Marike Finlay has skippered sailing voyages from the Great Lakes to the Caribbean along the Canadian and American eastern seaboard; she also spent many seasons sailing in the Pacific from Panama to Southeast Alaska. Most recently, she has been sailing in the Mediterranean.

After teaching literature and communications at McGill University for two decades, working as a psychoanalyst and developing an organic farm in Quebec, she moved to Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore where, when not voyaging, she works as a writer and an environmental and rural coastal activist.

The author of numerous academic books and articles, Finlay is most proud of her collection of short stories, The Killing Ear, and an illustrated history of the Lunenburg Foundry, Casting a Legend, which was co-authored with Karin Cope. Cope and Finlay have also long maintained a blog on sailing in British Columbia with a political and environmental focus, entitled West by East (https://quoddysrun.ca/).