We always owned a boat of some kind; we water skied, house boated and did some sailing on rental boats in San Diego. Both of us had sailing experince as kids, and sailing away on our own sailboat was our life long dream. [...] In 1995 we began traveling, and enjoying sailing vacations in the Eastern Caribbean islands, which inspired us to take our dream seriously. Although we considered ourselves "boaters" with small lake boats, we knew we had to take the big step to learn how to handle a blue water cruising vessel. For our anniversary in 1997 we joined the American Sailing Association, took 3 months of weekly classes in Monterey, CA, passed our ASA tests, got certified in celestrial navigationa and coastal cruising, and began chartering boats to sail. We were HOOKED and set out to find "our"boat! We put our plans into action in 1998, bought an older, bigger than expected, boat to refurbish and lived aboard. I went to work at Chula Vista Marina and Dennnis started his own small business in marine electronics installation. We participated in numerous boater ed classes, got our ham radio licenses, did everything we could to learn as much as we could. Dennis & I cared for other boats and delivered boats for people from San Diego to Mexico. Dennis also captained a 90' private yacht in San Diego for 3 years, while I coordinated classes with the coast guard and local cruisers. Eventually we were ready to go and we finally said our goodbyes, dropped the lines for the last time in San Diego and sailed away in 2002.

We lived aboard and worked at Chula Vista Marina from 1998 - 2002, then threw off the lines and coastal cruised EMERADA down Mexico, Central America to Panama and beyond. It was an amazing time of our lives, an incredible experience and God's gift to us. We had enjoyed and endured 30 years of [...]

marriage, hard work, busy schedules, raised a couple of wonderful kids and a handful of others, had grand children, took care of our elderly parents, served God & church, andlived life to the fullest....and it was our time for personal adventure! 2007 we returned to dry land, retired the boat, miss our cruising days... and now those old dreams are wonderful, precious memories. The difference between ORDEAL & ADVENTURE is ATTITUDE! Once a sailor always a sailor! This is our story.