End of The Secret Adventure
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Guests Come to Cruise
Sometimes renting a car in Seattle is expensive and difficult. Reserving a car to pick up our friends, Mel & Maria, from the airport turned out to be impossible! There were none available. Tom’s solution, a U-Haul truck. Mel & Maria got a kick out of it and it became…
Summer in the Puget Sound
May 10, 2022 – The day we were supposed to fly from Phoenix to Seattle to get on The Secret and shortly thereafter begin cruising to Alaska. May 3 – The day we found out Canada would not allow unvaccinated people to cross their borders. From Canada’s Immigrations site: It…
Finally Beginning to Cruise
9/10/21 – 10/16/21 – F-i-n-a-l-l-y, 9 days short of 1 year after purchase, we pushed off the repair facility dock and cruised out of Seattle. Day 1 began by moving the boat from Thomas Boat Repair to Fishermen’s Terminal (10 min away) to pump out and clean the fuel-coated bilge (see…
Still Working
7/1/21 – 9/9/21 – We were able to return to The Secret on July 26 after Tom got released by his neck surgeon, allowed to do anything that didn’t hurt. So, it was time to go back to work on our projects to get the boat cruise-ready. The “to do”…
The plan is coming together
11/01/20 – 06/30/21 – Well, yes, the plan is coming together…just not as quickly as we had hoped. As we told you last (many moons ago), the plan was to leave the boat in Seattle and get the needed repairs done, then spend the summer cruising the San Juan Islands. But…
Beginning of a New Season
We hope you’re ready to come along with us on this new season of adventure and more of the Vail’s boating saga! Beautiful pictures are sure to abound. 08/26/20 – 10/31/20 – We’ve heard it said the two best days of your life are the day you buy a boat…
End of a season
07/04/20 – 08/25/20 – On July 4th, we returned to the boat at Fort Meyers because there was a couple interested in seeing Life’s TraVails, which you might recall had been for sale for eight months with very little interest…but we were in the middle of COVID-19. Before leaving Marathon, Tom…
Quarantined in Marathon
Click on any image to expand 03/29/20 – 06/02/20 – When we last talked, we were in Marlin Bay Marina in Marathon with tentative reservations through the end of April, but with plans to head for The Bahamas the beginning of April. Well, April came and went, and our reservation was…
Canada to Florida Keys
08/13/19 – 03/28/20 – We imagine most of you have noticed we haven’t posted any cruising news lately. It got to be too much of a burden for Tom to format pictures to Paula’s writing, and we just decided to discontinue our blogs. But exceptional times call for exceptions, don’t…
Thousand Islands, Ontario, Canada
08/04/19 – 08/13/19 (Remember you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.) We were excited to begin exploring the Thousand Islands with whatever time we could spare before making our way back to the US. We had heard from several cruising friends how beautiful it was. The Thousand…
Trent-Severn, Ontario, Canada – Part II
07/18/19 – 08/03/19 On July 18, we drove the 120 miles to Toronto to catch our flight to NC for Paula’s Dad’s 102nd birthday party. Unfortunately, many flights were canceled due to thunderstorms in Chicago and on the East Coast. There were hundreds of scouts stranded in the airport bound…
Trent-Severn, Ontario, Canada – Part I
6/30/19 – 6/30/19 One of the main reasons we decided to keep the boat after finishing our first Great Loop in 2016 was because we loved the Trent-Severn Waterway and wanted to return to Canada and do it again, taking more time. After we started, we made the decision not…
Rideau Canal, Ontario, Canada
6/16/19 – 6/29/19 OK, OK, we’re a little behind, as you can see by the dates above. But…we were in Canada, and there was too much fun to be had! We’re now trying to catch up as we make our way back down the East Coast toward the Chesapeake and,…
New York City to Kingston, Ontario, Canada
6/2/19 – 6/15/19 After leaving the New York Harbor and the amazing experience of being the only boat moving on the water (see our last blog), we headed north up the Hudson River. On our first loop, we took several days to explore along the way, but this time we…
Beaufort, SC to Holden Beach, NC
4/6 – 28/16 Summary: Our move up to Charleston went well, including the narrow cut called Elliott Cut where the current could easily match the speed of one’s boat, so timing was important. This section of the ICW was one of the nicest we had seen with a large variety of…