Review: Baraka Blu Ray

This is the fourth time I've seen Baraka. I don't make it a point to see movies more than once as a matter of course, but when I first saw this movie in 1992, it blew me away. A film without dialogue, conversation or plot, yet telling a story with gorgeous, glorious cinematography, this movie captivated me for the entirety of 90 minutes. The next time I saw my parents, I took them to the movie. Then when Lisa and I had some time, we saw the movie on DVD.

Much has been written about the transfer process used to capture Baraka on blu-ray discs, and while critics usually succumb to hyperbole about it, I have to say in this case they are correct: the transfer is immaculate, and will provide as close to a 70mm film experience as you can expect. This is definitely a disc that will show off your home theater system if you've built one, or expose faults with it if what you've built is inadequate.

The extras on the discs are as long as the movie, and show how the film was made: the film-makers built their own equipment, and shot the whole thing mostly with 5 people. My respect for the makers went up: these weren't people who shot a ton of film only to throw most of it away; their budget was so low that they had to make every shot count.

Needless to say, this movie is highly recommended. If you haven't seen it before, make sure to see it with the best home theater set up you can get. It will blow you away.

Kindle Tips

When I gave Scarlet a Kindle for her birthday last year, I wrote up a page worth of tips for using it. Then as more and more of my friends bought one, that page got passed around, and now Larry reminds me that it's worth posting:

• List of free kindle books. These are mostly publisher promotions.
• Calibre e-book management software. This lets you manage E-books that you didn't buy from Amazon, and also lets you download all of the NYTimes, to your Kindle on a daily basis. Of course, it's probably easier to just pay $9.99 a month. :-)


• Mobile read ebook collection. All .mobi format books are essentially Kindle books. Yes, every Jane > Austen, every Sherlock Holmes, every H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo - it's all public domain, and all free, and very nicely formatted over at Mobile read, usually better than the versions sold for money on Amazon.com.


• MobiPocket Creator turns all your PDFs/Microsoft Word/etc files into Kindle books. There's no Mac version, but you can always e-mail yourself documentsand have it wirelessly sent to your Kindle for about 15cents/MB.


• Baen Books also sells $5 ebooks. Unfortunately, Baen seems to publish books for libertarian programmers rather than normal people. They do make books from other publishers available occasionally, however.


• Fictionwise.com also has magazines you might not be able to get at Amazon.com (such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). All their "multi-format" books are DRM free and come in Kindle format, so you can use those on your Kindle.

Review: John T. Reed's Succeeding

Succeeding is John T. Reed's self-help book. Self-help books are generally boring and bland, since they have to be designed to sell to as many people as possible. Reed, however, has a very strong personality and depending on who you are, you may or may not want to read 300 pages worth of the kind of material he has on his web-site.

I enjoyed Succeeding. I think it's very much worth the time. In some cases, I came across advice in the book that I wish I had when I was 18. For instance, Reed spends an appendix and a few sections referring to his "Dating System". I discovered the same thing when I was nearly 30. He did it in a systematic fashion when he was a West Pointer in college.

His section on investing is a great summary of Unconventional Success, which is a great place to start, and shows that he's not an idiot about finances. Unlike other books on the topic, he covers the selection of appropriate financial goals, and points out that setting them too high can cause you to take more risk than you should have, and that pursuit of too much wealth distorts your life in ways that you might not imagine.

He pushes self-employment pretty hard, as he thinks that being a cog in a big machine of either the army, the federal government, or a large company is bad for people with a strong sense of ethics. To a large extent, I agree, but I've also had a good career with many Silicon Valley startups, all of which were uniformly concerned with ethics and doing the right thing, so I disagree that you have to go the self-employed route. However, self-employment is the route to wealth for most millionaires, as described in The Millionaire Next Door, and Reed is writing for the general public, not your typical Silicon Valley software engineer, so I'll give him a pass there.

I don't agree with everything he writes, but in the essential stuff (risk, reward, choice of career, staying away from alcohol, tobacco and drugs), I think he's got it right.

All in all, this book was worth $29.95, which is a good thing, since that's what you'll have to pay for a copy. Reed is self-published, and does not sell to bookstores (especially not Amazon, against which he has a grudge) and libraries.

Review: Nyko Blu Wave Remote

The PS3, as previously mentioned, makes a fantastic blu-ray and DVD player. However, it does have one flaw, which is that it can only be controlled with blue-tooth. This is not a problem if all you're doing is playing games, but when watching a DVD or a blu-ray movie, the PS3 controller would go into sleep mode after a period of inactivity, then when you need to pause, you're frantically pushing the PS button on the controller, waiting for it to re-register, and then pushing pause. This was not very conducive, and also had the disadvantage that I had to have 2 controllers in my hand, the universal remote and the PS3 controller. I could buy the Sony PS3 blu-ray remote, but then I'd still have to have 2 remotes around.

The Nyko Remote is a USB dongle with an infra-red port that comes with an infra-red remote. Since my universal remote was fully programmable, the first thing I did when I unpacked it was to program my universal remote with all the functions of the Nkyo, and then keep that remote boxed up. The remote is missing two functions, an Eject Button, and a Power on button. Given that every time I have to play a disc, I have to walk over to the PS3 and stick it into the device anyway, this is no big deal. Once the PS3 is turned on, I can navigate to the eject and power off screen functions using the remote just fine, so ejecting the disc and turning off the device is no big deal.

So now I have one device that controls all the functions of my entertainment system. The only real downside as far as I can see is that now I only have one slot on my PS3 free for charging controllers. Until Lisa decides that PS3 games are fun enough for her, I don't see this as a big deal --- I haven't even bought a second controller yet!

Needless to say, the Nkyo remote is highly recommended at the $12 Amazon.com price.

Book Update

For those of you who are wondering about the book. I'm now close enough to the finish line that I'm starting to think about things like book sizes (5x8? 6x9?), font sizes (size 10? size 12?), font type (Garmond?), and who to get to do my printing (Amazon is the current leading contender).

And yes, I horribly mis-priced the book over at Kickstarter. The final price will be likely closer to $29.95 than $15 a book, but giving my early supporters a price break seems only fair. I'm actually really shocked to see so much support, so thank you all very much. Obviously, at this point, even if Kickstarter fails to generate $1000, the book will go out.

The electronic edition actually offers a major conundrum. I'm a big fan of the Kindle, as anyone who has traveled with me knows. But the royalty split between the author and Amazon is an astonishingly low 30%/70%. I'm not expecting to get rich off this book, but at this point, it seems like I'm better off going John T Reed style and accepting Google checkout in exchange for a DRM-free version of the book! Funnily enough, the print split between Amazon and the author is a much more reasonable 50/50 split. Even that's annoying enough for me to want to go John T. Reed on everyone and just inventory and ship the books myself. (I'm not egoistic enough think that this will be a best seller by any means --- it's a highly technical book on a very niche topic)

Disappointed with Battlestar Galactica Seasons 3 and 4

After I wrote the rave reviews of Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1 and 2, I let it lie fallow for a few years, partly because I was in Germany with no real way to watch TV, but also because my friends who kept watching Seasons 3 and 4 expressed their disappointment to me.

I started watching Season 3 with low expectations, but episodes 1-4 were amazing, rivaling any of the first two seasons. The subject matter was intense, and the scripting and pacing near perfect. I started to hope.

Unfortunately, the rest of the season disappointed me. It wasn't so much so as each individual episode was bad, but the sense of an overall story-arc faded. It felt like literature professors had taken over the shows from science fiction authors, as the show started worrying more about character development (not that there wasn't plenty before, but now the show really worked on it) and meaning and symbols instead of telling a great story.

This really became obvious in Season 4, when it became very clear that Ron Moore had no idea where he was going all along, with the story contradicting itself in blatant fashion, with plot-holes you could pilot a full squadron of Vipers through. Seriously, I can put up a ton of suspension of disbelief, but the resurrection of one of the major characters with no real explanation? That takes it from science fiction to serious bible study allegories. There's a place for it, but keep it away from my fiction, especially one that worked so hard to maintain an illusion of a working military.

I wish I had stopped watching the TV series after Season 3 Episode 4, but I was curious to see if the producers and story tellers could salvage anything out of the mess they had written themselves in, and they never did. The photography was gorgeous, the actors just as great as before, but with an empty shell of story, it all turned out to be just eye candy. Someone I read recently wrote: "It's as though Lance Armstrong came into the last stage of the Tour De France in the yellow jersey, and 300m from the finish line, crashed and broke his collarbone and DNF'd." I think it was much worse than that. It was as though Lance got off his bike, and beat up one of his fans and got taken to jail and DNF'd.

Review: Drive

Drive is the latest in a series of books that really should have been a magazine article. You can get most of the gist of the book from the 20-minute TedTalk Daniel Pink gave in 2009. The talk is really good: in 20 minutes Dan explains that extrinsic rewards actually serve to reduce performance in creative tasks, and turns what would be pleasure into work. This isn't really controversial, and there's a lot of studies to prove it. For instance, Warren Buffett, who's long lived in a $300,000 house for 20 years, and picks up a salary of $100,000 a year, outperforms any number of Wall Street traders and investment bankers who get all sorts of bonuses and performance incentives dangled in front of them.

The problem with the book is that it doesn't say a lot about what you do with this knowledge. For instance, he suggests 20% time as something good. I agree. Unfortunately, I've heard of places where that 20% time was treated as a reward for good behavior, with large swaths of the organization referring to it as 120% time. Dan Pink doesn't examine the secondary and follow on effects of introducing something like this in a traditional environment with traditional management.

A friend of mine once told me that he thought the biggest mistake the company we worked for made was to introduce a career ladder for engineers. At that time, I disagreed, because I thought that the extrinsic motivation of promotions and additional stock options, etc., would generate good behavior. Having seen the follow-on effects in later years of people gaming the system, and what should have been a motivational tool turn into a de-motivational tool, I'm inclined to agree. For software engineering at least, extrinsic motivations don't work. Ditch it and ensure that people have job satisfaction instead doing work to the best of their ability.

None of that is in the book. If it was, I'd be please about paying $9.99 for the Kindle edition. As it is, I say watch the Ted Talk for free --- there's nothing new in the book. Dan's very good at explaining existing work, but isn't an original thinker capable of analyzing second-order effects. Not recommended for the price, though being a short read, you could easily check it out from the library.

Little things that matter

I'm finally watching the Season 4.5 of Battlestar Galactica, on the new PS3 setup. What amazed me about the PS3 is that it's actually a much better DVD player than my old dedicated DVD player.

You know how every time you watch a DVD it shows you the anti-piracy screen that's impossible to bypass? Well, if you watch 4 episodes that were stored on the same DVD on separate occasions on the DVD player, you get to sit through it 4 times. But on the PS3, you only see it once! That's because the PS3 remembers where you were, and restarts the DVD from where you left off.

It's this kind of attention to detail that's the reason Apple products are kicking ass. I'm so impressed that Sony's consumer group gets it as well. I get a little thrill every time I startup the PS3 for movie playing as a result.

Appendix: Equipment Reviews

The following equipment worked very well, as previously reviewed:

• Amazon Kindle
• Battery Geek CPAP-222 Battery
• Gomadic Charging System

The following performed incredibly well, but were not previously reviewed:

Blackberry Curve 8320. This was by far the most valuable phone on the trip in a ship full of phones. International data roaming meant that Lisa and I could get e-mail access at all times. With the UMA service, any phone call in a Wi-Fi connected zone was a local call to the US. Today's choice would most likely be a Blackberry 8900. Note that of all the U.S. Carriers, only T-mobile supports UMA. For international travel, there is no reason to carry any other phone. I say despite knowing that yes, the Nexus One and iPhone are faster devices. It doesn't matter how fast the device is if you can't get access to data at a decent price while traveling, which is when I want data most. Highly recommended.

Sea-To-Summit Dry Bags. Light and water proof. Exactly what you want for a sailing trip. Or a cycling trip, or a backpacking trip. Every outdoors person should have a collection of these in his closet. Highly recommended.

MSR Pack Towel. Douglas Adams on towels. This one is light and absorbs massive quantities of water. Enough said.

Cloudveil Cool Caribe Shants. I bought 2 pairs at the Sports Basement. They were great. Long enough to protect knees, short enough to be cool. I can't wait to treat them like cycling knickers. The pockets are so well designed that when I got dunked into water my wallet stayed in them and I didn't lose it. Highly recommended.

The following performed somewhat decently, but had drawbacks:

Vibram Five Fingers. This was my first trip with the Five Fingers where I finally got comfortable with them. As usual, they attracted lots of attention, with two people offering to buy them off my feet. The problem with them is that once you get sand in them, it's nearly impossible to get sand out without putting them in the laundry. On a boat trip, that's incredibly annoying. I still wouldn't use these on a long hike.

HP Mini. This was a reasonable netbook, but the battery life is terrible, I don't think we ever got more than 3 hours of battery life out of it. They keyboard was nice, and I liked being able to write on it while I was on vacation, but if I was looking for a netbook, I'd look for one with longer battery life.

Wolverine PicPac. On the one hand, this allowed us to back up all our pictures. On the other hand, it can't be treated like a normal hard drive, and had a tough time connecting once I got home. I think a better solution would be to carry a netbok and a universal card reader.

Conclusion and Thoughts

Usually when I go on vacation, the general rule is the cheaper the vacation, the better experience I have. That's because you do more on the cheaper vacations: whether it's sailing or cycling, you control your destiny by controlling your schedule, deciding where to go, when to go, and how to go. This grants you maximum bang for the buck and the S.V. Illusion seemed like one of those cases.

However, I struggle with trying to come up with who would have a good time on the Illusion. Experienced sailors will have a tough time because the boat clearly doesn't sail well. Any sailboat which regularly requires the engine to move with any decent speed doesn't really deserve the moniker. New sailors could potentially find sailing with Norman a good idea: he's a good sailor, and knows his boat inside out. However, he is also impatient, and can be difficult to get along with. More important, however, the boat just doesn't maneuver well enough to really be a good instructional boat. Not once did we come about, or gybe. I shudder to think how the boat would do on a man-overboard figure 8 (though since the engine is usually on anyway, it doesn't matter—you'd just furl the sails and motor to the man overboard).

The really big knock against the Illusion is what Ron said: "It's difficult to trust the man's judgement." I'm not sure I could recommend the experience to novices. Certainly, if I was the first person to run a formal knots lesson on the boat, don't expect your lessons to come other than in the heat of the moment, or if you're driven to learn yourself. A typical sailing certification can be had in 6 days, and will be much more useful to you.

I guess ultimately, the best way to use the Illusion is if you don't particularly care where you go, and are willing to go with whatever Norman wants to do. He's not a snorkeling fan, so don't expect good snorkeling—arrange that yourself. He won't pay to dive, so don't expect good diving, because he won't inconvenience himself by mooring or anchoring at a good dive spot, so expect to arrange that yourself. Make sure you go when the boat has at most 3 other crew on board, so that Norman isn't swamped by the responsibility. If you can meet all these conditions, you have a good chance of having a good time at a very low price. For myself, I expect that I will do my own charters after this, or find something with someone I know. There is such a thing as being too cheap.

There's apparently going to be a reality TV show to be filmed on the Illusion later on this year. This is one reality TV show that I might have to watch.

Kindle DX just went international

The Kindle DX just picked up international wireless! Unfortunately, they haven't dropped the price, indicating that the sales volume is too low to drive economies of scale. The $489 device ships on Jan 19th. For my money, the Kindle 2 is probably the better travel companion.

Sailing and Diving St. Vincent and the Grenadines

This is the index page for our recent sailing and diving trip through St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Unlike other sailing trips, I learned about this through an article in the New York Times about the Illusion.

Pictures

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Alena's Pictures

Trip Report

• December 15th, 2009: Prologue
• December 16th, 2009: Rodney Bay to Marigot Bay
• December 17th, 2009: Marigot Bay to Rodney Bay
• December 18th, 2009: Rodney Bay
• December 19th, 2009: Rodney Bay to Bequia
• December 20th, 2009: Bequia
• December 21st, 2009: Port Elizabeth to Wallilabou Bay
• December 22nd, 2009: La Soufiere
• December 23rd, 2009: Wallilabou Bay
• December 24th, 2009: Wallilabou Bay
• Christmas Day
• December 26th, 2009: Wallilabou Bay to Young Island
• December 27th, 2009: Young Island
• December 28th, 2009: Young Island to Canouan
• December 29th, 2009: Canouan to Union Island
• December 30th, 2009: Union Island to Bequia
• New Year's Eve
• New Year's Day
• Epilogue
• Conclusions
• Appendix: Equipment Reviews

2010 Book Reviews Index

Note: The Books of the Year for 2010 have been picked.
Fiction

• Perdido Street Station
• Juliet, Naked
• The Magicians
• Manifold: Time
• The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency
• Primitive
• Freedom
• The Other Lands
• The Windup Girl
• The Hunger Games
• Ash
• The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo
• Catching Fire
• The Lost Fleet: Victorious
• The Scar
• The Girl Who Played With Fire
• Whit
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Battle Royale
• Crystal Nights and Other Stories
• The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
  
• Mockingjay
• The God Engines
• The Fuller Memorandum
• Zendegi

Non-Fiction

• Drive
• Succeeding
• Fortune's Formula
• Self-Publishing
• The Spirit Level
• Dear Undercover Economist
• You: The Owner's Manual
• Perfect Rigor
• Predictably Irrational
• The Big Short
• Iconoclast
• Adobe InDesign CS4 One-On-One
• We Might As Well Win
• The Upside of Irrationality
• Happiness
• That was the Millennium that was
• Success Built to Last
• ECONned
• Breaking Windows
• Memoirs of a Fellwanderer
• It Takes a Genome
• Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance
• Psych Yourself Rich
• More Money Than God
• Galen Rowell's Inner Game of Outdoor Photography
• 36 Views of Mount Fuji
• Born On A Blue Day
• Look Me in the Eye
• Being Wrong
• Click: The Magic of Instant Connections
• Priceless
• Sway

Comics

• Fables 1-12
• Fables 13
• Astro City 1-5
• Astro City: The Dark Age Book 1

Review: Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station is China Mieville's steampunk novel set in the city of New Crobuzon. It took me two tries to read it: the first time, I checked it out of the Santa Clara County Library, but could not get past the first few chapters in the 3 weeks I had it. Then the Kindle store gave it away free, and it sat on my Kindle for a few months until I got around to it.

Mieville has probably written the best graphic novel in words. His descriptions are evocative, creating in my mind frame after frame of images corresponding to his characters --- the mad scientist Issac Dan der Grimnebulin, his artist lover Lin, and even the mayor of the city as he confers with the Demon ambassador (it is a tribute to the scope of the novel that this isn't giving away an important part of the book --- less ambitious novel would have made that scene the fulcrum of the novel). Mieville's command of the language is impeccable. He also has a huge vocabulary and is not afraid to use it or invent new ones --- reading this novel on the Kindle made me realized that the reason I rarely used the dictionary feature was because I rarely found authors with such large vocabularies!

The plot starts with Issac being asked to restore a formerly winged sapient to flight, while his artist lover gains a patron. The two threads converge, diverge, and converge again, as one of Issac's research projects goes awry, and he releases a predator into the city that proceeds to threaten the entire locale.

All through this plot presentation, Mieville ensures that the city of New Crobuzon is as much a character as any of the ones that talk and do things. We get introduced to all that various races (including one of Cactus-men), technology, and side plots. In fact, if there's any weakness in the novel, it's that Mieville seems so enraptured of his milleu, that entire pages are devoted to it that are irrelevant to plot and seem like so much padding. For example, did he need to really spend an entire chapter on how cable was laid?

Nevertheless, the plot is interesting, the characters, while perhaps stereotyped and not one hundred percent original, different enough from standard fantasy fare to be very much worth your time. In fact, if urban fantasy was this good, I would be pleased. And it is a meaty novel, so you'll get plenty for your money --- in fact, I don't think I could finish this book within 3 weeks if I didn't have a long travel day during my recent trip. If I get another long travel day ahead, I will probably buy another Mieville book to keep myself occupied and return to the city of New Crobuzon.

Recommended.

Epilogue

The rest of the trip was uneventful, as we took various taxis, planes, and so forth back home. We had a bit of time between the ferry and the flight, so our taxi driver did give us a bit of extra time. It did feel nice to have a shower, and I did learn something about American airlines. If you have a long layover and want a chance to fly stand-by for an earlier flight, don't check your baggage in after receiving it from customs. You need to go back to the ticketing counter and let them recheck the baggage after they've rebooked you for another flight.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Alena, unfortunately had her lugguage lost again on the way home, but this time, she remembered to pack all her warm clothing in her carry on, so it was only a minor inconvenience.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

New Year's Day

We woke up at 5:45am and hurriedly packed whatever we could not pack the day before, and brought all our lugguage. I woke up Alena at 6:00am, and we then waited on deck and said goodbye to everyone else, who had awakened early to see us off. Apparently, the night before, Norman had returned to the Illusion without telling anyone else, so everyone partied until 1:00am before returning. Apparently the street dancing was quite something and very exciting, though someone had told the crew that this year was particularly quiet because of the recession.

At 6:10am, Norman came up to have some parting words with us. "You didn't pay the water taxi last night. You're responsible for all the fees, since you didn't have to leave early. When the water taxi guy shows up, he won't take your bags until you pay him." Those were his last words to us.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

At 6:20, the water taxi hadn't shown up yet, so I gave him a call. He sounded groggy, as though he had been napping in his boat, but showed up with 10 minutes and delivered us to the ferry dock with plenty of time. I paid him 50EC for his trouble, we got onto the ferry, and watched as a glorious rainbow poured down from the sky. As the ferry departed the harbor, I took the last few pictures of the Sailing Vessel Illusion, quiet and serene in the morning light.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

New Year's Eve

We were picked up right at 9:10am by the dive boat, and threw in our gear and headed over to the north coast of Bequia to do a drift dive. On the boat with us was Dan, Dani, and Dana, a family of divers. Dan and Dana were in their 70s, and Dani was their daughter in their 40s. It wasn't until we were in the water that I realized what was different about Dani—she had lost the use of her legs, and could only use her hands to propel herself under water. Yet her arm motions were graceful, and she moved just as easily under water as any of us, and had great eyes, spotting wildlife and other notable objects that I would miss.

Our first dive was a drift dive, known as Cathedral. Drift diving is a great way to see things under water. You sit and watch the world go by as the current pushes you along, and when you see something you like you stroke gently against the current and float in the water. I could do it all day.

Our second dive was at Boulders, which was a loop around some fascinating formations. A giant grab was spotted but I didn't get to see it. When we came back to town, we had Roti, and then spent some time at an internet cafe, where I uploaded the last of my book reviews. I then negotiated with Alena about our departure time the next morning—she wanted to catch the 7:30am ferry, but my position was that if we missed the 7:00am ferry, we would have a backup, whereas if we missed the 7:30am ferry we would be in trouble. We eventually negotiated on a pick up time of 6:20am.

We then returned to the Illusion with everyone, and I got the phone number of Peter the water taxi guy, who would be working all night on New Year's Eve. Dinner was going to be at the Salty Dog today (with Norman paying for everything except drinks), and then there would be fireworks and a party afterwards.

By the time we got ashore on the water taxi, the party had already started. Loud boom boxes and speakers were playing all around town, and I was impressed by how earth shattering even cheap speakers could sound if you simply poured enough power into them. By the time we got to the Salty Dog, we saw the Josh and Noah had already been there and were already working on some beers. They said they saw Jude Law on Princess Margaret beach after their dive session was over. Allison and Norman soon joined us, and then they got us a table. There were foreboding storm clouds coming over the hill, but we saw nothing more than a sprinkle.

Dinner started with a bowl of Callaloo soup, and the main entree was a choice of fish or steak, though Lisa got a special vegan dish made for her. Both came relatively quickly, though since the steaks were all cooked the same I wondered why they bothered asking each of us individually how we wanted the steaks done. Dessert, however, which was a key lime pie took a long time in coming. By the time it was delivered it was 9:30am, and we had started to see some fireworks fired off by various houses that were too eager to wait for midnight's official showing.

Lisa and I were pretty tired, so we took leave of everyone and went back to the Illusion to get some sleep before the next morning's early start. I heard some fireworks go off just before I drifted off to sleep, and folks the next morning would tell me about dancing in the streets and a wild party, but I was never much of a party animal anyway.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Review: Treason

Treason was a free book I picked up from the Kindle store. In fact, all of Don Brown's books are available for free. It didn't take 3 chapters to figure out why. When I read that this book was about a JAG case and JAG lawyers, I was excited because of my good experience with John G. Hemry's excellent JAG in space novels.

However, these novels are a different story altogether. It starts off by stereotyping Muslim characters as being religious fanatics, and then depicts the two protagonists (beautiful, white, Christian characters of course) trying to put them in jail, but not before depicting the justice system as being a joke by putting an innocent Filipino-American in jail first.

By the time I got to the end of the book, I had decided that the remainder of Don Brown's books would also have no redeeming value, but the last few pages advertising the Christian press that published the novel explained it: the evangelical religions are having a great time blasting away at each other, and I have no trouble believing that the same people who publish such hateful novels would have no problem shooting doctors who provide abortion services.

Not recommended, even at the Kindle price of $0.00.

Bequia

Despite Norman's tinkering with the skiff's outboard, it still wasn't running reliably. At this point, I made the comment to Ron that these diesel engines seem to last forever, at which point Susie corrected me, "No, it's not a diesel engine. It's just a gasoline engine running so badly that it stinks!"

Norman thus made the decision to skip Mayreau and Mustique on the way back, since neither places had water taxis, so we had to head all the way back to Bequia. Today, Norman seemed to have calmed down a bit, and got Alena, Paul, Mary, and Greg to help out with the sailing rather than try to do everything himself. The departure went uneventfully, and the sailing was smooth. We did see various catamarans and other boats go flying past us, however, so we knew that we were getting pretty good wind.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

The ship's generator had been broken since the day before, but fortunately, Norman had changed his mind about letting me plug in my CPAP battery, which meant that I would be able to get two more nights of CPAP therapy, which was all I needed before I would have consistent power. At this point, everybody's cell phone was drained down to next to nothing, and even my battery extender was gone.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Upon arrival at Bequia, a water taxi was called. Paul & Greg had reserved a room in a hotel on Bequia, and they seemed relief to get off the boat. Lisa, Noah, Josh and I went over to Bequia Dive Adventures and arranged for 2 dives tomorrow, since it was our last chance to dive. We then bought a little bit of food, and Lisa bought some souvenirs to bring back home, though I had to remind her that our flight from St. Vincent to St. Lucia was going to be extremely weight limited! Looking around the harbor, it was clear that a party was going to be happening on New Year's Eves. Big huge boats were coming into the bay. Even Club Med had a boat coming into the harbor and disgorging tourists and all sorts of water-borne toys.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

We then double checked with the tourist information to make sure that there was a ferry departing on New Year's day. We were told that there were two, one at 7:00am, and one at 7:30am, and the cost would be 20EC per person. We ran into Paul and Greg outside their hotel, and they graciously let Lisa and I use their bathroom to shower.

Upon returning to the Illusion, Norman asked if I had a print out of our itinerary from St. Vincent to St. Lucia. Since we had booked everything online, and didn't have a printer handy at Wallilabou Bay, we didn't have a print out. "If I had known, I would have brought the laptop today to the internet cafe and printed out a copy!" I said to Lisa. I probably said it too loudly, since Norman yelled back, "You knew, Piaw, because you were there when Zach left the boat, and you heard me ask him for his flight papers." I guess when you're the skipper of a boat you expect everyone to hang on your every word. I'll remember not to do that the next time I'm the skipper of a boat.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Fortunately, Allison was going to head down to shore with Norman anyway, and she had her Mac. So I powered up our laptop, copy and pasted our online copy of our itinerary to our portable hard drive, and then copied it to Allison's computer. We were very relieved to get all this out of the way, and had an uneventful dinner.

Canouan to Union Island

I slept well, but in the morning almost everyone else complained about the surge moving the boat so violently that they had trouble sleeping. I guess there's something to be said about having a medical condition that makes sleep so uncomfortable normally that you don't notice minor things like your bed shaking around with the waves. I sleep better on boats than I do at home.

Paul had not managed to find any flights or ferry from Canouan, and in fact would have to stay with us until we got back to Bequia.

Right after breakfast I heard the engine turn on. There had been no calls to get crew members on deck. Apparently, Norman had decided that from now on he would do all the sailing alone. On my initiative I got the boat hook ready and a bucket of water ready for the anchor to weigh, but Norman shooed me away. Well then, I would relax and enjoy the sail!

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

The "sail" to Union Island was done without even unfurling the main. It was close enough that in 2 hours we pulled into the anchorage, which was crammed with boats of every size. As usual, the Illusion headed into the part of the bay furthest away from shore, but this time we appeared to be headed for a coral reef. We stopped right at the edge of the reef and dropped anchor. It's not considered cool to anchor right off a reef because an anchor hooked into a reef can cause serious damage to the coral. Ron and I raised our eyebrows at each other, but didn't do anything else—it wasn't as though saying a word would trigger anything but a storm of invectives. I'm sure that Norman knew what he was doing, but his questionable judgement the night before made us question this move a lot more than we would have.
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From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

The skiff was out of operation, since the outboard motor had been flooded. Allison therefore called a water-taxi to take us ashore, but since they didn't have the cash for it, we would have to front the money and then have them reimburse us. Arriving ashore, we headed around looking for food. Allison had recommend this place called Jennifer's at the end of the street, so we chose it and ordered food. I had forgotten that this was the Caribbean, however, and everything operated on island time. The entire meal took 2 and a half hours, at which point it was nearly 3pm and we had a limited amount of time for snorkeling.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Josh, Noah, Lisa and I headed over to Big Sand Beach, which was recommended to us by Jennifer. When Lisa saw it, she decided that she didn't want any of it, and headed back to town to do some shopping. Big Sand Beach, turned out to have terrible snorkeling. The beach was so churned up by the surge that we could barely see anything. I did spot what I thought to be a moray eel, but it wasn't all that spectacular. The coral was also in poor condition, and looked like it had bleached out, a sure sign of it being about to die. After an hour of struggling to make the best of a bad situation, we finally called it quits and walked back to town, where I caught up to Lisa and we took a shower.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Getting the water taxi back to the Illusion was a fiasco. We had to split the party in two, as we did before, but we forgot to hold back some money and paid the taxi in full, so he never went back to pick up the rest of the party and they had to get a ride back from someone else. This reliability thing doesn't work very well when you're not in high trust countries.

The sunset from the boat was beautiful, though.

Young Island to Canouan

The new sailors turned out to be students from Columbia, Paul and Greg. we had heard from Norman that they were a couple, and apparently had told Greg the night before when he picked them up at the jetty, "I thought you were a woman!" The rest of us found it amusing, but I don't know if any of the principals involved also thought that way. (Paul later said that his e-mail exchanged mentioned that they were school friends, and somehow that got lost in the translation)

It turned out that Norman and Allison couldn't provision the boat yesterday, because it was a Sunday, so they had to provision the boat this morning. I was left to assign duties and explain tasks to people while they went ashore to provision the Illusion. I showed Mary and Greg how to get water for the dishes, and then went over the ship with everyone: winches, genoa, staysail, main sail, and what to do with the skiff, fenders, etc.

We then prepped all the lines for sailing, but I forgot about the furlers for the genoa and the staysails. I then asked for volunteers for each station. I then asked Ron if I'd forgotten anything, and he said, "No, I think you've pretty much covered it." Soon enough, Norman and Allison returned, and once they stowed away, Norman was on fire wanting to move the boat in a hurry.

Unfortunately, while I had briefed everyone, what we had was effectively an entirely new crew. Unless you have a crew that's been drilled multiple times in what's expected of them, asking your crew to move fast is likely to lead to confusion and chaos. This was, unfortunately, what ensued. The main got unfurled, but the boom topping lift got dropped at the same time. And of course, my forgetting the genoa and staysail furlers enraged Norman even more. It didn't take him 10 minutes to start chewing me out, and by 20 minutes he had fired me as first mate. In fact, he fired everyone on the boat who had ever sailed before from their stations.

Ron and I were actually pretty happy about this. "Well, I didn't pay for a full-on charter where I got to sit around to do nothing," he said, "but I'm getting a vacation like that anyway!" It took about an hour and a half to sail back to Bequia, where we would stop for lunch and some sailing snacks for the long haul to Mayreau. Union Island was deemed to far for the sail given how late we had started.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

The stop in Bequia was uneventful, and again on the sail out of Bequia Norman directed every aspect of it. It was quite clear that he could show people what to do if he wanted to do so, but only 2-3 people at a time. Even though there was decent wind, the Illusion is definitely not a great sailing vessel, and after an hour or so, Norman turned on the engine to get us an extra 2 knots. Despite all that, it was deemed unlikely that we could make Mayreau by dinner time, and a last minute decision was made to change the destination to Canouan, where Norman owned some land.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Canouan bay looked deserted compared to Young Island, though when we got closer we could see that there was other yatchs also moored or anchored out in the bay. We dropped anchor around 7pm, and since there was at least an hour before dinner, Norman said he would run folks over to shore for showers and/or a drink. Ron decided at this point that he didn't trust Norman's judgement, and decided to stay aboard, as did Mary. I didn't feel like I needed a shower, but I knew that Lisa felt otherwise. I did make the lucky decision to ask Lisa to put everything for shore into a dry bag, rather than bring the backpack.

We all loaded onto the skiff, and Norman brought us ashore. As we approached the jetty, we saw that there was a dinghy that had been lifted out of the water and placed right onto the jetty. That wasn't usual, but I thought it might have been out of the water for repairs. As Norman brought the skiff around to the ladder, Lisa stood up and tried to get onto the ladder, Norman said, "No! Lisa's the least suitable person. Can one of the guys do this?" Lisa sat back down and Josh jumped out of the boat and onto the ladder, but it took him a couple of tries. Then we felt a surge come. The boat felt like it went up 3 feet at once during the surge. I had stood up at this point to get ready to get onto the jetty.

At this point, another surge came and this time I lost footing and was thrown off the skiff into the water. I flew through the air for a half second or so and then hit the water head first. When I stood up, I felt the gritty taste of sand in my mouth, which meant that the water was pretty churned up. I was almost immediately knocked down by another surge. When I got up again, I saw that the skiff had turned turtle, and there was screaming coming from it. I moved towards the skiff, but when I got there, realized that I was the wrong side from Noah, Norman, and Josh, who were trying to right the skiff from the other side. By the time I got to the correct side of the rescue operation, the skiff had been righted, though it was full of water.

Paul was screaming, but Lisa had stayed calm throughout the whole thing, and hung on to the dry bags. We ran up the beach to a place where we could get onto the jetty and climbed onto it. Norman at this point had moved the skiff forward and asked me and Alena to tie it down. I tied down the boat, at which point Norman asked me about the fuel tank for the skiff. I turned to look for it, but Lisa had already found it and was bringing it forward. Noah, Josh, Susie, and Greg were on the beach looking for lost items that were washing up ashore. Lisa's flip flops were found, Paul's wallet with his citizenship papers were found. Susie's cell phone was lost. Paul's envelope with $2000 in it was lost. Susie thought she had lost her camera as well. My wallet had fortunately lodged in my pocket and stayed there through the entire event.

Most importantly, Paul looked like he was in shock. When asked if he was OK, he would say "No." He would occasionally scream when he realized what he had lost. Norman asked if everyone was all right, and then said he had to leave since folks from the resort said he could stay tied up there. "Tell everyone to meet me at the ferry dock at 9:15!"

Paul, however, looked like he was in no condition to walk any distance, and a walk in the dark to the ferry dock didn't sound appealing to any of us. So Susie and Alena went to report their losses, while Josh, Greg and Noah went to try to calm down. Lisa need to use the rest room to clean up afterwards, and we ordered some tea for Paul. It took quite a while to get all the reports filed, and by the time we were done it was about 8:45pm. Nobody felt like walking over to the ferry dock. Paul was particularly furious, since he felt that Norman did not stick around to check up on him while he was in shock.

Fortunately, one of the moorings charter skipper saw our plight and offered us a ride back to the Illusion if we needed it. We spoke with him and he generously walked up from his dinner table and led us to the jetty where his rubberized dinghy was sitting right at the end. "I put it here because of the surge." Then dropped the dinghy into the water, hopped into it gracefully, and then said, I will bring it around. You sit on the jetty, and when I am below you, just push off and into the boat. If a surge comes don't jump in. We wait it out, nice and easy."

Sure enough, it was surprisingly easily done. It took him 2 trips to ferry all of us, but it all went uneventfully. Turned out the he was a skipper for hire for Moorings, which had a base here in Canouan. He said that these surges happened because of a North Atlantic storm, which translated into huge waves.

When we got back to the Illusion, Allison looked quite concerned. We all got cleaned off, though I still felt quite sandy all over, and ate the dinner she prepared. Paul was still unhappy about his experience and monetary loss, and was unhappy that Norman wasn't around to talk about it. But when Norman showed up, the entire event turned into a confrontation instead of a post-mortem, with Norman being very defensive about his actions, and saying that the capsize happened because we were too slow in getting off the skiff. I felt that the proper thing to do would have been to recognize that once there was a surge, abandoning the evening's drinks and shower activities would have been the appropriate thing to do. Nevertheless, if it was rare, it would have been difficult to realize the degree of danger we were all in. That's why post-mortems have to be conducted as dispassionately as possible. Unfortunately, that takes a leader quite capable of self-criticism, which Norman was not that night. Harsh words were exchange in elevated voices, and within half an hour everyone was quite sick of conversation. Josh tried to calm everyone down, "It's just an accident, it's nobody's fault," he said. Norman declared that he had taken care of every one by arranging for a pick up at the Ferry dock, and that it was my fault for not getting everyone there. Arguing with Norman at this point was a lost cause, so I just shrugged and accepted blame. He needed a scape-goat at this point, and prolonging the agony when everyone needed sleep would have done no one any favors.

Paul, having had a bad experience and lost all his cash, declared that he wanted off the Illusion as quickly as possible. He was still trying to arrange a flight or ferry from Union Island for tomorrow as I went to bed to sleep off this near-disaster.

Young Island

We had our last two dives on St. Vincent scheduled for today, as the idea would be to leave Young Island the next day for Union Island after picking two more crew members late tonight. This would mean a full crew of 10, with Norman and Allison not having a cabin.

At 9:00am sharp, the Dive St. Vincent boat showed up and we were off. Our first dive was Dan's Reef, which was in the shadow when we arrived, but clouds lifted at the end. Since the other two divers were at the end of their stay with a flight out the next day, it wasn't a very deep dive—around 70'. When we were finished, they asked DJ if they could repeat a dive at the Garden, which was their favorite dive so far. Since we were OK with that, we ended up doing our last dive there. Both sites were beautiful, with the garden being interspersed with coral and sand, so it truly was like visiting a laid out garden.

We finshed the dives, ate at Xcape again, and bought 3 burgers for the dive shop operators as a tip after that. Josh had asked me to get his mask repaired, so I asked the dive shop for a replacement strap. That came out to be about 25EC, and Josh was happy about it when we returned the operational mask to him.

Upon discussing the day with the others, we learned that a private party had booked up the Young Island resort, and no one was allowed to set foot on the island other than those in the party. Alena decided to swim there while waiting for Norman to pick us up, but while she was swimming across, Lisa saw Norman leave the jetty, apparently having picked no one up. It turned out that his cell phone's clock was about 15 minutes faster than everybody else's.

There was nothing to do then, than to wait for Alena to swim back from Young Island (where she had been invited to the party), and then hire a water taxi back to the Illusion. Lisa and I packed away her dive gear, and then had dinner, where Norman launched into another one of his stories, this time about land ownership and a project in Barbados.

I then asked Norman for a piece of cord, and proceeded to have a knots lesson aboard the Illusion. "Wow, we've never had a formal knots lesson before," said Allison. We first started with the figure 8, then moved on to the half-hitch, and finally did the bowline, whereupon Norman got mad enough at the way I was demonstrating it to give everyone a demonstration instead. I figured that we would start with knots tonight, move on to sailing principles tomorrow night, and maybe ask people if there were topics they were interested in afterwards.

After that, there was a brief period of reading, at which point everyone turned in, not waiting for our latest crew members to show up.

Review: Snake Agent

Snake Agent is Liz William's novel about an Occult investigator named Detective Inspector Chen. When I heard that it was set in a version of Singapore, where I grew up, I could not resist, and picked up the entire series over at Bean Online.

I was to be sorely disappointed. First of all, the novel isn't really set in Singapore, but Singapore 3, which is some sort of excuse for Williams not to do any research whatsoever about Singapore. For instance, there are references to Beijing throughout the book which indicates that Williams, like many Americans, think that Singapore is part of China. A look at any atlas or even a world map will show you where Singapore is, and it's not in China.

The novel itself is fairly trite. Detective Inspector Chen investigates a girl's murder, and then discovers it to be part of a broader plot that threatens the heavenly order. The bureaucratic view of heaven and hell come right out of Chinese culture, but everything else is made up. The result is that you go through the book with one new rule after another being turned up, and our protagonist is tossed about like a bottle on waves in the Ocean, displaying very little of the qualities we expect from Detectives or Police inspectors.

Ultimately, I finished the novel, but I want the 2 hours of my life I spent reading it back. Not recommended.

Review: Stabilizing an Unstable Economy

The recent financial crisis has been called a Minsky moment by many economists I respect. Minsky's 1984 work, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy was out of print for many years, and certainly not available at my local library, so I bought the Kindle edition and decided to read it over my vacation.

What the book encompasses is a re-engineering of existing orthodox economic theory. Fundamentally, Minsky believes that the lessons of John Maynard Keynes has been misunderstood and unincorporated into modern economic theory, which holds that a free market, capitalist economy is self-stabilizing at an equilibrium that approximates full employment. The typical argument then, is that government intervention is self-defeating and does not accomplish much.

The book covers several topics, the most important of which is an exposition of what Minsky considers the basic instability of our capitalist economy. He fundamentally divides financing schemes for projects into 3 types: hedge finance, where debts are paid for out of ongoing operations, speculative finance, where debts are paid for by a series of continual refinancing activities in the hopes that ongoing operations will eventually exceed the costs of refinancing, and finally ponzi finance, where even the interest on debt is paid for by a series of increasingly large refinancing activities, in the hopes of a future payoff. An economy consisting entirely of hedge projects is very stable, while an economy filled with speculative and ponzi projects runs the risk of a financial collapse. The post-war economy from 1946 to 1966 looked very much like the former, while the economy post 1966 looked very much like the latter.

How then, does our current economy not collapse into a depression despite having had several financial collapses? The answer, Minsky answers is Big Government, which is capable of running a deficit as well as organizing bailouts of bad financial bets when they reach a collapse. However, Minsky argues that this leads inexorably to the increasing instability of the economy, since each bail out legitimizes and validates the dodgy financial instruments that caused the financial collapse in the first place.

Acceptable financing techniques are not technologically constrained; they depend upon the subjective preferences and views of bankers and businessmen about prospects. With the financial structure that ruled in the 1950s, it was correct for businessmen and bankers to increase short-term indebtedness. However, success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure; the absence of serious financial difficulties over a substantial period leads to the development of a euphoric economy in which increasing short-term financing of long positions becomes a normal way of life.16 As a previous financial crisis recedes in time, it is quite natural for central bankers, government officials, bankers, businessmen, and even economists to believe that a new era has arrived. Cassandra-like warnings that nothing basic has changed, that there is a financial breaking point that will lead to a deep depression, are naturally ignored in these circumstances. Since the doubters do not have fashionable printouts to prove the validity of their views, it is quite proper for established authority to ignore arguments drawn from unconventional theory, history, and institutional analysis. Nevertheless, in a world of uncertainty, given capital assets with a long gestation period, private ownership, and the sophisticated financial practices of Wall Street, the successful functioning of an economy within an initially robust financial structure will lead to a structure that becomes more fragile as time elapses. Endogenous forces make a situation dominated by hedge finance unstable, and endogenous disequilibrating forces will become greater as the weight of speculative and Ponzi finance increases.
The result of these continual series of bailouts is that inflation has become a persistent and endemic part of the economy, and each bail out has to be increasingly larger, while not solving the fundamental instability of the economy in the form of financial institutions which while under regulation very quickly take control of the regulators, no matter the intentions of the legislation behind such regulation.

Minsky then goes on to describe what he considers to be important measures that could stabilize an economy. These prescriptions seem guaranteed to piss off liberals and conservatives alike, but in the light of his theory seem very sensible. He proposes setting a desired target size for the government such that it is big enough to manage changes in the economy. He further proposes the elimination of welfare, and replacing it with a guaranteed jobs program much like Roosevelt's. Then, financial institutions can be allowed to fail, since a series of Ponzi schemes that fall apart would not automatically spread across the entire economy.

I think a lot of people wouldn't like the typical man on the street to read this book: the existing Economics establishment wouldn't want you to read it because it highlights the failings of conventional economic theory. Conservatives probably wouldn't like the prescription of a Big Government, and Liberals wouldn't like the destruction of transfer payments. Yet the book is relatively accessible: none of the math involves more than simple summation series and algebra, and the writing is relatively clear and lucid, though dense. More importantly, if we realized the major structural problems in the economy that Minsky describes, we can actually have a debate about how to fix the root causes, rather than indulging in one bailout after another which doesn't actually seem to solve any problems, and just sets us up for further economic collapse. Highly recommended at the full price.

One caveat about the Kindle version: It's not very well formatted for the Kindle, as footnotes are inline rather than hyper-linked. This makes the footnotes very jarring to read. Nevertheless, it was worth it to have the book available on vacation.

Review: Passage at Arms

Passage At Arms is Glen Cook's submarines in space novel. It follows the story of an ex-military“embedded-reporter” attached to a Climber unit in a war. The Climber is commanded by his former officer school classmate, and he finds himself resented for taking up a useless space on the climber, in addition to another useless experimental weapon thatt was fitted onto the ship for a special mission.

In a typical action adventure story written by a lesser writer, the narrator will prove himself to be a superior human being, able to make use of his useless weapon in unprecedented ways against the vce enemy. This being Glen Cook, however, we get a very well told submarine tale, with more than a couple of surprises in store, but nothing as trite as what you would expect from the set-up.

Nevertheless, this is early Glen Cook, and those who are used to later Glen Cook should be aware that you can see Cook polishing his narrative style in this novel for his later, greater works, such as the Black Company series. The prose is sparse and spare, very reflective of a former military officer who's used to saying little with few words. Sentence fragments effectively render the moods of the men and machines, and little pieces of narratives provide what I consider really well written vignettes of the military and its situation.

If I have any criticism of the novel, it's that the author also had a very spare approach to plot and character—nearly everyone was a stereotype, and you're expected to have sympathy for the crew out of proximity without any real characterization being provided. Nevertheless, the book is recommended, at the very least as an airplane novel.

Wallilabou Bay to Young Island

Wallilabou Bay is infested with mosquitoes. In general, Caribbean mosquitoes aren't bad, but Lisa had so many bites that her legs were pock-marked with mosquito bites. The bay was particularly bad because the Illusion was moored stern into the wind, which meant that there was no breeze flowing through that boat. But at least we now had the entire boat filled with water.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Norman wanted to leave at 11am, but Alena, Josh and Noah wanted to wait till at least Noon, because they had wanted to take a shower, and use the internet at Steve's. Despite Norman's assurances that our travel dates were OK, it turned out that January 2nd was not a good date to fly out of St. Lucia—the customs office would be closed until 9am, and our flight left at 8:40am. This meant that we would have to depart the Illusion on January 1st, take the ferry from Bequia to St. Vincent, and then fly from St. Vincent back to St. Lucia so that Norman could discharge us from Bequia on the 31st. So we had to book an extra flight as well as a hotel room. Alena was in the same situation, so we bought our plane tickets and booked hotel rooms together.

At 10:00am, I saw that we had at least two hours, so I jumped into the water and swam out to the arch and back again. It was a surprisingly long swim, despite the relatively quiescent current. By the time I finish, it felt like I had a really good work-out. I had half an hour to dry off and change before everyone else came back and we got the boat ready to go. I was put on the helm, and skiff line got undone and replaced, and then Ron pulled the mooring line off. Unfortunately, when I put the engine into gear to move off our mooring position, the engine didn't engage. None of us noticed at first, but after a while when we saw the shore getting closer it became obvious what had happened. Norman ran down into the engine room, and came back up a bit later, declaring that the shearing pin attaching the engine to the propellor had sheared off. Apparently, the boat was designed for there to be a loose coupling between the engine and the propellor, so that fouling the propellor wouldn't damage the engine (or the propellor). However, during a recent incident, the loose coupling broke, and Norman did not have a replacement handy, so made do with a rigid coupling. As a result, you had to baby the throttle and the gear shift, and even then once in a while, even shifting gears could shear off the pin!

Well, with the main engine disabled, Norman jumped into the skiff and to start it so he could at least tow the Illusion back into deeper water. When he tried to start the motor, however, the choke came off in his hand! At this point, there was a crowd gathering on the shore to watch the spectacle as the Illusion edge closer and closer to the beach. I felt the rudder go stiff in my hand as it dug into the sand on the beach. Tony and a few sailors from another boat came up to the Illusion and tried to push it back off the sand, but with a 20 ton boat, a few hands just wasn't enough to move it. I saw Norman rip off the cover on the skiff's outboard motor and start taking the engine apart to try to cajole it into working. It took him an agonizing 5 minutes, but he eventually got it started, and he then drove up to the bow to pick up a towline and started towing the Illusion into deeper water.

At first progress was slow and unapparent, but a few pushes from folks ashore helped it along, and soon the Illusion was headed into deeper water—but with another boat in the way. I felt a moment of error as the wheel wouldn't respond to my efforts as the rudder was still in the sandbar, but after a bit I felt the rudder free up from the sand and I turned the Illusion away from the other vessel and into the middle of the bay, where the anchor was dropped. The relief on everyone's face was apparent, but that didn't last long, as Norman was livid when he came back on board.

"You're supposed to check that the engine engages before coming off the mooring!" he shouted at Allison. "That wasn't on the check list?" "Yes it is, but you weren't looking at it!" It turned out not to be on the crew's check list, and I do remember checking it routinely when I sailed other vessels, but if you ask me this sort of thing is the skipper's responsibility, not that of the crew.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

We turned off the Illusion's main engine, and Norman worked on it while the rest of us cooled our heels and relieved the exciting moments. Norman knows every piece of the boat well, including the engine, so it didn't take him 30 minutes to replace the sheering pin, and we were off again. After all that excitement, the sail down into Young Island was unexciting, taking only 90 minutes with the engine at a fairly slow speed. We pulled into the Young Island area around 4pm, dropping anchor close to the shore but further away from the dock. Lisa and I got our dive gear ready, and were dropped off at the jetty along with several others, but while they would return to the Illusion at 5:30pm, we would do the dive and then be dropped off at the Illusion by the Dive St. Vincent folks. Since Allison would be joining us for the night dive, she would be dropped off as the others were picked up.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

We walked over to the dive shop, and got everything ready for the dive. By the time 5:30 rolled around, we were on the jetty waiting for the night dive to start. We saw Norman drop off Allison and pick up the rest of the crew at a jetty not far from where we were, but on the return, the skiff had its outboard out of the water and folks were out rowing. We asked Allison as she came up what was going on, and she said that the outboard had gone out. She made the comment that she didn't think that they were going to do the charter on the 15th after all, as the boat was simply not reliable enough.

The night dive was on a site close to Young Island known as Critter Junior. We were each given a flash light by Calli, and went into the water for a fairly long, 50 minute dive at shallow depth. Night scenes are completely different from day scenes—lobsters, which are usually hiding in crevices at night are out in full force, and we saw large lobsters roaming about scavenging in the open. We also saw many shrimp, and lots of other creatures that I can't remember. Allison had been a little nervous about doing the night dive (it was her first one), but once in the water she was completely comfortable and had no issues at all.

Despite the wet suit, however, I got cold somewhere around 45 minutes, and wasn't unhappy when the time was up and we returned to the dive boat and the Illusion, where the crew had kept some spaghetti for us. We met our newest crew member, Mary from New York, and went to bed worn out after all the excitement of the day.

Christmas Day

There was no diving on Christmas Day, so everyone woke up late, and Norman prepared an outstanding English breakfast, with eggs, bacon, and English baked beans. "None of the sweet American stuff," he declared. Since we were allowed to stay on the boat all day, the first thing we did was to do some snorkeling off the boat! Ron had found a book that indicated that the best snorkeling in the North end of Wallilabou Bay, which explained why the snorkeling was disappointing to him the day before. We jumped off the side of the boat and swam around. The water still wasn't the crystal clear waters I was used to when diving, but there was more to see. Nevertheless, the fish were very small. After swimming nearly all the way out to the arch, I grew tired of the average snorkeling (though much better than at Bequia), and swam back to the boat. It turned out that Josh had broken his mask strap, and so he borrowed my mask and snorkel for a swim with his brother.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Lisa and I dried off, and then walked up to hill to the waterfall. On the way there, we ran into other yatchies, and they said that the waterfall was disappointingly small. When we got there, we discovered that the place was a newly designated park, and included a new building. The waterfall, while small, presented an oasis of coolness amidst the warm tropical climate, and after all that swimming in the Caribbean, it was refreshing to have a soak in cool fresh water for a change. I certainly enjoyed having the place all to ourselves—we were only interrupted by the squeal of wild pigs who had entered the park through a hole in the fence.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

When we had had enough, we walked back down the road and saw the artists' shack. This man had metal sculptures all through the front yard of his house, and then all sorts of art and craft items made out of found objects such as bottle caps.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Then we returned to Steve's for another shower (the men's shower is outdoors and exposed, so it's best to take a shower on an unbusy day like Christmas day. We then sat down to read and use the internet—I had finally realized that when my Blackberry Curve 8320 was connected to a WiFi network, all calls were treated as though they were made from the US, which meant that everyone could phone home. While the boat was filled with iPhones, Nokia phones, and yes, even a Nexus One, the phone that got the most use was still the Blackberry, mostly because of the unlimited international data roaming plan and the UMA service.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Norman also volunteered to cook Christmas dinner tonight, and it turned out to be an amazing 10 course meal. How he managed that with that tiny galley on the boat still amazes me when I think about it. Champaign, and both red and white wine was brought out, and the entire thing was topped off with Chocolate Volcano cake. We went to bed feeling quite full and satisfied.

From St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Wallilabou Bay

Apparently, the day before, a new boat had arrived, which forced Norman to switching mooring buoys. Norman wasn't very happy about it, because he had laid down the mooring buoy himself. Nevertheless, the Illusion was moved and everyone was happy. However, during the night the mooring broke loose, so the boat next to us drifted towards the rocks on the north end of the bay. Everyone on the boat had awakened upon hearing the shouts except Lisa and I! Apparently, it was very exciting with lots of pulling and shouting, but it turned out that there were railroad tracks underneath that boat, and they had just gotten stuck on them. A little bit of throttle and they were free. They sailed off and we never saw them again.

We left early this morning, since we had to do a taxi transfer and make it to the dive shop at 9:30am. It took us longer to get picked up this time, so it was a good thing we left extra time, but now that I knew where the two bus terminals were, and how they worked (one was for local rides, the other for long distance rides), we had no problem with the transfer, which had taken a whole hour the day before.

Today's Divemaster was DJ, a quiet St. Vincent native. Dive 3 was at New Guinea Reef, and I learned to be really comfortable there, and took the best picture of a Moray Eel that I had taken the entire trip. A barracuda was spotted, and I also saw some jelly fish and got a good picture of them.

Dive 4 was at Turtle Reef, where I spotted some Sphagetti Eel and had 100' of visibility. This was ideal diving, warm water, no current, and lots and lots of wildlife. DJ mentioned that a night dive was planned for December 26th, and we committed there and then to do it. In fact, since I knew we wouldn't be leaving until the 28th, I committed us to a 5 dive package.

We ate lunch, and then took the bus downtown where it took me about 25 minutes to find an ATM that would take my american ATM card and give me money. Then we got back to Wallilabou bay, but upon arriving discovered that Lisa had stuck the camera into her pocket and it had fallen right out of it during the bus ride, so we lost 2 days worth of pictures, including the ones that I was making just as I was getting comfortable with shooting underwater! I was so bummed that I ordered a beer at Steve's to the sound of Ron saying, "I can't believe Piaw is drinking alcohol!"

I did pass on Dive St. Vincent's snorkel trip information: they ran a trip to the Falls of Baleine in the north of St. Vincent, and a second snorkel site, with all day rum punch for US$60 a head. The price was too steep for everyone there, so they passed. Allison, however, was interested in doing the night dive with us, since she had never done one before.