April 5th: Leverick Bay (Virgin Gorda) to Deadman's Bay (Peter Island)

From Screen Captures

Our original plans for making it all the way up to Leverick Bay was to do some of the dives in the northern part of the British Virgin Islands, and maybe stay another night in the North Sound at the Bitter End Yacht Club or anchor near Marina Cay. The north swell crushed all of those plans. Many of the sites on the north end of the BVI become impossible to dive in these conditions. We scrapped all the plans in favor of heading back south into protected waters so we could do more diving and have a good night's sleep.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

The morning started with Arturo and I getting the boat ready to get to the fuel dock. The mooring lines were once again a little tangled, but this time we recovered it without having to get into the water. The swells were no worse than the night before, and the docking went relatively smoothly, especially after a gentleman from a nearby boat picked up a line and pulled us in.

Once we filled up with water, the dockmaster looked impatiently at us while the folks who hadn't had a land shower took one. We left at 8:30am and motor'd out for another look at Necker Island before heading down south, jibing one way or another to plot a course south. Our plan was to look for a southern anchoring spot, but as we approached salt island, we saw that we had swells coming from the south as well, so that nix'd that plan also. As we emerged into sheltered waters, I noticed a sailboat that looked familiar. As we drew closer, to my excitement I realized that it was the Rya Jen, the same boat I first sailed these waters in. We hailed the Rya Jen over the VHF but nobody replied. I would later find out from a fellow traveler that the folks who chartered that boat were not very good about monitoring the VHF. It struck me then just how fast catamarans were compared to monohull boats. The Rya Jen looked like it was standing still in the water, compared to us.

Coming around Salt Island, however, we noticed that the Rhone site seemed to have plenty of mooring buoys open, and the water wasn't bad. We picked up a mooring and discovered that there was a stiff current flowing against us from the Rhone Reef direction. The entry into the water and the first 15 minutes of swimming against the current was tough. There was always a feeling of not knowing whether we were going to make it to the dive site before we ran out of air.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

Once on the Reef itself, however, the current all but went away, and we were able to explore freely. Shauna had an equalization problem and had to return early with Steve, but Arturo was game to keep going, and had no problem finding all the locations the dive guides had shown us previously, including a good view of a shark that was apparently sleeping the day away.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

Though it was cloudy, occasionally the sun would come through and we would get beautiful views of the Reef, taking our breath away.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

After the dive, we did not have a lot of time left, and decided to start looking for a place to anchor. I made the decision to head towards Peter Island, where there were multiple harbors on the north side of the island which ought to be well protected. On the way there, however, we had a pleasant surprise: 4 dolphins had decided to come play with us, swimming ahead of our hulls!

From Escape Catamaran 2012

As we approached Peter Island the dolphins fell away but we swept into Deadman's Bay, which looked gorgeous and as we approached seemed to have an empty hole in the middle where we could drop anchor and not swing into other boats.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

The cruising guide describe Deadman's Bay as being a tricky anchorage, occasionally difficult to set anchor because of the grass mixed in with the sand. It took me two tries and re-reading the user manual on the boat to figure out how to do it. It turned out that I had always ramped up the engine to about 3000rpm to set the anchor. Well, a catamaran has two engines, so revving them to 1500rpm is what would do the trick. Do any more, and the anchor might not hold. Third time was the charm, but not trusting ourselves, Arturo and I snorkeled to the anchor just to check it out, and reassured ourselves by checking some nearby boats as well, seeing that they actually didn't do as good a job as we did. We spotted many star fish around at the bottom, but the snorkeling actually wasn't that good.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

After waiting for the boat to settle and making sure that the anchor didn't drift, XiaoQin, Arturo and I swam ashore to look at the beautiful beach and walk along it. Being a privately owned island (though as with the entire BVI, the beaches are always public), the beach was nearly deserted, with most guests in their rooms or at dinner. There was a dinner table set up outside, but we never saw guests show up.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

On the swim back, XiaoQin demonstrated how much a difference the fins made: try as we might, neither Arturo nor I could keep up with her or even come close. When I asked XiaoQin about it afterwards, she said she wasn't even kicking hard or at maximum speed. We settled back to eat dinner and watch the sun set in the gorgeous area that we had found ourselves in.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

After the glorious sunset, we were treated to an even more impressive show: the moon rose and the lights in Tortola went on, granting us an absolutely glorious, ethereal night. I didn't plan the trip this way, but today was nearly a full moon, and tomorrow would be a full moon. Until you've sat on a sailboat you've anchor'd under a full moon and the stars, listening to the waves lap and feeling the boat move beneath you, it would be difficult to understand how romantic sailing really is. There are no sounds you didn't make yourself, and there's a sense of satisfaction that's difficult to share as the moonlight permeates the landscape around you, giving everything a beautiful, mysterious glow. It was dream-like in its lucidity. We stayed up as late as we could, enchanted by the experience. But we had early morning the next day, so turned in and slept like logs.

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April 4th: Manchioneel Bay (Cooper Island) to Leverick Bay (Virgin Gorda)

From Screen Captures

The morning started with a conundrum. A couple of days ago, while swimming to the snorkel at cistern point, I had noticed that both lines to the mooring were tied to the buoy, rather than one line to the pennant and one to the buoy as recommended. I had mentioned it to Arturo, and asked why he made the choice, and the response was that it was easier to equalize the tension the way he did it. Well, after 2 nights on the buoy, we discovered that the lines had tangled around themselves, which made it pretty much impossible to untangle the lines from the boat. "Now I see why you can't do it this way," said Arturo. "The difference between sailboat lines and climbing lines is that sailboats move and climbers don't." He jumped into the water, untangled the lines, and then we were ready to go.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

The sun came up as we motor'd towards Virgin Gorda, making for a beautiful sight. Arturo and I experimented with paper plotting and the result was very satisfying: we made it to the Baths (named after Batholiths) on Virgin Gorda at around 7:15am or so, and were about the third or fourth boat on the scene.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

I had made it to the Baths years ago at sunset, from a boat tied to a slip at the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor, but doing it the nautical way was much more satisfying. We would tie up the boat to a mooring buoy, drop down the dinghy, load everyone up to it, and then motor to the dinghy moorings after dropping XiaoQin and Cindy off so they wouldn't have as long a swim to shore. The rest of us would then swim from the mooring buoys.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

John begged off from doing the Devil's Bay trail because of his hurt hand. I remember the hike from before, and I did not think that his hand was so injured as to make it worth passing up, but it was his decision to make. The trail leads through tunnels, climbs up several rocks (though always with a rope to aid), goes up and down stairs, and in general, gives you a feeling of exploration of adventure while not actually putting you in any real danger or even chance of real discomfort. In other words, one could think that it's almost designed by the Imagineers at Walt Disney. Nevertheless, the area so beautiful and unique that I cannot help but recommend it to everyone who visits the area. After a while, we emerged on op of some rocks and found to our surprise that the only sailboat visible from the spot was the Escape. We could not pass up getting a photo of everyone together with the Escape.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

By and by, we got to Devil's Bay, with clear water and beautiful snorkeling. We donned our mask and fins and immediately got to snorkeling amongst the boulders.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

The variety of things to see in the area is amazing. You get to swim between boulders, under them, through swim-throughs, next to waves crashing about you. The water was a little cooler than the day before, but it was still a lot of fun. While Steve, Amy, Shauna, Arturo and I were more than capable of swimming back to the start of the trail, Cindy seemed intimidated by the water, not daring to stray very far from the beach. Arturo and I agreed to let the others swim back while he, XiaoQin and I would hike back with Cindy.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

The return hike illustrated why you are often told to show up at the Baths early. While our hike to Devil's Bay from the entry point led us to having the Baths all to ourselves, but on the return, the middle sized crowd (from more sailboats arriving) led us to having to line up at choke points for one side to pass and then cross over to the other side, ruining the experience. My guess was that when a real cruise ship crowd arrives, there would be a line all the way along the beach and up the stairs from the road.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

Once we returned to the entrance, we did a little bit more snorkeling. Arturo said he saw a Manta Ray but I didn't find it. John, because of his hand problem, would swim all the way to the Escape while the rest of us would swim to the dinghy. After having taken the dinghy back to the Escape, we discovered that there was already several sailboats waiting to take our mooring buoy as soon as we left! I toyed with the idea of perversely having breakfast on our mooring buoy instead, but decided to do the friendly thing and start sailing for Leverick Bay. We were running low on water, and would need to replenish our water. While Amy had wanted to see the Bitter End Yacht Club, I had called ahead several days ago and they were completely full from some event, and I did not relish the idea of more crowds. Leverick Bay offered a free 100 gallons of water to folks who moor'd overnight at their mooring line, and so it was towards Leverick Bay that we sailed, heading north on the Sir Francis Drake Channel.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

Since it was an easy sail, Arturo and I took the opportunity to teach folks how to sail the Escape. We toy'd with detouring to visit Richard Branson's Necker Island, but the memories of racing for a mooring buoy from 2 days before was still haunting me, so we aimed straight for Leverick Bay, sailing through the channel instead of motoring, and turning on the engines only at the last minute to moor at one of the many mooring buoys in Leverick Bay.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

Once Moor'd, we put together laundry and a shopping list, and prepared to go ashore to do things that crew ashore needed to do: provisioning, laundry, land showers (which were free!) and hanging out at the bar. At the bar, a conch was passed around, and I took a try at blowing one. It's trickier than it looks: you can't just blow into it, you need to purse your lips and blow.

Amy & Shauna went for the full spa treatment, and the rest of us hung out at the bar. When Amy came back, she discovered that there was a conch blowing contest. "I'm from Hawaii, I'm going to win." So she entered the contest and indeed won a bottle of rum!

From Escape Catamaran 2012

We were going to let Amy, Steve and Shauna stick around for shore showers after the event, but by the time I'd gotten the rest of the crew to the Escape I had realized that the seas had gone rough and swells were in! While it was possible that the North sound, being very sheltered had gotten as rough as it was going to get, I still had memories in Canouan of watching a skipper turn-turtle a dinghy, ejecting me several feet and trapping several others underneath it, and decided I would rather be a wuss than risk a night time dinghy docking when the seas were swelling with a small craft advisory, so I recalled everyone and hoped that the swells were already as bad as they would get.

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April 3rd: The Wreck of the Rhone & Cistern Point

We woke up in the morning and immediately got to work loading up the dinghy with dive tanks. Tony was not very clear as to how we were going to dive today, and had mentioned that we might want to refill our dive tanks ourselves since he might show up and use our own boat to take us diving. Shauna had failed to get DAN's dive insurance the night before, and so she wanted to make that happen as well.

At 8:00am, folks were already ashore but the dive shop was not opened, so I called the shop and the employee said she was on the way. Horizon also called me to say that they had not received the WiFi unit, so I ended up on the phone making calls to Tony's wife and Horizon to ensure that everything would come together.

It took until nearly 10:00am for Tony to show up, but when he did, it was on the sailing catamaran/dive boat, the Braveheart. The Braveheart was a luxury dive catamaran that made The Escape looked like a toy (though at charter rates of $19500/week for 8 people, it had better be). It had two compressors on board, a big dive platform, a water maker, and ample room: even the heads had transparent bottoms so you could look down at the fish while taking a shower.

From Escape Catamaran 2012

The wreck of the Rhone is a world class dive, and even though this was my second time, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. It's an old wreck, so it's encrusted with wildlife, and lots of pretty things to see. It was so good that after snorkeling above us for a bit, XiaoQin decided to try diving one more time.

From BVI 2012

During the surface interval, a false alarm led us to believe there would be whales for us to see, and we all got into the dinghy to look for it, but it didn't happen. So we were taken to Salt Island to have a look at the salt pond instead. It was warm once out of the water, but it was interesting to look at the island. The best thing about the Braveheart is that with 2 tenders, surface intervals will never be boring.

From BVI 2012

The second dive was even more fun, since we were all pretty good about using relatively little air, it was agreed that we could do the Rhone and the Rhone Reef.

From BVI 2012

I'd forgotten how pretty it was, and XiaoQin had a great time as well. We even saw a shark but I didn't have my camera ready for it so it went. I did, however, get a decent video of a turtle swimming.

From BVI 2012

We found a specimen of a Lion fish, an invasive species in the Caribbean, and our guide speared it, bringing it back to the Braveheart for a decapitation.

From BVI 2012

Soon enough, the dive was over, and we were delivered back to Escape with 2 fresh tanks replacing tanks that were previously known to be low but which we had not bothered to refill because they weren't low enough to justify the money.

We then proceeded to dive Cistern Point, which turned out to be more interesting as a dive than a snorkel. Once the coral was up close, we could see plenty of life in the area. Arturo even found a souvenir: a ring with a cork tied to it via a ribbon.

From BVI 2012

The nice thing about shallow dives is that they are quite long. We got 60 minutes out of our tanks. Unfortunately, John hurt himself while getting into a dinghy, rendering his hand out of action.

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Independent Cycle Touring in Europe: Reprise

I was asked to reprise last year's very popular, Independent Cycle Touring in Europe talk at the Bicycle Outfitter on April 19th at 7:15pm.

All are welcome! As usual, I'll have books available for sale and to sign.

Review: The Mathematics of Life

When I told my crew that I was reading The Mathematics of Life on the cruise they said, "Come on, you're on vacation!" Well, I'm a science junkie and the Mathematics of Life is quite a great read if you're one.

For one thing, biology has historically not needed a lot of math, and the author knows that. We start with a discussion of fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio and how it relates to natural phenomena like flower petals, leaf growth patterns, etc.

Then he goes into genetics and we now have a full explanation of the human genome project and how it makes use of the computational power we now have. The breath of the book is amazing. We cover astrobiology, including coverage of the rare earth hypothesis and how likely it is that we'll find life on other planets.

The book is slow going. At time, it feels like the author pontificates instead of just disclosing the latest research and thinking. On the other hand, there's no one chapter I can point to and say: "this should be cut out. It has nothing to do with mathematics and life." I felt like I learned something in every chapter, and as a science geek that's says quite a lot.

Recommended.

AirBnB's delightful offices

I'd been a big fan of AirBnB ever since I met one of their founders at the Sunfire offices, but I had never visited the office, so when XiaoQin and I were in San Francisco today for an unrelated matter, I asked if we could pay them a visit and was pleased that it was OK.

The exterior of the building is non-descript, but the interior is gorgeous. The lobby is the giant cereal box of Obama Os from way back during the startup phase when they were timing the launch with political conventions.

From BayArea

The meeting rooms inside are styled after some of their apartment BnB listings.

From BayArea

It is standard now for Silicon Valley startups to have their own kitchen and chef, and AirBnB's kitchen was open, in full view of everyone, and most importantly, the food was very tasty:

From BayArea

In a nice touch, even the bathrooms are deliberately non-corporate, styled after a comfortable home's bathroom, albeit a little bigger. In a tip towards environmental consciousness, they don't offer paper towels, but instead reusable cloth towels that are laundered.

From BayArea

There were large numbers of bicycles in the hallways, as 80% of the employees bike to work. It's very popular in Silicon Valley to say that all Silicon Valley companies are similar. I think people who say that are full of it, as every Silicon Valley startup I've worked at has been very different with its own unique culture. The ones with the strongest cultures tend to be very successful, and if what we saw today is characteristic of AirBnB, I'll be surprised if they do not have a bright future ahead of them.

April 2nd: The Bight (Norman Island) to Manchioneel Bay (Cooper Island)

From Screen Captures

I got up at 6am only to find that Arturo was also up, along with Shauna. This would set the pattern for the entire trip: the 3 of us were morning people and well suited to getting the boat moving and underway. The morning's motoring was a short distance, less than a nautical mile to get to the Indians, where the mooring buoys would be in high demand (no anchoring allowed because of the coral), but no overnight moorings were permitted.

From BVI 2012

I last tried diving the Indians the last time I was here, but I had a very confused dive master who got lost during the dive and so we never saw any of the swim-throughs that were listed in the book. This time, I suggested that we snorkel around the area to sort through navigation issues. Arturo agreed, but Amy and John were impatient to get underwater and so jumped in straight away with scuba gear. Since Arturo had many more dives than I did, it was naturally assumed that he would lead the dive.

From BVI 2012

Snorkeling in the morning is amazingly great, since the water is still calm and the crystal clear water granted us clear views of the coral near us. We snorkeled for a half hour before donning wet suits and diving in. Arturo after his initial snorkel, said I must have had an idiot for a dive master last time because the navigation would be straightforward.

From BVI 2012

Through to his word, we did the entire dive with no problems, and had no issues finding the divethroughs. The dive was very shallow which meant that we had a nice long dive, without any panic whatsoever about running out of air. Or we would have, had we not noticed that Tony's equipment leaked like a sieve.

From BVI 2012

The dive took so long that by the time we were all sorted out it was 11:00am. Given that Cooper Island's mooring balls were known to fill up some times at 2:00pm, I decided to be extra conservative and start sailing there right away, eschewing a second dive. I reasoned that there were plenty of dive opportunities around Cooper Island anyway.

From BVI 2012

Indeed, by the time we got to Cooper Island's Manchioneel Bay it was quite clear that there was a race going on. There were about 3 mooring buoys left, and there were about 3 sail boats coming in. We watched as one boat after another beat us to the mooring buoys (their skippers much more willing to push their engines than I was), and we headed for the last mooring buoy only to find that it was red. Fortunately, one more buoy at the edge of the bay was open. We took it without drama, and settled down to enjoy the afternoon, still quite disbelieving of the fact that we had a mooring buoy race at 1:30pm!

The others wanted to dive the wreck of the Maria L, but I wasn't terribly interested, having seen the pictures of the wreck from the book, and elected to snorkel Cistern point with XiaoQin instead. We did the snorkel, which was pretty but none too special as it looked like the coral was too far to get a close look without scuba tanks.

We got back to the boat and found the folks were driving back with the dinghy as they could not find the location of the dive site. Shauna and Amy had decided to go ashore with the dinghy. Fortunately, I had pre-programmed the dive sites into my GPS, and handing it to Arturo, was confident that they would be able to do find it this time, especially now that we realized that we had had South and North confused.

There was still plenty of time to swim around, so we swam to the beaches that were marked private as seen from shore. Throughout the BVIs, the beaches up to the high tide line are always public, so you can safely ignore any signs about the privacy of beaches. Indeed, as we got there, two women were dropped off by a dinghy from another yacht and started collecting shells.

From BVI 2012

We had a crisis with the wifi unit. It wasn't working the previous night, and John and Arturo suspected that others were hopping onto our router. They had performed a hard reset, which rendered it useless. A call to the office revealed that (1) the network was simply down last night, and (2) the reset wiped the password for logging on from the unit, and (3) they couldn't give us the password over the phone because the same password was used for all the units. So we had to return the unit back to Horizon and then they'd find a way to get it back to us. A chase boat would cost $150, and there was no easy way to get the unit back to Horizon without sailing back to Nanny Cay, something I was loath to do. While I was at it, Horizon talked us into debugging and fixing the shower sump in the starboard head, which was not draining the shower of water.

The folks came back from their dive and said the coincidentally, Tony was diving at the same site! I called Tony and asked if he could get the unit delivered to Horizon and he agreed, so Arturo jumped back into the dinghy and drove back to the site.

Dursk came early, disappearing behind the clouds and robbing us of a sunset. Nevertheless, having solved all the problems to day, I could not complain and looked forward to diving the wreck of the Rhone again the next day.
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April 1st: Nanny Cay Marina (Tortola) to The Bight (Norman Island)

From Screen Captures

The order of business was to get to Nanny Cay Marina bright and early this morning so we could take possession of the boat. Since many charters start on Sunday, I anticipated a mad rush for limited mooring buoys, and so got us a taxi at 7:45am. The taxi driver, however, showed up quite a bit earlier than expected and so we ended up at Nanny Cay Marina by 8:10am. While waiting for the office to open, we walked around and found the Escape in the state of being cleaned up.

From BVI 2012

Checking in with the office, we picked up the WiFi unit we ordered, and then got a chart briefing from a very casual staff member. I was quite familiar with the area, but attended the briefing anyway mostly so my crew had an idea of what's going on and why the itinerary was set the way it was. In addition, listening to other skipper's questions gave me ideas for what to do later on in the trip.

An hour after the briefing, our boat was ready and we started moving stuff in in earnest. We discovered that the two bow cabins actually had 2 beds, the forward most one intended to be for a small person, such as a child. This was great, as Arturo and Cindy could now share a cabin and keep the salon free. The boat seemed like it was in fairly good condition, and the air condition felt good. Equipment and provisions started trickling in: Tony showed up with all our dive gear, and Cindy's order for provisions showed up in boxes, one after another. The crew was kept busy stowing away stuff, while Arturo and I walked around the boat with the check list, counting off one item after another.

Despite our being entirely ready by 12:30pm, we did not get a captain from Horizon charters until 1:00pm to start our boat briefing on the various ship's systems. The briefing was very thorough, but it wasn't until 2:00pm before we were driven out of the slip, with our captain getting off at the fuel dock and then I found myself in command of the Escape and driving out of the marina into the Sir Francis Drake Channel.

From BVI 2012

The day was the last day of a multi-day series of regattas, but we quickly motor'd away from the center of activity and then raised our sails for The Bight on Norman Island. Given how late we were getting away from Nanny Cay, I made the executive decision to skip any diving for the day and just find a mooring Buoy.

From BVI 2012

Arriving at the Bight near 3:00pm, we dropped our sails and bee-lined for one of just a handful of mooring buoys left: it was undesirable because it was close to the Willy T, a floating restaurant known for boisterous parties. We tied up one line to the pennant, and I immediately heard a splash as John jumped into the water to tie the backup line to the buoy itself. He was so eager to get in the water he did not want to wait for us to get out the dinghy!

We piled into the dinghy and headed for a snorkel destination: The Caves on Norman Island. This set of 3-4 caves past treasure point shows off everything great about the BVI. The clear waters show off the caves exceedingly well, even in the dark, and while they look intimidating, seem almost custom designed by Walt Disney for a safe and fun snorkel while giving you the experience of exploring water-filled caves by flash light.

From BVI 2012

From BVI 2012

"OK," Arturo conceded, "This is way better than the underwater trail on St. John." We swam around enjoying the water until those of us who weren't wearing wet suits started getting cold. Then one by one we got back into the dinghy and motor'd back to Escape for a lovely dinner made by Shauna, who was declaring herself the official cook on the trip. We made plans to wake up bright and early to snag a mooring Buoy at the Indians the next morning. Arturo found a couple of candidate second dives, and XiaoQin and I went to bed wearing ear plugs so we could sleep through the Willy T's party. Surprisingly enough, no one on the crew wanted to visit the Willy T's, preferring to turn in early for a bright and early start the next day.

From BVI 2012

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March 29-31st: Prologue

XiaoQin and I flew on Jet Blue from San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale, then to San Juan, where a 20 minute flight took us to St. Thomas. We arrived at 3:00pm, which was cutting it close to make it to the ferry, so spent the night at the Island View Guest House instead. Set on a hill side, it granted us a beautiful view of Charlotte Amalie and the surroundings.

From BVI 2012

The next day, we caught the first ferry and then taxi'd over to the Serendipity House, where we took a rest before getting picked up at 1:00pm by Tony, the owner of UBS Dive Center, where we tried out dive gear, which we would be renting.

From BVI 2012

Tony had a set back: his boat's twin engines had caught on fire a few nights before, melting bits of the hull along with it, so he wasn't going to be able to give us dive instruction as promised. He foisted us over to Paradise Watersports instead. Unfortunately, the attitude of the instructor didn't go over well with XiaoQin, so she bailed on the instruction.

From BVI 2012

We spent the next day swimming and relaxing on the beach instead, and Arturo Crespo and Cindy Zhou joined us.

Arturo had just spent 2 days at St. John's Virgin Islands National Park, and declared it to be excellent. "The BVI had better be spectacular to top that!" Arturo is well-traveled and a man for all seasons, but I felt surprisingly un-intimidated. My last visit to the British Virgin Islands had haunted me since, and I kept trying to make this trip happen. Having moor'd at Cinnamon Bay and spent a morning there, I deliberately started our charter in Tortola to avoid crossing borders so we could spend the most time in what I considered the fun parts of the virgin islands.
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Escape BVI 2012

From April 1st to April 8th, 2012, Arturo Crespo (first mate), Cindy Zhou (purser), Shauna Eggers (chef), John Feiler, Amy Platt and Steve Moran joined XiaoQin (admiral) and I (skipper) for a cruise around the British Virgin Islands upon the Horizon Charter Catamaran Escape, a Leopard 40.

This is the index for the trip, which will include a day by day report with embedded photos.

You can Download the GPS Tracks for Escape

BVI 2012

Trip Report

• Prologue: March 29-31st
  
• Day 1: April 1st: Nanny Cay Marina to The Bight
  
• Day 2: The Bight to Manchioneel Bay
  
• Day 3: The Wreck of the Rhone and Cistern Point
• Day 4: Manchioneel Bay to Leverick Bay
• Day 5: Leverick Bay to Deadman's Bay
• Day 6: Deadman's Bay to Kelly's Cove
• Day 7: Kelly's Cove to White Bay
• Day 8: White Bay to Nanny Cay Marina
• Epilogue: April 8th & 9th
  
• Conclusions and Thoughts

Review: Which Comes First - Cardio or Weights?

I was led to read Which Comes First: Cardio or Weights? by Scott Hess' comment on one my posts on Google+. Overall, this is a collection of columns from one of the Canadian Running magazines, but it's surprisingly diverse in its topics. Since the column was apparently in question and answer format, it's easy for even a casual reader and dive in and read just small chunks at a time. It's a sufficiently short book that I finished it in a 2 hour flight.

The opening question is indicative of the type of topics discussed. The answer, it turns out is that whether you start with Cardio or Weights depends heavily on what you want to achieve: your body can either improve the circulatory system or strength, but not both, so which one you start an exercise session with determines whether or not you build strength or aerobic fitness. This is a counter-intuitive result, and therefore worthy of attention.

Running is given extra attention, as is weight lifting. You'll get interesting answers as to whether you're lifting heavy enough weights, or whether your cardio workouts are intense enough. What's good about the book is when it steers into areas that I always wanted to know but never bothered to find good answers to because Google searches would only turn up advocate's results. For instance, I've long suspected that Yoga doesn't actually do anything good for your body compared to actually doing cardio or weight lifting, and this book confirms that with references to literature.

Where the book covers topics I had previously read about elsewhere, it doesn't contradict well known existing literature. For instance, it points out that your spouse is the biggest influence on your exercise habits. It also shows that if you want to stay young, "vigorous aerobic exercise makes your DNA look several decades younger than it is. And that's bad news for the sedentary groups." In recent years, it's been fashionable to dismiss exercise as useless for losing weight, but the reality has been that exercise is important for reasons more than losing weight:

Only the diet-plus-exercise group had significant improvements in insulin sensitivity, LDL chloresterol, and distolic blood pressure---crucial risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, but changes you can't measure by looking in the mirror or stepping on a scale... (Pg. 157)

In addition, the author takes on the typical prescriptions for exercise as being too little to even maintain your weight and not gain weight: "Managed to avoid significant weight gain throughout the study, and these women averaged a full hour of moderate exercise every day. Anything less was unusuccessful. That's a lot of execise---unless you compare it to the daily lives of our ancestors who didn't spend most of the day sitting at desks or in cars." (Pg. 160)

Overall, this is a good book, and given how short and easy to read it was, well worth your time. Recommended.

Sleep Apnea: The Noisy Killer

My previous post on Fitness had people asking me about Sleep Apnea.

Sleep Apnea occurs because our throats are a design compromise. In order for you to be able to speak well and articulate well, your throat should be as flexible as possible. However, in order for you to breath well, your throat should be as stiff as possible. Natural selection ended up with a compromise: your throat muscles hold your throat stiffly when you are awake, which means that the throat can be flexible enough so you can speak well. Unfortunately, when you're asleep, the muscles will relax, allowing the throat to collapse, which would cause an interruption of airflow. This is known as an apnea event if the interruption of airflow lasts longer than 5 seconds. A normal adult human would have less than 5 apnea events an hour. (In other words, if you have less than 4 events an hour, you don't have Sleep Apnea) Other than the throat collapsing, it's possible that your brain simply forgets to breath. That's called central sleep apnea, as opposed to obstructive sleep apnea.

The problem with being Asian is that Asians have smaller throats and smaller jaws. This leads to a higher probability that the muscles relaxing would cause a complete interruption of airflow. One doctor I spoke with told me that if you're Asian, it's not a question as to whether you'll have sleep apnea, it's a question as to when you'll get it. Women tend to have milder symptoms than men, and often don't develop serious symptoms until their 40s.

How do you know whether you're at risk? The big warning sign for me was my snoring. Snoring is basically your body pushing air through your throat in order to get air, vibrating the soft tissues and therefore making noise. My snoring was so loud that friends the next building over could hear my snoring when we were at Lucia. Otherwise, I was completely asymptomatic. Other people who've spoken to me about sleep apnea said they suffered the following symptoms:

• Hazy and dazy in the morning.
  
• Difficult to wake up or get up.
  
• Lack of energy, lethargic, difficult to stay alert.
  
• Grumpiness, especially in the morning.
  
• Unusually rapid aging
  

Note that I had none of those symptoms when I was diagnosed, something my doctor said was common among Asians, especially fit ones. That's why I was not diagnosed for so long. It took a full on sleep study to discover that I really had 50-60 apneas an hour. (By the way, if your spouse is a snorer, you're should track these symptoms) The standard therapy for obstructive sleep apnea is CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). Essentially, you wear a mask that pumps air into your throat to keep it open all night. Modern machines have algorithms that back off the pressure when you breath out so you don't feel like you've been pumped up like a balloon in the morning. You might also opt for surgery, but it's not for the faint of heart: they essentially break your jaw, move it, and stitch it back together, leaving you sucking food through a straw for a bit. I checked with one of the renowned surgeons in the area and he looked at my chart and said, "You respond really well to CPAP, you should try it before considering surgery." Now, if I had been symptomatic before, I'd have been super motivated to use CPAP. The overweight, obese, symptomatic people I've spoken to love their CPAP from day one, because for them, it feels like the fog in their mind was cleared away. For me, it actually seemed to make my sleep worse, and I woke up often with blisters on my nose where the mask chafed against my face, so I ignored it for almost a year. My doctor, however, got very concerned and called in the help of a sleep psychologist, who persuaded me to be more active about using CPAP therapy like this:

"Sleep apnea is like boxing. If you take a couple of hits in the face, it's no big deal. You'll recover and won't even notice. However, if you keep taking hits every day, it's all going to add up and you'll become slurry in speech and be unable to think well. Think about Mohammad Ali when he got old. In addition, it increases your risk of stroke, heart disease, etc."

That struck home, because my father had a stroke for no apparent reason in his early 50s. Ok, after that I became very motivated to use my machine. My sleep psychologist also helped a bit with finding the proper mask. Unfortunately, all the sleep studies seem to be done on Caucasians, so there're very few masks that will properly fit an Asian face, and custom masks just aren't done. And yes, I use the machine even when cycle touring, because I actually do spend a significant amount of my life doing this (or did before I had a baby). Now, if you have kids and you were diagnosed with sleep apnea, then you might be able to correct your kids' facial structure as they are growing so they don't end up with sleep apnea. It turns out that you need to start fairly young (at 1.5 years when you first take them to see a dentist is when you have to start thinking about it). Apparently it's like having braces, but for your jaw instead of just your teeth. The process can increase the airway area so collapse doesn't completely stop airflow. Which means that if you suspect you have apnea and have kids (or plan on having them), you really want to get yourself checked out. So that's as much as I know about sleep apnea. If you want to know more, let me know and I'll try to answer questions. And by the way, sleep apnea is one of those pre-existing conditions that cause you not to be able to get health insurance in California. Since about 10% of middle aged men have sleep apnea, that's a lot of people who would need Obamacare or some sort of group health plan in order to be covered.

PSA: United is now a suitable airline for flying with bicycles

I used to fly United Airlines with my bike all the time. But in 2008, United and Lufthansa jointly raised bike carriage fees to $250 each way. What that meant for me was that I stopped flying United on my bike tours. I wrote a letter in 2009 to United that it cost them 4 $1000+ plane tickets to Japan to continue this policy, but to no avail.

Well, this year, United merged with Continental airlines, which means that they've revised their bike carriage policy to be fairer to cyclists. Bikes now count as one piece of baggage as long as they fit in under 50 pounds and under the linear inches rule.

I've flown United often with bicycles, and they were not the best, but far from the worst. They frequently also had the lowest fare, so I'm glad to have them back in the "good for bicyclist" column on the airline.

These frequent changes in baggage policy is one reason why Independent Cycle Touring doesn't list specific airlines that are bike friendly or not. That information properly belongs to the internet and my blog.

Kudos to Arturo Crespo for telling me about the United merger and the impact thereof.

Fitness: Optimal Experience

A few years ago, a friend of mine told me that she was really really out of shape. "I'm so out of shape that I get out of breath just going up one flight of stairs." Like many Asians in their mid-twenties, this person was skinny, looked great, and obviously didn't have any trouble partying all night. So I put it out of mind. After all, I remember being too busy in college holding down two jobs while carrying a full time class load to bother with exercise.

I recently thought about this, because perhaps for the first time in years, I haven't recently been in optimal condition. Now, I'm well past my physical peak, where in 2005, I did 2 back to back 100 mile days in Italy, and then went on to do 3 more strenuous days of cycling in the Swiss Alps. I think at least once in your life every person should experience at least one period of peak conditioning, just to understand how it feels.

It feels like being Superman. During that period, I could wake up and ride 100 miles or 10000' of climbing, eat like a king, sleep like a log, and wake up the next morning ready to do it all over again. Every piece of your body works well, and I don't recall being even a little bit sick. The only possible problem was that I'd occasionally feel a little cold because I had too little body fat. And One of my tour companions would complain, because I had a pace that was far faster from all the conditioning that I did. Of course, I was suffering from low bone density during that period, so I was even faster since even my bones weren't contributing as much to my body weight. I felt alert all the time, waking up in a great mood and raring to go. My mind was sharp and I never missed details, such as when navigating across Italy with a paper map in the rain sans GPS. The effect of aerobic exercise on your brain is well documented --- John Medina spends an entire chapter of Brain Rules on its effectiveness.

Since then, while I've lost quite a bit of fitness, I've actually gotten healthier. I've been forced to work out in the gym, and add calcium to my diet. The interesting bit is that the shoulder muscle cramps I used to get in my mid-twenties (when I wasn't nearly as fit) have practically disappeared.

I recently read The Longevity Project, where the authors pointed out that to gain an optimal lifespan, you quickly hit diminishing returns when exercising, so the best use of your time is to be a couch potato and exercise 20 minutes 3 days a week. I think they're ignoring the quality of life difference when you're fit, not prone to aches and pains, and deal with the challenges of the day without pain. If you're Asian, it's more important than you think to be fit, because Asians have a genetic disposition to have Sleep Apnea. My sleep apnea went undiagnosed for years because my circulatory system kept my blood O2 level well above 98% even as my apnea was triggered 50-60 times an hour! Without it, I would have lost a lot of brain cells to my apnea.

I'll end with this quote:
“If exercise could be packaged in pill form, it would immediately become the number one anti-aging medicine, as well as the world’s most prescribed pill.”

-Dr. Robert Butler, International Longevity Center at Manhattan’s Mt. Sinai Hospital

Review: Career Warfare

I was lamenting to someone about the lack of a book on how to be a good office politician for engineers. That friend said, "There is one. It's called Career Warfare." With that, I was off to the library to pick up the book.

I'm glad I read the book, though I don't think it's actually very usable for engineers. It's clear to me that the kind of people who make CEO might be born, not made. For instance, D'Alessandro has this story from when he was 6 years old:

One winter day, Tony decided to revolt against my tyranny. He said, "I don't want to play with you any more. I'm going to play over here." And in the revolt, he cleaved off four kids into his own little gang.
I was very upset about these defections. But within a few days, Tony's gang wanted back into my gang. They said it wasn't any fun playing with Tony because there weren't enough kids.
Did I welcome them back? Absolutely not. They were out of the gang for the rest of the school year. I was 6 years old, but I froze them out without mercy. I already knew that banishment or death was the only reasonable punishment for traitors.

Clearly, A'Alessandro did not need a mentor to teach him about office politics: he arrived at the office to do battle, and most engineers having to deal with as consummate a politician as he is would probably fail.

Nevertheless, the book can benefit many engineers. The section on what managers want from you and what to expect from your managers in a quid pro quo is priceless. For instance, what does loyalty mean between manager and employee? What kind of bosses should you avoid working for? When should you be a whistle blower?

The book's filled with fantastic anecdotes, and worth reading just for those alone. I therefore recommend this book. Just don't expect that you'll be capable of applying those stories with the same amount of ruthlessness to your job.

Reread: Brain Rules for Baby

It probably wouldn't surprise you if I told you that I read 90% of all the books I review for this book out of the library. Most books aren't worth reading more than once, and more importantly, if I bought every book I read, I'd be spending a ton of money. However, Brain Rules for Baby is an exception. I read this book last year as the first parenting book, and since then I've read a lot of parenting books, most of which aren't reviewed simply because I could not bring myself to finish them! Parenting books are in general badly written, have little or no scientific backing, and never say something in 5 words when 5,000 words would do. I have no idea why they're so badly written, but there you go. When I saw that the Kindle edition of the book was now $8.10, I remembered the book so fondly I went and bought it for my Kindle.

In short, if you are a busy parent to be or a parent of a kid zero to five, Brain Rules for Baby is the only parenting book that's worth your time! Heck, if you're considering being a parent, do yourself a favor and read this book so you'll know what to expect.

On the second re-read, I nodded and laughed at the stuff he was telling me that would happen that indeed happened. Yes, marriages get strained with the introduction of the little guy. Yes, expect your wife to throw up during the first trimester. Expect sleep deprivation. Human babies were never meant to be brought up by just one couple, so expect to get help and take as much of it as you can. Expect to be charmed by the little one's first smile (Medina calls it the "Megawatt smile.") Expect to have to work extra hard to overcome the social isolation that could set in inevitably if you don't pay attention. I'm very grateful that at least for us, we've been very lucky and have the opportunity to eliminate many of the usual stressors associated with having a child, but I shudder to think what the typical American family goes through.

In re-reading this book, I keep finding little nuggets of information. For instance, kids learn to lie at 3, and they tell a lie every 90 minutes by the time they're 4. I enjoy reading the segments about empathy and how to teach kids to read emotions. (I'm an incredibly un-empathetic person, so this is going to take serious work)

In any case, there are many parents I believe who should read this book, and every parent-to-be or parent-wanna-be should read this book. As usual, the people who most need to read this book won't, but hey, there's nothing YOU can do about that. Heck, even if you never want to be a parent you should read this book. It's just that good. Highly recommended I really should have named it the book of the year last year.

Review: The Best American Science Writing 2008

I checked out The Best American Science Writing 2008 from the library to see how science stories aged, after thoroughly enjoying the 2011 edition.

The prognosis is not good. I'm not sure how much of it is that Sylvia Nasar has poor taste in science stories, and how much of it is that 4 years is a lot of time in science. For one thing, the collection has several themes, the first of which is about doctors getting paid by big Pharma to push drugs. Maybe one article on this theme should make the cut, but 4?! That's ridiculous.

Another theme was genetic engineering and genes. One of them was about 23 and Me, which was young and new back when it came out. But now it feels like old hat. Though one reminder about how slowly technology actually progresses is that we still don't have $1,000 complete genome sequencing as a service.

Other stories seem more like human interest stories than true science stories, and I got bored enough to skip them. All in all, it truly could be that I lucked out and bought the best edition of the series when it was on sale. The 2008 one was a dud.