Todd and I will soon begin a new chapter in our lives. The following explains what caused us to make this decision and provides some information about our future tentative plans:

In September 2005, we lost our best friend, Duane Teale, in a boating accident while we were vacationing together with he and his wife on Pickwick Lake in Tennessee. As a result of this untimely tragedy, we have reevaluated our lives and priorities and have decided that it is time to make a change. Therefore, Todd and I have resigned our jobs, effective May 19, 2006, and will be leaving Missouri State University and Springfield, Missouri, to begin a new chapter in our lives.

Both Todd and I are avid boaters and Todd has had a desire to take some time off when he reaches age 50 to become a full time live-aboard. I, on the other hand, was new to boating when I met Todd in 1996, but I have since developed a passion for being on the water. With the sudden passing of Duane, we both realize that life can take unexpected turns at any time, so even though Todd is still a few years shy of the 50-year benchmark, we have decided to spend the next few years doing what we love most as full time live-aboards on our new (to us) 40-foot Oceania Sundeck Trawler which we are going to name “Life’s2Short” in honor of Duane Teale.

Over the past few months, we have been liquidating virtually all of our worldly possessions and hope to begin our new lifestyle in early June. We just returned from a two-week jaunt to move our "new" boat from the Tampa/St. Petersburg area to Mobile, Alabama, and the events of this journey are the subject of another post! Fortunately, we were accompanied by an experienced live-aboard couple and we are very grateful to have had their assistance.

We are now in the process of wrapping up all the loose ends in Springfield and preparing to travel one-way back to Mobile to begin our new lives as live-aboards. Once we get the boat loaded with whatever remains of our worldly possessions, we will begin the trip north into the Tennessee Tombigbee (Tenn-Tom) Waterway and on into the Tennessee River system, traveling through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. We will spend the summer months in the Tennessee River system familiarizing ourselves with the boat and its many electronics and operating systems and, depending on our level of comfort with the boat, may embark on a journey in the fall of 2006 to complete what is known as the Great Loop or Great Circle, a circumnavigational cruise of Eastern North America.

For those who don't know, the Great Loop would take us south to Mobile, across the Gulf of Mexico and back to the west coast of Florida. We would then travel south to the Keys and north up the Atlantic coast, through Chesapeake Bay to New York City where we would follow the Hudson River to Lake Champlain, and the St. Lawrence Seaway to Lake Ontario, the Trent-Severn Waterway, Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay and other waterways of the North Channel of Lake Huron. We would then enter northern Lake Michigan at Mackinac Island and travel southwest to Chicago where we would enter the headwaters of the Illinois River. The Illinois River joins the Mississippi River at St. Louis and we would follow the Mississippi south along the eastern border of Missouri, head east into the Ohio River south of Cape Girardeau, and then into the Cumberland River which would take us back into the Tennessee River system at Kentucky Lake, south of Paducah, Kentucky. The Great Loop encompasses over 6,000 statute miles and well over 100 locks and may be a bit more of a challenge than we are ready for our first year, but it is definitely a journey we want to experience during our time as live-aboards.

We also want to spend some time exploring the Bahamas and the Dry Tortugas, but we don't want to bite off more than we can chew and choke on it, so our only plan at this point is to do as much as we feel comfortable doing whenever we feel comfortable doing it! Both Todd and I realize that it is going to be difficult to untie the lines to the dock, so to speak; to leave the security of good jobs and our land-based family and friends behind, but we were made painfully aware of how suddenly life can change and how very short life can be and neither of us wants to look back and have regrets about what we could/should have done when we had the opportunity.

We recently ran across an apropos quote: “You can always make more money, you can not make more time.” The other quote that Todd has earmarked for several years has been attributed to Mark Twain and is something of a mantra for us as we begin this new chapter in our lives: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Todd also has a t-shirt hanging in his office, which some of you have undoubtedly seen, that says: “Sell the house, keep the dog, live on a boat.” And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we take the plunge to explore, dream and discover.