About Us

Joe retired and Ann quit her job in 2000 with a plan to cruise and have fun for a while. We had a very pretty but small 32’ Fuji ketch that we had bought from friends in California. We loved that boat but she was short on storage and accommodations for guests (we have 3 grandchildren now!) so in the first long, cold, miserable winter of retirement Ann "forced" Joe to go boat shopping. We bought Short Walk in the spring of 2001. Her name at the time was Shoshin which the owners told us meant New Beginnings. In a nautical ceremony complete with champagne and a toast to Neptune (to ward off the evil spirits) we changed the boat name to Short Walk.   When I tell Joe he is driving me crazy, he tells me it is not a drive but a short walk.   Actually, it's a pretty short walk for both of us (and getting shorter all the time).

Almost immediately after purchasing the boat, the economy and our parent’s health started to tank. So our travels were curtailed for a while as we watched our retirement savings shrink and we helped care for our parents. During that time we were very busy doing what we not so fondly call the “hospital/rehab dance”. Hopefully you have no idea what we are talking about. When our parents passed, we thought we were finally ready to cruise. However, at that time we had 17 year old cat (this was not in the plan; who knew cats lived that long?). She was an indoor cat and although we loved her dearly, we didn’t relish spending so much time in 40’ of space with her and her litter box. Also, we didn’t think she would handle the sailing so well (kind of like taking your cranky grandmother sailing). Although we had lots of offers to “take care of the cat” from our non-animal loving friends, we again constrained our sailing while she lived to the ripe old age of 19! We weren’t exactly sitting home all that time as we made lots of trips around the Chesapeake Bay and one 10-week trip to Maine. We refitted the boat with a full enclosure, new electronics, new refrigeration and several other luxuries. When the cat passed in November of 2009 (finally!?), Ann again quit her job again and we started to make serious plans to cruise. 

We sailed back to Maine for the summer of 2010 (glorious!) and then came home for 6 weeks to add solar panels and provision for a trip south on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and then to the Bahamas. We left Maryland in mid-October 2010 and returned on April 29, 2011. We spent 3 of the months with our friends John and Kathy on Oceana who graciously shared their knowledge of the Bahamas. We met up with other old (I use that term loosely) friends along the way and met many, many new friends. Thanksgiving in St. Mary’s with 100 other boats was definitely one of the highlights and a great way to start the cruising experience.  There is so much to see that we plan to spend the winter of 2011-2012 sailing too. Plans? One of the first things Oceana taught us is that when you are sailing, plans are written in the sand at low tide. It took a while for this philosophy to sink in (we both worked in the pharmaceutical industry where plans and deadlines are usually written in blood; definitely not sand) but now we are totally deprogrammed and to the frustration of most of our friends and family, we consider “heading south” to be a detailed itinerary. Really….what more do you need to know? We hope you follow along and enjoy the ride as we head south again in October 2011. And remember, it’s not a drive; it’s a Short Walk.

A bit more bio details for the curious among you who wonder why/how we do this:

Joe:       Sailing since 1968 

Certified ASA Instructor

Captain of Short Walk (Ann definitely doesn’t want the job)

Captain of my heart (even after all these years)

G-Daddy

Ann:    Sailing since 1985 (I rarely admit it but I did learn everything I know about sailing from Joe)

First Mate

Navigator

Galley slave (Joe says “galley slave extraordinaire” but that is probably so I won’t say anything too mean about him in the rest of the blog)

The Snack Queen (definitely in charge of Happy Hour)

Gram