We are the Grafs, Sharon and Michael, of Springfield, Illinois, proud owners of the Larabeck, a 42-foot yacht. 

Sharon is an ethnomusicologist at the University of Illinois at Springfield. She has always enjoyed music, travelling, and being outdoors. The combination of these interests inspired her to learn about American traditional music, and eventually to study musics from around the globe. She was born in Laramie, Wyoming, where she explored mountains and prairies on horseback and on skis. She met Michael in 1989, and with her love of the outdoors already firmly established, it was easy to become interested in sailing. This trip gives Sharon a chance to expand her knowledge of the culture and music of the South Pacific that she can share with her students and colleagues. Among her many accomplishments, Sharon is the 2004 Illinois State Old-time Fiddle Champion. 

Michael is an engineer who can build or fix just about anything and who caught the sailing bug at a young age. He was born in Luebeck Germany, a city with a long maritime history. His first sailing experience was in the boy scouts with a small boat called an "Optimist" and later took up windsurfing (also known as “sailboarding”). He outfitted his own "surfmobile" van in Germany, which took him to many windy destinations with his sailboards including the North and Baltic Seas and the Mediterranean. Moving to the U.S. in 1989, he continued to explore windsurfing opportunities including Lake Michigan, Columbia River Gorge, Cape Hatteras, and Corpus Christi. Michael came to the U.S. in the employ of a German company specialized in bag filling, and he has been designing and building packaging machines for companies across the country ever since. His combination of engineering skills and sailing knowledge keep the Larabeck sailing smoothly.