About Us
Gene’ has been sailing practically his whole life. Yet Susea only started sailing when she met Gene. Even though they went to the same grammar school, same junior high school and same high school, Gene, a school friend of Susea’s brothers, Mark and David, who were also friends of Gene’s youngest brother Glen, Gene and Susea didn’t get together until 1976.
Gene was proprietor of Bay Scuba Underwater Yacht Maintenance, a business he started in 1970 in Marina del Rey, CA, and then sold in 1978.
Gene proposed to Susea in 1978 on his 27′ Catalina sailboat named La Brisa. They married and moved to Seattle, WA, having La Brisa trucked up there to be with them. They spent their honeymoon on La Brisa cruising the great NW and Victoria, B.C. Unfortunately, but fortunately, Susea got a toothache and they anchored off Friday Harbor (San Juan Island), WA., to have the tooth looked at. Friday Harbor was small and beautiful. “It was like the forest of Big Bear, CA., down on the ocean, at sea level,” Susea mused. They both fell madly in love with Friday Harbor.
As Gene and Susea both grew up in Venice, CA., which is about 18 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, moving near downtown Seattle, although a beautiful city, was a bit much. It was either go back to Venice, CA., or move further north to Friday Harbor. They picked Friday Harbor and sold La Brisa in order to buy property on the island. For the next year they lived in an 18′ trailor, ran a cardboard recycling business (that Susea hated), and handbuilt a house. Turns out that house was featured in the Pacific section of the Seattle Times (July 1981), as a Hand-built house in the San Juans, just as Gene and Susea moved off-island to help deliver a brand-new 43′ Serendity sloop from San Francisco, through the Panama Canal, into the West Indies. That was an eight- month adventure. Then they returned to Friday Harbor, to start over in a way.
Over the years Gene has built over fifty single-family homes in Friday Harbor. Four of the homes are waterfronts and a number of others he was contracted to build for some of Friday Harbor’s most upstanding citizens. The project Gene is most proud of is is the small subdivision he and his father developed, called “Gould’s Meadow.” It is one of the first ”affordable” housing projects in Friday Harbor, and it has become a show piece for its realization. The street, Terra Bella Lane, is owner-occupied and the pride of ownership prevails in the colorful decor and beautiful landscaping.
Susea became a Real Estate Broker, opening her own one-woman office, which was easy as Gene was her best customer. “He always needed another property to build another house on,” Susea admitted. But Susea’s real passion is photography and writing. Her most well known published photo is the cover of Steve Miller’s Fly Like An Eagle album. It is a triple-platinum selling album.
Her most successful published endeavor, besides one-act plays and monologues performed in the San Juan Community Theatre in Friday Harbor, WA., or magazine articles, is as co-author of the non-fiction novel, Red Sky in Mourning. It was purchased and published by Hyperion Books in 2002.
Gene admits to being in his element out cruising the world on their Catalina 50. They purchased Moody Blues in 2003. It was their 25th wedding anniversary. Instead of giving each other silver (the standard 25th wedding anniversary gift) they gave each other 25′ of fiberglass!
Susea has mixed emotions regarding year round cruising and being away from home, family and friends. ”Sometimes it’s pure heaven and other times I feel in exile. But chances are to be home year-round now, I wouldn’t find it as fulfilling. Innately I know what Mark Twain said is true: ’Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
“Also, my mom used to say, ’Susea, all you want is your cake and to eat it too!’ Nothing has changed in regard to that! I mean, is there a point in not going for it?”
Gene and Susea left Friday Harbor, “going for it,” on Moody Blues in August, 2007.
(Photo by Jose Allen of s/v Stravaig, shot in June, 2008, Playa Panama, Costa Rica.)