Richard du Moulin first crossed paths with Sean Day in the late 1980s when both were interviewing for the CEO’s post at the old Navios Corp.
Day won that contest, but it was the start of a friendship that would endure for 35 years until his death in August at the age of 74.
Du Moulin was among around 400 mourners who squeezed into St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Day’s long-time home of Greenwich, Connecticut, last week for a memorial service celebrating a life well lived inside and outside of shipping.
“The church was packed with friends and family — people flew in from all over the world,” du Moulin said in an interview.
“Sean was the smartest person I’ve ever met in shipping. But he had a great manner with people. While he was the smartest guy in the room, he never acted that way.”
Educated as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the UK, Day went on to lead Teekay for nearly two decades as executive chairman. This was a fairly unusual structure for shipping in which management control was divided between the chairman and chief executive.
Day worked closely with successive CEOs Bjorn Moller and Peter Evensen during his time in the chair from 1999 until his retirement in 2017, a period of great expansion from Teekay’s roots as a traditional tanker company. He served as chairman emeritus for two more years.
The South African described the leadership role in his final interview with TradeWinds in April 2019, conducted in his home office in Greenwich, where he was neighbours with former OMI Corp and Diamond S Shipping chief executive Craig H Stevenson Jr.
“I worked closely with Bjorn and Peter,” Day said then. “They were the CEOs and I was not. I’ve always said a chairman advises and never instructs, while a CEO listens and never ignores. It was a cooperative relationship.”
But there was more to Day than his life as a shipping executive, and it was partly those shared interests away from work that drove his friendship with du Moulin.
Both were entranced by the water — Day spent his youth riding tug boats in Cape Town harbour — skilled competitive sailors and generally athletic, with a common love of mountain climbing and hiking. Day also carried a passion for tennis into his later years.
“We became fast friends. We had such parallel interests,” du Moulin said.
“Sean was a highly competent sailor and seafarer. He was in the South African merchant marine and navy and had sailed in the race from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro. We both were fascinated by maritime from the time we were little children.”
Fascinated by maritime
The shipping part of their relationship got closer when Day invited du Moulin to join the board of Teekay Tankers in 2007.
“Professionally, he was highly perceptive and could think both strategically and tactically,” du Moulin said. “He was famous at Navios for getting as many options as he could and controlling risk.”
Du Moulin, a former leader at Marine Transport Lines and Intrepid Shipping, was named commodore of the Connecticut Maritime Association (CMA) in 1999, fresh off his chairmanship of Intertanko.
He recalls that six years later, he and CMA stalwart Jim Lawrence tried to persuade Day to accept the award. Day was hesitant, saying that Moller was the public face of Teekay and not to be upstaged. It was only after Moller learned of the idea and insisted that Day would consent.
Day’s fan club was far from confined to those working in shipping.
Finance man Joe Massoud — based in Westport, Connecticut — recalls being hired in 1998 by the Kattegat Trust, a charitable vehicle dedicated to Teekay founder Torben Karlshoej.
Managing director Massoud came to Anholt USA, which handles non-shipping investment, around the same time Day joined Teekay and was asked to work with the affiliate. That brought the two men into daily contact, and Massoud soon came to view his elder as a mentor.
“I had worked for a couple of people earlier in my career who were extremely successful and they just weren’t that nice,” Massoud said. “I was only 30. Sean was the first guy I worked for who was well respected, very successful and just a super humble guy.
“He was always focused on his four daughters and his wife. He was always acutely interested in other people. Even when we would talk about doing a transaction, for him it was always about ‘how well you know the CEO or the CFO’. He was always about the people.”
Friends say Day’s highly active lifestyle began to change several years ago when he felt the first signs of a progressive muscle-wasting disease that bore some resemblance to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, although doctors were able to rule out this as the affliction.
It ultimately weighed on his ability to travel and get around as he so loved, but friends and his family at the memorial service said he never complained.
Lucky man
“He came from middle-class roots and he realised he’d been a lucky guy, both with what he’d done in shipping and with his beautiful family,” Massoud said. “A lot of us have been lucky, but we don’t stop to reflect on it. It’s one more thing I’ve tried to learn from Sean.”
In later years, Day and his wife of 43 years, Virginia, sold their home and bought a smaller apartment on Greenwich’s Steamboat Road near the Indian Harbor Yacht Club.
Just as he had many years ago in South Africa, he still enjoyed a great view of the water.
Day is survived by Virginia and their four daughters — Anne, Alexandra, Whitney and Robyn, all of whom spoke at his memorial service.
The family has asked that any donations be made to Lawhill Maritime Center in Simon’s Town, which Day had supported and which focuses on job creation in South Africa through maritime education.
