In the beginning!

Sunset on the deck of  the Grampian

So how exactly did we get to where we are today? Well it's a long story, believe it or not we were both avid sailors. An unfortunate broaching incident lead to my wife developing a form of vertigo and here we are. We didn't give up on sailing right away though, we tried sailing flat on a trimaran. We bought a Newick designed Summersalt 26, it was fun and fast. Many times we would outrun the wind and the river banks would come up quickly. For all that speed and exhilaration you do have to sacrifice creature comforts. She sailed flat and fast, but we wanted to go cruising.

Our Grampian 26

With cruising in mind, we started searching for larger trimarans that would fit the cruising lifestyle. There wasn't much out there that really appealed to us. Then one winter while at a boat show, we had a look at some power cruisers just to see how the other half lived. From there we ended up with a small jet boat to putter around on the river with and mostly to take my daughter and her friends tubing. The jet boat was a lot of fun, but...it was noisy and really only handled well when you were at full throttle. For the kids, great, for us .... not so much. So we set off looking at power cruisers. The smaller ones were nice but didn't really feel right. We then started looking at larger boats, and there were a few in our price range that we found. We then found that we liked the aft cabin models which helped weed out lots of boats and our modest budget helped weed out many others. After spending countless hours searching through online adds, we came across two boats that really appealed to us.

Silverton 40 AC

We found a Silverton 40 Aft Cabin and a Sea Ray 410 Aft Cabin for sale and decided to make a road trip out of it. First stop was in Northern Ontario to have a look at the Silverton. It was nice, and the previous owner did sink some money into it with new decks, re-built carbs, and newer heads. There were some issues that we had with it though. The cabinet doors on the flybridge were rotten and falling off their hinges, the aft deck was covered with a canvas top that would need to be replaced and the interior space was not what we were hoping for.

We then headed down into Southern Ontario to see the Sea Ray and wow, we couldn't believe the amount of space that the Sea Ray had. For the most part it seemed to be in pretty good shape.

With a hard top over the aft deck, a radar arch to accommodate electronics, a clean interior that had loads of space, we were more than ready to move ahead with the purchase. After a survey and sea trial, we negotiated our offer and were the owners of a power cruiser which is now known as M.V. Tropical Horizons.

Welcome

Welcome to our blog.  We are two souls in search of sand, sun and warm weather; then again, who doesn't want these things?  So we went out and bought a boat, maybe it isn't the perfect boat, but she's ours.  Our dream is to take our boat "Tropical Horizons" and actually get out there and explore what lies around our home port and beyond.
Karen and I (Eric) will document our travels and share our adventures with all who wish to follow us in the hopes of creating a source of information for those who wish to cruise in a power boat.  We'll post blogs on boat improvement projects, destinations, cruising strategies, route planing and more as we travel and learn about our boat and ourselves.
We started off as sailors, but circumstances arose that made sailing no longer a viable travel option. So we traded our sails for motors and now we cruise aboard our 1987 Sea Ray 410 AC.  She's not a trawler or tug by any means but she fit our budget, can carry plenty of stores, is very comfortable, and with a bit of work we are slowly turning her into a medium range cruiser. As Dag Pike wrote in his book "Cruising Under Power" "the best boat to cruise in is the boat you have".
So hang in there and read on as we post more stories from the purchase of our boat, to crossing Lake Erie, spending time in Long Point, transiting the Welland Canal, crossing Lake Ontario and entering the Bay of Quinte and beyond.  We'll try to post here and on our YouTube channel, "M.V. Tropical Horizons" on a weekly basis as time and internet access permit.