About Us
We are George and Chris Reiss, and in January we will have been married thirty-eight years. George is a retired general surgeon, who spent the latter part of his career specializing in breast cancer. Chris is a “wannabe retired” attorney and was an occasional real estate developer. Together we raised three wonderful children, and they in turn have brought into our family two incredible sons-in-laws, one amazing daughter-in-law, and three perfect grandchildren.
We are long time boaters, and for the past thirty-four years have lived in a home on the shores of St. Andrew Bay in Panama City, Florida. Loopers, an affectionate term for those traveling the Great Loop, pass our dock as they travel the ICW (mile marker 291.4, between red buoy 20 and green buoy 21). For those of you passing by, our home is the one with the unusual flagpole at the end of the dock; it is the top half of the broken 70’ mast from our dearly departed Leopard 46 catamaran sailboat which was destroyed by the Category 5 hurricane that hit Panama City in 2018.
While we are new to the world of cruising on a motorboat, before we bought our Ranger Tug 43, we owned a series of sailboats, primarily catamarans, and on those we enjoyed many great adventures. We’ve sailed extensively along the Florida panhandle, Florida’s west coast, and the Keys (lots of gulf crossings between Panama City and the Keys under our belt). When our children were young (8, 10 and 12), we took a sabbatical and lived on our sailboat for six months, sailing throughout the eastern Caribbean, as far south as Grenada, and then back home to Panama City (and the only really harrowing part of that experience was homeschooling). In recent years we spent a couple of seasons sailing in the Bahamas, and we also had the good fortune to take our boat to Cuba as part of a regatta from Pensacola to Cuba.
So, while we are not new to boating, and not even new to living aboard, traveling the Great Loop aboard m/v (motor vessel) Assisted Living will be a completely new experience for us. It is one we both look forward to with great excitement and hope. We know from experience that living on a boat is not a “vacation” (George always called it “fixing your boat in exotic places”), but we do know that life on a boat is a simple life in the best of ways; so much of the noise, meaningless distractions and negativity of everyday life is filtered out as you work closely together, rely on each other, and remain focused on discovering new places and getting to know diverse and interesting people that you meet along the way. Indeed, the camaraderie, kindness and cooperation of the boating community is legendary, and we happily anticipate being part of that once again as we embark on another epic boating adventure.
Through this website and our blog posts, we hope to stay connected to our family and friends, and we hope it will help us connect with new friends we meet along the way. We look forward to sharing the stories of our journey (the good, the bad and the ugly) and to sharing what we are sure will be many valuable lessons – both in boating and in life. We wish you all fair winds and following seas, and hope that you will keep in touch.
About m/v Assisted Living
Assisted Living is a 2022 Ranger Tug 43-CB, designed and built near Seattle, Washington by Ranger Tugs.