Captain Owen Jones

-U.S. Merchant Marine Officer and Master of steam, motor and auxiliary sail vessels of up to 50 registered gross tons, License #1144547.
-Lifelong experience as both crew and owner of boats 6 to 50 feet in length, power and sail.
-Lifelong sailing experience including coastal waters of New England while growing up, and more recently in the Caribbean.
- Other sailing experience in the Adriatic and offshore sailing in the Eastern and central Atlantic and Caribbean.
- Knowledgeable and experienced in blue water and heavy weather sailing.
- NAUI-licenced SCUBA diver and recreational snorkeler.
- An educator happy to provide informal instruction in sailing, small boat handling, navigation and marlinspike seamanship.
- A pretty good chef, although not as good as Mary.

Chef Mary Trovato

- An excellent and innovative chef
- NAUI-licenced SCUBA diver and recreational snorkler
- Licensed private pilot for single-engine land aircraft
- Previously a Human Resources Specialist and Employment Manager
- A caring and fun-loving person who enjoys being with and listening to people.

Mary and Owen had been really quite ordinary people before deciding to live their dream...he a university professor and she an employment manager at the same place of higher education. They had been together and married for twenty five years, were comfortable Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before taking early retirement in 1995. They traveled quite a in Mexico and sailed up and down the island chain in the Caribbean.

Capt. Owen Jones is a life-long sailor. He was brought up sailing on the coastal waters between New York City and the Penobscot Bay in Maine. He has sailed everything in size from 6-ft prams and 8-ft Dyer Dhows to 50-ft sloops and catamarans. During his formative years, he spent many weekends and extended periods sailing with his father on a Hereshoff 28 gaff-rigged sloop. He also sailed on a 45-ft ketch owned by cousins and captained a Hatteras 45 during the summer between high school and college.

Owen went first into the U.S. Navy, joining in 1954 for four years then to the University of Massachusetts for his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. While working full time as a nuclear energy research engineer for General Electric Company's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory he obtained his PhD. Upon graduation in 1974 he became a research engineer at Argonne National Laboratory and bought his first sailboat…an 18-ft day sailor that he trailered between his home in Chicago and his parents’ home on Martha’s Vineyard, usually launching in Wood's Hole and sailing to Oak Bluffs.

Missing the sea, Owen moved to Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, was Division Head for Thermal Hydraulic Nuclear Development and met Mary Trovato who became his executive secretary and later one of the two great loves of his life, sailing being the other. They purchased a Rhodes 25 Meridian, the Moonrise, in 1978, sailing her extensively in waters from Oyster Bay to Nantucket.

By 1981, tiring of the managerial duties of his position at Brookhaven, and missing the hands-on research experience, Dr. Jones and Mary Trovato went into academia, he a Professor of Nuclear Engineering Department and she, first departmental secretary and then Manager of Human Resources Employment at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Mary and Owen both obtained their NAUI SCUBA-diving certifications and their private pilot licenses before traveling to Japan in 1988 on a year-long sabbatical. They have dived extensively in many locations including the west coast of the United States and Mexico, Hawaii and the Caribbean. Owen went on to obtain both his aircraft instrument rating and commercial pilot's license.

On their return from Japan in 1989, he and Mary purchased the Whisper, a Cal-35 in Huntington Harbor on Long Island. They cruised her up the inland waterway to Lake Champlain where they gunkholed extensively for many years.

Mary and Owen purchased the Fidelity in 1999, a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 45.2 with the best of all configurations...three staterooms with three cabin-accessible heads. Since then they sailed her extensively between the Spanish Virgin Islands and the far southeastern end of the island chain, Grenada and most recently to Los Testigos and Isla de Margarita in Venezuela.

Owen has sailed as both crew and skipper in the New England coastal waters, eastern and western Atlantic offshore waters and on the Adriatic, as well as in the Caribbean. He sailed Fidelity from the Virgin Islands to Bermuda and on to New England in 2000. Mary, of course, is a cook extraordinaire and delights in tickling the palate of both Owen and their friends and guests.