We remember Mike as a loving husband to Wendy, father to Sophie, grandfather to Jacob and Frankie, brother, and a phenomenal son.
Mike was an exceptionally kind man who went out of his way to encourage, help, and ensure the safety and wellbeing of his family, especially as they became elderly.
It is a joy to celebrate Mike’s life today here in Marwood, where he lived for the first nine years of his life and attended Marwood School. He has also had a home in Middle Marwood at Greenhill since 2007
Next door to this church, are the Marwood Hill Gardens, created by the late Doctor James Smart. He was for many years the Harris family doctor. Doctor Smart often reminded the family of the night in February 1950 when he delivered Mike as a baby.
It was a memorable event for the doctor because on the way to the Nursing Home, he stopped at the traffic lights on the Long Bridge at Barnstaple . A car, unfortunately, skidded into the back of his vehicle, injuring the doctor and breaking bones in his neck.
Although the doctor was in agony, rather than going to hospital, he was worried about Mike’s mother, so he bravely carried on to the nursing home to deliver the baby
Mike was adventurous from an early age. His mother always told the story of how difficult it was to keep him, as a baby of eight months, in his cot. He could climb up the bars just using his arm strength, balance on the top and then army crawl down the outside, gripping the outside bars headfirst. Then he would roll across the floor to explore – laughing all the time. His parents resorted to an eighteen-inch wooden extension on top of the cot, their only mistake was to not make a roof as Mike crawled up and over that one too with great gusto!
Mike’s enthusiasm for adventure continued and was expressed through a variety of sporting endeavours. He was one of the first people to surf here on the North Devon coast.
With his dad Alan and his friend Graham Saunders , he enjoyed rifle shooting at the Braunton Rifle Club and competed in national competitions at Bisley.
Alongside these other sports, Mike’s great passion for sailing, was fostered from an early age and would continue to feature throughout his life as he became an adventurous sailor.
His dad Alan taught him to sail in his early teens off Ilfracombe in the yacht Zara. Zara was a beautifully designed wooden 27ft tumlaire yacht, built in Germany in the 1930’s. Sister yachts to Zara had been raced by the German navy in the 1930’s.
She was moored at Watermouth, a tidal cove, which meant that Zara, having a deep keel, had wooden legs fitted. Mike’s job was always to unscrew the wooden legs before going sailing and refit them when they returned.
The yacht was a wonderful introduction to yachting and an inspiration to Mike as she had previously belonged to Adlard Coles, one of the most highly regarded figures in ocean sailing, at the time.
Coles had written about her in one of his books, saying he had ‘never owned a boat with more endearing manners, which was such a delight to sail, as Zara, his first tumlaire yacht.
While working in Holland, many years later, Mike bought Sapphire, a Warrior 35 yacht, both, to sail and to live on in Holland at Rotterdam.
Sapphire has given him so many hours of pleasure over many years. He was never as happy as off on a sailing trip. He usually sailed with his friend the late David Laybourn, who he had worked with for many years in Germany and Holland.
On one of their many trips, they set off from Spain, travelled over to Cape Verde and then across to South America where they visited Surinam and Venezuela. They even sailed a little way up one of the South American rivers.
His most adventurous and dangerous sailing trip, however, was with John Clements and Gus Davies when the trio sailed Sapphire from St Lucia across the Atlantic to Ilfracombe.
They set off in May but encountered incredible storm force winds, that saw them face waves the size of buildings. At this point, having with no way to contact their families, they genuinely wondered, if they would ever see home again.
They had no choice of route, as the wind took the yacht on a different course than they had plotted. The strong winds meant that they by-passed Bermuda and the Azores, which extended the length of their voyage to 4,000 miles. The three men took it in turns, to work in shifts, two hours on and four hours off. However, they rarely got any respite from the storm, let alone sleep.
The incessant onslaught of the waves meant that they were constantly wet through during the two-week storm. While washing their cutlery and crockery on deck in the first storm, a wave had washed everything into the sea – after that they had to eat out of saucepans.
They had plenty of food to last, however, it was too dangerous in those conditions, to boil water, so their food was only ever half cooked.
Things became much worse when about sixteen hundred miles before reaching Ireland, the auto pilot stopped working. Battling the storms they eventually reached the welcome safety of a harbour in Southern Ireland.
Mike wasn’t just known for his sailing. From an early age Mike had a passion for building, particularly carpentry. On leaving school, he served a traditional carpentry apprenticeship, with a long-established Barnstaple building business run by Clive and Brian Burgess .
Mike’s potential talent for building had been spotted while he attended school at Belmont College. His parents received a letter asking them to provide him with a boiler suit to protect his school uniform to allow him to undertake a few projects around the school. Thinking this was part of a normal class project they agreed.
These projects turned out to be laying concrete and helping spread tarmac on the school drive with the caretaker, during the time the rest of the class were in lessons. His parents were not amused, as they had just paid the term’s fees and didn’t realise this included providing unpaid building labour!
Mike showed determination and drive when he started a building business, Harris and Upton, at Braunton, in his early twenties with Dave Upton. They built a number of houses and did general building work.
Later in his late twenties he built Europa Holiday Park at Woolacombe, which he ran for many years. He successfully turned a gorse covered piece of hillside, on the main road into Woolacombe, into a thriving campsite and self-catering complex with a large club house.
During most of his forties, he enjoyed working in Germany, doing building work all over the country there, especially, in Dresden and Berlin.
He specialised in fitting ceilings high up in sports halls, hospitals, and stadiums.
The first year, there, he had to reassure his parents, who were very concerned about his safety, as he was working on very old five story buildings, with just ladders and no scaffolding.
Later in Holland, he worked on the building of the prestigious ING Bank and amongst other work, fitted ceilings at Schiphol airport.
His last big building project, for himself, was when he renovated Greenhill bungalow and the two derelict farm buildings opposite at Middle Marwood.
Micheal took great pride and pleasure in creating his five-acre cider orchard at Greenhill and hoped that it would be a lasting legacy. He dug all the pits for the trees and planted them all himself with a friend’s help.
When the trees were young, some of them would be blown over by the strong winds. Mike enjoyed roping them to his car and standing them up again.
Finally, Mike was an incredibly kind man, always willing to help out a friend or family member. One example of his great care and concern for friends was exhibited during his time in Rotterdam.
While living on his boat in Holland, he had become friends with a Norwegian family who had sailed down from Oslo to Holland in a large yacht that the family, had recently bought, to live on in the South of France.
By the time they reached Rotterdam, they had realised that they had made an enormous error in thinking that they had sufficient sailing experience to continue their journey down to the Mediterranean.
Realizing, that they could not afford to pay anyone to help them, Mike, out of the kindness of his heart and very concerned for their safety, especially their young children, offered, free of charge, to sail their yacht down to the South of France with them.
Well before reaching Finisterre, Mike realised that the yacht wasn’t handling as she should. Then they hit a violent storm, and it was obvious to him that there were major problems with the fairly new yacht, and that she was starting to break up.
The family were absolutely petrified and fearing that one of them would be washed overboard, Mike ordered them to go below and stay there.
He immediately made a May Day call, and spent the next twelve hours in the wheelhouse on his own battling the storm.
Eventually the French lifeboat managed to throw a tow rope to him. Michael always considered, that the most dangerous part of the whole experience, was having to leave the wheelhouse and cross the open deck to take the tow rope.
He was helped immensely by the captain of a passing cargo ship, who being aware of the emergency, manoeuvred his ship into a position to try and protect them as much as possible from the wind. The cargo ship stayed with them all night until the danger was over.
After being towed back to a French port and placed in a dry dock it was discovered that there had been a major design fault in the yacht’s construction.
Michael said he was glad that he had had the foresight to help them and probably avoid a tragedy.
To sum things up Michael lived a colourful, adventurous life in his own unique way.
A generous, kind, and thoughtful life, well lived, that has touched the life of many people.
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