Thank you, Jane, for the warm welcome to these pages.  As well, thank you MTW for giving me the opportunity to present a column as well.  I only apologize for taking so long to come up with an idea for what I want to present (I’ve had authoring rights for some time now), and it took a bit of being poked in the nose by my friend and fellow Mowry conspiratress Indigo Mertel the other day to formulate a concept and ball it up and throw it at Jane.  Indeed, I -still- have yet to decide on a title for the column, nor do I even have a neat little masthead logo for it.  Maybe after reading this one of you might have a suggestion.

Most people probably know me as the Mowry Bay Yacht Club’s primary furry cheerleader.  That’s fair.  I am a cat, yes, and I have indeed done a bit of MBYC championing.  It’s the first yacht club I encountered in Second Life, literally the day after I discovered that it was possible to sail at all here.  So, rightfully so, I will always consider it to be my sailing home.

Promoting my home port, however, will not be the point of my column.  While, indeed, I’m sure my travels will involve Mowry in some way (every voyage has to start somewhere) I hope to keep things to a more general scope than just my own aqua familiaris.

Real world sailors (of which, I clearly note now, sadly I am not for various reasons mostly psychological and financial) are probably familiar with the magazine Cruising World.  Jane and I toss references to it back and forth on occasion.   For about a year I had a subscription to it.  I’m not sure why.  I never requested it.  It just started showing up in my mailbox one day.  I no longer get it, but I still have a few favorite issues that I reread when the mood strikes, that I may be filled with tales of adventure and distant places and exotic ports of call.  Or, alternately, tales of how to repair the hull and how to make sure the sink is plumbed correctly so as to not cause the boat to sink.

Indigo suggested to me that I would be the perfect fur to compile a catalog of suggested pleasure cruise routes with places to visit along the way.  Her suggestion was that I could sell the charts in  my stores.  I might still do that. But… descriptions of the same passages, in narrative/descriptive style a la Cruising World, would be similarly ideal for a column here on slsailing.com.

Thus, this is what I intend to make this column: tales of adventure on the pixel seas of our world, distant destinations, exotic sims of call… written, most likely in a narrative style in hopeful homage to persons such as Cap’n Fatty Goodlander.  Indigo has already insisted on helping me.  Perhaps our adventures will be together.  Perhaps they might even involve one of you, the reader, or else come about based on suggestions you have made.  Either way, one thing in my heart is certain: the seas lead to many places, and being the cat I am, I intend to let my curiosity lead me to those places.  Come with me!

- Elisha Paklena-Montpardien, at home in the Great Tree of Mowry