Fireside tales – Part 1

As he and his brother Olaf begin to loosen the reins (a little) at their famous Pewaukee, Wisconsin headquarters, Peter Harken eventually conceded that it was about time that he told a little more of the remarkable story of the rise and rise of one of performance sailing’s pre-eminent names...

Peter and Olaf Harken were born in Indonesia and grew up in the Philippines, sons of a Dutch father and Swedish mother. ‘Actually, we could have been almost as rich as Onassis by now but we lost everything in the Second World War! My Dutch grandfather ran a small fleet of ships operating between Holland and South America, which were all destroyed or captured during the war. My father, who worked for Caterpillar in Indonesia, helped fight with the small local Dutch army, got captured and then spent from 1941 to 1945 in a Japanese prison camp.

‘My mother, brother and I all managed to escape to Borneo, then to New Zealand and Australia, to be reunited finally in San Francisco after the war. With his emaciated arms wrapped tightly around us my father smiled and said simply, “War is hell, life’s not always fair, let’s get on with it!” And both he and my mother never looked back, never once whingeing about the past and our losses. They gave us a wonderful life. Man, they were tough!’

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