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 life time, taking close to a year, and we are inviting you to join us.

How it all began

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 that 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 out preparations for the Loop.  We visited family in Georgia and Florida. Travelled 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 out grandkids near Chicago IL.  We enjoyed our grandson’s first birthday and took care of the 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 a 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 head 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  that reservations that were expressed  were concerns about me 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 wont spend a great deal of time on this section boring you with my CV.  Lets 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 aways 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, 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 placed that 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 site, 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.  Nobody who ever met her did not like her.  She was a flower child.  She married me in a Gunny Sack dress with a ring of daisies in her hair.  We 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 love all the children and animals she ever met.  She was an exceptional mother and an even better grandmother.  She left behind and very lost and lonely husband, and special dog, and 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.