It all started in the 1990s…

Before the internet. Riding bikes. Stick fighting in the park. Super Soakers. Ding Dong Ditch. Mighty Mites and Roman Candles. Ball Tag. We were free range kids and the outdoors were our Playground. Back then my uncle went in on a small sailboat with some friends of his. Being on the water was an awesome experience as a kid, and The adventures we had would stick with me for the rest of my life. It was pure and absolute freedom. I felt like we could go anywhere, with unlimited discoveries awaiting us.

These were also turbulent times. My Father randomly showed up at my house one day, after leaving when i was a baby. I wasn’t sure how to process it as I had always considered my stepfather as “dad”. My home life was becoming less and less stable, until my mother and Dad separated when I was 11. I had moved to a much larger school where I had my first experiences being bullied… I started to rebel. I was staying out late, doing delinquent stuff with friends, sometimes not even going home or even calling. I was avoiding the changes, and supressing my feelings to protect myself.

This continued on throughout my youth. I became really good at hiding my pain. I was a joker, and aligned myself with other fun people. We’d fool around in class, sometimes failing and returning to terrorize the teacher for another year. By this time I was no stranger to drugs and alcohol, although it took a few more years for me to get deeper into them.

I Felt like school was a waste, other than having introduced me to my first groups of friends. I left High school dissapointed and entered the workforce feeling like i had no skills that I could use. I Bounced from shitty job to shitty job. Retail. Labour. Painting houses… They all sucked and I never felt I had any purpose or fulfillment. I was fortunate enough to land an interview at a very famous luxury hotel. I didn’t understand the job I was applying for, but I knew it was an opportunity I couln’t let slip away. After four interviews, Including one with the general manager, I got the job. It was great but the industry was intense. Work hard, play hard… I fell deeper into substance use, but somehowi maintained. Graveyard shift? Cocaine. Need to sleep? Drink until you pass out. Rough morning? Whiskey in your coffee… Not to mention all of the social gatherings and music events. It didn’t matter what the substance was. You got it? I want it.

I kept this up for 20 years… But these things progress, and as I got older it was harder to recover. The missed opportunities stacked up. My hope for my potential to succeed dwindled. My depression grew. i was caught in a bad cycle and I could see the trajectory I was on. It was going to end horifically in disaster. I had to change.

There was one thing that kept me grounded during this past decade, something i could never give up. Sailing. It was in my mid 30s when my UNCLE decided to get back into sailing by partnering with someone who owned a sailboat. He had a new generation of kids in the family to take on adventures, (he was always the most fun guy in the family) including his own now. I was thrilled. That summer i immersed myself in sailing. And by the fall i was determined to get a boat of our own. My good friend and i had been sailing together all summer and we'd meet at the bar after a hard week to hang and chat about getting a boat. We'd look at listing all the time, but we didn't find anything for another 6 months, until one day in the early spring. Her name was Corina, a clean, cute well designed little US25 sailboat, and the price was right, plus she came with moorage, which was worth it alone. I called the owner to meet the next day, cash in hand, and she was ours.

We sailed on her for 7 years, learning the lines, upgrading her, and staying on many of the islands around the sailish sea. It was awesome, but eventually we wanted something bigger. So we started looking, for months again. I wanted something that i could be happy with for at least a decade, and take even further to places like Haida Gwaii, Alaska, and Mexico. Finally we found the perfect boat. She had standing headroom, was well-equipped, and best of all, she was one of a kind.

Around this time i had transferred to another department at work and becoming increasingly fed up with the deteriorating conditions there. I knew that i wanted to be an entrepreneur, incorporating sailing into my business somehow. I had also begun my recovery journey aroundthat time, and wanted to be of service to others in recovery, transferring my hospitality experience to those who need it the most. I was referred to an entrepreneurship course by a counselor of mine and jumped on the chance. It was a charity program by an organization called employ to empower, women-led, with the goal of HELPING anyone struggling with barriers to follow their dreams and turn their passions into a business of their own.

It was in this program that I came up with the idea for the East Van Yacht Club. I knew that i could make a difference, satisfy my creativity, and get out on the water more if i just went after it…