This is a plea to help our two wonderful friends and fellow sailors to recover their golden years sailing plans, after losing everything to Hurricane Irma in Marathon, Florida Keys. Having both lost their boats, SV Osprey and SV Tigua, in the devastation of Boot Key Harbor they will be homeless when their temporary accommodation ends in 4 weeks.

Rocky, 72 and Donna, 71, are two long term Marathon locals who have been living in the Florida Keys for over forty years. 

To give you an idea of how thoughtful and selfless they are, having found that their own homes had been swept away in the storm, they rowed out to our sailboat, Empress, to make sure she was safe from sinking patching the broken window to prevent any water getting in and causing any more damage. We evacuated before the storm and all communications were down, so we had no way to know if our friends or our boat were ok. Rocky and Donna found someone who could relay a message to us by cell phone that Empress had survived, knowing how worried we would be. 

Rocky, a talented watercolour painter and art teacher has been sailing his whole life, in everything from dinghy racing to live-aboard cruising. In 1984 he bought a home-made 1972 Seabird II, SV Osprey, which over the years would become his 22 foot home and the love of his life. In 2005, after sailing Osprey all over Florida and the Bahamas, he spent two long years undertaking the mammoth task of deconstructing her and rebuilding her piece by piece, giving her a new lease of life and preparing her for another lifetime of wind and waves.

Having weathered several hurricanes on his boat, Rocky prepped Osprey as well as possible and moved onto land to weather the storm. She survived on her mooring right to the end of the storm, but was hit by a loose boat and driven up onto the mangroves by the storm surge breaking her main mast, ripping off the bow sprit and causing catastrophic hull damage below the waterline.

Donna arrived in the Florida Keys with her late husband in the 1970’s, having sold everything to sail the world in a 22 foot sailboat. During these years, they came across a 1961 35 foot Alberg, SV Tigua, in disrepair in the back of a boatyard. The couple bought Tigua, restored her from bare bones and sailed her to the Florida Keys.  Sadly, he became seriously ill and passed away some years later. On her own, Donna started cleaning homes and vacation properties in Marathon to support herself and built up her own list of clients in the area.

Donna and Rocky had been friends for a long time and as they both found themselves living alone, they grew closer and became a couple just two years ago. With Tigua having seen better days, they lived on Osprey, sometimes staying in the workshop space of a home that Donna looked after in the summer months.

Every evening, we would see them sitting in the cockpit of Osprey, soaking up the piece and serenity of harbor and the glow of the sunset. As I glanced out from our cockpit at sunset yesterday, I almost expected Osprey to still be there. Realising that I miss her too, I can’t begin to imagine how Rocky must be feeling.

When he wasn’t busy trying to sell his artwork Rocky worked tirelessly on Tigua, which was almost ready to start sailing again when Irma hit Boot Key Harbor. What happened to Tigua is still a mystery. They have searched the entire island on foot and by row boat, but with no results. We now believe that she has been lost at sea, sunken somewhere in the harbor or crushed under the huge pile of other boats in the mangroves. 

Rocky and Donna are both kind, generous, warmhearted people, who were looking forward to a new lease of life together, a new season out on the ocean. They are by no means wealthy; both live simple but fulfilling lives in the Florida Keys. Some fellow sailors even wrote an article about Rocky and Osprey, dubbing him “The Simple Sailor!” Before the storm hit, they were in the process of deciding which of their beloved boats, Osprey or Tigua, should become their cruising home, while the other would be sold to help support them as they retired into a life of simple sailing. With so many years of sailing and memories in each boat, letting go would be hard for both of them, but it was a decision they were prepared to make. When we visited them a couple of days ago Rocky said, “We knew this storm was going to be bad and there was a chance that we could lose a boat, but we never thought we would lose them both.”

I asked him if he thought that Osprey could be recovered, but with her transom-hung rudder, propeller and swing keel deep in the mangroves, the damage caused by an attempt to extract her would simply finish her off completely. “It took so much of me to bring her back the last time. I just don’t think I have it in me anymore to do all that again.”

As I write this, Rocky and Donna are reading reviews of tents online, at the same time calling campsites in South Florida to stay in while they figure out what to do next. They are both incredibly humble, capable and resilient, so they’re being very pragmatic and positive about everything. But this is not where they are supposed to be - they are sailors, they have always been sailors and thrive on the simple, pure passions that come with it. 

When we first brought our boat, Empress, to Boot Key Harbor, I was living on the boat alone to fix it up while my wife was abroad for work. Rocky saw me struggling one day to lift my fibreglass dinghy off the deck and into the water, so he rowed straight over to help out. Soon after, I met Donna who still leaves bunches of bananas in the cockpit for me. One day the bunch of bananas was sitting on a neatly folded piece of sun-shade, because Rocky had seen me baking in the cockpit when it was too hot to work inside the boat! 

It is exactly these types of kind and genuine acts and the selfless thoughts behind them that make them such special people and we want to help them to get back to where the should be, where we know they will be - living the beautifully simple lives of true live-aboard sailors. 

They both loved these simple, sturdy old boats so much and had so many years of hard work, fond memories and amazing sailing with them. With these boats they have quite literally lost everything, except each other.

Despite all of that loss, however, I believe we can help them to turn it an opportunity to start over one last time. If together we can help them raise the funds to buy another boat, then we will be helping two truly deserving sailors to start afresh and sail away together.