Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019
It was a Sunday morning in early June when Jeremy McGeary quit his job at Good Old Boat , via email, without notice. It was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. “I’m afraid that recent, rather sudden developments in my health force me to give up my work.” The British-ness of his message allows me to hear his accented voice. He went on to offer suggestions for the impossible task of getting through the September issue without him, with no replacement in place. He promised to deliver some odds and ends still in the pipeline, but in the end, he didn’t get the time to do so. He died July 8.
I never knew Jeremy without melanoma. Since I joined the Good Old Boat team in 2016, he was slight, struggled to put on weight. I never worked with the husky guy known to the folks who worked with him for years at Cruising World, the guy pictured on their September 2006 cover. And there were no other clues to his illness. Over the past couple years, as he increasingly worked from hospital beds and infusion centers, he never missed a deadline and continued to come up with article titles that were spot-on and clever as heck. Jeremy’s “chemo brain” was better than
mine at my sharpest.
I’ve told many people that working alongside Jeremy has been like a masterclass in editing. I leaned on him for advice on acquiring stories. For 18 issues, I studied the changes he made to the text I’d handed off to him, and I learned. When Jeremy got wind of my praise, he quickly dismissed it, turning the focus to Tim Murphy at Cruising World. “He has the magic wand that turns a tortured sentence into a poem. I’m a hack.”
He wasn’t a hack.
He was a brilliant lifelong learner who liked to laugh and had a keen wit, but he was never boastful, to a fault. Things, remarkable things, from his past would only trickle out of him over time, and only because a subject came up. I just read the following from Yves-Marie Tanton’s remembrance of Jeremy: “While working at Tanton Yacht Design, he took it upon himself to learn French. So, after work he frequently took the road to Providence to catch up with language lessons. Within six months he learnt enough to proceed to the translation from French to English of Guy Bernardin’s book Sailing Around the World: A Family Retraces Joshua Slocum’s Voyage.” I had no idea Jeremy could even order a beer in French. I wonder if Yves-Marie knew that Jeremy was at the post-restoration launching of Endeavor at the Royal Huisman shipyard in Holland, having received a personal invite from Elizabeth Meyer, or that he once took a day sail on Shamrock V?
Growing up in England, Jeremy early on set his sights on the sailing world. Sometime after hitching a ride across the Atlantic, he began work for Gulfstar. Later he worked as a yacht designer for Pedrick Yacht Design and then Rodger Martin Design. Upon returning to England, Jeremy became chief designer at Camper & Nicholsons. Returning to the States, he continued in the trade with Tanton Yacht Design. But all along, it was the printed word, about sailing, that dominated his interest. For years, he distinguished himself on the mastheads of both Practical Sailor and Cruising World.
Jeremy was working for Cruising World when Good Old Boat was started in 1998. He sent founders Karen Larson and Jerry Powlas a letter of encouragement. A decade passed before he signed on as senior editor. That was a decade ago. “He was the guy who really made the magazine’s personality come to life,” says Karen. “His wide range of sailing experience and technical know-how made him invaluable, and he was a personal friend to all.”
Jeremy finished up his resignation letter with, “I can’t tell you how much I am going to miss my Good Old Boat colleagues and routine.” We’re going to miss you too, Jeremy, and the routine goes on for us, but it will not be the same.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
