In bygone eras, retirement typically meant slowing down, staying home, and accepting the idea that one had become old. Today, however, that’s a concept that more and more people are ignoring; none more so than five of the small-boat enthusiasts in this month’s issue.When Chris Price was thinking about retirement in 2013, he decided to fulfill a lifelong ambition to build a boat, choosing the 13′ 6″ Tammie Norrie design. He had no plan for how he and his wife, Jacqui, would use the boat, but after they launched BETTY the following year, they discovered a mutual love of rowing. When Nic Compton caught up with them last fall, he learned that “within a few years there was barely a patch of water in the West Country they hadn’t explored.” In the years that followed, and at a time when many of their contemporaries must surely have been slowing down and putting their feet up, the Prices were rowing down the River Thames from Oxford to Rotherhithe; exploring the River Severn; and picnicking on the banks of the Great Ouse.As I read Nic’s story, it occurred to me that the Prices are not only defining a new approach to retirement, they are also giving a whole new meaning to the term “downsizing.” For most, downsizing means exchanging a larger house for a smaller one in order to free up some capital with which to relax, unwind, and make life easier. But the Prices have downsized from the relative comforts of a 28′ sailboat to the more spartan accommodations of a rowboat with neither shelter nor auxiliary power. And for years now they have delighted in rowing their way through southern England, in an unconventional approach to aging that appears to be keeping them young.

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