The love story behind Magnetic Island Race Week
From a life-saving first encounter to a lengthy battle with cancer, the unconventional love story of yachties Rob and Lisa Fogarty is wilder than the seven seas.
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When people ask Rob and Lisa Fogarty why they love sailing, they can’t help but also share about their love for each other.
It all started on New Years Eve, 1969, when Rob’s father was urgently pulled away from giving a speech at the Mounts Bay Sailing Club in WA. A newborn child needed a lifesaving blood transfusion.
Rob was only 11-years-old. While fireworks lit up the sky to bring in the new year, his father was saving the life of Rob’s future wife, Lisa.
It would be 28 years before their paths crossed again.
Rob was working as a private investigator, and having a wild ride of it.
He said in that time he was electrocuted, glassed, shot, stabbed, struck by lightning, held up at gunpoint, declared dead for a minute-and-a-half and worked as a security guard for politicians and celebrities, including Elle McPherson.
By 1997, Rob was working as a security guard at Karrinyup Shopping Centre when Mazzuchelli’s Jewellers was raided by three men with balaclavas, shotguns, and sledgehammers.
Rob and his colleague, Les, responded to the scene. When the offenders spotted them, they were forced to the ground.
Rob tried to keep the armed men’s attention on him so they would ignore Les, who had a family.
The men eventually fled the scene.
Two weeks later, Rob came into work early to receive a thank you letter for his services.
Lisa was managing a high-end fashion store called Jordano in the centre, when she suddenly passed out behind the counter.
Rob responded to the call and resuscitated the unconscious 28-year-old as she was turning blue.
“I came to in his arms and panicked like no tomorrow,” Lisa said.
“I was petrified, absolutely petrified.”
For weeks after, Rob would come to the store and offer to walk Lisa to her car. She still had no idea what he had done for her and was suspicious. It was around the time of the Claremont murders involving Perth’s most notorious serial killer.
“Every time I tried to close the store he would be there. But he never told me he was the one who resuscitated me,” Lisa said, until one day Rob stopped showing up at Lisa’s store.
Two years later, Lisa was a counter manager for Clinique, at Aherns in Perth.
“I walked through security and there sitting at the cameras was Robert Fogarty. My first words were ‘Are you following me?’” Lisa said.
“It would seem you are following me. I’ve been working here for two years,” Rob replied.
Several months later, the pair attended a farewell party at a local pub where they finally had their first date, however, it was interrupted when Rob received a phone call – his 73-year-old father had passed away from cancer.
When Rob returned to work the pair started dating.
It wasn’t until their families met that they discovered Rob’s father had saved Lisa’s life through the blood transfusion when she was born.
Rob mentioned he had also saved Lisa’s life when they first met too, which happened to be on his father’s birthday.
“It was just like Rob, he’s so humble. Who saves someone’s life and doesn’t even tell them?” Lisa said.
Rob, a bachelor until he was 42, said from the moment he saved Lisa he knew he was going to marry her.
So, Lisa went out and bought an engagement ring, asking when he planned to propose.
Lisa and Rob married on February 24, 2001.
But there were stormy seas ahead for Rob and Lisa when in 2016, Rob was diagnosed with prostate cancer and told if he didn’t get treatment in three weeks, he would have three months to live.
Lisa went to work on a battle plan to help them fight the disease.
The pair sold everything to afford treatment, including cutting-edge robotic surgery, chemotherapy at Greenslopes Private Hospital, and pursued alternative therapies in Fiji.
“To find out he was the one who saved my life, his father saved my life, and then for him to only have three months to live, I was never going to give up on him,” Lisa said.
On May 12, 2016, the doctors told Rob he was on the road to a full recovery and he decided he wanted to work on Hamilton Island and continue sailing.
He got halfway through an application with Hamilton Island Enterprises before wondering “Who would employ a cancer survivor?”
But Rob was offered a job and moved to Hamilton Island on July 8, 2019, while Lisa sold their five-bedroom, three-storey home on the 18th hole of Brookwater Golf and Country Club in Brisbane.
By the time they both settled on Hamilton Island, they had one suitcase of clothes each, having sold everything for Rob’s treatment.
However, they had just enough money left to purchase the Emma-Kate – a 2007 Sun Odyssey Jeanneau 39 DS – on June 30, 2020.
“We could float out on the ocean and live peacefully together until the end. That’s what the Emma-Kate was to us,” Lisa said.
Rob and Lisa originally wanted to call the boat ‘Deep’ because their love for sailing and the sea reflects the deep love they have for each other.
“When we’re on the water, we couldn’t be anymore together,” Lisa said.
Rob and Lisa moved to Magnetic Island on April 19, 2022, with a dream of helping cancer survivors come back together as families and get back into society.
Together, they wrote a book called Creating Happy Families and have started Maggie Island Bubble Tea Shop.
But their new dream still involves a few sacrifices, and the 2023 SeaLink Magnetic Race Week will be their last regatta with the Emma-Kate, which is up for sale.
While it won’t be their last boat, the Fogartys are ready to put down their roots on land and hope the Emma Kate will go out with a win.
With Rob at the helm, the crew is currently in the lead in the Non-Spinnaker Division.
“We are living examples that dreams do come true,” Lisa said.
“And with the belief we have in each other, we know our dreams can happen too.”
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Originally published as The love story behind Magnetic Island Race Week
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