Before I dive into 2020 and its interesting events, I thought it best to look back at 2019. Since much of 2019 has been documented on our Facebook page, I’ll spare you a lot of the details, but this is kinda how it went…
I’m sure the saying “I love it when a plan comes together” came from some movie that I’ve never seen or can’t remember, but I don’t know that you could find more appropriate words to describe what 2019 was for Lisa and I. The plan, as I outlined in a previous post, was to retire and move onto No Yards for the warm weather months followed by travel to some warm weather country for the Canadian winter. The details of this plan were to follow, and now that is has passed, I’ll give you the condensed version of how it worked out for us.
Retirement
April 1: I can’t think of a better date to retire than this one. Some, perhaps many, of our friends likely weren’t sure right up to the end whether we were really retiring or if this was a big April Fool’s joke (for Paul anyhow). But this was certainly no joke. Day one of our retirement, both of us, began on this date as planned. Do we really know what is in store for us? No. But we do know that we’ll be taking on this new phase of our lives together, and we wouldn’t want it any other way. How do we start our retirement? With a one week vacation in Bonaire. Nothing like sunshine and beaches to help decompress after decades of the working life.
Moving onto No Yards
April 9 to 28: Time to pack up our belongings and get out of our condo in Toronto. Less than three weeks to figure out what will fit on the boat, what will fit in storage, what we can give to family and friends, and what we can donate to charities. A busy but exciting time, but we managed to get it done. I think we’re going to miss the excitement of Toronto’s waterfront…..maybe someday we’ll be back.
April 28: The move onto No Yards happens today. I honestly have no idea how we were able to get everything that we brought with us onto that boat, but we managed. Up until this point I don’t think we’ve spent any more than three consecutive days living aboard, and now we’re planning to spend months here. Does that sound a little scary? Maybe. But you’ll never know until you do it.
April 28 to October 26: Our first season living aboard No Yards. Many adventures alone, with family, and with friends old and new. Learning how to drive, dock, anchor, and raft-up No Yards. Learning how to fix things we’ve never seen before (some of which we broke ourselves). Mostly enjoying life on Georgian Bay, taking in the spectacular scenery. We were trying to get six months aboard but when our marina shut off the water late in October we decided to book a vacation in Costa Rica for a week. This was a really nice bookend, with the Bonaire trip in April, for our first season aboard. You can find many stories and photos from this boating season on our Facebook page by clicking this link https://www.facebook.com/no.yards/ or by clicking the Facebook link at the bottom of this page.
Family
2019 was a great family year. The highlight for us was the wedding of our son Brendan to Sarah Kuri, in Toronto in July. Welcome to the family Sarah!! Of course there’s nothing like a wedding to bring family together and we were so happy to have family members travel from New Brunswick and southern Ontario to celebrate with the newlyweds. 2019 also afforded us the time to spend more time “back home” than we have in many years. Check out our Facebook page.
Travel
Charlotte, Bonaire, PEI, Boston, New Brunswick, Toronto, Costa Rica, Cleveland, and Calgary were just some of the locations we traveled to in 2019. Sports, music, and family visits led the way in bringing us to these places. What a great first year in retirement! If this is what retirement looks like, I’m liking it so far.