About
Us

We are Steve, Mittie, and Gnarly.
We have embarked on our last great adventure, attempting to navigate America’s Great Loop in our sailboat.
This will be an experience of a lifetime, taking close to a year, and we are inviting you to join us.

How it all began

We bought our dream sailboat in 2010. After a great deal of research, we decided that the Telstar 28 was a perfect boat. Very stable, shallow draft, and is very easy to sail. We bought it used, but in perfect shape, and sailed it from Havana FL (St. Marks) to our home in Summerland Key FL. After many local excursions to Picnic Island and a number of modifications to make the boat more livable and easier to sail singlehanded, I took a longer trip with a friend (Jim McCready) to the Dry Tortugas. The trip went well, and the boat was ready for a greater adventure. In 2018, Jim and I took her to Havana Cuba for a week. On the way home, we had a catastrophic failure of the right outrigger in a storm. The entire outrigger departed the boat after breaking some extremely stout stainless hardware attachments. We tied up the outrigger to the boat and motored back 28 hours to Summerland. A testament to the safety and flexibility of the boat design. I doubt any other boat would have stayed afloat, let alone allow the continuation of the trip.

After moving to Bayou Vista Texas and dragging the boat, pieces and all with us, I found a perfect place to repair the boat. It took me 4 years and all the fiberglass and epoxy I had left from my attempt to build a Velocity airplane. After the repair, it was in better shape than when we bought it. I found a marina close to our home at Harborwalk Marina and began to fix it up for another great adventure.

Mittie and I had talked about going on the Great Loop. We joined the Great Loop Society and watched as many Youtube videos on the subject as we could find. A major plan was put in place, and a start date was chosen to be February 2023. We had one more trip on land that we wanted to take before we finished our preparations for the Loop. We visited family in Georgia and Florida. Traveled the east coast to a lovely week in Bar Harbor Maine and observed perfect fall foliage. We then entered Canada and had a fantastic two-day trip to visit our grandkids near Chicago IL. We enjoyed our grandson’s first birthday and took care of Jacob, Emma, and Keeley for a week. What a glorious week that was.

Mittie was not feeling well at the end of the week, so we headed home so she could see her doctor. The illness accelerated and an emergency room visit did not yield anything unusual. She was told to get some rest and check back in a week. Within a few days, she continued to deteriorate. A quick trip to the emergency room again placed her in the ICU at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. The care was exceptional, but nobody could identify the real cause of the problem. She became very critical in a few hours and went into organ failure very quickly. She died on November 8, 2022, and the grief was overwhelming. Gnarly, our 14-year-old Yorkshire Terrier was lost and confused, as I was. We needed to get away so we went on a long road trip and tried to get our heads wrapped around our future without Mittie. It has been tough and will be for the foreseeable future. A day has not gone by in the last 50 years that we did not talk to each other.

So……….Gnarly told me that we must go on the trip we had planned around the Great Loop. At least that is what I heard from her. After bouncing this off several family members and friends, the only reservations that were expressed were concerns about my being able to handle the boat by myself. My answer is always, “Gnarly will be with me and Mittie’s spirit is always present”. She would be very angry with me if I put Gnarly at risk, so I will take great care to make this trip safe, enjoyable, and a memory FOR a lifetime. A celebration of Mittie’s life.

Steve

I won’t spend a great deal of time on this section boring you with my personal and professional history. Let’s just say I have had a wonderful life. I have accomplished more professionally than I ever thought possible, met some of the most fantastic people I could ever imagine, and loved getting up every day of the week and going to work. I have nothing to regret and nothing to prove. But, I believe I still have a great deal of life to live, and by God, I am going to do that. As Mittie would always tell me, and the saying goes, “Dance like nobody is watching”.

Our travel philosophy

I have always been a bit of a risk-taker. However, like I already said, Mittie would not want me to put Gnarly at risk. I will be careful, take my time, and enjoy the travel even if we have to terminate the trip early because of mechanical, health, or personal issues. Nothing will be a failure even if we turn around in Galveston Bay and go home.

Gnarly and Mittie

Gnarly has been a constant companion. We would not fly commercially because we could not easily take Gnarly. So we always drove (with few exceptions like to places where we could not drive). Gnarly is a special kind of Yorky. She has black skin and white hair, but AKA registered. She has a personality that is unsinkable. I fell in love with her at first sight, and she is her daddy’s girl, which always bothered Mittie a bit. She will be a great companion for the trip.

Mittie was a very unique person and personality. Everyone who ever met her liked her. She was a flower child. She married me in a Gunny Sack dress with a ring of daisies in her hair. She was exceptionally intelligent, but never liked to flaunt it. She fell in love with me at first sight, and I fell in love with her at the same moment when she gave me a simple hug. Our life only got better from there. She was very happy with her life when she left this earth. She loved all the children and animals she ever met. She was an exceptional mother and an even better grandmother. She left behind a very lost and lonely husband, a special dog, a very kind and talented son (Steve Jr), and three very exceptional grandchildren (Keeley, Emma, and Jacob). She will be missed but never forgotten.

We don’t know where we’ll be in a week or in a month. We do what we want for as long as we want, always trying out new experiences.
Fair winds and following seas my friends.

— The Woodens —

About Us