Jack King

92 Hickory Thicket

Irvington, VA 22480

(804) 577-4588
(804) 815-6307

jandlking@gmail.com

photo posted 2013

Update 2021

Last year we moved across the Rappahannock to our age-in-place house.  (One level, doorways and shower wide enough for a wheelchair, since everybody seems to use one at least temporarily.)

John and family moved to Davis CA, where he toils at UC Davis.  The vibe there is eerily like WL in the early 60s, very mid-century.

The grandchildren turned 16 and 14 this summer.

We continue to enjoy good health, although (and we'll spare you The Organ Recital) an increasing amount of repair and maintenance seems to come with the advancing years.

Update 2013

A friend told us that retirement was in fact just another career change.  On reflection we saw the merit in that argument.  Running away to sea gave us a whole raft (so to speak) of new and entertaining experiences, but staying out of trouble on a boat requires serious attention and skillful responses to the challenges that keep popping up.

At the reunion we will tell anyone who’ll listen about how we got from Sardinia to Virginia in five short years, in the form of highly entertaining stories of strain, pain, fracture and equipment failure.  (Our plan was to do it in three.)  We have finally said those fateful seven words: We’re getting too old for this!

Yes, we are finished gadding about as full-time, long-distance cruisers.  Once Horizons gets out of rehab—she’s receiving a makeover at a nearby boatyard—we’ll concentrate on Chesapeake Bay, with side trips as far as Maine in the summer and Beaufort NC in the winter.  After three months on land we are working on re-entry to “the new normal.”

We are fortunate that our son John and his family live in nearby DC.  We see them frequently—grandson Nicholas and granddaughter Quincy are eight and six and very good company.  Daughter Anne lives in Massachusetts with her husband, a one-day ride away,  and that’s where we all were Thanksgiving 2011, for the accompanying photo.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone.

Jack King

Posted 2008

Jack & Laurie in Prague November 2007

Sometime in February 1991, Laurie’s walk to work from Boston’s North Station included half a mile of uninterrupted ankle-deep slush.  Accordingly, she concluded that There Has To Be a Better Way.

That evening she called me in Costa Mesa, California, where I was on a business trip.  She explained that the Better Way involved a) quitting our jobs, b) selling our stuff, c) buying a boat and d) going sailing in warm places. 

It sounded pretty good to me, so at the end of September 2000, with jobs quit, stuff sold and boat bought, we sailed Horizons out of Mattapoisett Harbor.  After 31 years, we were no longer living in New England.

We shuttled between Maine and Key West for two years.  Our rule of thumb was, if we couldn’t see any butterflies then we needed to go further south.  Then we sailed by way of Bermuda to the Caribbean. 

We spent two years in the Caribbean, bouncing between St Martin and Trinidad.  Particular favorites in addition to those two islands were Bequia, Martinique and Grenada.

Then in the spring of 2004 we sailed from Trinidad to Miami, via Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. We went north up the Intracoastal Waterway and to Rhode Island, and in August we had the boat shipped to Sardinia.

We have been in the Mediterranean ever since, except for the times when we fly home for a few months.

We have cruised in Sardinia, Sicily, mainland Italy, Croatia, Greece and Turkey. We wintered once near Rome and twice in Kemer, Turkey.  Last winter the boat was in Corfu in Greece.

This spring the homeward journey began: westward along the sole of the Italian boot, to Syracuse in Sicily, to Malta, to Tunisia and now to Sardinia, where we are as I write this at the end of June. 

We will go to the Balearic Isles and spend August in Barcelona.  Then we will make our way to Toulon in France, where the boat will stay for the winter.  Next April we will ship Horizons back to the Caribbean, where it and we will be based for the next few years.  Sometime we’ll bring the boat back to America and tie up at the slip at our condo in Virginia.  Then we will get to spend some time cruising in Chesapeake Bay.

It has been a great pleasure doing all this cruising, and I will mention just a few of the reasons.

We have seen Old Rocks from antiquity and art from medieval and renaissance all the way up to modern.

The area is steeped in history.  We have visited the site in Turkey where Alexander the Great declined a challenge to fight some well-defended locals and the place in Malta where St Paul was shipwrecked on his way to Rome.

We have become friends with large numbers of the Perfectly Normal People (fellow cruisers and liveaboards)—British, Dutch, Swedish, Australian and who knows what else, even Americans (although the strong euro has been scaring our fellow countrymen out of the Med in recent years).

We live “on the economy” in our travels and we eat and drink what the local people eat and drink—and we have to buy it in their language.  (I have received haircuts in eight or so languages.)
I know a lot more about navigation, boat handling, diesel engines, electricity, sanitary plumbing and a dozen other topics than I ever would have guessed 45 years ago.

Life on board involves a lot of time outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine, and there is so much healthful exercise that we have actually been getting younger … until a random twinge from the lower back or some arthritic knuckle reminds us that we are not.

As to younger generations, Anne lives with her husband Tom in the Boston area and works in publishing; John lives with his wife Cheri in Washington DC and works for the Economic Research Service of the Agriculture Department.  Also in Washington are grandson Nicholas (three) and granddaughter Quincy (one year old next month).  They are tall, sturdy kids with good dispositions and they are doing well.  When we’re in Virginia we visit the grandkids often, since they are only three hours away.

The last reunion we attended, ten years ago, we mentioned (I think to anyone who would listen) that we had a plan to run away to sea.  Well, that is exactly what we did!  It was worth it, wouldn’t have it any other way.  And after eight years living just the two of us in a space 40 feet long and 10 feet wide, nobody has murdered anybody and we are in fact still married.  (Must be all that fresh air and sunshine.)