Matrimony is the Splice of Life

In honor of all sailing couples, and in particular those couples married on February 29, Mike Fahle shares this leap year commentary…

This week was our 10th wedding anniversary. I knew that Carol was definitely the woman to marry when she agreed that, with our limited money, a Tasar was a better thing to buy than a wedding ring. We went on to be a great sailing team, winning several U.S. National, Canadian National, and North American Tasar titles together.

After sailing in the 1979 UYSRU Championship of Champions regatta in the Prindle 16, we decided to help form the new Hobie 18 fleet in northern Ohio in 1980 and raced in that class for the next 20 years together.

Racing in those two boat classes and others took us all over the U.S. and Canada and we attended two Tasar World Championships in Australia. We waited several hours for a connecting flight in Honolulu on one trip and vowed that we would return some day to see Hawaii. We just completed a weeklong cruise around the Hawaiian Islands with our siblings and their spouses to celebrate our anniversary.

(Editor’s note: Their 10th anniversary actually took 40 years)

So our matrimony, which was heavily tied to sailing, really did splice us together for life. It allowed us to develop great teamwork and communication, practice recognizing and solving deficiencies in ourselves and each other as a team, experience great joy and disappointment together, and have so many amazing adventures together.

We are bonded so tightly together by our sailing that any other life endeavor was easier to handle and succeed at as a couple.