Note: This section is under construction and will be expanded as the mood strikes me.  We have been encouraged by friends and families to document our adventures and we have a lot of material - photos, ship's logs, and a journal, as well as our memories.  In fact, there's TOO much.  So sifting through it all is going to be a spare-time activity that will probably never be finished.  For now, here's a summary narrative.  I have also put together a detailed narrative with photos of our 1999 cruising season, when we crossed the Pacific, and our 2000 season to Fiji, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia.

The Beginning: Patti and I knew NOTHING about sailing.  We had each ridden along a few times with friends on tiny Sunfish or Hobie Cat sailboats when we were young.  But our impression was that sailing in the ocean was an extreme sport and the only people doing it were athletes who had started when they were kids.  Sailing, even as a hobby, never occurred to us.  Then, in the late 80's, we took our first two vacations to the Caribbean on a small Windjammer cruise ship.  It was small enough to stop at tiny islands and reefs where we noticed that there were sailboats anchored, sometimes with only two people aboard.  "How did they get here in the middle of nowhere?", we asked.  It was then we learned for the first time that there were people who actually traveled around in the ocean on sailboats, going where they wanted to go and staying until they wanted to leave.  "Wow!", we thought, lucky they started sailing when they were kids so they could perform this dangerous stunt.

About that time, some co-workers from our plant in Swansea, Wales, visited Silicon Valley where we worked on a big software installation together.  Our company president learned that the Swansea guys and one of our US team members were keen sailors.  As a reward for our success, he said the company would pay for a weekend's sailing on San Francisco Bay.  Dave Williams, the US team member, rented a 39' Beneteau and Keith Dawson and Andrew Anthony, sailors and boatbuilders, were the expert crew.  The other three of us were neophytes.  I was shocked to learn that Dave had only been sailing 5 years - he took lessons.  Interesting.  Keith and Andrew spent the weekend explaining how sailboats worked and why they were much safer in the ocean than I had imagined.  And it was exhilarating!!  Tacking back and forth against the tide to get  under the Golden Gate was one of the most thrilling things I had ever done.  This was fun!  I wanted do more but I was already 43, much too old to start, so ... I didn't.

Two years later, in 1992, I picked up a book called "Around Alone", by Tania Aebi, the youngest person to sail AROUND THE WORLD (!!) alone.  Now, I knew that adventurers did things like this, so I figured she was some elite athlete who had been sailing since approximately birth.  Hardly.  She was a 17-year-old high-school dropout whose dad had done a lot of sailing and sometimes took her along.  He was sick of her doing nothing.  He offered to finance her college education OR buy a small sailboat so she could try the round-the-world thing OR kick her out.  She chose the sailboat.  When she sailed out of New York Harbor on her small 26' Contessa, she didn't know how to navigate and she had never been on a sailboat by herself!   She bumbled and stumbled her way around the world.  I was stunned.  She was NOT a good sailor and yet she hadn't come close to killing herself.  Maybe this wasn't as dangerous as I thought.   I handed the book to Patti when I finished and suggested she read it.  When she finished, I asked, "What did you think?" and she said those fateful words, "We could do that."

From that time on, we talked about it all the time - and found that there are many books by adults who have done this kind of thing.  We signed up for beginner sailing lessons.  Our kids were teenagers and they didn't care how we spent our time as long as we left them alone.  On our first lesson, the instructor asked each of us what our goals were.  One person said they hoped to learn enough to be able to rent sailboats and go sailing on SF Bay.  "Ok", he said, then he looked at Patti.  "What about you?"  Patti said, "We want to learn enough to buy a sailboat and sail around the world."  Emotionally, we were already on the way but we didn't talk to anyone else about it.

We took lessons as fast as possible, both on sailing and on navigation.  After a few months, we found that the sailing school was organizing a group trip to the British Virgin Islands.  Fully qualified sailors would skipper each boat and 3 to 5 others would crew.  In the end, we had enough people to rent six boats.  We were paired with the only other "mature" couple, George and Amy.  George was very experienced.  After a quick check-out of the boat in Tortola, we sailed out INTO THE CARIBBEAN, just the four of us, with ten days where we could go anywhere we wanted and stay as long as we wanted.  We were now one of those boats we had seen from the Windjammer.  We had a wonderful sail that first day through the islands and anchored off a gorgeous beach.  We snorkeled for a while and then motored ashore in the dinghy (which came with the boat) to a little dock.  We walked up a hill to a wonderful open-air restaurant and had a great dinner looking out on the ocean.   Afterwards, we dinghied back to the boat in the dark and went to bed.  Was this all real?  What were we doing here?  There followed days of sailing and anchoring at various beautiful islands and reefs, snorkeling every day, exploring ashore, eating and drinking on the boat or at resorts.  It was the best time we had ever had.  On the last morning, we went snorkeling one more time before turning in the boat.  When it came time to swim back to the boat, we found ourselves surrounded by a school of fish.  It seemed like they were saying, "Stay!  Don't go!"  We didn't want to go.  Tears were running down our faces.  We were well and truly hooked.

We Buy a Boat - George predicted that we would soon have to buy a boat.  We assured him that we were YEARS away from that.  But, now that we were qualified to charter boats on our own, we were anxious to get back to the Caribbean and do it with just the two of us.  We booked a boat with The Moorings for six months later to sail out of Grenada and tour the Grenadine Islands for 10 days.  At this point, The Moorings went into sales mode.  They said, "Why throw away all that money on chartering other people's boats?  Why not buy a boat and let us charter it out for you?  You will get income from the charters AND then, because you're an owner, you can charter boats at any of our locations around the world for FREE!"  Since we had decided we wanted to do a LOT of chartering, John spent many hours on a spreadsheet working out the implications and finally decided we should buy a boat - a 35' Beneteau.  It would be based in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands where we knew it would get rented a lot.  We could sail on our own boat in BVI or sail on someone else's boat in any of the Moorings other locations around the world. 

The Grenada trip was one of the great thrills of our lives.  Conditions are challenging in that part of the Caribbean and navigation was not as simple as the BVI.  We were wet, tired, and nervous, but we did it.  All by ourselves.  And what a wonderful time we had.  We also got the experience of checking in and out of different countries in a boat, which is a lot more complicated than when you're traveling by auto or plane.  Most of all, we had to navigate the open ocean between islands, anchor the boat safely in small crowded bays in strong winds, and keep the boat safe.  We did it all without ever feeling in mortal danger.  Now there was no doubt.  We could do this.

This was June, 1993, and for the next four years we went sailing four weeks a year in exotic locations: Mexico, Tahiti, Tonga, St. Lucia, and four more trips to the BVI where we sailed Dream Aweigh, our own boat.  BVI is sailing heaven, by the way.  We didn't even HAVE four weeks' vacation a year but by combining vacation days with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and so forth, we made time. 

We Buy Another Boat - By mid-1994 we were certifiably nuts.  We were both working in very high stress, long-hours jobs, had three kids (15 to 20 years old), and were spending every spare moment secretly planning our escape.  Although we loved our Dream Aweigh and the chartering, we felt we needed to get our hands on a boat and take care of it ourselves to really be prepared.  The Moorings did all the maintenance on Dream Aweigh and we also knew that it would never be the boat we would go world cruising on.  So we started thinking about our "escape" boat that would be tough enough to carry us across the oceans.  The plan was to buy one in 1996 or 1997 because we had figured that 1999 would be our escape year.  But ... at a boat show in September, 1994, we saw our dream boat, a Caliber 40.  We took delivery in early 1995 and put it in charter at Club Nautique in Alameda, on San Francisco Bay.  We named her Escapade because she was our "escape aid" and also because it was a fun, easy-to-pronounce-over-the-radio name.  When you're sailing into a foreign country and calling their officials on the radio, you need to have an understandable name. 

Club Nautique  in Alameda has  a very extensive chartering and training organization, specializing in offshore ocean training classes.  Escapade was a perfect boat for their fleet.  Patti had a lot of things going on outside work at the time so John took the offshore sailing classes and got certified for that.  It's not necessary and most people don't bother, but I felt it was well worth it.  We were often training on Escapade so I got good experience in some very rough conditions off the West Coast.

We Quit Our Jobs - In 1997, Patti and I were making big salaries and socking away every cent we could.  We were accumulating money but it still looked like it would take another two or three years to come up with enough hard cash to be able to live on the boat without working for an indefinite period.  We discussed this endlessly and worked out scenarios on spreadsheets.  How much would it take to live without an income?  We would soon have three kids to put through college, too.  If we ran out of money in five years, it would be hard to find work again.  But we got lucky.  The housing market in Silicon Valley took off in 1997 and all of a sudden our house was worth a lot more than we expected.  Also, our youngest son was graduating from high school so we were no longer needed on a daily basis.

In a space of four months, we sold our house, gave practically everything away, and quit our jobs.  Our youngest son rented a room from his cousin and her husband while he was starting college.  In December, 1997, we put Escapade on a truck and drove to Port Townsend, Washington, where the trucker dropped her off.  The next five months were a wonderful blur of activity while we worked through the winter in cold weather and short days to get Escapade ready to go.  We loved the small-town atmosphere of Port Townsend, which is full of talented boat workers.  Brion Toss, Jack Landwehrkamp, and countless others helped us through.  And we became part of the cruising community, a remarkable floating, mobile group of people who somehow are all connected though they're spread across the world.

On May 1, 1998, we left the dock after a wonderful send-off from our friends and pointed north to Alaska.  We were cruising at last.

The Cruising Years - For now, I'll summarize our cruising time-line:

1997 - Sold our house, quit our jobs, sold our cars, gave away everything else.  Put the boat on a truck to Port Townsend, Washington, where we began the re-outfitting necessary to live aboard and go cruising.

1998 - Inside Passage from Washington to Alaska, Glacier Bay, and Skagway.  Returned to Port Townsend and then headed down the West Coast with stops in San Francisco, Catalina Island, and San Diego.  Sailed out of the US in November, 1998, with the Baja-Haha rally, about 90 boats, down the coast of Mexico to Cabo San Lucas.

1999 - Sailed various places in Mexico ending up in Puerto Vallarta.  Left there on March 4, 1999, on the longest ocean passage away from land that we would ever make.  Unfortunately, there is just no land between Mexico and French Polynesia.  At 3,000 miles, most boats take 18 to 25 days.  We did it in 20, which was fine.  There's no way to summarize that experience.  Visit the 1999 Cruising section to get the details.  We stopped in the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti (including Moorea and Bora-Bora), then on to Samoa, Tonga, and finally New Zealand in November, 1999.  We had travelled about 7,000 miles across the Pacific in 8 months and ended in another paradise, New Zealand.

2000 - After extensive repairs and improvements, plus some wonderful cruising in New Zealand, we headed for Fiji, a thousand miles north, with our nephew John on board.  After three horrible days of pounding into 25-30 knot headwinds and big seas, a bad storm was forecast.  Prudence dictated we get out of that part of the ocean so we turned around and sailed all the way back to New Zealand.  John had to leave but 4 days later, we headed north again.  It took eight days and the worst lightning storm we had ever been through, but we made it into Suva, Fiji - just in time for the military coup.  Remember when George Speight held the Fiji Parliament hostage for about 6 weeks?  We were there and it was pretty strange - burning buildings, looted stores, and no one in charge.  But in the end no visitors were harmed and we left for Vanuatu a month later.  Vanuatu is still our favorite place - exotic primitive friendly people, beautiful islands, fantastic diving and snorkeling, and best of all, we got to swim with the dugong.  Then on to New Caledonia for the once-every-four-years Pacific Arts Festival.  All the islands send their best dancers and artisans for two weeks of music and fun.  This was one of our best experiences, plus it was the biggest gathering of cruisers in the South Pacific - maybe ever.  In November, we left for an uncomfortable 7-day passage back to New Zealand.  Visit the 2000 season photo page for all the details.

2001 - We decided we needed to catch our breath.  We did more boatwork, aided by the best boatworkers in the world, and more cruising around New Zealand.  We also drove the whole length of both islands.  They're magnificent.  Then we flew to the States in May and bought a car for a 24,000-mile tour of the States - east from California to South Carolina, north to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Minnesota, down to Kansas, Nebraska, and back up through the Dakotas, Canada, Montana, Washington, and back around to California.  We were in a motel room in Oregon on 9/11, 2001, when we turned on CNN.  What is there to say?  We flew back to New Zealand in November to start getting the boat ready for another cruising year.

2002 - By now, we had reached the limits of the time we could stay in New Zealand.  We were also beginning to reassess our ultimate goals.  We decided that we didn't want to finish our sail around the world.  We loved this part of the world and sailing through the Red Sea or around Africa didn't appeal to us.  Being able to say we had "sailed around the world" would be immensely cool, but now that we knew we were able to do it we felt that we didn't need to.  We were already in Paradise.  Incidentally, many other cruisers have made the same decision.  So we sailed to Tonga in May, 2002, and had a wonderful time - again.  Back to American and Western Samoa.  The Samoans are such nice people.  Then our roughest passage yet - 1,200 miles to Vanuatu with three days of gale-force winds and big seas.  Patti injured her elbow and our autopilot quit and there were other dramas.  What a relief to return to beloved Vanuatu for three months.  In October, we set sail for Australia, another 1,000 miles away, and had our nicest passage ever.  Australia attracted us from the beginning.  You feel at home because they speak English (sort of).  And the Aussies are fun.  It wasn't as beautiful as New Zealand but the weather was a lot warmer. 

2003 - We spent the southern summer in Mooloolaba, north of Brisbane, in a marina just 100 yards from one of the most beautiful beaches you have ever seen.  Mooloolaba is a resort town and everything was in walking distance - which was good because we didn't have a car.  We decided to apply for a long-term visa called a Retirement Visa, which allows 55-and-older couples (Patti is a lot younger, but only one of us had to be 55) to stay indefinitely as long as we had clean criminal records, enough money to make sure we didn't go on the dole, clean medical check-up, and we had to buy Aussie health insurance.  In the meantime, we went cruising up the Queensland coast, which is one of the great cruising areas anywhere.  Warm weather, islands, marinas when you want them, interesting towns, the Great Barrier Reef, snorkeling, diving, resorts, everything you want.  This is when we accidentally discovered Port Hinchinbrook and Cardwell.  John had been diagnosed with advanced thumb arthritis in both hands and it was getting more and more painful to handle the ropes and other boat tasks.  Long story short - we decided this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  We bought a condo, sailed our boat back to Brisbane in a frantic 5-day non-stop trip to get her on a ship to Florida.  An old friend bought her in a tremendous stroke of luck.  We flew back to the States, rented a car, drove across the country to Florida to meet Escapade and turned her over to her new owners.  This was all quite emotional, but we knew it was time.  Six years after quitting our careers and sailing away, we were homeless with time on our hands.  Our condo wouldn't be completed for 9 months.  So, once again we hit the road, driving all over the country, visiting friends, and thinking about our new life Down Under.  In January, 2004, we returned to Australia to begin our next life.

Our Cruising Photo Gallery just covers 1999, from Mexico to New Zealand.  I hope to add more later.