Above you see us, Bruce and Cherryl, at the end of our first “Bareboat” charter. We spent a week sailing in the British Virgin Islands, had a fantastic time, and couldn’t help but think the name of our charted boat was an omen… Our Destiny!
I (Bruce) grew up around boats in Southern California. I like to mention that I won my first sailing race when I was 9 years old. (I usually neglect to admit I haven’t won a race since). Through high school and college I spent a lot of time with ski boats, but then marriage, kids and a dental profession took precedence over boating.
Cherryl did what growing up she did in Hawaii. She developed a great love for the water and all that lives in it. Then time spent in Monterey, California in high school enhanced her appreciation of all things oceanic.
A few years ago, while doing continuing dental education in Florida, we looked at all the beautiful sailboats. After spending time around so many boats, we decided it would be great to live on a boat, and see where all it could take us. So we took classes to get sailing certifications and chartered different types of boats in different locations, including the British Virgin Islands, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, and Florida and California.
Then we decided a sailboat big enough to live on, and cross oceans, was more rigging than we wanted to work with. So we looked into a powerboat, specifically a trawler, because of their seaworthiness, comfort and fuel efficiency. So we were somewhat new to boating, and very new to big powerboats. We spent a little over a year on Grace, our beautiful trawler, before deciding we should live a bit more economically and move back on land.
We have now moved onto our home with wheels. Motorhomes are not new to us- we actually have had some kind of RV most of our married life. We even did our honeymoon in my Dad’s motorhome in 1976! Our first rig was a very small camper on the back of a pickup. It was so small I could only stand up straight under the roof vent. As the family grew over the years, we moved up through a series of bigger campers. We graduated to class A motorhomes, and over the years travelled from Seattle to the Everglades, San Diego to Nova Scotia. While we have traversed to every corner of our country, there is a lot of “middle” that we have yet to see! So this is the current goal: exploration, adventure, and heading towards Our Next Horizon!