Paul and Susan Mitchell are doing something they haven’t done in decades — settling down on land.
Well, they are now that they’re back from a nearly two-month vacation overseas.
The Mitchells reside at La Jolla’s Casa de Mañana senior-living facility. But most of their lives have been spent on the water as they operated a pair of sail lofts (places where sails are cut and made) and lived on a boat at Shelter Island for years. They later spent over two decades traveling the globe.
“You can go around the world in an airplane in one day,” said Paul, 88. “There are cruise ships that go around the world and they do it in maybe 90 days with lots of stops. It took us 26 years.”
Paul and Susan’s seagoing story began with his fateful decision to purchase a boat. At age 21, the Chicago native traveled to Los Angeles by bus. His boss at the time had a roughly 20-foot sailboat for sale, and Paul thought the price was reasonable.
“I’d never been on a sailboat in my life, but it really sounded like a good idea,” he recalled.
Paul had no idea what he was doing at first, he said, but he grew to love sailing. Despite having no experience making sails, he and friend Barry Spanier launched a sail loft, named Sail Services, in 1973. After seven or eight months, Spanier ed on his knowledge and hopped on a boat to Mexico.
Over the years, Paul said, he has ed on his own knowledge of sailmaking and maintenance to many colleagues or employees — “sail loft babies” — who went on their own to open businesses across the West and East coasts.
“I used to tell my employees, ‘You have a cold and you’re sick? You come to work. You break a leg? Come to work. If you want to go sailing, go,’” Paul said.
Susan, now 82, was no stranger to sailing. Her father was a sailor and her mother’s family was “a sailing family,” she said.
A few years before she met Paul, she spent a summer as an apprentice for a sailmaker in the Caribbean while “babysitting” a friend’s boat.
In 1978, Susan walked into Sail Services, searching for sails for a friend’s boat and inquiring about a job to pay them off. Paul said he didn’t necessarily need additional staffing, but he asked for her help on a week-long job.
As it turned out, that week-long job turned into a life partnership that continues today. After a year and a half, the two were married.
They lived on a boat minutes from work, sold sails, took customers on rides throughout the week and attended boat races on Wednesdays.
“We worked hard but we also played hard — saving every penny to take off … into the sunset,” Susan said.
In 1982, they sold their two businesses — the other of which was called Canvas Services. They began their two-decade global odyssey in November that year, when they took off on the boat they lived in — a 58-foot “vintage schooner.”
With provisions, equipment and two sewing machines, the pair set off for Mexico, Costa Rica, Easter Island, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and more. They resettled in San Diego in 2008.
“We’d stay at a place for a while, get to learn the people and the cultures, eat the food, make friends and sometimes go back again, which made us very happy and made them happy,” Paul said.
At each stop, they put their sewing machines and experience to work. With many ports lacking sail services, the two were able to earn money by providing them.
After their journey ended, the couple bought a canal boat and spent six-month increments of the next 15 years in , as well as in the United States. The 50-foot-long houseboat included a bedroom, a pair of bathrooms, living and dining rooms and a kitchen — more of a proper home, but still on the water.
As they debated their next move, Paul and Susan ed a waiting list for Casa de Mañana. After five years, they were approved and moved in 2023, selling their trusty houseboat for a home above sea level.
“We wanted to move while we could physically do it ourselves,” Susan said. “We also had no furniture. This seemed like an enormous space to us.”
“And it didn’t move,” Paul quipped, a smile forming on his face.
Reflecting on their decades of travel, Paul and Susan speak of the freedom, sense of adventure and learning opportunities their lifestyle granted them. Another highlight, Paul said, were the interactions they had with people in other countries.
These days, their trips typically don’t venture farther than Catalina Island. Still, the sea beckons them — that is, if their ocean view at Casa de Mañana doesn’t quite suffice.
“We don’t cross oceans anymore,” Paul said. “But … our favorite thing is we go on a boat, we leave the dock, we go find someplace, drop the anchor and just sit there swinging on the anchor for a couple or three days and go home.” ♦
