hellooo!!!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everyone!

I hope you are enjoying a magnificent day, wherever you are. I have just arrived in Auckland after what turned out to be a 14-day voyage on our vessel, Scout. That’s 6 days shy of our anticipated arrival time, thanks to the yellow catamaran that could. Our Scout is a little beast, having managed to withstand a passage through the South Pacific for which, we discovered, she was clearly not built. She made it nonetheless, in spite of storms, waves and winds beyond her seeming capabilities. And now we are most happily docked in the land of kiwis and hobbits. Here, here!

As far as the voyage was concerned, having done mostly 1-2 day sails in the past, which required the regular raising, lowering, trimming and furling of sails, etc., I expected this trip to be equally if not more arduous, but once we left Tahiti and set our sails, I discovered we had little to do other than make minor nautical adjustments, eat, sleep, eat, read, sleep, read and read, as you’ll notice in the scrappy postcard I’ve uploaded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF1ehv0sRLU), made with my dad’s little point and shoot camera. Regarding the title of the postcard, my family comes from a long-standing tradition of punnery, and poetic license for words like 'punnery'.
Forgiveness is requested.

As for reading and the great amount of time available onboard to do it, it just so happened that the mysterious owner of this boat, known simply as ‘Andrew’, has a great affinity for Kurt Vonnegut. It also just so happens that Vonnegut is the best-known preventative cure for scurvy, which afflicts (or did, before Vonnegut was born) so many fine seafarers, so you can imagine my joy at finding his name all over the ship’s bookshelves.
Needless to say, I’ve arrived in New Zealand 100% scurvy free.

Despite the seemingly lackluster schedule of sleeping, eating and reading that I’ve described, I do in fact have numerous, harrowing stories to tell, but I will save those for when I see you in person, which is on my list of New Years resolutions- just before my resolution to stay in New York for longer periods of time and just after my resolution to write fewer emails and see more faces, so until we meet again….

In the meantime, drink lots of champagne, kiss something and wake up with the name of a vociferous plant or animal tattooed on your forearm. There’s nothing like it to start a New Year. I promise.

XO.
A

PS. Thanks to everyone for the lovely birthday wishes! I'm sorry not to respond to you each individually but two weeks away from my inbox has left me overwhelmed with emails.