Imagine……A sandbar, skinny dipping and a bottle of wine.

We woke up one morning and we started packing……..Great words from a great song……and what would become our mantra for life!

We married at a young age, had a wonderful family, home, careers and used every spare minute we could find to go someplace…. anyplace. Our children learned to travel on a moment’s notice, at a very early age. We took them from the dinner table in New Jersey to the car and ended up skiing in Vermont the next morning or in Florida doing their pre-arranged homework at Disney World. We don’t think they ever held it against us.

We transferred to Florida, the children grew up, the homes got sold and we found ourselves looking at new things to do. We bought a sailboat and learned how to sail. Hurricane Andrew prompted a move to California, but ultimately, we quit our jobs and moved to Hawaii for a year, and then came back to California to love our first grandson…. and live on our sailboat. We waited patiently for the rest of our grandchildren to be born. The year 2009 brought the sixth and final one….. Next stop retirement!

Life got really interesting at this point. We would have to live on Social Security. We would have to learn to live without fancy cars and good restaurants. We would not be able to live our lifelong dream of going to Europe. No more expensive vacations.

On the bright side, we had no financial obligations. No bills, no mortgages, no family to support and a little nest-egg if we got old and needed some medical attention. OK, we thought. So…… we decided, over a glass of wine, that it was worth a try. We packed up the boat and started a brand new life, leaving it all behind. We have never looked back.

We now live on our beautiful boat, The Nelly Gray, in Ensenada, Mexico and enjoy a wonderful, full life.

By the way, we still go to nice restaurants and managed to save enough money to spend eight weeks in Europe.

The fancy cars? We drive a little Mexican Chevy that is cute as a button and costs us one hundred and fifty dollars a year to insure.

We recently purchased a 1982 VW Vanagon, restored it and have happily camped all over the Baja.

We’re saving again and next year, we will take the van to Europe and camp everywhere possible.

We have never held it against ourselves for retiring!