COMMENTS

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU

 

I know this is against the norm in the blogging world but, I try to keep the site clean and easy to read for our reader’s enjoyment. For this reason, I opted to keep comments to one page. We would love to hear from you. Do not let my wacky thought process deter you from expressing your feelings regarding our postings or another items of interest you want to share.

  • Thoughts on the cruising lifestyle?
  • Do you have an favorite sailing destination or a place you think we should avoid?
  • Send us your favorite recipe.
  • Have you read any good books lately?
  • What would you like to know about us?

Please include your e-mail so we can write back to you (email addresses are kept private)

Thanks for connecting to us!

 

Mark and Cindy

731 Comments

731 thoughts on “COMMENTS

  1. Almost there. There is certainly something refreshing and liberating about getting rid of stuff you have collected over the years. After only a short time of us cruising we wondered to ourselves.. Why did we need all that stuff when we had a house? .. There is very little you need apart from you two, a boat and the horizon. Good sailing..
    Oh.. can you drop me a quick e mail.

    • Mark

      Thanks for the encouragement Mark. It has been quite liberating to shed the 20 years of junk stashed away in the house. We have both vowed to never buy such a big home again. When we moved into this house I was on a corporate fast track and was told not to plan on living here for more than two years. We purchased the home strictly for resale value. The company’s growth slowed, Cindy started a successful business and twenty years later, here we are.

  2. It feels so good when you close the door for the last time and drive away. The stuff burden just floats away to the sky and you feel so much lighter! Pretty soon you’ll play the game, “Honey, did we keep that?”

    • Mark

      Hi Sherlene,

      We can’t wait for that. Everything seems to take us five times longer than expected. But, we are not in a hurry.

      We both now have our mindset fully aboard Cream Puff. We thought there might be an emotional tie to the house as we have lived here for 20 years. There’s not.

      Mark

  3. Awesome site! Having some fun reading all the info you have on here.

  4. Thank you for leaving a comment on our blog. I am very envious of you leaving for the Bahamas in December/January. I know you will have an amazing experience. We are now in Pensacola and I guess that is the end of our first cruise. I need to update our blog – but it is a happy/sad thing that I have been putting off. Happy in that we have reached a destination….sad, in that it is the temporary end of our trip. We have decided to live in Pensacola for the near future and I have returned to full-time w@@k (sorry to cuss!). We will be weekend cruisers for a while and hope to cruise again in 2015/16 – hopefully for a longer trip. BTW – I love your boat! Just returned from the Annapolis boat show and the Amel was the one mono I was really taken by! Please feel free to email us if we can help or offer any insight into your upcoming trip. I also get to Tampa quite often due to work – so would love to meet up sometime.

    Best wishes – fair winds
    Neil
    S/V Midnight Sun II
    http://www.midnightsunii.com
    http://midnightsunii.blogspot.com

  5. Marie H

    Are you going to pay $1,500 a year? A total of $15,000 for ten years? WOW, outstanding!

    • Mark

      Hi Marie,

      Yes $1,500 per year for a 20 x 10 x 12 climate controlled space. It should be large enough for all the stuff we wish to keep. All the credit goes to Cindy for hunting until she found something reasonable. Persistence paid off.

  6. Regarding finding storage space at a reasonable cost, I hope we are as lucky. I plan to look in Eastern Washington, land of sparse populations, if need be. After 33 years of marriage, there are things that make our house a ‘home’ that we are not ready to give up. Who knows how long we will want to cruise? 1 year? 10 years? We can’t bring ourselves to be the ‘sell it all and run away’ types after investing in our home for this long. So it’s either going to be a storage space, or my sister’s workshop attic. (I’m hoping for the attic at no cost). That being said, the more I look at my ‘stuff’ the fewer things we want to store, and most of them are small. Some furnishings, but not too many. Glad you solved the problem economically!

    • Mark

      Hi Melissa,

      This was much harder than we both thought it would be. I wish we had family that would help, but alas. Most cruisers seem to go that route. Some friends that are long term cruisers have pretty much given up on getting any of their stuff back because it has been with family for so long 🙂

  7. Marie H

    Hi Mark, I realized after I reread my comment that the one line might have sounded weird. “I’m a boater; not a sailor”. I should have said we have a power boat; not a sailboat.

    I read quite a few sailboat blogs with much envy. There are very, very few power boaters that blog. Maybe because we can’t afford to travel? Sailing intrigues me; but hubby has absolutely no interest.

    My husband and I take “trips” on our boat; but long voyages are usually planned out for every few years. We are in the Great Lakes and boating here is just beautiful. We would love to go more; but fuel costs hold us back a bit. In retirement we hope to stage our boat around the lakes for a few summers and then venture out from that home base. (7 years to go)

    The coastguard is very active in the Great Lakes. We see them often. A decommissioned ice breaker; The Mackinaw is now moored permanently in Mackinaw City. It has been replaced with a newer, more efficient version. The tour is great.

    I just noticed up above that you mention book recommendations. I just finished Seized by Max Hardberger. I enjoyed the content; even if the writing could have been more in depth. Very entertaining.

    Take care, Marie

    • Mark

      Thanks Marie! Have added Seized by Max Hardberger to the book list. We are always looking for a good read.

  8. Marie H

    Love that last picture of the harbor in the Our Friends post. Just beautiful.
    I’m a boater; not a sailor. But I love following along on your adventures.

    • Mark

      Hi Marie,

      Thanks for the kind words. We will not hold it against you that you are not a sailor 🙂

      We hope to set sail soon after this hurricane season for the Bahamas and expect to really have a lot more to write about. Stay tuned, exciting times are coming.

  9. Ha! I should print out your flow chart and hang it up in the engine room!

    Thanks for the chuckle and the thoughts you shared. Hopefully this weekend we find out exactly which spare part we’ll be ordering two of!

    Hope you both are well.

  10. Great blog! Good luck with the house sale and your future adventures. I look forward to following along!
    :0)
    Viki
    http://www.astrolabesailing.com

    • Mark

      Viki,

      Thanks for stopping by to say hi. We are really excited about getting going soon.

      The best way to follow along is to enter your email in the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page. We never share email addresses, ever! You will get an email as we update.

      Although we are on the opposite side of the world from you, we truly hope our paths cross one day.

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