In June, we got rid of 85% of our stuff and moved out of our house in Southwest Portland to move full-time onto our boat for the summer. We will spend three months sailing the Salish Sea with our kids. Our tentative plan is to explore:
- The San Juan Islands
- South Puget Sound
- The Hood Canal
- Canada, if the border opens up!
I left my full-time job in April and am transitioning to freelance writing and editing in the fall. My husband will continue his current job, which he can do remote almost 100% of the time.

Downsizing for the future
My kids are from my first marriage, and they spend 50% of their time with their dad (big thanks to him for agreeing to let us take the kids for the summer!) He is based in Portland, so we aren’t leaving Portland completely. But once we return from our trip in the fall, we plan to split our time between Portland and Seattle. We’ll be in Portland when the kids are with us and in the Puget Sound area on our boat when they are with their dad.

Part-time cruising the Salish Sea
Since getting our first boat four years ago, and our current boat, Polaris, just in the past year, we’ve only been able to take it out for a week at a time. Still, we’ve seen so much: Orcas, gray whales, sea lions, otters.
We’re so excited to dedicate the summer to exploring this beautiful and rich body of water. I thought that cruising was something I wouldn’t be able to do until I was much older, certainly without kids in the house anymore, and probably closer to retirement.
This is the beginning of something new. Something, for now, that is only part-time. But something big, indeed.
Thank you so much for following our journey!
[…] Our plan to spend the summer cruising the Salish Sea up to Canada may have to be modified now, thanks to the ever-growing threat of coronavirus. […]
[…] eager to head back to the South Sound when we start our three-month cruise of the Salish Sea this summer. We want to take advantage of the re-opening of state parks and do more hiking and […]
[…] Getting on the hook and away from it all is. […]
[…] Anyway, we recently had the bilge pump kick in while we were returning from our two-week cruise of the South Sound. We were motoring back to our home marina in Seattle because we had absolutely no wind and needed to hit the road back to Portland so we could start our big move. […]
[…] continuing their cruise of the San Juans, and commiserated with a few other boaters who had also planned (like us) to journey to Canada this summer until the border closed due to […]
[…] exactly what we planned to do after finishing our epic Summer 2020 cruise. Coronavirus changed those plans when Oregon schools moved to online learning for most of the year. […]