About Us

We are Karl and Nora Klewiada. We met at Montclair State University in New Jersey while studying to become art teachers. We got married in 1977 and that summer took a road trip from New Jersey to Seattle. We absolutely fell in love with the small “big city” on Puget Sound and in 1979, after working several years as teachers, we quit our jobs and moved to Seattle in a used school bus. Karl found his dream job as a wind tunnel modelmaker for Boeing. He surprised himself and stayed for 34 years, earning a BS in Computer Science and traveling to France, Italy, and Japan for Boeing. He retired in 2013. Nora parlayed a love of food, and a passion for teaching and working with people into a career in retail/food service management and ultimately human resources. In 2017, she retired after over 25 years as a HR director.

We share a life-long love of boats and boating. Karl built boats in high school and for summer jobs. He kayaked and canoed the rivers of south Jersey. Nora learned to sail in high school and canoed and kayaked with friends in college. When we moved to Seattle we pursued our shared love of boating and our cycle of buying houses, fixing them up, selling them, and eventually living on a boat. From 1982-1984 we lived on a 34' CHB Trawler named "Tranquility Base" and in 2017 we lived on a Nordhavn 55 named "Bravo". For more details, see our previous blog of our first Nordhavn at www.n55bravo.com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summer in Maine

Image
Summer in Maine This is the earliest we have arrived in Maine. With strict quarantine procedures in place, there are fewer boats than previous years and we enjoy wide open anchorages all to ourselves. Bravo is way out there straight ahead, all alone against the shoreline. Southwest Harbor and Hinckley Yacht Services This will be our “home base” for mail, laundry, fuel, and provisioning. When we are on their mooring buoy, we also have a front row seat for many maritime activities… barges, coast guard patrols, sailing classes, etc. This was bizarre and a little scary looking for sure.       I finally saw the owner on board the boat, so I cautiously asked him if there was a story that went with the heads?      He matter of factly replied it was to keep the birds off of his boat. As if all boats had mannequin heads!? The youth sailing classes took place almost every day, and sometimes they used Bravo as part of the course. Karl driving our tender, which was our...
Read more

Here we go again!

Image
There’s adventure out there ! And, we're ready to find it …again!  Two years ago, we moved on-board our dream boat, a Nordhavn 55 we named Bravo. We cruised the east coast from Florida to Maine and back to Florida.  Our many adventures were logged in our previous blog  www.n55bravo.com .  Unfortunately, a little over one year ago we decided to put our cruising plan on hold.     Previous boat - Nordhavn 55, "Bravo" Life happens. We sold the boat in January 2018, came back to Bellingham, Washington, bought another house, and tried to settle into life on dry land. After nine months, we had enough. All we could think of was getting back on a boat. So, we put the house on the market, and spent our free time perusing boats for sale.   Friends and family thought we were either totally crazy, or on top of the world. Our son said, “What will I tell my friends? You are stressing me out!”. The house sold in February 2019 an...
Read more

Migration North

Image
Summer Migration North Okay, we've been enjoying our travels way too much, and as a result our blog is lagging by a few too many months. So time to start catching up... Homer Smith is a great marina, and often has fresh off-of-the boat shrimp. Yum! As the heat and humidity increases in late May, we are still at the dock in Homer Smith Marina in Beaufort North Carolina. Our thoughts and plans are quickly turning to the cooler climate of Maine. Because of the constantly changing Covid 19 restrictions, that vary wildly from state to state, we are plotting a route that will get us to Maine with the fewest number of stops, and little reason to go ashore. We plan to leave at first light, but our dock neighbors suggest a later start because 150 sports fisherman boats in the "Big Rock Blue Marlin Fishing Tournament" will roar out of the harbor at the time we want to leave. Since we cruise at 8 knots, and they go 22+ knots, we will let them go ahead of us! Similar...
Read more