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What is Bill and Mary's Website?
Bill and Mary's Website is the personal travel site of Bill Finkelstein and Mary Mack. It is not a commercial guide or booking service: the homepage is mainly a short account of their life together and a set of links to where their photos and older material now live.
What the site covers
The page describes two distinct phases of travel:
- Sailing years: After retiring in 2000 and 2004, they left San Francisco Bay on their Valiant 50, Raptor Dance, four days after Bill's retirement. They cruised Mexico, then British Columbia and Washington, returned to Mexico for more than five years along the Pacific coast, and were back in San Francisco Bay by late 2010—logging over 25,000 miles in just under seven years.
- Land and cruise travel: Once home, they travelled by land and on cruise ships, naming Celebrity and Oceania, sometimes for up to seven months a year. They now travel only occasionally.
Where the useful material sits
The homepage itself is a summary rather than a journal. For actual photographs, it points to their curated Flickr collection. It also links to a pre-2009 legacy site with earlier digital photos and videos; the page warns that it has broken links, low-resolution images and no SSL protection. A further item is Bill's presentation from the Chaffey High School Alumni Association's 2024 ceremony, where he was named "2024 Tiger of the Year."
Who it suits
This is a site for people curious about a long-term cruising and retirement travel lifestyle, or for friends and family following the couple's history. Someone planning a similar Pacific Mexico or Pacific Northwest cruise may find the narrative useful as background, but the page offers no itineraries, costs or practical advice.
A sensible next step is to open the Flickr link for the curated photos, and treat the legacy site as an archive to browse cautiously rather than a maintained resource.
What can I learn from Bill and Mary's sailing and cruising experiences?
Bill and Mary's site is a personal travel memoir rather than a guide: the main takeaway is a real-world template for long-term cruising followed by a shift to land and cruise-ship travel. Their page describes meeting on a SCUBA trip to Belize in 1992, retiring in 2000 and 2004, then leaving San Francisco on their Valiant 50, Raptor Dance, four days after Bill's retirement. They cruised Mexico for a season, spent a year in British Columbia and Washington, returned to Mexico for more than five years along the Pacific coast from the Sea of Cortés to Zihuatanejo, and were back in San Francisco Bay by late 2010—over 25,000 miles in just under seven years. Later they traveled on land and cruise ships, mainly Celebrity and Oceania, for up to seven months a year before settling into mostly occasional trips.
What the experience illustrates
- Sequencing matters. They tested coastal cruising close to home before committing to longer passages and a multi-year loop.
- A seasonal rhythm works. Mexico in one season, the Pacific Northwest the next, then a long return to Mexico shows how cruisers can follow weather rather than a fixed itinerary.
- Cruising is a phase, not a permanent identity. Their move to cruise ships and land travel suggests planning for what comes after the boat, including stamina and shore-based interests.
- Records pay off. The mileage and timeline give a concrete sense of pace—roughly 3,500–4,000 miles a year—useful for estimating your own range and layover time.
For a reader planning a similar life, the practical next step is to sketch a three-to-five-year route with seasonal windows and one fallback port per leg, then compare it with their Mexico–Northwest–Mexico pattern. Their curated photos are on Flickr, and the page links a pre-2009 legacy site with older, lower-resolution material that Bill and Mary themselves describe as a "blast from the past" with broken links.
Where can I find Bill and Mary's curated travel photos?
Bill and Mary point readers to Flickr for their curated travel photos: Flickr. The site's welcome text says you can see "some of our curated photos" there, so it is the intended place for the edited selection rather than the full archive.
A useful next step is to treat the site's two photo destinations differently. Flickr holds the curated set; the pre-2009 legacy site, linked from the same page, is described by the authors as a "blast from the past" with broken links and low-resolution photos from their first digital camera in 1999. If you want presentable travel images, start with Flickr. If you are researching their earlier cruising years and can tolerate gaps, the legacy archive is the deeper but rougher source.
How did Bill and Mary plan their retirement to include extensive sailing and travel?
Bill and Mary's own account on Bill and Mary's Website shows a plan built around sequencing rather than a single leap: they retired (Mary in 2000, Bill in 2004), departed on their Valiant 50 "Raptor Dance" just four days after Bill's retirement, and then cruised in stages—a season in Mexico, about a year in British Columbia and Washington, then five-plus years along Mexico's Pacific coast—before returning to San Francisco Bay in late 2010 with over 25,000 miles logged in under seven years. After that, they shifted to land and cruise-ship travel, often up to seven months a year, and now travel only occasionally.
What their approach suggests for your own planning
- Use a phased launch. Their quick departure worked because the boat and route were presumably ready before retirement; test your own readiness by asking what must be settled in advance (vessel condition, insurance, mail, medical cover) so you can leave soon after your last workday.
- Cruise in regions, not one epic route. Splitting time by region let them adjust pace and return to familiar waters; a reader planning a similar life could set one- to two-year regional blocks with a clear turnaround point.
- Plan for a second act. When sailing ended, they moved to cruise ships and land trips, mainly on Celebrity and Oceania. Treat the first phase as time-limited and decide in advance what replaces it when stamina, health or interest changes.
- Match the plan to your budget and crew. Long coastal cruising rewards patience and simple systems; cruise-ship travel trades independence for convenience and less preparation.
For a next step, write a one-page timeline with a departure date, two regional cruising blocks and a decision point for switching to land-based travel. Their curated photos on Flickr and their pre-2009 legacy site (linked from their page) offer a concrete look at how the cruising years actually unfolded.
What is available on the pre-2009 legacy website?
The pre-2009 legacy site is an archive of the couple's earlier digital material from when they got their first digital camera in 1999. Bill and Mary describe it as a "blast from the past," and warn that it contains broken links and low-resolution photos and videos from the pre-smartphone era. It is not SSL-protected, so it is best treated as a nostalgic read rather than a secure or complete archive.
What to expect
- Early digital photos and videos from around 1999 onward
- An older site structure with links that may no longer work
- Lower image quality than their curated Flickr collection
For a practical next step, use the legacy site to sample early trip material, then go to Flickr for the curated photos. If you want the fuller cruising story, the main page summarizes their roughly seven years and 25,000 miles aboard Raptor Dance.
What did Bill Finkelstein's 2024 Chaffey High School Alumni of the Year presentation cover?
The page does not describe what Bill Finkelstein's 2024 Chaffey High School Alumni of the Year presentation covered. It only notes that the presentation can be viewed on the site and that he was named the "2024 Tiger of the Year" at the Chaffey High School Alumni Association ceremony.
For the actual content, watch the embedded presentation on Bill and Mary's Website. If you want background first, the site's short biography—meeting Mary on a Belize dive trip in 1992, retiring in 2000 and 2004, then sailing the Valiant 50 Raptor Dance out of San Francisco and logging over 25,000 miles in under seven years—suggests the talk may touch on a life of travel and sailing, but that is inference, not a stated summary of the presentation.
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