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DENTON – Today, married couple Susan and Ron Fortucci live in the quaintest of houses on Pealiquor Road. But the path they took to get here starts in Massachusetts, takes a few turns around Key West, loops through the Bahamas, and, of course, includes countless pit stops in between. The two now operate their respective small businesses – she, sewing, and he, woodworking – out of their home in Denton, and they will tell you that they couldn’t have dreamed of a better place to land.
Susan grew up in Massachusetts in what she remembers as a happy household with her parents, two sisters, and a brother. Her father worked in education, and his career led the family to move often. Susan attended seven schools in 12 years, an experience that taught her how to adapt to unfamiliar surroundings. “Wherever you plop me down, I’ll be okay,” she said.
Also during her childhood, Susan was honing her skills with a needle and thread (even though she admits that her favorite part of her craft is the fabric). She began sewing through 4-H, using her maternal grandmother’s treadle sewing machine. After sticking with it for about a year her parents gifted her an electric sewing machine. And by middle and high school, she was making most of her own clothes.
In her workroom today, Susan still sews on a black, all-metal Singer machine, which was made in the 1950s or possibly early 60s. At one point her personal collection included around 40 sewing machines. She has since pared down the collection, but I would bet she still has more sewing machines than the average person.
Ron, meanwhile, grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, a city he recalled being filled with factories and machine shops. His father was a barber who, like most of their neighbors, believed a dependable factory job offered a sensible future. Ron, though, had bigger aspirations.
In his youth, Ron attended a trade high school and worked in industrial jobs, including a machine shop producing parts for jet engines. He appreciated the skills he acquired but knew he did not want to spend his life doing repetitive work. He eventually joined the Coast Guard like his father and uncle had, and it just so happened to save him from being drafted to fight in Vietnam.
Through his military service Ron spent time on the Chesapeake Bay as a lighthouse keeper at Smith Point and Wolf Trap in Virginia, becoming one of the Bay’s last lighthouse keepers. He had long been drawn to sailing, influenced in part by the television series Adventures in Paradise. He imagined a life on the water, perhaps sailing to Tahiti and the South Pacific, even if he had not yet worked out all the practical details.
The lovebirds met in the mid 1970s when Susan was 19. A friend took her to a working-class yacht club in Lynn to visit someone who had a boat there. The person they hoped to see was unavailable, so Susan and her friend found themselves waiting outside. Ron, who lived aboard his sailboat at the time, came through the door on his way to visit his parents and drop off laundry. In the process, he accidentally hit Susan in the face with the door – though the severity of her injuries depends on which of them is telling you the story. The night ended with the pair taking a dinghy out to Ron’s 34-foot sailboat, and they’ve rarely been more than 34 feet apart since.
That was August. By October of the following year, they were preparing to leave Massachusetts for Florida on Wanderer, the aforementioned sailboat. They would make it there 209 days later.
If you’re wondering how the couple saved up enough money to buy them food, water, clothes, and other supplies for almost a year, the answer is that they didn’t. The Fortuccis actually said they were broke most of the time, but they were willing to work whenever and wherever they could for cash along the way. Ron took jobs in boatyards and painted and varnished boats. Susan worked in retail and other jobs before finding opportunities in sail and canvas shops that would help develop her sewing career.
Wanderer offered them no refrigeration or proper onboard shower, and they initially cooked on a kerosene stove. Food had to be managed carefully, and ice was available only when they could obtain it. Still, they found comfort in the friendships they forged with other maritime travelers.
They spent more than a year in Key West, where both found work while continuing to live aboard. Eventually, they secured monthly dockage at the Truman Annex, a former Navy base. But the docks sat so high above the water that getting ashore required climbing the boat’s rigging and making a leap to the dock. This was just one of the many challenges they faced at sea and on land.
Eventually, the Fortuccis went back to Massachusetts and invested several years in rebuilding Wanderer. They improved the sleeping arrangements and storage, added refrigeration and a propane stove, and changed the sail plan from a sloop to a ketch to make the sails easier to manage. The bulk of this maintenance was done with their own hands.
Their later voyages took them through the Bahamas, including the Berry Islands and Nassau, and to the Dry Tortugas, where they navigated with old charts and their own instincts while contending with dwindling food and water, persistent winds, rough seas, and dangerous reefs. At one point, other sailors warned them they had narrowly missed a submerged rock and a sunken boat near an anchorage; during another storm, their anchor snagged on the boat’s bow gear and drove them toward a reef, while elsewhere in the Bahamas, sludge stirred up in the diesel tank shut down their engine with reefs behind them. They survived each ordeal, and Susan ultimately promised God she would serve Him if they made it through. “If the boat doesn’t survive, we’re not going to survive,” Susan said.
The couple kept the boat together just as the boat kept them together. They explained that manning such a vessel and living at sea demanded communication, compromise, and trust. While anchoring, for example, Susan steered as Ron handled the anchor, and they learned to coordinate their movements through hand signals.
They eventually grew tired of the Florida heat and wanted to once again experience all four seasons, but neither was eager to return to New England. So, they turned to the place where Ron had worked all those years ago: the Chesapeake.
As they explored possibilities for where to settle around the Bay, Wanderer suffered a lightning strike, and the vessel’s batteries stopped charging. The boat got them to Oxford, and they figured that was where they should stay. They found work and eventually settled in nearby St. Michaels.
Ron went back to working in boatyards, including at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s yard, before building his woodworking business. Susan gradually moved toward sewing for interior designers.
Still, they weren’t quite satisfied. They continued looking for homes that fit their wishlist – after all, they had spent all these years customizing their own living space exactly to their needs. And they didn’t waste time when they finally found their coup de grâce in Denton.
Susan opened her own sewing business in 2003, drawing on decades of experience with fabric, practical sewing, and the specialized work of sail and canvas shops. Her workroom predominantly produces window treatments and soft furnishings for interior designers, including draperies, valances, shades, duvet covers, pillows, cushions and bed skirts. Designers typically select the fabric, establish the design, take measurements, and arrange installation. Susan simply determines how to construct each beautiful hand-made piece one at a time. Don’t go thinking it was easy, she had to pair her years of experience with professional classes, trade shows, and conversations with other workrooms in the industry to become the certified window-treatment specialist she is today. She especially enjoys working with unusual fabrics, including embroidered textiles, custom prints, and fine natural materials. Her interest in historic textiles remains strong, and she has sought opportunities to explore other unusual types of fabric; such as her current undertaking, cork bags.
Despite not knowing the first thing about sewing, Ron (known in the industry and by their friends as “pin boy”) stepped in to help when demand for Susan’s talents spiked during the pandemic. Though he would much rather be in his shop, crafting models of sailboats and completing other projects (“anything wood”) with just as much care as Susan. His works have included small-boat repair, antique boat restoration, furniture, carved pieces, display work, and custom commissions. Don’t get me wrong, Susan has held her fair share of pieces of wood in place.
“We’ve always helped each other,” Susan said, “We’ve always worked together.” For that, the Fortuccis credit those early sailing adventures, and it extends to the way they understand marriage. Susan described their relationship as a team in which both people must consider what is best for the partnership, rather than simply pursue what either person wants individually. They chose not to have children, explaining that the decision reflected the life they wanted to build together. They firmly believe people must find the path that suits them rather than assume one model works for everyone. Or, in Ron’s words, “You can do whatever you want to. You don’t have to go to a nine-to-five job to be successful.”
“It’s not going to come to you. You have to make it happen,” Susan added, “Life is an adventure to be lived.”
