In another life, Jim and Judy Brown were landscape architects living in Western Loudoun County, Virginia, in a house they designed themselves. “We had a beautiful view, it was a beautiful place — a great place to raise the kids,” Judy says. “Then we said, ‘OK, we’re ready for the next thing, they’re grown, they’re independent, what can we do next?’ We both love water, we’ve been sailing on and off since we’ve been teenagers, and we’re kind of landlocked in our place in Virginia.”
Because they had once served as their own general contractors, they had 20 years of equity saved up on their property, which eventually became the down payment for the purchase of a boat.
“I had no idea what we would be doing after our corporate career [when we built that house],” Jim says. “It’s kind of funny how everything comes around.”
The Brown’s bought their boat, and after five years of research and development — and while they still had, as Jim puts it, their “strength and sanity” — they left their jobs and moved onboard.
