The Kuhners honeymooned on their new 23 foot O’Day Tempest, sailing from Westport, Connecticut to Nantucket.  That was in 1969.  Now, 48 years later they are still sailing mostly in the Bahamas in the winter and Maine in the summer.  

So what happened in between you may ask.  Well, they quickly upgraded to a 30 foot Allied Sea Wind Ketch.  After making necessary improvements for long distance passages and a shakedown cruise, in 1971 they left for the Caribbean which was the jumping off point for their first circumnavigation.  Once through the Panama Canal they headed for New Zealand via the Galapagos, French Polynesia and Fiji.  In January of 1973 they crossed over to Sydney and in the spring headed north to New Guinea, then westward with stops at Bali, Cocos, Mauritius and Durban, and on to Cape Town. 

From Cape Town the Kuhners crossed the Atlantic via St. Helena and Fernando de Naronha, finally crossing their outbound path in July, 1974.  Jobs and family prevented the Kuhners from going back to sea until 1987 when they were off for their second circumnavigation with their two boys, nine and eleven.  The route was fairly similar to the first circumnavigation, except the Kushners decided to sail over the top of Africa via the Red Sea and Suez Canal.  

In the fall of 2003 the Kuhners sailed from the Bahamas to Portugal via Bermuda and the Azores.  After spending the winter in Portugal, they sailed around to Spain in the summer of 2004 and then back to the Bahamas by way of the Canaries.  Add twelve years of cruising in Caribbean in the winter and Maine in the summer, that pretty much fills out 48 years of cruising.