Bill Hezlep

A retired professional cartographer, Bill's lifelong infatuation with the sea, ships and boats began in 1961 when, at seventeen, he went to sea on a square rigged Norwegian school ship. He met Betty, an aerospace engineer, mathematician, pilot and experienced sailor, in a sailing club in Annapolis in 1993. A year later they sailed their Mariner 36 ketch out of the Chesapeake Bay on what was supposed to be a one year round trip cruise: south to the Florida Keys, over to the Bahamas and back to the bay. They never returned to their former lives. They lived aboard and cruised full time, power and sail, for fourteen years―from Maine and the New York and Canadian canals, south to Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean, west to Texas and through the canals of France. During that time they renovated, sailed and lived aboard boats ranging from an ocean going ketch through a trawler and several Down East boats to a large antique, iron hulled Dutch motor barge.

In 2012 Bill sold red Walkabout, his ageing Cape Dory power boat and bought a newer boat. The new boat is a Nauset 28 downeast style hardtop lobster boat that was built by Nauset Marine in Orleans, Massachusetts (out on Cape Cod)in 1995. The boat was re-powered in 2006 and then refurbished in 2012.

Bill is a contibuting writer to the Southern and Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway editions of Dozier's Waterway Guides and he and Betty spend half of each year cruising the eastern seaboard and the Gulf coast...enjoying life and doing a little research. When they are not out on Bill's boat they live in Betty's house in the art and antique town of Round Top, Texas; where Bill spends his time working on his current project, a book about the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.