Scott Kuhner will be taking up from the point where he left off in his presentation on February 3rd – somewhere in Indonesia, relating the tale of how he and Kitty, his wife, completed their first circumnavigation of the globe in four years after setting off in 1971.

Six weeks after Scott met Kitty in the late 1960s, he proposed, and four months later they were married. She was up for adventure, so they took their honeymoon on a 22ft sailboat with a Porta Potty and sailed her from Westport to Martha’s Vineyard and back. Scott talked Kitty into buying a 30ft Allied Seawind Ketch, and two years later they quit their jobs and went sailing around the world. Scott was a securities analyst for EF Hutton and his boss could not believe he was going to leave his well-paying job.

They returned to Rowayton, bought a house and started a family. When their two sons were 9 and 11, Scott and Kitty decided to show them there is more to the world than just Connecticut. They bought a Valiant 40, named her Tamure, took the boys out of school, loaded them on the boat, and spent another four years sailing around the world. The boys were home-schooled, and when they got back, went into their normal class at Brian McMahon in Norwalk. Both graduated in the top 5% of their class and went on to an Ivy League college.

After each world tour, Scott was immediately offered great jobs back on Wall Street. Two years after he returned from the second trip, he was offered the position of running the New York office of a Brazilian Investment Bank, and spent the first six months living in Sao Paulo. Soon after he turned 60 the bank was bought out by a European company, Scott was awarded a big bonus, and retired.

Arranged by Bryan Hooper

Bryan’s notes on the talk:

Scott Kuhner, together with his wife Kitty, resumed the tale of their first sailing global navigation some 50 years ago from where they left us at the end of February’s talk – on the beautiful island of Bali. Leaving behind the rice paddies, the Hindu temples and the incredibly friendly and curious children they encountered, they then sailed to Christmas Island and on to Cocos Keeling Islands, an Australian Territory, before setting off across the Indian Ocean for Mauritius.

There were ten other boats about to sail across the ocean at that time, and the Kuhners had come to know their crews as friends in their travels. They became close to one  couple in particular whom they had first encountered in St. Thomas, and who were now on the last leg of their journey back home to South Africa. After battling mostly strong winds for the 17 days and 2400 miles to Mauritius the Kuhners spent time relaxing there, enabling Kitty to indulge in some horse-riding on the beach and solo sailing for the first time ever, before setting off for Durban, taking another 14 days and covering 1600 miles. Keeping radio contact with their South African friends, they learnt of bad weather and managed to prepare for the oncoming storm with winds blowing at up to 70 mph. It seems that despite what nature threw at them, Scott and Kitty also managed to find good time to recuperate and to explore the better part of nature through visiting local areas of interest – in Durban this was a game reserve with zebra, giraffes and monkeys.

Their onward journey involved stops in Cape Town, St. Helena in the South Atlantic, Fernando Island off Brazil, and finally to complete the circumnavigation, St. Thomas. And this is where the story really begins! On their journey back home toward New York they evaded the hazards of a waterspout before succumbing to the perils of a hurricane. Falling off the crest of a wave they hit the trough, went upside down and righted, but blew off the main hatch and took on tremendous quantities of water. Fortunately for Scott he had available what he described as “the most efficient bilge pump in the world: a frightened woman with a bucket.” Having recovered from the fright, they reached New York harbor and thus ended the voyage of the Bebinka.

That, incidentally, is the name of the book written by Scott and Kitty about their four years traveling the world. You can learn more from the book, and can watch the two parts of the talk on the links listed below:

Part I : https://youtu.be/USvhGtHrEE8

Part II : https://youtu.be/-xydPlMgrKk.