IT’S NOT (JUST) ABOUT THE (15) BOATS
THIS IS THEIR STORY.
Brian Saunders and Terri Deuel have been together for 11 years—or, in more relevant terms, three boats. They are partners in passagemaking now, but the difference in their boating backgrounds when they first met was dramatic.
Saunders was a veteran sailor and off shore cruiser, a liveaboard who had been crossing oceans and working in the marine industry for most of his life, selling boats, delivering boats, running charters. He’d grown up in the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club; his dad was a member, and Saunders learned to race flatties in the junior program. Soon he was sailing club members’ 40- and 50-footers (winning his first silver cup at age 18) and then racing internationally.
The first sailboat he owned, , was an Ed Monk Sr. design built in a hobby shop at a U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan. By the time a mutual friend introduced him to Deuel in 2008, Saunders had owned 12 vessels: 10 sailboats and two powerboats. (Never more than one at a time, he’s quick to point out.)
