The beginning of our odyssey

Odyssey: Any long series of wanderings and adventures.

A long Greek epic poem attributed to Homer, describing the ten years of wandering of Odysseus after the Trojan War and his final return home.

We were winging our way across the Atlantic in July 1992, from our home in London, to Phoenix where Doug would officially retire from a thirty-one-year career with Honeywell. Our conversation dwelt on two subjects: What would we name our Crealock 37-foot cutter waiting for us in ClearLake, Texas? and What would be the nature of our "odyssey" for the next few years of living aboard and cruising? Just like that - the name for our boat!

While Odysseus reached his home in Ithaca ten years after he "retired" from the field of battle in Troy, we are still roaming fourteen years later. Perhaps for us home will be like Jimmy Buffet's description of Margaritaville . . . "You'll know where it is when you get there."

We will miss our dear friends of the past three years in San Diego, and our Little Italy neighborhood, but go forward in anticipation of meeting still more wonderful people - as has been our good fortune in our past travels. In fact, half of the year we plan to visit with family and friends in the U. S., Canada, France and Mexico. We start the year aboard the Queen Mary 2 for a 26-day cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to San Francisco (around the Horn) and end the year

with a 126-day cruise around the world, aboard the tramp freighter Rickmers Jakarta, departing from and returning to Houston. That should bring us back to San Diego in about one year.

For now, we’re looking forward to a beautiful Christmas season here in San Diego. In the midst of the holidays, we’re organizing things to begin a more nomadic life. We’ve contracted with a mail forwarding service, scheduled the packers and movers, and arranged for the sale of some furniture pieces. We’ve put all 250 music cd’s into our i-pod, accumulated a few books we’ve been waiting to read, decided which clothes to take for a year and put together a small file box of essential paperwork (enough to do the taxes in April). We’re getting together with friends to say our farewells for a year and temporarily severing ties with our volunteer organizations (Doug with the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum and Rebecca with TACO – Third Avenue Charitable Organization).

So, stay tuned to this blog site for further updates on our odyssey of the places we visit and the people we meet.

Doug and Rebecca