5 miles off of Salisbury, Dominica

Heading due south toward Martinique. Under full sail plus engines, as we must make landfall by sunset at 1830 hrs. Sistership Impala has chosen a routing closer to the coast to take advantage of lift from a rain systen to our west, but so far our strategy is working. Impala left the cruise ship dock a half hour ahead of us after taking on water. We are gaining on them!
A parrot landed in the avocado tree as we were sauteeing dorado fish at. Mike and Daria's house up on the mountain. It is on a plateau 2000 feet above Rouseau, overlooking the sea

At anchor in Portsmouth, Domenica

Starting to think about cooking dinner. Chicken satay with peanut sauce, rice and peas, salad with garlic croutons, green beans vinagrette. But first another rum cocktail while Debra and I enjoy some alone time while the other crews are on expedition up the Indian River.

Arrived Dominica

Five hour passage from Iles-des-Saintes. Found a fishing poles in a dusty bin of a toy store; tried 3 different lures without luck yet.
Anchoring last night major pain; tried 9 times before another yacht got us connected with a mooring ball.

Position N1608.08W61 31.44

Sailing to Iles des Saintes in 15 knots of wind, doing 5 knots over ground. Carib beer should receive the Nobel Prize for the Refreshment category.

At 35,000 feet off the Georgia coast

Flying never ever seems to lose its ability to inspire awe. Even flying commercial, I love the chaotic logistics of getting planes pushed back from the ramp, lining up for departure. Tractors, trucks, aircraft, linemen all in motion, all working, all doing their part to get these planes loaded, moving, and unloaded.
Take-off is the best part of commercial flights; landing is the best if I am the pilot. On airliners I love staring out the window as the two dimensional world suddenly acquires a third axis as individual cars, buildings, streets slowly give way to highways, rivers, towns and suddenly the open ocean.
The flight attendants are a scream. Four of them are super nice and friendly. The fifth one served our row. Face like a prune left out in the sun and gone sour. She asks the guy sitting between me and Debra what he wants to drink. He says "yes" Bad move. "Yes, WHAT?!" She snarls back. The other stewardess shakes her head, laughs and looks to us in sympathy. We are a little afraid to move until the Prune has stalked on to her next charge. Debra staunches the flow of condensate running from the A/C onto the dude in the middle seat, and suddenly She-who-must-not-crossed has returned, now bearing a tray of trash. She sets it down, and accuses Debra of having requested a kosher meal. Debra denies it, but is forced to accept it until steward turns up with a vegetarian meal looking to trade it for a kosher. Vindicated, Debra peels the cover of her (now correctly ordered) vegetarian meal to find a chicken BBQ sandwich staring at her.
The vegetarian chicken meal was recycled up in first class, debra gave her now-sugar free meal components to the diabetic guy between us, I finished my OJ and now I better put this device away before Cranky SuperPrune discovers me.

Travel tummy

Why is it that when you arrive at the airport, starving, none of the food lloks good enough to actually eat?

T minus 19

I forgot to pack sunglasses. If I squint for ten days I might look like Mr. Magoo by the time I return.

Off to sea again

I am so excited that I am bouncing off the walls like the square dot in a game of Pong! Departing Friday for San Juan again, and then taking a 42 foot catamaran on to Guadeloupe, Domenica and Martinique. Packed all the crucial items: one pair of shorts, two t-shirts, pirate flag, radio, and canned tuna. Good to go for a couple of weeks!

Puerto Rico

The rain started as we wound our way down the damp rocks, on the way to a promised waterfall. I was concerned about the electronic gear in our little knapsack getting wet. I had already killed Maike's camera once before, when I thought it was a great idea to protect her camera inside a cooler chest while rafting on the Merrimac River in Missouri. Note to self: freezing a LCD screen = irreparable damage. Sorry Maike! The trail grew steeper as we descended into the valley. All around us the jungle grew warm and close, strange green plants and exotic sounds, a path ever steeper, smells of life and rich soil. We paused on the wooden bridge for a drink of water from my aluminum bottle. Leaves the size of frisbees littered the path like someone had strewn a truckload of dishes upon the jungle floor. Hmmm - some of them had stems 3 feet long attached....Ah-ha! We grabbed a couple to use, threading the stalks through the pack webbing, to make a portable umbrella.

Okay, the dorky look wasn't going to save the camera, so we repacked the pack contents to keep the camera underneath the towel and snorkels, and marched ever onward. After three miles the sounds of running water became louder, and around the bend in the trail the waterfall took form at last. Eagerly forward to walk in the cool water and get relief from the oppresive humidity. Wow was that cold! Maybe swimming in the pool wasn't the best idea ever! Others approached the falls from the path leading from the south, and stared in awe at the stream cascading over the precipice into a stony pool at the base of the valley. Shoes off, we waded into the cool waters and found the round stones not too painful to our Yankee feet. Trying to get used to the temperature of the water, we sat on the rocks and threw stones into the rushing confusion. The pool was almost deep enough for a swim; with a little engineering it could become deeper no doubt. Fatigue gave way to action as we started assembling a dam of stones at the edge of the largetst pool. For an hour we worked, patching the leaks with handfulls of gravel and sand, pausing occasionly to plan our next move. A couple of local girls joined us in the pool growing ever deeper. The eldest spoke to Maike !Hola! and more words that neither of us could understand. Maike smiled shyly. I told her a few words to share in Spanish, but it was too great a barrier to overcome at the time. Sometimes you just can't break out of your own world into the uncertain without a just a little more confidence and maybe a push.

Check out La Ostra Cosa

Check out La Ostra Cosa on the Calle Cristo on Google; best meal on the island so far!!

The streets of old San

The streets of old San Juan were magical, filled with classic Flamenco music, cute little cats, and some Prawns that we dissected table-side.

We are slightly burned. Okay,

We are slightly burned. Okay, Maike is just a little pink and I however am more like a standing rib roast medium rare.

I have no idea what

I have no idea what we are eating but it sure is colorful. Got lost at the fort so we returned to thr hotel ans sat down at a random brkfst bar.

Old San Juan is filled

Old San Juan is filled with sidewalk cafes and excellent people watching. The hotel is HUGE, and Maike has 8 places to swim.

Test message from a plane

Test message from a plane full of cranky Continental customers

Still here after all that craziness

No posts for a while: haven't had too much to laugh about I guess. It's snowing on a gray Sunday morning and Maike and I have no plans for the day. We were going to go skiing but ... we didn't.
Debra and I watched "Roman Holiday" after Christmas, the old black and white Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn masterpiece. I can't remember the last time I watched a B/W movie; made me feel like a kid again. I really miss Italy. I love the people, the language, the food, the anarchy. So we used up frequent flier miles before they expire, and flew to Rome for New Years. Every scene in the Roman Holiday movie we visited, including the Vespa dash around the Piazza Navona, and the midnight visit to the Coloseum. My Italian was a little rusty the first couple of days, but it started coming back by the end. The hotel was close by the Spanish Steps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLxFjPzNux4), and very nice although we got yelled out for being too loud while talking on a phone by some crazy middle-aged American woman with hyper-sensitive bat-like ears.
Totally random travel tip: When you order the house wine in a carafe in tratoria's, sometimes you get very nice wine, sometimes you get damage to your tooth enamel.
It is time to escape this cold: Maike and I decided to go snorkelling. Well, I decided, and Maike was game. Puerto Rico I have passed through half a dozen times now, flights were dirt-cheap, so for President's Day weekend we have a direct flight to SJU. No hotel or plan yet, aside from snorkelling, swimming, and maybe zip-lining.