Bill Soulier
Bill Soulier grew up in Upstate New York. His career includes serving 9 years in the US Air Force and working 25 years in technology. At the age of 54, he and his wife Laura left their jobs, bought a sailboat, and went sailing.
In his first book SAIL AWAY, Bill and Laura work several months on Second Wind, their Endeavour 43 Ketch, and then sail to the Florida Keys, and then through the Caribbean to South America. This begins a 12-year love of sailing in beautiful places.
Bill has logged over 60,000 miles on the U.S. East Coast, Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. Bill is also a U.S. Coast Guard licensed Master and serves as Captain on a 100-foot, 150-passenger cruise-boat on the Hudson River.
Blog
Travels of Bill and Laura
Bill and Laura's blog on various aspects of their cruising life aboard Second Wind, their Endeavour 43, since 2019!
Books
Sail Away
Bill and his wife Laura travel on their Endeavour 43 sailing ketch Second Wind from the United States through the Caribbean for over a year to South America. This book is written from the detailed Blog that they kept almost every day—from boat purchase to 4 months working on the boat, sailing to Florida, then leaving the United States to sail the Caribbean to South America, until just over a year later when they leave the boat in Trinidad for 3 months.
Details of their travels include over 130 full-color pictures of people, places and (of course) the boat, which they share in this book.
Sail Away can be purchased on Amazon
Sail Up The Pacific
Bill flies to Auckland, New Zealand where he continues his sailing life on the 48’ Ketch Capaz – sailing “up” the Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii over a 2-month period. Starting from Bay of Islands, New Zealand, they sail to Tonga, American Samoa, Suwarrow and Penrhyn (Cook Islands), Kiribati (Christmas Island) and Hawaii. Included are over 50 beautiful, full-color pictures of the trip.
At the same time, Laura flies to Seattle to be with her daughter who is pregnant and due any day. Most of these entries are posted by Laura as she receives intermittent emails from Bill out on the Pacific.
Sail Up The Pacific can be purchased on Amazon
Sail Home
Bill and Laura fly back to Trinidad in January 2008 and sail Second Wind to Venezuela then up the Leeward and Windward islands and, eventually, back to the United States and the Hudson River.
There they start a successful charter business in Catskill, New York (on The Hudson in summers) and the Florida Keys (Marathon during the winters). They find many rewards and challenges in 8 years of running a charter business which are detailed in this book along with over 200 beautiful, full-color pictures from their travels and charters.
Sail Home can be purchased on Amazon
Sail On
Retired from chartering, Bill and Laura perform some major upgrades on their Endeavour 43 Second Wind for a new cruising life—a new galley and refrigeration, solar and wind power, a new jib and main roller furling, and new bow pulpit.
No longer rushing up and down the coast for charters, they sail to new places including Cuba and Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Over 130 full-color pictures of their boat upgrades and beautiful new places are included in the book.
Sail On can be purchased on Amazon
