By: Misty R. Snow
Their house was a boat. The world became their address.
In the opening pages of Masterplan: Adventures of a Lifetime – Volume I, before we’ve even left the slip in Satellite Beach, Florida, the romance of life at sea runs into its first, indelicate problem: none of the toilets will flush. The holding tank that was supposed to be empty is mysteriously full, the marina’s pump-out is unavailable, the port engine quits, the battery charger dies, and, as a final indignity, the new liveaboards don’t yet have a key to the marina restrooms.
Karen Reilly, who has just moved onto a 58-foot Hatteras Long Range Cruiser named Masterplan with her husband, Stan, tries to negotiate bathroom access and ends up rattling the locked door of the men’s room—BYO toilet paper in hand, before realizing her mistake.
It’s a small scene, played for comedy, but it’s also a kind of thesis statement. It’s the record of two ordinary people who sell the house, move aboard a 130,000-pound trawler, and then spend the next decade-plus figuring out, often the hard way, how to live inside their own dream. Reilly’s “Masterplan” project, two books published so far, with a third forthcoming, is part travelogue, part love story, part meditation on late-life reinvention.
Drawn from real-time emails to family and grandchildren, the trilogy traces a 63-country odyssey across oceans, continents, and countless small domestic battles: fixing pumps, fighting bugs, and finding new versions of themselves.
A Life Afloat, One Hard-Won Lesson at a Time
Volume I (2012–2014) chronicles their first years aboard Masterplan: a period of trial, error, and unexpected joy. It begins with a simple resolution: no more “someday.” On New Year’s Day 2012, they traded land life for a 58-foot hull and a new address, Latitude and Longitude.
They learn fast. Sea trials reveal just how massive their new home is, 130,000 pounds of floating possibility, and how fragile comfort can be when something breaks. Within weeks, they’ve moved aboard, exhausted but elated, toasting a Florida sunset from the flybridge. A few days later, Karen earns a $259 speeding ticket. “The land wasn’t ready to let me off the hook just yet,” she jokes, a perfect metaphor for the tug between past and future.
Their early months mix lyrical moments and gritty detail: running aground in the “Amazon River” stretch of the Intracoastal Waterway, juggling bridge schedules, and compiling an ever-growing list of lessons learned over evening wine. The romance of the sea coexists with broken pumps, bug invasions, and the chaos of living in a floating workshop.
When Stan breaks his wrist, Karen finally seizes the moment to reclaim the aft shower from his stockpile of tools—one small domestic victory at sea. Neighbors offer “Florida Bug 101,” and she turns Masterplan into a fortress of repellents. Yet each night they climb to the flybridge for sunset, marveling that the sky “is never repetitive,” and wondering how they ever lived without this view.
From the ICW to Lake Garda: Volume II Widens the Frame
If Volume I is about learning the ropes, Volume II (2015–2019) is about widening the horizon. Leaving the U.S. waterways behind, the couple explores Europe, the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, and finally Australia, by boat, train, plane, and every ferry in between.
The second book opens in Venice, 2015. Too jet-lagged to sightsee, they drive straight to Cortina d’Ampezzo. The next day, the Dolomites rise before them “in their rugged beauty,” sunlight spilling over stone. Reilly writes with a mix of awe and candor—delighting in Lago di Barcis, confessing her terror on mountain switchbacks, and admitting that not every scenic detour delivers. Monte Spia, she notes dryly, was “not quite as spectacular as promised.”
She battles colds, bad mattresses, and endless stairs; hunts gluten-free meals in a land of pizza and pasta; and measures time in ferry rides, festivals, and market days. A supposed 30-minute walk to Bardolino’s wine fair stretches to nearly an hour, ending with Aperol spritzes, fireworks, and aching feet. Travel here is sensuous but never slick: a symphony of small frustrations redeemed by wonder.
As Volume II expands across continents, its emotional terrain deepens. The couple tours Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast, yielding the driver’s seat—and Karen’s anxiety—to a bus. In Mykonos, they lose themselves in whitewashed alleys once used by pirates. A scheduled Istanbul stop is canceled amid unrest, a reminder that the wider world always has its own agenda. In Ireland, they stand atop Slieve League, then drink pints under a harvest moon. The next day, they walk through a replica “coffin ship” in the Ulster American Folk Park, contemplating what travel once cost those who couldn’t choose it freely.
Reilly’s genius is to weave these vast panoramas with life’s minor economies—Groupon spa passes, errant GPS routes, and the calculation that a free Aqua Center ticket “saved us enough for dinner.” The grand adventure unfolds one receipt, one wrong turn, one ordinary miracle at a time.
The Voice: Emails Turned Epistolary Memoir
The books’ charm lies in their voice, intimate, unscripted, and warm. Each entry reads like an email dashed off after a long day: dated, precise, and vivid. Where they slept, what they ate, how many steps to the top. Reilly’s voice invites you in, her self-deprecating humor turning missteps into connection.
Edited with care, the volumes avoid diary monotony by tracing an emotional arc beneath the chronology. Both introductions frame travel as education. “This book isn’t just about the places we visited,” she writes. “It’s about the lessons travel teaches when we let go of control and embrace the journey.” The “endless horizon of the open sea,” she adds, became their classroom; fellow travelers, their teachers.
At times, the dailiness blurs into routine: laundry, logistics, long drives; but even that repetition is part of the argument. Adventure, Reilly suggests, is not a genre. It’s a posture. A life at sea is still life: repairs, chores, laughter, exhaustion—and the view, endlessly changing.
Love, Loss, and the Shape of a Trilogy
Both published volumes carry a quiet undertow of mortality. Each is dedicated to Stan, “my husband, my anchor, the love of my life,” and to Reilly’s father. Beneath the humor and mishaps runs a meditation on impermanence: how travel stretches time even as it spends it.
Across twelve years, Karen and Stan travel “not just in miles but in meaning,” trading their 58-foot cruiser for cruise ships, trains, planes, and bikes as their journey evolves. Stan’s voice filters through: his steady optimism, his signature phrase, “Believe it.” The trilogy’s epigraph—“It’s better to be at anchor wishing you were at sea than at sea wishing you were at anchor” captures their shared creed: choose movement over regret.
The Forthcoming Third Volume
Reilly hints in her acknowledgments that Masterplan was always conceived as a trilogy. If Volume I is apprenticeship and Volume II expansion, the third promises resolution: the final years of a life defined by motion, and the quiet reckoning that follows.
Readers already know, from her dedications, that Stan passed away in 2023. With that knowledge, even the mundane, ferry schedules, wrong turns, and bad Wi-Fi take on the radiance of the irrevocable present.
The third book will likely serve as an emotional keystone: a testament to love, endurance, and the art of keeping faith with a dream when the co-captain is gone. Yet even without it, the arc is clear. The Masterplan story is about building a life so large it refuses to fit on land—and about what remains when the voyage ends.
Why Read Masterplan Now
With curated travel influencers these days, Masterplan stands apart for its unfiltered honesty. Reilly doesn’t pose on decks with champagne; she’s elbow-deep in repairs, swatting mosquitoes, and laughing through setbacks. The result is more relatable and, paradoxically, more inspiring.
Her prose is messy, generous, and true to its origins as correspondence from the road. It offers immersion rather than distance: you’re on the aft deck, glass in hand, watching the horizon tilt. For armchair travelers, the books are a passport; for dreamers considering their own reinvention, they are proof that it’s never too late to begin again.
The first two volumes—Masterplan: Adventures of a Lifetime, Volume I (2012–2014) and Volume II (2015–2019)—are available now on Amazon in print and eBook. Together, they chart more than journeys; they document transformation.
And when Volume III arrives, it will complete not only a trilogy, but a love story that redefines what it means to set sail. Until then, there’s plenty of sea left to cross in these pages, and plenty of evenings to sit on the flybridge with Karen and Stan, watching the sky change and wondering what it might mean, in your own life, to believe it too.
The two volumes of Masterplan: Adventures of a Lifetime—the extraordinary 12-year, 63-country memoir by Karen Reilly—are available on Amazon. Begin with Volume I, continue with Volume II, and follow the Reillys’ journey to its unforgettable conclusion in the forthcoming Volume III.
