Are you really going to sell your home and live on a sailboat!?  This was the reaction we received from our friends 12 years ago when we informed them of our plan for retirement. We sold our home and most of our belongings to move on to our 37-foot sailboat, “Orient Express”.  I joked that we went from 1,700 square feet to about 300 square feet of living space, but our daughter, the architect, set me straight.  She said we could only count floor space as living area, which meant we would be living in less than 10 square feet on the boat.

The day we said good-bye to friends and family was somewhat scary. We threw off the dock lines and pointed our bow south, saying farewell to our life on land.  The voyage on the Atlantic Coast was not quite what I had expected.  While I was packing, a dear friend told me to stop fretting about what clothing to take because all I would need were a couple of bathing suits.  She was so wrong and had obviously never traveled south in the fall on a sailboat.  The bathing suits never left my closet, as we froze almost all the way to Vero Beach, Florida.  There were days that I had to wear socks on my hands in order to hold the wheel.  Knowing how cold I was, Bruce tried to light our diesel furnace and nearly burned up the boat.  That was when I told him I would rather freeze to death than burn in hell!

 A tour of our 10 square feet of living space

Our intent was to sail south to the warm tropics, but we had no definite plan as to where we would stay.  We adhered to the advice of other cruisers and finally decided to go to the Abaco Islands in the Northern Bahamas – a great decision on our part!  We fell in love with the Abacos and  have returned there every winter since that time.

For the first two years of our retirement we were full time liveaboards. We then realized we missed some of the comforts of a house, like flush toilets, an icemaker, and a dishwasher not named Bruce. We purchased an adorable house in Connecticut and now spend half the year there and half the year on our boat.

Life on board our boat is now easier as well.  We sold our sailboat a few years ago and now live on a 40-foot trawler,  named “Orient Express 2”. It feels like a floating condominium and is just as comfortable.  It has a large bridge area, which is perfect for our jewelry-making enterprise. Bruce appreciates the expanded work space on the trawler, as the work space on the sailboat was confined to the very small cockpit area where he broke his finger while pushing silver around a piece of sea glass and ramming it into a winch.  Needless to say, the broken finger was a bit of an inconvenience..

Besides finding numerous pieces of beautiful sea glass, the best part of our cruising life has been making friends from all over the world. We have countless wonderful memories of all our sailing buddies.  Once you travel the sometimes treacherous Gulf Stream with a buddy boat, you form a lifetime bond.  We now realize we live in the best of both worlds and are delighted with the decision we made 12 years ago.