http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/18/MN1KVLFGD.DTL
Lost sailors were in race for the joy of it
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
A sailboat race 12 miles out to sea was more a recreational cruise for lifelong sailors and outdoorsmen Matthew Kirby Gale and Anthony John Harrow.
The longtime friends were in Saturday's 27th annual Double Handed Lightship charity race for the fun, not for the competition, according to relatives.
The two men left the Golden Gate Yacht Club in Gale's 31-foot sailboat Daisy Saturday morning and never returned. Harrow's body was pulled ashore near Moss Beach Sunday. Gale has not been found, but wreckage from his boat was spotted in the water.
Nobody knows what happened, but the two men were last seen struggling through 16-foot swells in the open ocean.
It was a tragic end for two men who dedicated their lives to helping the sick, enjoying the outdoors and nurturing the environment.
Gale, 68, of Mill Valley, was a retired neurologist. Known by almost everyone as Kirby, he had worked primarily for Kaiser hospitals during the past decade.
He grew up on the East Coast, graduated from Princeton University and got his medical degree from Columbia University medical school. In the mid-1970s, he moved to San Francisco, where he enrolled in a naval hospital residency program.
He lived for a time in New Mexico, but moved back to the Bay Area in 1996 after a divorce.
An outdoorsman and mountaineer, he had climbed some of the highest peaks in California, Colorado and New Mexico, according to his son, also named Matthew.
He had continued working as an adviser to hospital interns after his retirement, but spent most of his time going on adventures. He has gone trekking with friends in Tibet and Nepal and went to Africa last year, his son said.
"He really enjoyed many different things," said his son. "He's a very avid reader and was picking up new hobbies all the time. Our house is almost like a library. He would read a book or two a week, fiction and nonfiction and some academic and lighter materials, too. He was also very much an art lover."
Gale met Harrow seven years ago, and the two men seemed to hit it off right away, according to family members.
Harrow, 72, of Larkspur, was born and raised in England, but moved to the United States about 45 years ago and became a citizen.
Known by his friends as Tony, he worked for many years in the insurance industry, retiring two years ago, but he was always involved in other activities, including volunteer work helping AIDS patients.
A talented rower, he coached for a time at the Marin Rowing Association and was an avid birder and amateur botanist, according to his wife. He conducted a weekly census of birds at the Rodeo Lagoon, in the Marin Headlands, and hiked all over Marin County.
Quiet, with a wry sense of humor, Harrow enjoyed Gale's intellect.
"They were close friends," said Mrs. Harrow, who asked that her first name not be used. "They had quite the intellectual life together. They talked about opera and boats and literature and the ways of the world. They were philosophers."
Gale and Harrow enjoyed sailing, but it was a hobby for them both, according to their families. "He has been a hobbyist sailor on and off for the past 40 years, mostly just pleasure sailing," said Gale's son. "He's raced a handful of times over the years, but the boat he was sailing was not by any means a racing boat."
The two men viewed the race as an exciting challenge, and Gale even put in a new radio system with a telephone line in preparation for the big day.
"They had not done a race like this," Harrow's wife said. "I think they thought they were going out for a day on the ocean. It should have been pretty easy. That's what they thought."
They were last seen alive hitting swells so high that it was difficult for the racers to see the other boats, Coast Guard officials told the family.
"There is some sort of comfort," Gale's son said, "knowing that it happened when he was doing something he enjoyed."
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