Short story: We met on a sailboat, got married on a sailboat, and now cruise on a sailboat.
Longer story: We met on a blind date set up by sailing friends in 2008, and two years later bought our first sailboat together, a Hunter 420 center cockpit. We named her Blind Date, of course! We were married by a captain on Blind Date in June 2010 and celebrated with friends and family during twenty Ports of Call on the Chesapeake Bay that summer. We sailed the Bay and chartered in the British Virgin Isles for several years, dreaming of more cruising ahead.
In August 2014, we bought a Gozzard 44 and named her Belle Bateau (pseudo-French for Beautiful Boat). She’s cutter-rigged, built in Canada in 1997 as hull #11 of twenty-three G44s, with a 6’ bowsprit and traditional styling. In October 2015, we paused our careers and began a seven-month sailbatical to Florida and back, logging more than 2,000 nautical miles along the ICW and also along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. We returned to Maryland in May 2016, settled in Annapolis, and resumed our careers while sailing Belle Bateau up and down the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays on extended vacations and weekends.
Fast forward to Spring 2023. We have both retired and finally have time to really cruise. In the near term, we plan to chase 72 degrees up to Maine for Summer 2023 and return to Maryland in the fall, as the wind blows. Then we’ll decide what’s next!
About Captain Cheryl
Cheryl began sailing at the age of 8 when her dad bought a Snark to sail on small ponds and lakes near their Baltimore County home. Now don’t snicker and get snarky---that 11’ expanded polystyrene boat with a wooden daggerboard initiated Cheryl’s love affair with sailing. As a young adult, she took lessons on keelboats, mostly J22s, but still didn’t have access to her own boat. In 2001, she purchased her own Snark (yep---same model as her dad’s, still available 36 years later) and sailed the 50-pound wonder with her sons Philippe and Jean-Luc on Tar Bay near their vacation home on Hoopers Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She never missed the Annapolis Sailboat Show, and dreamed that one day she’d own a somewhat larger boat so she could explore the Chesapeake Bay and occasionally anchor out on weekends.
In 2007 Cheryl rejoined the Downtown Sailing Center (DSC) in Baltimore and took more sailing lessons. The following year she stepped onto a DSC cruising sailboat and met Dudley Whitney on a blind date set up by mutual DSC friends. And the rest is beautiful history.
About Captain Dudley
Who knew that land-locked Atlanta was a wonderful place to learn to sail? Apparently, it is, or so Dudley claims. His dad bought a San Juan 23 when Dudley was 14, and the family sailed on Lake Lanier. Dudley soon learned to sail the boat on his own and continued to sail during college in North Carolina when twenty-one architecture students chartered three sailboats and set sail from Miami to Bimini. That’s when he gave up free beer---you’ll have to ask him for the full story.
After graduation from NC State, Dudley bought a Cheshire Cat 16’ catamaran and enjoyed sailing her in many different lakes in NC, including Lake Jordan, Kerr Lake, and the Albemarle Sound. Ah, the beauty of a boat that can be trailered. He brought the cat up to Maryland in 1989 when he began his new job in Baltimore but sold it when his daughter, Kat, turned 1 year old. Guess he traded one cat for the next (drumroll please)! But we digress. The years passed, and finally life allowed him to join the Downtown Sailing Center (DSC) in 2007, where he became a sailing instructor. Although he was teaching keelboat lessons, and Cheryl was taking keelboat lessons, the two never met. It took the effort of two mutual DSC friends with the foresight to propose a blind date. And, as has been said, the rest is beautiful history.