Welcome to the Heather & Jon's Excellent Adventure
Heather grew up in Miami Florida and learned to sail with her parents aboard and O'Day day sailor. Her family were also members of the Coconut Grove Sailing Club and she took sailing lessons in the prams. At the age of 12 Heather's parents decided to move to Vermont.
I (Jon) grew up in the other corner of the country, Newport Vermont. From my living room window I could see Lake Memphremagog. Although I had never sailed, sailboats intrigued me (which I guess is perfectly normal for a young boy).
When I graduated from high school I went to the University of Vermont for computer programming. This is where I met Heather (she was going for nursing). The first time I went to meet Heather's parents I also met Heather's sister and brother in-law. It was the last I would see the sister for another year as they were leaving on a 1 year cruise in their Cape Dory 28 to the Bahamas. I guess you can say this got me thinking, first of all, how in the world is it possible to just quit your jobs and head off sailing. Once I got over that Heather and I started planning that once we were out of school that we were going to do it also.
Fast forward 6 or 7 years, we had just gotten married and found a Cape Dory 31 that was in great shape. We closed the sale in December in Rhode Island and spent the winter getting the boat ready for spring. Three years latter we both quit or jobs and our first 1 year trip started. We took the ICW south from Rhode Island to Key West then crossed the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. We had a blast and dragged our feet heading back home. We returned back to Boston Massachusetts and decided to stay living aboard while working. We spent the next couple of years saving for the next trip and the next boat. After a couple of years we started looking for the next boat, a well built offshore cruising boat.
With the help of Wagner Stevens we found our next boat, a Tashiba 40. This is the boat we took on our next cruise. A ten month trip to the Caribbean as far south as Grenada going through Bermuda. We wanted to see if we would like offshore sailing and luckily for us we did.
After that trip we returned back to Boston to return to work to save some more money and plan for the next cruise. This cruise will hopefully last at least five years and take us around the world and be the focus of this blog.
