Mary Ahnie Estes McHugh & Patrick McHugh Biography

picture on the way ...

as told by Ahnie and as she says, "who is as long winded as always"

Some of you may remember that Pat and I started dating the fall of our senior year at Clover Park. We got married after college (in 1969), had a giant baby boy (Noel) in 1971, and moved to Europe when Noel was 3 months old. After a year there, we decided to become more responsible parents, so returned to Washington.

Pat managed a retail store, while I worked for attorneys (I had attended court reporting school after college). In the early 80's, Pat decided to return to college for a graduate degree, so we moved to Bellingham for him to attend WWU, while I got a job with more attorneys there.

In high school, Pat & I had always dreamed of living on a sailboat some day. We bought a large, beautiful sailboat and the 3 of us moved onto her in 1985, after years of sailing charter boats during our vacations. We lived on board for under a year, then we decided to figure out a different dream and sold the boat happily and moved off even more happily. Pat had his own computer network support business for a number of years, decided he'd had enough of that, and went into the sailing industry as a career, managing a bareboat charter fleet and sailing school, and getting his merchant marine's captain's license. A few years ago, he "jumped ship" so to speak and began his own business, Orca Sailing and Yacht Charters, with a friend, another ex-skipper. Orca does a number of things, namely, the company is a broker for people wanting to charter crewed yachts (sail and power ranging in size from 36' to 300') all over the world, but we also have sailing schools in the San Juan Islands, Alaska, the British Virgin Islands, Croatia, and are opening one in the Sea of Cortez. The nicest thing about Orca is that charter boat brokers are "required" to attend a certain number of yacht brokers' shows all over the world each year, so Pat "has to" do a lot of traveling to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Poor guy.

Over the years, I kept working for an attorney, doing litigation and trial support in wrongful death and traumatic injury cases all over the state. In the mid 90's, I spent a month at a time, 3 years running, trekking in the mountains of Nepal. In more recent years, Pat and I have both been enjoying numerous trips to the southern Caribbean (and Europe) and are looking forward to spending this December on islands offshore from Venezuela.

We only have the one son, who is now 34 years old and has always been a total delight. He is married to a wonderful woman who is an equal joy to us, and they gave us the best gift of all, Amelia, our now-3-year old granddaughter. She is, of course, not only gorgeous and brilliant, but like her mother, will just as happily punch a guy in the face in a soccer game as shine in her ballet class.

Life has been good, we have enjoyed it tremendously, and look forward to seeing all of you at the reunion!

Ahnie

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