Mark And Diana Doyle: A Marriage Made On Water

Boating and the water have flowed through Diana and Mark Doyle's lives. After meeting a decade ago at a marina in Portsmouth, New Hampshire — where Diana was temporarily keeping her sailboat, and Mark was outfitting his C&C to go cruising — Cupid's arrow struck. A year later, the pair had sold their boats and bought a PDQ 36 catamaran to set off on a two-year cruise with Diana's young son, Morgan, in tow. The trio took in Canada, the Great Lakes, Maine, the Bahamas, the Dry Tortugas, and everywhere else in between. While using several cruising guides, they noted a few omissions. "Many had been written more like prose and that didn't work," says Diana. "We started to think about what information people really needed right at the helm. And maybe it was having a child onboard, but we also wanted to know things like how a place had gotten its unusual name." Those thoughts eventually became their first book, Managing the Waterway: Hampton Roads, VA to Biscayne Bay, FL (ICW), published in 2005.

The Doyles were certainly qualified to launch the new guides. Mark had recently retired from high tech, specializing in color digital imaging, and also had a 100-ton USCG Master's License. Diana, a former university professor with a Ph.D. from Yale, holds a 50-ton USCG Master's License. Their guides and electronic charting series have led them all over the country. They've just finished their fourth publication, An Illustrated Cruising Guide to the Great Loop Inland Waterway: Chicago to Mobile (Volume 1: Chicago, IL to Paducah, KY).

They recently sold the catamaran and invested in a trailerable 22-foot C-Dory Pilothouse workboat that's become their home away from home. Unlike other cruising writers, the Doyles' smaller boat means they can go into every anchorage, which they do, without fear of running aground. "We're writing for larger boats but we can gunkhole everywhere," Diana says. Onthewaterchartguides.org