Michael came to England as a student studying marine engineering, with a view to performing his military service in the Greek Navy. However, he found that he had fallen in love with this small part of the world, and after his stint as a sailor he returned to work as an architect at Jacksons, the local ship building firm. It was there that he fell in love again, this time with a Catholic girl called Mary who worked in the same office as Michael.
With the decline of the ship building industry in the 1980's, the couple (now married and with two children; Orestes and Hermione) set up their own small company, Kyknos, specialising in private shipping: speedboats, yachts, sailing equipment and the like. Although it was a great struggle for its first few years, Kyknos steadily grew, and the family are now comfortably set up.