Brian Eyre Grinnell, 60

Harpswell, Maine

On July 26, 2018, Brian Grinnell fell ill while working aboard the tugboat Edna on the Hudson River. Five days later he underwent surgery for a brain tumor, and was subsequently diagnosed with a glioblastoma, terminal brain cancer. Brian died peacefully at home, in Harpswell, on April 8, 2019. He was 60 years old.

Brian was born in New Rochelle, New York, on May 12, 1958 to Katherine Chandler Carr and Richard Doane Grinnell. He was one of nine siblings – eight brothers and one sister. He grew up and attended Catholic and public schools in Mamaroneck and Larchmont, N.Y. Family on both sides have strong maritime roots. Stories of ship captains from Searsport, a grandfather who was the commodore of the Larchmont Yacht Club, a mother who loved to sail and who after college worked at a sailing publishing house in NYC, and an aunt, Mary Lou, who was instrumental in developing competitive women’s sailing worldwide: It is these ancestors who populated Brian’s imagination. As a child growing up on Long Island Sound, Brian was immediately drawn to the sea. From frostbiting with his uncle Mike, sailing his mother’s Cape Cod Mercury (that he subsequently sank), boating and fishing with his father and siblings in many a gale aboard a converted steel WWII lifeboat, the Ponderosa, and learning to surf from his older siblings, Brian become forever enamored with vessels and the sea. Basically, he loved anything that floated.

At the age of 17, Brian began a life of traveling, beginning with his first hitch from New York to Colorado, and then on to California to surf and live outside LA. As a young adult he would continue to travel, work, and meet people, always with a dog by his side. His stories included making donuts on the strip in Venice, working at a Country Club in San Francisco where he met Mick Jagger, to climbing oil field towers in Wyoming. He subsequently hitched back and forth across the United States 14 times before settling in Montauk, N.Y., the first of three places by the sea he would call home.

In Montauk, Brian began his maritime career commercial fishing aboard the dragger Pontos, and longline tile fishing aboard the Restless and the Deliverance, and with Atlantis Fisheries fishing from Block Island Sound to the Chesapeake Bay. The many years in Montauk was shared with a loving group of friends with whom he surfed, ice boated, sailed and enjoyed many dinners in his teepee.

It was from Montauk that Brian set sail for Happy Valley Goose Bay, Newfoundland, Labrador aboard his Columbia 26. Off Grand Manan he lost the propeller on his engine, and had a memorable night as he encountered a school of whales in the moonlight. For repairs, he anchored in Lubec, found the place enchanting, and there decided to set down new roots. While living in Lubec, Brian began to restore a Rosborough schooner, developed another community of friends, and met and married Molly Stone, whom he divorced in 2005. They had two beautiful children. His beloved daughter Willow, and son Tucker. While in Lubec, Brian attended boat-building school, after which he became co-owner of Lubec Shipyard, with Alba Briggs, where he and his crew custom built the Lubec 28 based on a Bob Ellis design.

After leaving the boat-building business, Brian moved to midcoast Maine where he lived and worked in the Camden and Rockport areas. In 2006, Brian began a merchant mariner career, climbing the hawsepipe to run as mate and sometimes captain on tugboats. In 2009 he met Cindy Davis, with whom he lived in Harpswell. They married in 2014. It was in Harpswell that Brian was able to find “his home by the sea.” Brian and Cindy found a loving community of friends and enjoyed surfing and sailing with his children. Brian found another wooden sailboat to restore, this time an Ohlson 36, and cruised the Maine coast on a series of “classic plastic” vintage Pearson sailboats with his family, friends and dogs.

To meet Brian was to meet an energetic, loving, tenacious, funny, and whole-hearted man. His children, wife, family, and friends were the most important to him. He lived every day to its fullest, with a devotion to the sea, and was deeply loved. Brian’s smile, humor, laugh, and good nature will be missed by all who knew him, particularly his wife Cynthia (Cindy) of Harpswell, Maine, his children Tucker and Willow, of Camden, his siblings and the rest of his extended family. A celebration of life service will be held for Brian in Harpswell at the end of September.