M/V ILLUSIONS                               ABOUT US                                   

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ABOUT US David and Angela Magill  Houston, Texas      David was raised in East Tennessee and went to college in Virginia.  He moved to the Houston area in 1975.  David received an engineering degree in 1966 and a Masters Degree in Business Administration in 1975.  His father liked boats, and the family had a runabout on Cherokee Lake near their home in Morristown, TN.  Frank Magill built a houseboat/boat house combination in the early-1960s.  The outside dimensions of the frame were 20 by 26 feet with an open space of 10 by 20 feet in the middle for the runabout.  The deck was six feet wide on each side and across the front.  The houseboat was supported by 55-gallon drums, and the top deck was about 15 feet above the water.       Early boating experiences included water skiing and running around in the ski boat throughout high school.  One one occasion the family went through the locks from Knoxville, TN to the dam at Watts Bar on the Tennessee River.  That was a week-long vacation taken with another family in their own boat.  David completed a Coast Guard Auxiliary boating class at that time.      David's first boat was the family runabout, inherited from his dad's estate in 1972.  That boat was a 16-foot Larson.  Since then he seems to have moved up six feet at a time, except for the first move; 20-foot Wellcraft Cuddy Cabin (1977), 26-foot Sea Ray Express Cruiser (1983), 32-foot Carver Mariner (1989), 38-foot Carver Aft Cabin (1992), and the 44-foot Carver Aft Cabin Motor Yacht (1997).  He bought one of the first Sea Ray jet boats delivered in the Houston area, about April 1993.  He traded that boat in on a 16-foot Yamaha jet boat in April 1998.      Angela was raised in Paraguay and was educated and employed as a medical doctor there.  She came to Houston in 1990, visiting a married sister and a married brother who lived in the area.  Angela and David met soon after she arrived, and they were married in August 1992.  Angela has a brother who operated a tow boat on the Paraguay River, but she had no real background in boats before she met David.      In their current cruising, David does most of the navigating, and Angela does most of the cooking.  Angela takes the still photographs with a single lens reflex camera she likes to use, or a digital camera.  David generally does the video footage and writes the logs, which are reviewed by Angela.  David does the oil and filter changes, and Angela does most of the line handling.  David says he gives the helm to Angela if she gets bored; she does a great job and he usually has some telephone calls to make regarding their next port of call.  Angela draws the line at navigating the boat in close quarters, such as locks and docks.  She also prefers to not use the radio.       Since the birth of their first grandchild, Angela has been knitting at one project or another while cruising down the rivers.  At home, Angela is a world-class orchid grower; and she wants to get home frequently to take care of her several hundred orchids.  David prepares the website and the printed log books, which are permanent souvenirs from their cruises and great reminders of all the beautiful places they have been in their boat.