Bill and Laurel Cooper, a voyaging couple in their 80s who have been around the world four times in various voyaging boats they built themselves, have decided to end their nearly four-decade life of voyaging. The couple sold their house in 1976 and departed on their first voyage and have been making sea voyages ever since. According to a report in the U.K. newspaper the Mirror, Bill said, “We’ve had a wonderful time, but I’m afraid I have been overtaken by what you could call ill-health. When I got to about 78, we built a boat we could manage for when old age really strikes – we call it the geriatric boat.”
The first boat they built in the 1970s was a 50-foot steel ketch called Fare Well. Their latest vessel is a 40-foot steel houseboat on the River Medway at Rochester, Kent, named Faraway.
They wrote a book abut their exploits called Sell up and Sail.
