Henry
My journey with Arabella began when I was 15 years old. My friend’s family was one of three joint owners, and they would invite me to help sail the boat from Marion, Massachusetts, where I spent my summers, down to Maine. Those sails were simply extraordinary.
Prior to that, I’d spent most of my time on a Crosby Striper with my father, fishing on Buzzard’s Bay. My first night run on Arabella from the Cape Cod Canal down to Maine converted me from a powerboater to a sailor.
I did these summer runs on Arabella almost annually, and then chartered Magic, a 36’ Staedel schooner, from my brother-in-law. I sailed to Bermuda and points south, and then returned to Maine. That cruise made it impossible for me to return to the confines of a college dorm, so you could say I was ‘ruined’ at an early age.
Next, I signed on as First Mate on Deliverance, a 96’ Eldridge McGuinness design built by Quincy Adams Yard in 1956. I worked on her refit in Maine, and sailed with her to Bermuda. My next boat was 1965 H-28, home built by a backyard builder in Virginia, and in need of new frames and deck. She was our family boat until we moved to Florida, which was the wrong environment for a wooden boat with a lot of brightwork.
We purchased Arabella in July of 2006, and kept her based in Maine while we were still based in Florida. It proved too challenging to manage the boat long distance, and so after our daughters returned to New England for college, we sold the Florida house, moved to Maine, rented a small house with a big driveway, built a shed and moved the boat to her ‘new’ home to begin a two year refit.
Since we’re not retired, many people ask us how we were able to move and then take the time to do this project. The answer is simple: our business, which provides an unprecedented level of independence while simultaneously generating a professional income with full benefits.
Since the age of 5, I was in my own little motor boat and able to go off and explore, first, the little cove we summered on and then Buzzard’s Bay. I loved being on the water and having lots of freedom, and I was aware of how much freedom I had. As a young adult, I sought a way to have a career which allowed me to be in control of my time, and with the Juice Plus Virtual Franchise, I found it.
Here is a business wherein you can work for yourself, but you are not working by yourself. You have the support of a full corporate home office, but are building your own business. You get to chose whom you work with, when you work, and how hard you work. The unique element is that once income is built with this business, it is an on-going income, which you don’t have to work over and over and over again to create.
For 22 years our company has grown some of the best produce in the world. We juice it, dry it, and encapsulate it. We are the first company in the world to encapsulate whole food. Having developed millions of customers around the world and educated them on the benefits of eating as much produce as possible, it was a logical evolution to develop the vertical aeroponics. These gardens allow individuals and families to take control of their food and have fun gardening in a unique, green, state-of-the-art system. We are the future of food.
We’re always looking for like-minded people, and so if our business is something you’d like to learn more about, please contact me. If you have any questions about the boat, feel free to connect with me, as well.
Jen
I always tell Henry that he married very well.
I am not an experienced sailor (I am a horsewoman) but fortunately, I love refinishing old wood: bureaus, chairs, windows, tables, – just about anything with peeling paint catches my eye and makes my heart skip a beat. My first hands-on experience with wooden boats was deciding that his family’s H-12 needed to be launched, after sitting out for many years.
During the course of the 12’s life, someone had stained the spars a mustard yellow, and so my first step was wooding them, and gamely beginning to varnish them. Henry informed me, ‘Books have been written on the subject.’. I did not believe him!
Our first boat of our own was another Herreshoff, an H-28. She was a bit of an eyesore when we bought her, which (of course) won my heart. We brought her back to life, and then moved to Florida, where we rapidly understood why there aren’t wooden boats in Florida. The sun was ruthless, and so we sold her to another wooden boat enthusiast.
Our original plan for life in Florida was to be there for the school year and then be on a boat in New England for the summer (we actually did this for one summer on the H-28, but that’s another story). After looking at a variety of boats, we couldn’t find one which seemed right. Over the years, I had ferried Henry out to Arabella for the trips down east from Buzzard’s Bay to Maine, and she had always been what I considered a boat ought to be. As we were shopping for our next boat, I kept comparing everything to her, which made the process impossible. We put a temporary end to our shopping. Then our youngest daughter, Leita, did a week-long Outward Bound course in the Keys on their open pulling boats. When she returned, she was an enthusiastic sailor, and suddenly all 4 of us were on the same page: ready for a boat. I immediately searched online, and, as luck would have it, Arabella was for sale.
We had our doubts when starting this undertaking, because so many people with the right intent take on an old, tired, wooden boat, and the boat languishes in a shed or a backyard. We really didn’t know the scope of the project before us. I was extremely nervous about physically being able to do the work. It’s one thing to refinish an end table, and quite another to refit a 51’ boat. But we both had a passion for bringing the boat back, getting her in the water, and making her our home for a period of time. We’ve been able to accomplish all three of these goals.
We have had many people ask us how it has been possible for us to accomplish them, and quite simply, the primary reason is because of our business – it has given us the freedom to take the time to see this project through. We have had our business for 24 years, and started it because it just made sense. I had been in the corporate world, and then small business. I love business, but the corporate world wasn’t a fit, with the inefficiency of meetings, the glass ceiling on income and advancement, not to mention the commute. I next tried turning my passion of training horses and riders in Dressage into my profession, and ran an equestrian training facility. After years of 90+ hour weeks, working every evening, weekend, and holiday, no time at home with my family, I was ready for something else.
When my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, we were introduced to a physician who shared with us that he felt that 85-90% of his patients were sick, simply because they hadn’t been eating enough fruits and vegetables. That got my attention. I knew, down to the morsel, what I was feeding my horses, but I didn’t have a clue about feeding myself. I started paying attention to eating lots of organic fruits and vegetables.
That’s when things became challenging. Eating a lot of produce isn’t complicated, but it is expensive and can be difficult. Just as we were going through this process, we were introduced to Juice Plus: fruits, veggies, and berries in a capsule. It just made sense to me, and so I was all in! When the vertical garden was introduced, I was so excited because here was a way that I could grow a lot of my own produce, and do it sustainably. I couldn’t help but share these concepts with everyone, because I knew, firsthand, how challenging it is to get enough healthy food.
When I looked at the business model, it made complete sense to me, too. Unlike in my previous corporate experience, there is no glass ceiling here, in terms of either income or advancement. And unlike the riding center I had run, this business is very efficient, with no investment and extremely low overhead. The business is also completely portable: I can take it wherever I go. The most unique aspect is this business creates on-going income. Once we built our income, we were able to take several years off,while rebuilding the boat, and still have that income come in, month after month after month.
Now that most of the major projects are completed on the boat, we are back actively building our business because the timing demands it: More people than ever are aware that they need to be taking an active role in their health, they need to be growing some of their own food, and they need to have an alternative source of income, which they completely control, which they can develop without jeopardizing their current career, and which provides them with the time freedom to do what they want to do with their life. Our business provides someone with all of those options.
Leita
Growing up on the water in Marion, Massachusetts, I was born into a sailing family. I have childhood memories of my dad working on our family boat, Calliope, during the winter nights. Although sailing was always a part of my summer, I never really enjoyed it. When my family and I moved to Florida, sailing remained a big part of our lives, because my sister participated in all of the Opti regattas. During my sophomore year in High School, a local family sponsored a week-long Outward Bound trip on the pulling boats, for the students at my school. I was lucky enough to be invited on this course during Spring Break . Even though my sister had taken the same course a few years earlier, I knew very little about the trip except that it was in the Florida Keys and there were boats involved. Something about this course, be it the intense thunderstorms at night, the lack of a private bathroom, or being forced to live on a 15 foot boat with 13 strangers, made me fall in love with sailing. Even now, 10 years later, this course stands out as one of the best weeks I’ve ever had. When I came home, I remember telling my parents I loved sailing. That same week, my parents started boat shopping and discovered that Arabella was listed for sale.
After my high school career in Florida came to a close, I felt wholly unprepared for college. My sister had taken a gap year before college and I decided to do the same. This gave me time to feel more prepared, as well as gain a little more life experience. After some deliberation and the need for “structure” (my mother’s words) we decided on a vocational school in Maine, building wooden boats. The Landing School, based in Arundel, Maine, has a program where students can learn to build two wooden boats in the course of a school year. This was the main focus of my gap year. Monday through Friday I would wake up and go to “school” in the most untraditional sense. There we no classes and only one teacher. My days consisted of reading plans and manipulating wood, accordingly. I learned how to operate power tools and acquired some amazing skills with hand tools.
During my gap year, I had been accepted at the University of Vermont, my first choice college. I had grown up in Florida but my heart has always been in New England and a long winter in Maine (including one of the worst ice storms the state has seen) did nothing to temper my desire to stay north. Because my sister and I were both going to be based in New Eng;and, my parents moved to Maine to start the work on Arabella. Many of my breaks from school involved stripping varnish, sanding, oiling teak, and applying fresh varnish. The year at Landing School, with Paul, my teacher, had instilled perfectionist levels of expectation with varnish. I had to adjust my mindset with the work on Arabella, because restoring a boat is very different than building a new one. I have learned to realize, though, that the bumps and bruises underneath the varnish are part of what makes Arabella so special.
As my parents wrapped up the restoration, I was wrapping up my college career and many of my classmates were applying for jobs. I knew long before Senior Year, that I didn’t want a traditional job. Growing up, I had watched my parents have a lot of flexibility and freedom with network marketing. I wanted to create the same flexibility and freedom that they had, so that when I have kids, I’ll be able to spend quality time with them, just as my parents did with me when I was growing up. I also understand the incredible financial potential of building a network marketing business. A traditional job could never create the same level of financial independence that I want. Even though I’ve just started my business, I’m already benefiting from the flexibility it provides.