About Trish

Trish's Cruising Biography

Since I’m loading you up with opinions about cruising in my newsletters, articles, and booklets, it’s only fair that I share a bit about my background as a cruising sailor.

Here's the short version:

First mate/wife of three skipper/husbands on three different sailboats. See below for more detail about each of my cruising phases.
Either been preparing to cruise, cruising, or just back from cruising for around twenty years.
Sailed in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. All of my cruising has been in the western hemisphere.
As things turned out, I’ve been more of a longitudinal cruiser than a latitudinal cruiser.
Transited the Panama Canal several times, both in my own and other boats.
Certified open water SCUBA diver.
Hold an Advanced amateur radio license (KF0WE).
Wrote and published Panama By Water, a cruising guide to Panama. The book is now out of print, but I have included a lot of its content on this site.
Produced and led cruising seminars in San Diego for folks who planned to continue south past Mexico. I also delivered a number of talks about the cruising life to yacht clubs throughout California.
Now an East Coast cruiser, living a dual life—working during the week and joining the boat on weekends and long holidays to cruise with my retired husband.
Will be a full time cruiser again in a few years, once we’ve met the financial goals required for our “old age.”

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Three Boats, Three Boys, Three Trips

I have been the first mate/wife of three skipper/husbands on three different sailboats. The reasons why I have had three husbands in three cruising venues are varied and complex, and have more to do with relationship issues than with cruising issues. In fact, all three of my husbands have been terrific sailing partners, and I would trust any one of them at sea again.

Though my serial marriage experience is definitely NOT something I recommend, I have ended up in a unique position vis-à-vis cruising: I have been three kinds of first mate, supporting three very different cruising styles. Combining this first-hand knowledge with my acquaintance with many other first mates has brought me where I am today: dedicated to passing along what I’ve learned to you so that your cruising experience will be the best it can be for both of you.

So there have been three phases to my first mate-ness:

Eager but Green
Insecure but Willing
Confident but (slightly) Jaded

In my articles and ebooklets, I talk about my experiences in these phases. Since it might be hard to keep track of which boat and which skipper was in which phase, here is a quick summary.

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Eager but Green

Boat Name	Brandy
Boat Type	Contessa 35, medium-displacement fin-keeled sloop
Cruising Grounds	Long Island Sound, Massachusetts, Chesapeake Bay, Intracoastal Waterway, Virgin Islands
Budget Category	Medium
Duration of Cruise	12 months

First husband Dan introduced me to the idea of traveling the world by sailboat. He had spent many of his growing up summers on the Jersey shore, and had been on numerous family sail charters in the British Virgin Islands. I am an Army brat, and spent my childhood and teen years moving from place to place in the U.S. and abroad. It didn’t take much prompting from Dan for me to see the attractions of traveling the world in our own floating home. Think of the places we could go and the people we could meet! There is an adventurer inside me, and she got very excited about the prospect of sailboat cruising.

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Insecure but Willing

Boat Name	Ciao Bella
Boat Type	Hans Christian 36, high-displacement full-keeled cutter
Cruising Grounds	Baja California, Gulf of California, Costa Rica, Panama, Cartagena (Colombia)
Budget Category	Low
Duration of Cruise	3 years

Jim, my second husband/skipper, not only had never sailed before, but he was unaware that there was actually a cruising lifestyle. Over the first few years of our relationship, my stories about cruising and my passion for the life got him thinking about this option, and one day he told me he’d like to give it a try. I was thrilled. The insecurity of this phase stemmed from not knowing how much I really knew about sailing and cruising. It took me a while once we were underway to understand that I really did have a handle on cruising and was actually a pretty good sailor and navigator!

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Confident but (Slightly) Jaded

Boat Name	Nehalennia
Boat Type	Baba 30, high-displacement full-keeled cutter
Cruising Grounds	San Diego, Chesapeake Bay, Intracoastal Waterway, Florida Gulf Coast (so far)
Budget Category	High
Duration of Cruise	Ongoing

Skip and I were introduced by mutual sailing friends. He was a singlehander looking for a partner to share his dream of post-retirement cruising. It didn’t take long for us to click, and for both of us, the third marriage has been the charm! Though he is retired, I am not, as the state of the market after the e-commerce bubble has adversely impacted our investment savings (that accounts for the slightly jaded part of this phase!). Skip lives and cruises the boat full time, while I work and join him as often as possible. We cruised San Diego, then the Chesapeake Bay, then moved the boat down the Intracoastal Waterway and across the Okeechobee Waterway. We spent the 2003 hurricane season in Tarpon Springs Florida’s Gulf coast, and are now living in the panhandle in Niceville, Florida.