The Moorings photo

that started it all.

About Us

About 6 years ago, Rod tore an ad for a Caribbean charter company out of an international business magazine.  It was the picture that caught his attention, not so much the charter company.  A 45 foot catamaran anchored in turquoise blue waters off of a white sand beach in some amazingly tropical location.  He pinned that picture to the wall of his corporate cubicle and his fantasy wheels started to slowly turn.  He left that job a few years later and along with his GAAP books and Chinese language tapes, that torn out magazine page was packed up and brought home.  By that time we had purchased a 1995 Hunter 26 and were sailing on our nearby reservoirs and lakes.  We figured if we were going to “sail away” someday, we better learn how to sail.  Call us crazy.

In the Fall of 2003, after subscribing to numerous cruising magazines and investing a small fortune in books on All Things Sailing, we established a departure date of Fall 2005.  We had two years to meet our self-imposed financial goals and find a boat to serve our needs.  Rod did all of the boat research and he did it really well.  He and the Internet were very close and I was insanely jealous.  In the last year of our boat search Rod had contacted some brokers to establish relationships so they could help us out.  We were pretty sure that Boise, Idaho wasn’t going to offer the kind of boat we were looking for.  We ended up finding our boat in Tampa, FL with the help of a wonderful broker, Stan Dabney of Offshore Atlantic Yachts, in the Spring of 2005.  Fortunately, we were ahead in reaching our financial goals so we were going to move ahead with the boat purchase and face the ensuing dominoes that were to fall from that decision:  selling our house, selling most of our possessions, stepping away from our careers, leaving our family and friends, and moving across country to make the biggest change in our lives that we were yet to experience. 

Morale of this short story:  we established a goal and worked toward it.  We are professional, working class people that have faith in our employability and are willing to take a chance at leaving our careers to breathe deep, live life, and grow from our experiences outside an office.

Rod

Lisa

Rod has craved adventure for most of his life.  He grew up in the Idaho outdoors, hunting, fishing, motorcycle riding, mountain biking, kayaking, and telemark skiing in the Idaho backcountry.  After college he became an accountant with a multinational agribusiness company and worked on projects all around the world.  A desire for change led Rod to his second career as an Investment Sales Specialist with a large commercial real estate firm in Boise.  Rod holds the prestigious Certified Management Accountant and a Certified Commercial Investment Member professional designations which he is certain will have no value on this current adventure.  In addition to his professional designations, Rod is a PADI certified Advanced Scuba Diver and ASA Bareboat Certified.

Lisa has always dreamed of being an explorer, an adventurer, going to far-off places and experiencing new things.  A childhood book that made a big impression on her was “My Side of the Mountain”, where she longed to follow in the footsteps of Sam—living off the land and befriending nature.  While most friends would not describe her as “earthy”, she has surprised a few through the years with her willingness to try new things; from overcoming her paralyzing fear of water to kayak the Middle Fork of the Salmon River with Rod to buying her first sailboat in a truckstop parking lot in Rawlins, Wyoming.   She was fortunate in her career to have worked her way up the corporate ladder of the largest US semiconductor manufacturer and achieve self-proclaimed professional success while making life-long friends in the process.    In addition to no professional designations beyond a BS in Marketing, Lisa is a PADI certified Scuba Diver and ASA Bareboat Certified.. 

The Dream