Phil and Lorraine are two long time friends who met on Changes in 1979 have been friends for years. Later when each was free, we hooked up again, became engaged on Changes and then were married on Changes in 2005. Sept 2010 to May/June 2011, we had our first trip cruising to Georgetown Bahamas, loved it and are currently planning and preparing to leave again this summer 2013.

Phil is a retired Electrical Engineer earn his BSEE from Case Institute of Technology. His sailing resume started in the Mid 1970’s on Lake Erie sailing on his O’Day 20 with his young daughter, Victoria. Then he bought S/V Changes, a C&C 34, in 1979. He has accumulated about 30,000km cruising and racing on the Great Lakes. 1999 started his cruising adventure participating in the Atlantic ARC on his friend’s Prout Cataraman S/V Adventure with his now grown daughter Victoria. Since then he has honed his skills by transporting sailing vessels with Cptn Dave from the Caribbean to USA. Phil is quite the handyman (that’s why I married him, just kidding). Besides his electrical engineering skills, he’s pretty handy from woodworking to plumbing (which he hates) to being my second hand when sewing our canvas on the boat. Pretty much anything that has needed to be fixed on Changes he has done himself, except for when the boat got damaged in a flood on Grand River, OH in 2006. Then Parker Marine in Lorain, OH did a wonderful job painting the topsides Awlgrip vivid red and making her better than new.

Lorraine is a RN working as a Hospice Home Care nurse. She started sailing on S/V Changes in 1979 after being invited sailing on a wonder September Sunday and can you believe it – didn’t get sea sick. She loved it, took a community course at Lakeland Community College, told Phil, who promptly invited her to go sailing every Sunday the following season and the rest is history. Really, when first sailing, I just follow directions blindly – not really learning how to sail myself. After marriage and divorce for both parties, we hooked up again and continued sailing on Changes turning our focused on fulfilling Phil’s long time dream of cruising on salt water. That’s when I decided that I better learn sailing myself to be able to “bring the boat back” if something happened to Phil. Now I can bring the boat back and dock her, even if it isn’t pretty. So in September 2011 we left Grand River Yacht Club and out Fairport Harbor, OH to traveled through the Erie Canal to the Hudson River to points south. We reached our goal of Georgetown, Exuma Bahamas and returned in the spring of 2011 logging over 5,000kn. Please see our blog at changesgoingsouth.blogspot.com for the day by day account of this trip.