Peg and Tom retired to the town of Oriental in Pamlico County, North Carolina in 1993 from Upstate New York. They built a house on Broad Creek just off the Intercoastal Waterway. 

There is excellent sailing on the Neuse River and on adjoining Pamlico Sound, and the Atlantic Ocean is just a four-hour trip down the Intercoastal away.

Prior to retiring Peg was a Nurse Practitioner and Tom was a business owner in the Rochester, NY area. While in Rochester they raced and cruised extensively on Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands in dinghies and small keelboats. After moving to Oriental, they purchased an Etchells keelboat  for racing in the local fleet, sailed an O’Day Daysailer on their home creek and purchased a Pearson 37 (also named Starboard Home) for cruising. 

Peg and Tom cruised to the Bahamas in the Pearson during the winter months from 1993 through 1996, spending most of their time in the Abacos but also sailing in the Exumas, the Berries and the Bight of Abaco. While in the Abacos they joined the Hope Town Sailing Club and participated in some of the activities and racing.

Although they had accumulated quite a bit of sailing experience and had chartered in the Virgin Islands, Peg and Tom found their first trip across the Gulf Stream to be a new and definitely not a pleasant experience. Just as racing in dinghies is different from long distance racing in handicapped keelboats, cruising on lakes--even Great Lakes--is different from making ocean passages. The trips to the Bahamas, whether sailing directly from Beaufort or making the trip via the Intercoastal Waterway with a hop across from Florida, convinced them that they needed another boat for offshore.

Although the Pearson was a great boat for rivers, sounds and the relatively protected waters of the Bahamas, it was not suited for extended offshore passages. With plans for a multi-year circumnavigation of the Atlantic and Mediterranean Seas forming, Peg and Tom put the Pearson up for sale in the winter of 1996 and began looking for a suitable ‘sea boat’ to make the trip. They found a "boxy but good" 1986 Valiant 40 for sale the day that the Pearson was shipped by truck to Kansas City to live on the Lake of the Ozarks with her new owners.  Peg and Tom sailed the new Starboard Home from Ft. Lauderdale to Broad Creek in June of 1997. After two shakedown cruises to New England in the summers of 1997 and 1998, and many modifications, repairs and upgrades, they were finally ready to depart for Europe on May 19, 1999.

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