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.

Phil and I are older now. Lorraine retired End of May 2025, and this summer we are cruising around Lake Erie taking our time.

Our previous story of our cruising adventures is below.  After returning in August 2015, we house sat a yacht club friends furnished home for the winter.  Then May 2016 we bought a house.   We now have been in that house for 9 years. How time flies. After sailing in our friend’s Tartan 37 the summers of 2021, 2022 and 2023, we decided that we would like our own Tartan 37 and search for one late summer 2023 with hope to do some cruising again. After traveling to the Chesapeake Bay Area, we found our 1977 Tartan 37 , hull 45 at Ford Yacht Club on Grosse Pointe Island, Michigan. This time SV Katie O, named after my daughter who’s no longer with us, is our boat. We transported SV Katie O home with our friend Ted Z in one long passage overnight arriving in our home port the next morning during a great weather window. Since then we’ve made our own upgrades getting a new refrigeration system, and had Tides Track on the mast and mainsail. We had a 30″ wide gate added to the port side, and new Flexifold prop added to help with the pull to port when in reverse. Lorraine put new fabric to replace the cushion top and had new foam and batting replaced. We have also put stratoglass replacement on the front dodger windows and took the center window to replace the window in the Bimini. We added 5 Caframo fans which helps us to keep cool. Phil added an under the deck autopilot and constructed a frame to support 2-140 watt solar panels. These are what we kept when we sold our previous boat SV Changes. Lorraine is learned the boat systems and helps with winterizing the boat and commissioning her in the spring.

Previous cruising  adventure started Sept 2010 to May/June 2011, when we had our first trip cruising to Georgetown Bahamas, loved it and after work8ng and lreoar8ng for 18 months, cruised to Trinidad and back leaving July 5, 2013 and returned August 7, 2015.  Summer 2014 we left SV Changes at  Peaks Yacht Service while we flew home for the hurricane season with Lorraine working at her job for the summer.

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 BSN, RN that worked as a Hospice Home Care and ended before retirement May 2025 as Triage nurse in the Care Solutions Center. She started sailing on S/V Changes in 1979 after being invited sailing on a wonderful 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. 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.