Captain Don MaidlowDon Maidlow was born to a Canadian father and an English mother shortly before the end of the Second World War. He went to sea at the age of fifteen, first sailing on fishing boats, then from 1960 to 1984 he sailed on ships registered to the British,Kuwait, and Lebanese merchant navies. He obtained a British master's certificate of competency (class 1) at South Shields Marine College in 1973. He continued sailing as chief officer and captain until migrating to Australia with his family at the end of 1984. In Australia, he worked as a stevedore supervisor, a state manager for a stevedoring company and shipping agency, then as a marine pilot and loading master. He also worked as an operations manager for a shipping company based in Sydney. In 1993 he bought an ocean-going ketch in which he went cruising with his wife, Gill, when they left Sydney in 1997. When Gill was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2001 and could no longer go sailing, he started a small company called Matelot Marine and earned a living from doing boat surveys, shipwright work, and delivering vessels around the world. He is now seventy-six years old and lives at Kyogle, in the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales, with his wife Gill. Read More Read Less