Welcome

Like many people contemplating an early retirement after an active and dynamic career, we wanted to ensure we continued to have an engaging and exciting life. We also wanted to keep learning and growing, in particular by challenging ourselves to learn a completely new way of living.

For us, that means living and traveling on a trawler yacht.

We’ve always enjoyed traveling, and we visited or lived nearly everywhere in the US during our working lives. During that time, we got out whenever we could to camp in everything from tents to the largest motorhomes. We finished our working lives by living in Asia for seven years, which was another kind of adventure.

So we’ve seen a lot of the land portion of this good Earth. Now we’re looking forward to the adventure of exploring hidden coves, isolated shorelines and beautiful reefs of the watery 70% of our world. Initially from the California coast up to the Pacific Northwest. But after that? Who knows. Alaska, possibly back down the coast and through Panama canal to the Caribbean. It’s a big blue world.

Our only prior boating experience was a summer in the mid-90’s where we went through Sailing School and did numerous day sails out to the Channel Islands off Southern California. We are certainly not experienced mariners, so our goal was to buy a boat that would partially make up for our inexperience, and that meant buying the most capable long-range trawler in the world: Nordhavn. We christened our Nordhavn N5520 Serendipity in celebration of the luck of finding wonderful things you aren’t even looking for.

That luck started with our boat itself, which we bought on the first day of my retirement. Serendipity is more boat than we had in mind, we were looking at 43 or 47 foot brokerage boats or possibly ordering a new one with a long wait for delivery. Still, the N55 had been our dream boat, but seemingly out of our reach. However, during a visit to Dana Point Harbor and the PAE offices, we discovered a brand-new 55 that was entering commissioning and available for sale. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we didn’t hesitate. After a dizzy week of negotiation and paperwork, we suddenly owned the boat of our dreams.

And so the adventure started. Hopefully, Serendipity will carry us along on the winds of luck which follow those who believe in the power of serendipity. The unexpected discovery of all those hidden places and things that amaze us with the beauty of our little planet.

We invite you to follow along on our journey with our blog and photo albums.