About The Owner

Michael Ashby is a retired professor of chemistry and biochemistry whose job is now full-time cruising. Drawn to the sea at an early age, he enjoyed skin diving in the Mediterranean while in middle school when his father was stationed in Turkey and SCUBA diving in the South China Sea while in high school when his father was stationed in the Philippines. Michael’s first job was a work-study position at a dive shop in the Philippines. Notably, his high school alma mater was destroyed during the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. Michael’s father retired shortly after being stationed in Tucson, and Michael took up diving in the Sea of Cortez while in college, mostly in San Carlos Nuevo Guaymas (Sonora, Mexico), which was just a few hours drive from Tucson. It was in Tucson that Michael purchased his first sailboat, a West Wight Potter 15. The boat was sold when Michael graduated college and he took up temporary academic positions in Germany and Chicago before accepting a tenure-track position at the University of Oklahoma. Although he did not own a sailboat while land-locked in Oklahoma, Michael would sometimes rent 25-35′ sailboats when he attended conferences on the west coast of the United States. During his years of employment, Michael routinely took sabbaticals to places with ready access to the ocean, including New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. During his final six years of employment , Michael would rent a beach house in South Africa for a month once a year, which helped remind him of his connection to the sea. Thus, his first task upon retirement was to purchase the Aegir-Ran, which ironically was located in San Carlos, thus completing a circle that was begun almost four decades earlier.