Bay of Islands, New Zealand …
For those of you getting this for the first time, my name is Sophia, I am six years old, my parents are Harley and Jen, and I get to write the annual letter each year. Those of you who actually keep track of these things probably realize that I missed writing our annual letter last year because we were pretty busy. Of course some of you probably breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that my Mom and Dad might have wiped you from our distribution list and that you would thus be spared from this literary onslaught describing what we have done with our lives over the past months. Sorry, no such luck.
To digress a bit, I guess I should have realized something was up when Dad brought our new boat, Kailani, back to Sausalito from Turkey in 2011, but after all, who would completely turn their lives upside down right after moving into a new house? I had a new room, a yard to play in, a steep driveway for my scoot bike and I was only half way through pre-school. And then, bam, come June of 2012 there I am living on the boat in Tonga. At least I didn’t have to sail the whole way there. It’s probably a thousand or maybe a million miles from California, plus I’m not all that thrilled with passage making although Mom and Dad say I’ll grow into it. Not that I have any choice.
The boat’s not so bad. I have my own room (I used to call it a cabinet until my parents told me the word was actually cabin, but size wise, cabinet pretty much describes it). I share my bunk (sailor speak for bed) with about fifty of my stuffed animal friends and a bunch of books, and I have my own head (bathroom, more nautical talk) next door. Some things are the same as back on land. We eat pretty much the same (except powdered milk tastes yucky); I wear mostly the same clothes (except I don’t wear any shoes unless you count flip flops); I don’t get to watch television except for football (and there isn’t much of that out here; come to think of it we don’t even have a television); and I have my toys to play with (at least those that will fit into two 18 inch cubes). Also neither Santa nor the Easter Bunny was deterred by me living on a boat although Santa had to squeeze through a dorade vent since we don’t have a chimney.
Probably the best thing about living on the boat is that we get to see a lot of cool places and never have to leave our home. I’ve been to Tonga (twice), Fiji (twice) and now we are back in New Zealand for the second time. We move around a lot but we sleep in our bunks every night. My favorite things to do are snorkeling and collecting shells. I collect a lot of shells, so many that every once in a while Dad makes Mom and me sort through them and toss some out. He says that if we don’t, the boat will sink from the weight, but I think he is kidding. When we sort shells, we throw the ones we don’t like anymore overboard, and as each one sinks to the bottom, we dance and sing a song : ”Hallelujah, It’s raining shells…!” Sometimes Mom sings, “Hallelujah, It’s raining men…!” Grownups are weird like that.
We snorkel a lot. I like looking for clownfish. One time in Fiji Dad and I found a whole bunch of them living in a large anemone. (I finally got so I can pronounce anemone, but I pronounce enemy the same way). We named it Clownfish Town and it was there when we went back a year later. Another thing I like to do is lie on the deck at night and use the star chart to try to figure out the constellations. Out here where there aren’t many people it is so dark that on a clear night I can almost reach up and touch the stars.
My favorite place so far is a remote island in Fiji called Fulaga (pronounced foo long a). The mosquitoes are pretty bad there but the snorkeling is really amazing. Mom drove us out the pass in the dinghy and Dad and I floated into the lagoon right over the top of all these sharks. One time I got scared and crawled up on Dad’s back so they wouldn’t see me. We went to the village on Fulaga a lot, and I made friends with a bunch of the island kids. We went to church a couple of times and ate Sunday dinner with our friends sitting on the floor in their house (they don’t have any tables or chairs). I got to help cook over the fire, and we all had coconuts to drink. I even helped make straws from a plant stem that grew right outside their hut. Coconuts are way better than powdered milk.
We make a lot of friends out here. I have met kids from all over the world, but since they don’t all speak English, playing together requires sign language or sometimes an interpreter like their parents. I also have a lot of adult friends because there just are not that many kids living like I do. Last year we attended Regatta Week at Musket Cove in Fiji which Mom and Dad refer to as serious partying interrupted by not so serious sailing. I got to dress as a pirate and throw water balloons at other boats during the Pirates Day race – the amazing thing was that the grownups were crazier dressed and acting than kids! I also got to dress up as an angel with my adult friends, Jamie the devil and Lucy the other angel, and enter the figurehead competition. And we won! The prize wasn’t great, a box full of cleaning supplies, but it was fun anyway.
I have jobs aboard the boat. Dad says that as a crew member I have to pull my weight. I told him I only weigh 43 pounds so I shouldn’t have much to do. I have to turn off the anchor light when I get up in the morning, I run the windlass when we are setting or retrieving our anchor, and I am usually the first one out of the dinghy at the dock and have to secure the painter (that is the rope that keeps the dinghy attached to something so it doesn’t float away). I also help Mom bake and hand Dad his tools when he is having one of his fights with something in the engine room. Dad spends a lot of time in the engine room, and sometimes Mom and I joke that he should set up a hammock and live in there. I always bring him cookies and drinks when he works on his projects, and it seems to make him happier. So far I can tie a cleat hitch, and most of the time I can tie a bowline, but I still get confused on which way that rabbit should run around the tree once he pops out of his hole.
Last year I went to the Opua School here in New Zealand for a time while Mom and Dad worked on the boat every day. I got to be like the Kiwi kids and not wear shoes at school. I also picked up an accent. But Mummy and Deddy didn’t think I learned much, so it was back to Kailani Boat School where I am now in second grade. My parents are my teachers which is pretty great, although until they have had their morning coffee school tends to move slowly. It’s funny but sometimes I think they never learned any of this stuff when they were kids. Like the other day when Dad asked me who the Greeks beat at Salamis (he was reading a book called “Too Big to Fail” and apparently if the Greeks had lost, the Western World would not be as it is today, whatever that means). Considering that he and I had read about the Battle of Salamis a couple of weeks before, I thought he was kidding but I told him anyway. (It was the Persians.)
As much as I like living on the boat, I really like going back to the States and seeing my relatives. We stay with my Grandma in San Diego, but we take a lot of road trips to see my grandparents and relatives in Colorado and my brother and sister in Oregon and some of our friends that are scattered all over. This year my brother, Harley, got married to Maureen and we went to the wedding in Phoenix. I danced for three straight hours. My sister Kate and her husband Alan were there with their new baby girl, Sunday Katherine, making me an aunt at six years old. Mom says it is just a modern family. Dad says he doesn’t feel old enough to be a Grandpa. And this year I sang “Grandma got run over by a reindeer!” at Christmastime, and Mom didn’t really like it so much. We always take a couple of field trips when we are driving around. (Dad tries to tell me that going to the marine chandlery is a field trip, but I think he is just trying to get out of teaching school.) This year we went to the Butterfly World in Phoenix, the symphony in San Francisco, the Natural History museum in San Diego and the Getty Villa in Los Angeles where a couple of nice ladies asked if I could be their guide. They had eavesdropped on me telling Mom the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops that we saw painted on an urn (which is like a big pot). Mom didn’t know who Polyphemus was so I had to explain.
My parents say I have to wind this up now and go to bed even though it is summer here, and it doesn’t get dark until really late. They want me to pass along their best wishes for the New Year and to remind you to stay in touch. If you have not already, check out our website – there are lots of pictures, and Mom and Dad write “updates” to tell everyone what’s going on. So far they only let me do the annual letter – oh well. Remember – our days are a bit brighter when we get an email from you!!
May your 2014 be the happiest of days …
P.S. Some of you may like to know how my rules are coming along … we have added a couple since leaving California. For those of you keeping track here is the current list:
1 – Don’t fall off the boat
2 – Always hang onto the boat
3 – Always look good
4 – Always solve your own problems
5 – Watch where you’re going, and remember where you’ve been
6 – Choose wisely and live with your choices
7 – Clean up the mess if you made it
35 14.1 S 174 10.1 E
at anchor
Roberton Island
Bay of Islands, New Zealand
