Background for Watermark's Voyage

April 1999

We decided to go cruising (or "sailing" as Jim would say) the winter of 1997-98 (after the days became the shortest of the year and we just finished painting the entire interior of our house). That Spring, we put our house up for sale, which we sold Summer 1998. We then moved temporarily into a rental townhouse about a mile away from our home in preparation for our trip the following year. Our intention is to be gone about a year and not sail around the world as most people think (it sounds good), but to do coastal cruising along the East Coast and then head east to the Bahamas during the winter. After much debate, we decided to keep our present boat, a 1990 Sabre 34 named Watermark, for the trip. We briefly looked at other boats, but decided we liked Watermark too much to sell.

Our boat was fine as it was for weekend sailing and a few longer trips, but it needed some modifications for longer-range cruising. Our main upgrades included refrigeration, Satellite 406 EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon), GPS, battery status monitor, single side band receiver, inverter, and many other miscellanous boat parts.

We plan to leave our jobs end of April to spend May transitioning from the house onto the boat. Limited possessions will be moved aboard, while the majority of items will be moved to storage (with a few things stored with our relatives and friends -- thanks Mom & Dad, Rick, Jane, and Skip & Harriet). We also plan to acclimate our two cats, Apollo and Atlas (who are 4 years old and had never been sailing before and have only visited the boat once previously last fall). Life aboard with these cats should be very interesting!

Picture of Apollo & Atlas      Picture of Apollo  
Click to see larger pictures!

We are presently docked at a marina south of Annapolis and plan to cast off the docklines the end of May 1999.

For those who stumbled across this web site and don't know us...

We started sailing together in the early 90's on an older Hunter 27 when we went into a partnership arrangement to see if we liked it. We sailed on Respite for 3 years and decided to look for our own boat and ended up with Watermark, the Sabre 34. Jim had been sailing and racing for many years on catamarans, while I (Joyce) had to learn from scratch. While it's not always easy to learn from one's spouse, I took several sailing courses which helped me gain confidence and kept me from my early days of screaming on the cockpit floor when the boat heeled over with the wind.

We're in our 30's, met while going to school at the University of Maryland and have been married since 1988. Jim has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a M.B.A. He will be taking a leave of absence from his job at the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore. I have a B.S. in Nutrition, but ended up working in the computer field. My position prior to leaving is teaching computer technologies to staff at the National Agricultural Library.

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