There are many great stories of circumnavigation, almost all filled with extreme challenges and bravery. Then there is Mike Harker's tale. Harker is a paraplegic who spent six years in a hospital bed, told he would never walk again. Not only did he walk, he took a brand new production sailboat nearly 30,000 miles around the globe, in less than 11 months – alone.
MIKE HARKERWanderlust prepares to Leave the Bahamas. The t-shirt, the salt-and-pepper beard and the sun-pressed crow's feet give Harker a sage, man-of-the-sea look. That impression is reinforced by his matter-of-fact tone, the one he uses to recount a daring round-the-world sail he took aboard his 2007 Hunter 49, Wanderlust III.
At a reception held in his honor by Hunter at the Miami International Boat Show in February, Harker shared a host of sea stories, like the time his high-water alarm went off in the mid-Atlantic. As it happened, the problem was a leaking water pump and his repair was inspired.
Harker said he grabbed a self-tapping stainless steel screw, coated it with 3M's 5200 adhesive sealant, and screwed it right down into the hole in the housing, permanently fixing the leak. He then had to then deal with a main alternator and a generator that had both been drenched in salt water.
Through it all, Harker seemed most annoyed by the fact that he had to spend almost 100 minutes of his 500-minute satellite phone budget to get the backup alternator to work.
THE ACCIDENT
That Harker can even walk is one of those miracles you hear about. A 1977 hang-gliding accident in Grenada sent him tumbling 400 feet down a sheer cliff into the ocean. He broke 33 bones and was in a coma for 11 months. He spent the next six years in a hospital bed, paralyzed. The doctors who told him he would never walk again obviously didn't know him. Harker was then, and still is, a driven adventurer, the kind of person for whom all obstacles are just challenges to be surmounted.
MIKE HARKERWanderlust on a port tack.
In the late 1960s, Harker was one of the pioneers in the sport of hang-gliding. His first rigs were nothing more than bamboo, plastic tubing and duct tape. But as he developed the equipment, and his skills, the high-adventure accomplishments began to accumulate. He flew from the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany, and glided down Japan's Mt. Fuji. The 1977 accident – the film of which leaves viewers shuddering – left him with control of only a few small muscles on the inside of his thighs.
Today he stands uneasily, finding balance only in constant movement. Endless physical therapy taught him to leverage the miniscule muscle control he has to allow a sort of uneasy gait. Aboard Wanderlust III, Harker has installed a StairMaster, which he uses by balancing himself with his hands on the cockpit dodger overhead. He is dedicated to staying fit and exercises nearly every morning during his cruises while his steel-cut oats are cooking in the galley.
THE BOAT
As befits his nonconformist personality, Harker circumnavigated aboard a standard production sailboat, the Hunter 49. He had previously owned and sailed a Hunter 466 on several transoceanic voyages and enjoyed the comparative luxury of the Hunter while sailing in ocean waters. Traditionally, ocean sailors have favored smaller, full-keel boats to venture into the blue water. Not many traditionalists would have considered a Hunter to be a true ocean passagemaker.
But Harker's philosophy about the Hunter was, "why not?" Even just learning to sail was a metaphorical jump into the deep end of the pool. He only learned to sail in 2000 aboard his newly purchased 466 in a sailing rally down the Mexican coast called the "Baja Ha-Ha."
