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?