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After sailing around the world together for eight years, where should a couple retire? Those years would be a mix of living together in tight quarters of a boat and stopping in exotic places around the globe. What if your option was between a small town mountain cottage and a seaside condo? Julie and Glen Bradley chose both. Their springs, summers and falls are spent in the high country Arizona town of Pinetop and their winters are spent in the seaside town of San Carlos, Mexico. Listen to Julie and Glen’s adventures on Episode 57 of Retire There with Gil & Gene!
Julie Bradley’s two books, about the couple’s eight year sailing adventure around the world, are Escape from the Ordinary and Crossing Pirate Waters.
To access Julie’s website, click here.
Author
Julie Bradley was born in Ohio, raised in St Louis and New Orleans. She attained her Bachelors through the Army from University of Maryland. And she has an MBA. With adventure genes and shares her passions in her books “Escape from the Ordinary” and “Crossing Pirate Waters”. Both are true stories about a 7 ½ year adventure of sailing around the world with her husband, Glen. After twenty years in the Army as a Military Intelligence Officer she traded her uniform and worldly possessions to pursue the dream that had inspired her to keep going through the long separations of military deployments. During those years her stack of Cruising World, Sail and Latitude 38 magazines grew to hoarder proportions until the big purge of all belongings to buy their new home: a sailboat.
Glen and Julie met through aviation and are both private pilots. To prepare for their voyage they became HAM operators, certified divers, and earned Coast Guard captains’ licenses up to 50-tons with sail endorsement.
Her authentic encounters in off-the-beaten path countries and interactions with native islanders prompted her to describe their adventures through writing. Julie’s writing has appeared in the sail press, Latitude 38, Cruising World, Boating New Zealand, Money magazine, BoatUS magazine, and the Sunday travel section of over thirteen newspapers in the United States. She also wrote articles for New Zealand press while serving on the race committee for the 2002 Louis Vuitton Challenger and America’s Cup races in Auckland.
Glen Bradley was born and raised in Michigan and studied electronic engineering and a Master’s from University of Northern Colorado. After graduation he served in Vietnam as an advisor to a South Vietnamese Infantry battalion in the Mekong Delta. He worked in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation for the Department of Defense and then ran a defense contracting company until he retired at 55 to go on an eight year sailing circumnavigation. During the pandemic they returned to the water for a year to travel the Great Loop on a 36 foot power boat. Now they split their time between a log cabin in the mountains of Arizona and a house in San Carlos, Mexico.
Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Glen and Julie have worked as international disaster response volunteers for the American Red Cross.
