August 16, 2006 — Zia Bio
by Joe Boyle

My wife Christina Fisher (Christy) and I started sailing in 1992 when we moved to Annapolis from Washington DC. We had recently married and we were running our own small computer business selling equipment to the Federal Government. When we relocated the office from DC to Annapolis, our real estate agent asked if we liked boats. "Heck yeah," we both replied. The next thing you know, we were crewing (as "rail meat") on his race boat in the Wednesday night fleet.

Joe, Christy, Cassie, and Juliana.

Not long after we started racing, we bought our own little racer/cruiser, a 1976 C&C 27 sloop, our first Zia. We learned about boat maintenance, and grew to love the freedom that cruising provided. We cruised and raced up and down the Chesapeake Bay whenever we could spare the time. Our plans started to gel after our first bareboat charter — "Why shouldn’t we do this full time?," we thought.

The cruising life influenced our timing when we started our family, so we had our two kids close together to have built-in playmates and to make home schooling easier. Our pre-departure goals for the kids were that they be able to read, swim and get along with each other. Two out of three ain’t bad — just kidding, Cassie (8) and Juliana (7) get along surprisingly well. We began to read every book and website that we could find on the subject, particularly those dealing with families aboard. We made it a point to get to know as many cruisers as possible and to glean as much information as we could on both the technical aspects of cruising and more importantly, the lifestyle issues. We discovered that as a group, cruisers tended to be gregarious, interesting and willing to help others down the trail.

Zia at anchor in the Bahamas, with the girls in the foreground.

We set and broke more than a few deadlines as we worked at educating ourselves. I passed the test for my Coast Guard Masters license and drove a whole platoon of boat brokers mad with endless questions, while Christy earned her open water SCUBA certification. We had always been monohull sailors but after chartering a few times, we became interested in catamarans for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which was level sailing for the children. We learned that catamarans as a group are much like monohulls — some are great for cruising and others, well, not so much. Chris White’s book The Cruising Mulithull was an excellent source for helping us understand the performance and safety issues involved with multihulls.

When we sold our business, things really began to accelerate. We found the perfect boat (a 2002 Switch 51 catamaran) in Fort Lauderdale and made the deal in short order — our years of boat shopping and test sails paid off handsomely. We then huddled endlessly with our CPA to get our financial ducks in a row; cash flow, rental income, and the four letter word of cruising — the "budget". "Budget? — We don’t need no steeeenking budget." Our CPA begs to differ. Next came the traumatic process of getting rid of years of accumulated stuff, cars, boats, books, pets, clothes, you name it. Yard sales, Salvation Army trips, gifts to friends and many heart-wrenching decisions later, it was done.

Juliana and Cassie studying.

Letting loose the dock lines was culmination of years of focus, and it was an emotional moment for the whole family. Our plan was to sail for a minimum of a year (even if we hated it after 6 months). Well, it has been just over a year and we currently have no end in sight. We have put about 9000 miles under our twin keels so far. Our itinerary is loose, but so far we have sailed up the US East Coast to Maine, down to Tortola with the Caribbean 1500, to the Bahamas and then to Europe via Bermuda and the Azores. We arrived in Spain in July 2006 and plan on cruising the Med for the next year or two.

Back when we were in the planning stages of our cruise, we would often check in on the SetSail website. We would devour the cruising logs and dream of the day that we would be out there enjoying all of the freedom and adventure that cruising offers. And just like many of the cruisers that we met when we were in the dreaming stage, we are now happy to help new cruisers down the trail.

Atlantic sunset.