunter 49 sailboat, Wanderlust III. He had sailed a Hunter 466 back and forth across the Atlantic and Hunter Marine had supported him in a bid to take his new 49 on a speedy solo circumnavigation. His voyage went a long way in demonstrating the unexpected bluewater capabilities of the larger Hunter sailboats. He sailed over a thousand miles during several week-long segments, followed by a week off. Years of physical therapy had given him some minimal control over some of the smaller muscles of his inner thighs and he gained just enough mobility, as well as amazing upper body strength, to handle his boat.

Harker was a wild adventurer, but what you got from him when you met him was that what made him different from "normal" people was not his intellect, although it was strong; not his physical strength, he could barely stand; and not some special seamanship sense, although he could certainly handle a boat as well as anyone. What stood this paraplegic apart was mainly his spirit — a combination of optimism, self-confidence, and an almost limitless desire to live his life fully, without the shackles of fear, intimidation, indecision or regret.

In fact, his Facebook page had a quote attributed to Mark Twain that said, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." It may be that Twain never said that, but it doesn't really matter. For those of here at Write on The Water, it is at the least a kindred philosophy.