Dear Friends and Family ~

As 2007 draws to a close, Jane and I are looking forward to our post-career years together and are putting into motion plans which we have been making for some time now.

In 2006, I left the company I started in Dallas and went back to the corporate world in Hartford for about a year. Jane, who works for a bank data processing company in Avon, CT, will join me in retirement this coming April.

While in Dallas we bought an ODay 322 in Rochester, NY, and trucked it down to Lake Texoma (the home of Valiant Yachts), about 75 miles north of us. We re-christened her Voyageur and spent most of our weekends for the next five years at anchor and under sail.



When we moved from Texas to Connecticut in 2000, we left our first Voyageur behind but continued to charter with friends in the Mediterranean, on the Sea of Cortez, the Chesapeake Bay and even aboard narrowboats on the network of restored canals that thread through the beautiful English and Welsh countryside.

All the while we have been looking at boats of all sizes and descriptions for the right one to take us sailing again. This fall, we found a sound, well equipped Island Packet 40 and came to an agreement with her (now previous) owners. A few weeks later we sailed her to Portsmouth, RI, where she will spend the winter and where we will recommission her next summer.

We plan to sell house, cars and other worldly possessions by July or August and begin full-time cruising then. Eventually, we'll probably return to Pennsylvania's Lancaster County. But until then, Jane and I will live aboard our new Voyageur.

As our transition, embarkation and cruising plans evolve into reality over the next few months and years we'll keep you posted here at . . .

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/voyageur/
. . . where you can read about our journey, see the people and places we discover along the way and view a map of our progress.

We hope you'll visit us here and aboard Voyageur often.

Bob & Jane Fulton
Dec 2007