I've been drawn to the water and to messing about in boats all of my life. Fishing with my father on the lakes of Illinois and Wisconsin when I was young, the Sea Scouts as I grew up, working on boats as diverse as a company party yacht on Lake Michigan and a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico as a young man, and open ocean sailing in the Pacific as a more mature adult.

Over the years I've built several boats - from an 8' Minimax hydroplane to a 25' cruising trimaran sailboat - and helped finish and sail a 36' trimaran sailboat. I've sailed all of the waters from Cabo San Lucas to the Strait of Juan De Fuca, and crossed the South China Sea under sail.

Even though I've been powerfully drawn to the water and to boats all my life, it's only now that I've felt compelled to write about that world. As we, my wife Joanne and I, plan and prepare for our upcoming voyage our heads are filled with ideas that might make worthwhile stories. Stories about the people and places we will see. Stories about the maritime culture and history we will be cruising through.

The purpose of this section is to make it possible for us to share our experiences and information with others who may find it useful or interesting. We will also make the plans to build four world-class cruising multihull sailboats available for the first time since they were originally designed.

About the Current Voyage...

On October 22, 2004 we began a circumnavigation of the Eastern United States (often referred to as "Doing The Loop").

Our plan is to spend November and December going down the inland rivers (Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Tombigbee) to the Gulf of Mexico, then east along the coast of Florida to the Bradenton/Sarasota area of Florida. In February we'll go south to the Florida Keys, and in late March or early April begin to travel north up the East Coast Intracontinental waterway. May in the Chesapeake, June in New York, July and August crossing the Great Lakes, and back to our starting point (Wilmington, Illinois) by September, 2005.

Information about the voyage and an "Occasionally Updated Journal" are on the Current Voyage page.

To make a very long story short, in 1983 I had just bought an unfinished 36' trimaran when I met Tristan Jones. Jones was the author of numerous books on sailing including a series of what could rightly be called adventurous autobiographies. He had lost a leg and was looking for a multihull to enable him to get back to sailing.

One thing led to another and I ended up finishing and outfitting the boat to his specifications and then chartering it to him for $1.00 per year. The boat was named the OUTWARD LEG and became a central character in two of his subsequent books.

The OUTWARD LEG was designed and partially built by an incredibly talented Australian boat designer Leo Surtees. Surtees had designed three other cruising multihulls, and when I bought the OUTWARD LEG I also bought the rights to all four designs. Now, for the first time, I am willing to make those designs available to others. See the Boat Plans area for details about this.

And if you would like to read the Sports Illustrated story about how all of that came to be then Click Here.