Send us a text
Hello, passionate cruisers! This is Paul and this week on The Joy of Cruising Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Peta-Gaye and Allan, creators of the My Cruising Family YouTube channel, Instagram, and blog. As frequent listeners know, I enjoy watching cruise YouTube videos and from time to time I get introduced to The Joy of Cruising Podcast guests. That’s how I met My Cruising Family (with their fun, mostly family-oriented videos often accompanied by a Jamaican beat.) I also occasionally interact with them on social media and decided it was time to finally reach out to them when they made a post about attending this year’s Maxwell Cruise, held during Valentines Day week. We attended R&B superstar Maxwell’s debut music cruise last year and thought it was great but had to miss this year. So, I invited them to come on the show and reflect on the cruise, and more importantly introduce them to the global cruise community as another outstanding cruise content creator. It is always fun to meet new cruise friends I am glad they agreed to come on The Joy of Cruising Podcast to talk about their various cruise platforms.
From MyCruisingFamily.com My name is Peta-Gaye. I am a Jamaican-born wife and mother who lives and works in the United States, and has traveled to 28 countries across 5 continents, thus far. I'm wife to Allan, and mom to our two boys, AJ and LJ. As a Christian and a foodie, I love to not only share my love for Travel, but also my faith and food! We love to travel together as a family, to see new places, try new activities, and eat good food! We often travel with my mom also, and I enjoy having “me time” and “couple's time” while grandma manages the boys!
Find My Cruising Family online:
YouTube: @mycruisingfamily
TikTok: @mycruisingfamily
Instagram: @mycruisingfam
Facebook: @mycruisingfam
Email: mycruisingfamily@gmail.com
Relying on ship wifi is slow, unsecure, sometimes not available & at foreign ports travelers don’t want to pay their carriers’ high fees. Save $ with GigSky! Get a data package usable on the ship & in ports. Link to GigSky: https://gigsky.pxf.io/nloxor. For a 10% discount use code: joyofcruising
Support the show
Support thejoyofcruisingpodcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/2113608/supporters/new
Support Me https://www.buymeacoffee.com/drpaulth
Contact Me https://www.thejoyofcruising.net/contact-me.html
Book Cruises http://www.thejoyofvacation.com/
US Orders (coupon code joyofcruisingpodcast)
The Joy of Cruising https://bit.ly/TheJoyOfCruising
Cruising Interrupted https://bit.ly/CruisingInterrupted
The Joy of Cruising Again https://bit.ly/TheJoyOfCruisingAgain
Intl Orders via Amazon
Paul C. Thornton started writing at 58 years old incited by the task of delivering a father-of-the-bride speech at his daughter’s wedding. Told to talk about memories of Kina growing up; among Disney trips, high school sports, proms, and first boyfriends, Paul divulged the most powerful memory of all, when Kina was six and his life changed forever. At the end of the talk—as they say—"there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” It was both liberating and cathartic to release secrets that had tortured Paul for 30 years. Needing to hold on to that feeling of release and empowerment, when he returned to his hotel Paul started his memoir, provocatively titled White Man’s Disease.
Paul’s just completed book, The Joy of Cruising Again, is his fourth; the third in The Joy of Cruising trilogy, and follow-up to the fun, upbeat, award-winning The Joy of Cruising, and Cruising Interrupted. The Joy of Cruising Again is the finale of the series but Paul won’t give up his passion. Besides continuing to cruise as much as possible, Paul hosts The Joy of Cruising Podcast, a weekly conversation with one of the dozens of passionate cruisers featured in the books and other global cruise personalities.
The cruise-themed books are a stark departure from Paul’s debut: White Man’s Disease, a memoir described as “gripping and inspiring” in the press release announcing it as the winner of the North Street Book Prize for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction about Paul’s harrowing brush with death, the journey of recovery from trauma, resilience and ultimately transformation. White Man’s Disease is at once poignant, sad, tragic, funny, and compelling. (And, if I could get a dollar for everyone who asks what White Man’s Disease means, I would be a wealthy man!) Despite their very different subjects, at the heart of White Man’s Disease and The Joy of Cruising Trilogy is passion and how passionate people do wondrous things. Paul just started a sequel to White Man’s Disease; a fun, and hopefully inspirational tale called Gracefully. In addition, he is planning a podcast series that deconstructs White Man’s Disease.
Paul is originally from Brooklyn and Long Island, New York. After serving in the US Army and simultaneously earning a bachelor's degree in business, he attained his MBA and then spent concurrently, 17 years in corporate management, and 23 years in small business ownership. After leaving corporate, he started a career in higher ed. He earned a doctorate, attained tenure as a business professor, and subsequently moved into administration in Dean or Executive Director positions before retiring in 2021.
Paul lives in Mooresville, North Carolina with his wife Cheryl and considers cruising with their children and grandchildren life’s ultimate escape. Paul longs to cruise as much as the people he writes about in The Joy of Cruising Trilogy.
