Our Recent Boating Experience

 So we have already spoke of transitioning from power boaters to sailors. And you may ask what kind of boating experiences have led us to this point. Chris grew up in a "Boating" family as his parents had many boats throughout his childhood.  Currently, we are traversing the beautiful Arizona and California waterways on the restored 1981 Tarva custom mini day cruiser you see above. Amanda got into boating when she met Chris, and together have spent countless weeks,weekends, and vacations aboard a variety of boats that we've enjoyed over the last 10 years.  Since buying our first boat together, you can say the lifestyle fit us.

 We started small with the 2001 Sea Ray 215 Express Cruiser. This 22' boat was awesome as it got us on all the lakes and had a good size cuddy cabin we could overnight in. This was really proof that we could live in a really small space together. After 2 and a half years though we had the itch to get something bigger.

 That's when we traded up to the 2006 Rinker 27' Express Cruiser. And for the next 3 years we explored everywhere we could tow it. The photo above was at Lake Havasu in the winter when you could have the whole lake to yourself.  We also enjoyed a two week vacation aboard exploring the amazing Lake Powell where we cruised and explored only a fraction of that lakes 1,500 miles of shoreline.

After launching the boat in Wahweap bay and provisioning for our trip across the lake. We set out at top speed for the 4 hour trip towards Colorado through the beautiful vistas of Utah. We wound up in a slip Bullfrog Bay at the back of the Lake then spent The next few weeks working our way slowly back. If you have never been to this lake we highly recommend it.

 After the epic adventure we had bought it to enjoy had culminated we sold the Rinker and went  over a year without a boat........a feeling of loss that was indescribable. So we decided that the only cure was another boat.. We picked up a fantastically preserved 1985 Sea Ray 245 SRV in Las Vegas that had been used primarily by it's last two owners exclusively on Lake Mead.

 We moved the boat into a slip in our local Lake Saguaro as seen here and we had a wonderful year together. It was nice to be out to the boat in under 1 hour from our home.

Here we were able to really enjoy being a part of the Marina and the local boating community. We also got more practice fixing an old boat and enjoying each other in close company.  Deciding that we had spent too many years boating and wanting to spend more time traveling and seeing friends and family with our vacation time we reluctantly sold the boat.

Although you would think this was the end of the story, it really is just the beginning. We realized  through our travels over the last few years that we wanted more and hatched the plan you see on this blog. We wanted to travel and see more of this world and as you can see it was natural as boaters to be drawn to the "Cruising Lifestyle" by combining the two.

Since we love the water and it is  such a great way to escape our working life. And until were able to set sail we simply could not be boat less. We decided to go a different direction with the purchase of our current boat. Also realizing the many miles of Arizona's coastline along the Colorado river could only be explored by shallow draft boat we chose the Tarva. This will now fill our summers when we cant be sailing to continue to stay connected to the lifestyle we love.