2023 Bahamas: Nov 25th - Lynyard Cay to Anna Cay

 

In the morning, the kids played Uber a couple of times while I swam and looked through the book. A snorkel spot named "Fish Hotel" caught my eye. Sandy Cay was on the way there, and I suggested that as our first stop. Wind was light, and despite the early hour, there was already a sailboat anchored off the island. I eschewed anchoring in the deep water and parked at the same place as the day before, where I was the only boat. It took 3 tries to get the boat to anchor, but a dive check upon the successful attempt turned out nothing untoward.

We scrambled to get the dinghy out but the boys balked and Xiaoqin elected to stay with them. This time, we remembered to start the generator and water maker during our snorkel. Taking the dinghy out, we parked at the same mooring ball before as Arturo said it was the best one.  Upon getting into the water, some other snorkelers waved at us and made the sign for a shark! Indeed there was a shark! We watched the shark chase two mating fishes around --- he probably wasn't hungry enough to really nail one to eat them --- all he was was disturb their mating behavior.

Marcie cried "Turtle!" and indeed a curiuos turtle had swam up to her. This turtle was the least purturbed by people that I had ever encountered --- it even let Katherine and I touch him. This was shaping to be a fabulous snorkel --- the surge was less than the day before and I wasn't cold at all. We swam around and explored more of the reef. "Every mooring ball is good!" said Arturo. After a while we realized that we didn't know where Niniane was. It was about 20 minutes into the snorkel so I suggested we started heading slowly towards the boat. I wasn't worried about Niniane --- she'd explored reefs on her own before and was a certified open water diver. But accidents can happen. We made it into the dinghy and looked around a bit before someone spotted Niniane. She saw everyone on the dinghy and started heading back.

With everyone back on the Katja, we put up the dinghy and were off just as more boats descended onto Sandy Cay. Fish Hotel was on Tilloo Cay, a narrow strip of an island that boasted many treacherous channels. We drove in and anchored off Tavern Cay. The dive check went well, but when we swam in search of the Fish Hotel, we saw a couple of tree trunks with a bunch of inverted jelly fish and some fish using the dead trees as a coral. Visibility was terrible and the surge was none too comfortable. After that disappointing snorkel, we debated what to do next. We were originally going to visit Hopetown the next day, but since we were all snorkeled out, a visit to hope town for lunch seemed in order.

We turned on the motor and started motoring up the straights but were soon in shallow water. A quick look at the cruising guide suggested that there was a way to get through, but I no longer trusted the book. We turned around and raised the sail, and started sailing to the other side of the straits. Once on the other side, I discovered that the Katja didn't do a good job sailing into the wind, and the straits were too narrow to keep going. After a little bit of attempting to sail in light wind, we gave up, dropped the sails, and motored into Hopetown harbor at 3:15pm It took several tries to pick up a Mooring ball, but we did pick one up and used the public dinghy dock.

Hopetown was picturesque in the little bit we explored, finding Vernon's grocery store. Vernon was an old man who was proud of the store and was famous for his key lime pies. He didn't display those, however, only bringing out one when we asked! We bought banana bread and Boen and Bowen each got a muffin. On the way out we bought a six pack of diet coke at $1.10 each, which seemed absurdly expensive but keeping everyone caffeinated seemed like a good idea. Niniane said she was going to stay in Hope Town for 4 days after the sailing cruise was over and took the opportunity to explore while Arturo, Xiaoqin, Bowen and I took the treasures back to the boat.

"How long do we have?" "We should leave by 4:30pm, latest." "OK, everyone staying, please be at the dinghy dock by 4:15pm." We took everything back, and then drove to the dinghy dock to find no one there and dropped off at the Elbow Cay Reef lighthouse. Then we saw others waiting at the dinghy dock and drove over to pick everyone up.

Arturo went to get ice (despite the closed sign on the marina office), while the rest of us walked up the Elbow Reef lighthouse from whence we got glorious views of the area in the late afternoon light. The lighthouse was the last manually operated kerosene lamp lighthouse in North Ameica. The mechanism had to be rewound by hand every 2 hours, and the light while dim by modern standards was still useful.

Leaving the lighthouse reluctantly by 4:30pm, we maneuvered out into the harbor after dropping mooring ball. It was getting late and I didn't feel like risking visiting Man O'War Cay right away and getting to do a dive check in the dark. Instead, I headed to my backup location, which was right off Ana Cay at about 6' of water. We anchored with no problems and the dive check revealed a solidly held anchor.

We got out the paddleboard and while there was a current it wasn't too bad --- the kids could play in this in the fading light. Dinner was Louis and Arturo's special --- Pasta, Sausages, and Vegetables mixed. I was still hungry after dinner and opened up a can of spam and ate much of it.

Stargazing was marred by clouds, a nearly full moon, and missing meteor showers. But since we were so close, we could see the Elbow Reef Lighthouse operating in its full glory, bright enough to be seen but not blinding.

Review: Number Go Up

 After being disappointed by Michael Lewis's Going Infinite, I read on Molly White's blog that Number Go Up was potentially far better. I checked it out from the library and finished it in two days, simply because it was such compelling reading.

There's a very rudimentary explanation of how blockchain works, and Zeke Faux doesn't shy away from explaining how blockchain is far from anonymous:

the way the blockchain database works, transaction records are never erased. And while it doesn’t record names, it does assign a unique address to each wallet. If any wallet can be tied to a specific individual, then an investigator can easily see every transaction that person has ever made. Investigators could tie a person to an address by making a purchase from them, just as they might buy drugs from a dealer before arresting them; or they could watch for transfers to exchanges, like Bankman-Fried’s FTX, then send subpoenas to the exchange for user records. Once the FBI busted Silk Road, the dark-web drug market, it was able to track down many of the dealers on the site. As the writer Andy Greenberg explained, “Bitcoin had turned out to be practically the opposite of untraceable: a kind of honeypot for crypto criminals that had, for years, dutifully and unerasably recorded evidence of their dirty deals.” (kindle loc 1736)

 The profiles of the various characters is probably the most boring part of the book --- to me, all the scammers kinda look alike, with very iffy backgrounds and not very interesting bios. None of them can explain why their coin or NFT token or whatever should be worth anything more than zero. I guess many of the crypto investors are betting on the bigger fool theory to be able to unload their stash at non-zero values. There's an aside where Faux watches Michael Lewis interview Sam Bankman-Fried:

the author’s questions were so fawning, they seemed inappropriate for a journalist. Listening from the packed auditorium, I started to question whether Lewis was really writing a book, or if FTX had paid him to appear. (Lewis later told me that he had in fact come to report for his book and that he was not compensated.) Lewis said he knew next to nothing about cryptocurrency. But he seemed quite confident that it was great. The writer said that, contrary to popular opinion, crypto was not well suited for crime. He posited that U.S. regulators were hostile to the industry because they’d been brainwashed or bought off by established Wall Street banks. I wondered if he simply hadn’t heard about the countless crypto scams, but the thought seemed preposterous. “You look at the existing financial system, then you look at what’s been built outside the existing financial system by crypto, and the crypto version is better,” Lewis said. (kindle loc 2292)

Then he gets into the crypto scheme in the Philipines during the pandemic called Axle Infinitie. The ending of that bubble is both comic and tragic:

Crypto bros and Silicon Valley venture capitalists gave Filipinos false hope by promoting an unsustainable bubble based on a Pokémon knockoff as the future of work. And making matters worse, in March 2022, North Korean hackers broke into a sort-of crypto exchange affiliated with the game and made off with $600 million worth of stablecoins and Ether. The heist helped Kim Jong Un pay for test launches of ballistic missiles, according to U.S. officials. Instead of providing a new way for poor people to earn cash, Axie Infinity funneled their savings to a dictator’s weapons program (kindle loc 2251)

There's a section in there where he replays an interview between  Matt Levine and Bankman-Fried, where Bankman-Fried essentially describes a Ponzi scheme:

Levine asked a simple question about “yield farming,” the investment technique Jason Stone had used at Celsius. As Bankman-Fried attempted to explain how it worked, he had more or less laid out the how-to of running a crypto pyramid scheme. “You start with a company that builds a box,” Bankman-Fried said. “They probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that’s gonna replace all the big banks in thirty-eight days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does, or pretend it does literally nothing.” Bankman-Fried explained that it would take very little effort for this box to issue a token that would share in the profits from the box. “Of course, so far, we haven’t exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but I don’t know, you know, maybe there will be,” Bankman-Fried said. Levine said that the box and its “box token” should be worth nothing. Bankman-Fried didn’t disagree. But he said, “In the world that we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, box token. Maybe it’s cool.’ ” Curious people would start buying box token. And the box could start giving out free box token to anyone who put money inside, just as Axie had rewarded players with Smooth Love Potions. Crypto investors would see they could earn a higher yield by putting their money in the box than in a bank. Before long, Bankman-Fried said, the box would be stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars, and the price of box token would be rising. “This is a pretty cool box, right? Like this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box. And who are we to say that they’re wrong about that?” Sophisticated players would put more and more money in the box, Bankman-Fried said, “and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.” “I think of myself as like a fairly cynical person,” Levine said. “And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.” (kindle loc 2359)

The big reveal in the book actually isn't about SBF. In the last third of the book, Faux discovers that the various internet crypto scammers (these are people who would tease you that they have a sure-fire way of making money on crypto using their special app, get you to download the app, and then use that app to siphon money away from you) are part of a global human-trafficking ring that essentially used human slaves to scale up these crypto scams. (In this day and age of AI, you might imagine that they'd use chatbots, but obviously machine learning models are still much more expensive than human slaves)

And the problem was large enough that it could account for a serious amount of Tether transactions. If Chinatown held six thousand people scamming like Vicky Ho, and each had to meet a quota of $300 a day—the number I’d heard from some victims—that one compound alone would generate more than $600 million a year in illicit proceeds. From what I had learned, it seemed that this scam slave complex would not be able to operate without crypto. And the benefits of crypto to the rest of the world seemed to be limited to enabling a zero-sum gambling mania. (kindle loc 3281)

 The conclusion the book comes down to is that Tether and Bitcoin have sufficient real world applications (not legal ones, given the extremely high transaction fees associated with conversion from crypto to legal tender) that countinue to fund its existence despite the crypto crash . What's more, with high interest rates being paid out by T-bills and Treasury Bonds, Tether can now make money legitimately:

In May 2023, Tether announced that it had converted most of its holdings into U.S. government bonds. It said that due to the high interest rates, it had generated $1.5 billion in profits in the first quarter alone—an insane amount for an unregulated offshore company. That number would be a good quarter for corporate giants like Raytheon, Nike, or Disney. Tether had, if its numbers were trustworthy, become one of the 150 most profitable companies in the world. (kindle loc 4208)

The author likes to give the government regulatory agencies a hard time  about ignoring the problem of crypto scams. But given the international scale of this problem, and how lightly funded the various agencies are, I can only imagine that it would be very hard to fund an investigation. But now that crypto is dead maybe at least the scammers are finding it harder to operate.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book, learned a lot from it, and it actually had insights I hadn't found anywhere else. Recommended.

2023 Bahamas: November 24th Snake Cay to Lynyard Cay

In the morning, while waiting for others to finish breakfast, I realized that the winds were calm enough that breaking out the paddleboard made sense. I got it out and pumped up the paddleboard and took it for a spin around the area. Paddle boarding is like having a bicycle on the water, with wind and current taking the place of hills. To my surprise Bowen and Boen (especially Boen) took an interest in paddle boarding and took it out for a spin as well. They had shown little interest in paddle boarding in previous years but I guess they finally felt comfortable enough to try it!

The dinghy tour had to be done before low tide at 10:00am, so we departed promptly at 8:00am around the corner where the cars were. Even at mid-tide, there were still many shallow spots. But this place was amazing --- there were turtles galore, and a sting ray jumped out of the water 3 times during our visit. I had tried to memorize the route the night before, but what I should have done should have been to create a course on Garmin connect and download it into the watch. Nevertheless, while we got lost several times, we managed to backtrack and make our way out of there by 9:30am after being much enamored by the sights of the salt marsh.

The boys took some time playing with the paddleboard again, and then it was time to pick up anchor and motor over to Sandy Cay, which promised good snorkeling. We anchor'd on the leeward side of Sandy Cay, where there were already 2 boats waiting. We noticed that on the other side of the Cay, where the sand was deep (25', necessitating a 150' anchor rode), there were more boats and lots of dinghys tied to various mooring balls. This place was crowded but that usually meant great snorkeling. We put down the dinghy and loaded everyone with their snorkel gear on it, and once the first few swimmers were in the water they all said "wow". This was the best snorkel spot we would find for the entire trip.

The others saw spotted Rays, but I missed it, since we had to spend much time convincing the boys to go into the water. Even then, it didn't take 20 minutes before they headed back to the dinghy.

When we were all done we debated what to do. We looked at the tide tables and realized that we could make mid-tide entry into Little Harbor and get out again and not be trapped in there overnight. We made with haste to the harbor entrance, though not without observing a couple of coves on Lynyard Cay that looked like it would make for a good overnight spot. At Little Harbor, we negotiated the entrance with 3' of bottom to spare, picking up mooring balls for the first time. The boys made use of their new found skill with the paddleboard to paddleboard to Pete's while the rest of us dingy'd over. The walk to the ruined lighthouse was recommended by the book as was snorkeling off the beach, but when we walked to the lighthouse we were disappointed by the views. I'd say that the visit only netted us the opportunity to leave a couple of garbage bags for the hefty price of $10 each.

After departing Little Harbor, we debated between Bridges Cay, the Bight of Old Robinson, and Lynyard Cay, but decided that the conditions were settled enough that Lynyard Cay was likely to net fewer mosquitoes than the alternatives. There were two other boats already in the cove, but we settled in between them with plenty of sea room between us. The wind and current were so calm in the cove that the kids could get out the paddleboard and row to the beach, scaring away the poor folks who had it all to themselves prior to our arrival. The kids played an elaborate game of Uber, where Boen would pick up Bowen, drop him off at the beach (where he would look for coconuts or conch shells), and then Bowen would shout for Boen, and Boen would come and pick him up in the paddleboard. Bereft of transportation, I got out my goggles and swam to shore without fins just for a workout.

The sunset was gorgeous. The stargazing was marred by the increasingly bright and full moon.

2023 Bahamas: Nov 23rd Mermaid Reef Great Abacos to Snake Cay

 I looked in the book and decided Snake Cay was worth a visit. Not only was it marked as having good snorkeling, the cruising guide also had a special insert map noting a dinghy tour that would be worth doing at mid to high tide. Along the way was Witch Point, which was also designated as a place that had potentially good snorkeling. None of this was mentioned during the chart briefing, and I was starting to form a poor opinion of the briefing staff at Navigare yacthing.

We first attempted to sail for 2 hours, going along at around 2-5 knots. As we headed south the wind was so light that we couldn't come about, so we dropped the sails and turne don the engines. Motoring down along the coast was straightforward, but unlike nearly anywhere else in the Caribbean I've sailed, there were lots of markings on the chart about shallow sands, shifting sands and other no-go zones. Unique amongst the places I'd visited, the cruising guide provided waypoints and markers and photos of harbor entrances so you would get grounded. Under motor this is no big deal, but under sail you would be constantly changing tack.

At  witch point, we dropped anchor. It took us two tries before the anchor caught. Arturo and I did the dive check and discovered that the anchor wasn't dug into the ground, but had caught against a vegetation root instead. It was holding, but no way would I consider it acceptable for an overnight stay. Out of an abundance of caution we decided that either Arturo or I could snorkel but not both --- one of us had to be on the boat at all times in case the anchor gave way and the boat started drifting. We told everyone to be on alert --- if the engine turned on and revved 3 times that means it was time to come back as quickly as possible. We'd turn the engine off immediately and let the anchor reset itself.

Arturo went first to scout the reef. He came back and reported that the snorkeling was disappointing but the folks had spotted turtles. We went, but didn't go very far before the kids complained about being cold. Fortunately, the anchor held throughout our short stay. Once everyone came back aboard we motor'd on to Snake Cay.

Snake Cay looked far more interesting --- at the anchorage there was no one else there, but we could see that there was some sort of ruined piers that were previously there. The anchor easily hooked the bottom at the designated spot, and after the anchor check Arturo and I went to scout the snorkeling along the pier. These were metal pillars that had holes in them that looked like they could give you tetanus. There were no less than 6 lion fish, and plenty to look at. But after we went around the corner in the narrow channel between Snake Cay and Deep Sea Cay, we found no less than 4 cars in the water that had so much fish using them as homes that we immediately knew we had to go back and fetch everyone else.

We would much later discover that even though it looked like a military base of some sort, this used to be the headquarters of a logging operation. Having ran out of wood, the base became abandoned, but we never found anything about why there were cars in the water. Past the cars, the current became strong, so we returned to the boat to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with a vegetarian turkey which this time had a snorkel but no mask. Arturo grilled chicken as well as some pasta. It was a huge feast but we did a good job of eating most of it. As the primary fridge freed up we would move food from the bad fridge into it.

At stargazing time, I saw two shooting stars. Bowen read that there were supposed to be meteor showers 2 nights from now. We made a note to be in a dark place that night.

2023 Bahamas: Nov 22 Coco Bay, Green Turtle Cay to Mermaid Reef, Great Abaco Island

 We woke up early again to make the crossing. The seas were calmer, enough so that we thought we could make another crack at Fowl Cay. However, there were a few provisions that we were missing and we needed to re-provision, so we decided to do a put in at Great Guana Cay at Grabbers for lunch. There was much debate as to whether there was a place to reprovision --- Google said that the supermarket was closed, but looking at how crowded the harbor was at Delia’s Cay, I couldn't believe it --- with a restaurant and multiple services there must be some way to buy groceries on the island.  The alternative would have been to visit Treasure Cay but that was a long sail, not to mention I dreaded putting in at a crowded Marina where we would be at risk of mosquitoes. We put in at anchor with 2 other boats watching. I asked one of them whether there were groceries and they said it was an easy walk from Grabbers to the market.

We put in the dinghy and took garbage onto shore, where Grabbers had multiple garbage containers where we could dump garbage without having to pay for it --- unusual in the Carribean where garbage fees could be as high as $10 a bag. We walked over looking for the general store but walked past it until we hit the dive shop, where they directed us back towards the liquor store. Arturo took the opportunity to ask about diving --- Dive Guana's proprietor told us that it would be a custom charter: $1200 for 5 of us for a two tank dive, and he could meet us at Fowl Cay the next day --- today was out of the question as he was already booked. $1200 was way above the normal top end price of $200 for a 2 tank dive, so we declined.

We walked past the general store a second time before being corrected by Katherine who was paying way more attention than I was. At the general store we bought fruits, more diet coke, ice, pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner, and various chocolate that wouldn't last long in the presence of Boen.

Arturo and I would make a quick run to the boat to dump the stuff we bought. We realized that one of the refrigerators onboard didn't work at all, so we'd have to buy another bag of ice. After lunch at grabbers, which had excellent food --- Rosie had highly recommended it and she was not wrong. We bought more ice and reboarded the Katja to motor over to Fowl Cay.

We anchor'd at Fowl Cay, and at the dive check discovered that the anchor was well dug in, but the surge was so violent that it would put Arturo at risk when loading or unloading the dinghy. I made the executive call to not attempt to even unload the dinghy there, but the question was where would we go? I desperately wanted to go Snorkeling and looked in the Cruising guide where Arturo had noted (another case where I hadn't paid enough attention or written sufficiently detailed notes) that Mermaid Reef, which was right outside Marsh Harbor was noted by Rosie as a good spot for snorkeling to visit.

It was a headwind, so we just motor'd there against the wind
, approaching the reef at around 3:30pm. The wind was dying and Arturo's forecast website noted that tomorrow was likely to be a motoring day. After the obligatory anchor check, we swam to the reef, which was marked by a single red dive buoy. It was a long swim, but the reef had sufficient life to justify the visit, and it wasn't too surgey. I even spotted a turtle on the way to the reef, and others spotted Mantas and other wildlife.

We dinghy'd the boys over, but they balked at spending much time at the reef and Boen gave us a hard time about pulling him aboard the dinghy and blistering his lower stomach while doing so.

Dinner once again was Hamburger. With the wind behind us, we expected the location to be bug free but the wind died enough during the evening that mosquitoes and biting gnats visited! We beat a quick retreat after stargazing time to avoid being bitten but it wasn't entirely successful --- Xiaoqin got the worst of it, being much yummier than gnats and mosquitoes than I am.

Review: Size - How It Explains the World

 Somehow I'd placed Size on my reading list and picked it up. I should stop reading stuff by Vaclav Smil. He covers a bunch of topics that you already know (such as when you scale up a human, bones would break, which is why elephant legs are shaped the way they are), but does so in a boring way, often without humor, and frequently with anti-environmentalist side notes drive-by-shooting style.

Early on in the book, there are actually some interesting titbits. For instance, why do you see so many fat kids?

 many parents underestimate the body size of their children by placing them in a lower—healthy—body mass index category than they actually belong to. Having parents who do not see the problem as even existing makes it more likely that such children will stay overweight or become obese, an undesirable outcome that may last a lifetime.50 And many perfectly normal adolescents and young adults see themselves as too small or too heavy because we compare bodies and faces with internal templates that are increasingly based on images of faces and bodies encountered daily in mass media.51 Not surprisingly, these perceptions shift the norm well below the population-wide mean, and they foster dissatisfaction, particularly among adolescents and young women. (kindle loc 898)

I also how much of this parent under-estimation is because the size and weight chart used by pediatricians don't map very well to non-white people! I expect that these size and weight charts will be updated as obesity becomes more the norm in the USA, where children are ferried around and not allowed to walk to school or bike to school. But does Smil mention that? No.

There's more interesting stuff about airline seat pitches. Which again, have an interesting history:

 in 2017, Flyers Rights, the passenger rights group, petitioned the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to set the rules regarding the minimum pitch, but no regulations came into force before the pandemic—making such efforts moot.37 And the tightening pitch is not the end of it: in 2013, French inventor Bernard Guering filed a patent, on behalf of Airbus, for “a seating device with reduced bulk”—a fancy term for a row of smallish bicycle seats with low backrests mounted on a tube.38 Even worse, in 2010 Ryanair had plans to introduce “vertical seats,” with crammed passengers strapped to thin, near-vertical (an incline of just a few degrees) beds.39 Ryanair even claimed that 2 out of 10 polled passengers said they would fly strapped upright if the fare was halved! And there are also designs aimed at packing in more people by placing seats on top of existing seats (double-decker seating) (kindle loc 1795)

There's a picture of it in the book, but again, no inside story on why the petition failed, what the interaction between passenger packing and fuel utilization is, and how the increasing sizes of passenger girths in the US affect ticket prices. Nope. Smil just blasts through the topic and never returns to it.

There's a section about food needs calculations and an intriguing statement about how they're over-estimated by 10-15 percent in western countries(!!!), but no explanation or even theories about how that overestimation came about (is it because of lifestyle changes? or was there some scientific problems with the methodology used?).

The most boring and useless part of the book comes when Smil devotes 3-4 chapters about normal distributions, power law distributions, and other statistical facts that are better covered in other books. Most of these things have nothing to do with science.

I don't want to say I learned nothing from the book --- there are many interesting parts. But the selection of topics to cover and the lack of depth in coverage leaves me wanting. I feel like he would have been better off dropping the statistics lessons and covering the interesting parts of his book with more depth.

2023 Bahamas - Nov 21st: Rat Cay to Coco Bay, Green Turtle Cay

We started the morning by taking the dinghy over to the mangrove forest, but soon ran into a snag. It was really shallow, and we got out by pushing with our feet. After getting back to the boat, I checked the cruising guide and noticed the detail I hadn't noticed the night before --- that the area was only traversable by high tide. We checked the tides and decided not to wait and go to the Manta Ray pier instead. It was too short to sail, so we motor'd over.

There was already another party by the pier, but that was not a bad thing --- we hadn't bought any squid to serve as bait. Marcie once again decided to swim over, but most of the rest of us took the dinghy over, since there was the possibility of hiking over to the Atlantic side, so we brought hiking sandals as well.

Once tied to the Pier, we realized that previous visitors had acclimated the Mantas to human presence, and they would swim over and check us out in case we had food even though we didn't. The mantas enjoyed bumping their heads against our legs and ankles and we shot multiple videos doing so. Niniane, Bowen, and Boen would explore the beach on the sea of Abaco, and discovered that Mantas weren't very efficient feeders --- there was plenty of dead squid that were half eaten and Bowen fished a bunch of them out of the sea and used them to entice/feed the Mantas who would come to visit.

On the shore itself, there were picnic benches, BBQ grills, and even a rope swing, as well as a sign indicating that this was a public park and not to leave litter. From there, it was a short walk to the Atlantic beach which was breath-takingly lonely and deserted. Eager to stretch our legs, we walked along the beach, once in a while seeing a coral remnant left behind by the millennia. This trip completely upended my expectations of the Bahamas as being crowded and full our tourists --- we would discover that nearly every beach we visited we had all to ourselves! I guess not many people choose to sail and travel in the Marsh Harbor area.

Upon our return, we saw another party feeding the Mantas. These parties would dash in on a fast motorboat, spend no more than 15 minutes feeding the Mantas, and then dash off in a hurry. We took our time playing with the Mantas again before returning to the Katja for lunch. We would then motor back to Rat Cay, as now the tide was high enough for us to explore than Mangrove forest. Niniane had a work call, and Marcie decided not to join us. This time, we anchor'd further out as the intention was just to explore the Mangrove forest.

The visit to the Mangrove forest was still exciting even at mid-Tide, but this wasn't bad --- these were opportunities to turn off the motor, raise the outboard, and paddle and listen to the sounds. We would make use of this experience later on in the trip.

When we returned, Niniane's work call was over, and we could put the Dinghy in the davits and motor over to CoCo Bay in  Green Turtle Cay where we would put in for the night in order to make the crossing the next day.

2023 Bahamas - Nov 20th Bakers Bay, Great Guana Cay to Rat Cay

We woke up early, made coffee and eggs for breakfast, then proceeded to do the crossing over to Noname Cay. The entrance across channel rock was narrow and not marked at all, so I was grateful for the GPS chart as well as the polarized sunglasses which let me see rocks and reefs more easily. Once back into the Sea of Abaco, we still had a great sand patch to go around before anchoring in Noname Cay's sand patch. I dived for the anchor, and once we were settled, decided that once you're wet you might as well swim to Noname Cay while poor Arturo was stuck deploying the dinghy and shuttling everyone else to shore. Arturo's sister Marcie was an enthusiastic and strong swimmer, and also opted to swim, which helped allay Arturo's anxiety about fitting everyone into the dinghy.

Once on the island, Marcie was immediately greeted by a pig, and as others arrived, the pigs got a lot of attention. They got even more attention when Arturo bought some feed and we started feeding them. The instructions are to drop the food, but in a moment of inattention I fed from my hand and got bitten by teeth. Fortunately, skin wasn't broken and I refrained from feeding pigs after that.

After that, we ate lunch before sailing to the little nook between Nunjack Cay and Crab Cay. There, we anchored near Rat Cay, a little speck of an island (the Bahamas has more than 10,000 Islands, and little specks like these were counted!) Another dive check later, we swam to the shore where there was a dive ball on shore and proceeded to swim to the two wrecks, which had enough fish to be interesting for an afternoon. It was far enough from the boat that the kids weren't expected to swim there, so we drove the dingy over, deployed the dinghy anchor, and then led them to the wrecks. Boen kept having trouble with his snorkel, but we couldn't figure out what was wrong. Fortunately, he remained calm and eventually learned to just clear the snorkel every so often when it flooded.

I looked in the cruising guide and decided that it was worth staying here for the night --- it was a bit late to try to move the boat, and there was potential to explore the mangrove forest in the morning.

Dinner was hot dogs. After stargazing, we went to sleep early once again, still not quite over jet-lag.

Review: The Last Politician

 The Last Politician is an account of Biden's first two years of presidency. It begins with the inauguration (well, maybe a little before since there's supposed to be a transfer of power that never really happened, hello January 6th) and ends with the midterm elections of 2022.

The book starts off with a description of the challenges in making and distributing the vaccine, as well as the disaster that was the withdrawal from Afghanistan, something that I still support. Certainly the description of how weak and corrupt the Afghan government definitely leads me to believe that it's actually very rare that you get leaders who actually care about the people they're supposed to govern. It makes the post WW2 regime changes in Japan and West Germany from their previous regimes to democracy much more impressive.

To some extent a lot of the book is inside baseball. For instance, there's detailed accounts of the back-and-forth between Biden, Schumer, and Manchin about Build Back Better, with lots of places where Biden/Schumer and their aides had to basically kow tow to Manchin and stroke his ego. Those moments in the book explain why I would have hated being a politician and can't imagine why someone would enjoy the job, but clearly, Biden does enjoy his job.

Similarly, a lot of the stuff that went on behind the scenes in the build up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in this book. Here's a description of Burns' attempt to dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine:

Rather than denying his intentions of invasion, it was as if Putin wanted to provide Burns with a glimpse of his own strategic thinking. He explained that conditions had never been more ripe for him to conquer Ukraine. For starters, there was Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin said he was the feeble leader of a hopelessly divided polity. Putin did not deign to describe Ukraine as a nation, since it wasn’t in his view. He said that he would be able to score a quick military victory, at a low cost. In the past, Putin had resisted the temptation to invade Ukraine, because he worried about the European reaction. But he figured that he didn’t have much to worry about on the Continent. Angela Merkel had vacated the scene, replaced by a relative novice. He said that recent elections in France exposed Emmanuel Macron’s political fragility. And even though the West blustered about the strength of sanctions, Putin bragged that he’d built his economy to withstand the blow. He had stockpiled an impressive reserve of foreign currency. Putin hadn’t quite delivered a point-blank confirmation of the intelligence, but he talked as if the decision to invade were a fait accompli. Burns felt that it was his mission to barrage Putin with the questions that his advisers lacked the courage to ask: How is this going to end? How are you going to occupy a country with forty million people who are bound to resist? “I know we live in a glass house,” Burns told him, “but we know how an occupation can start off successfully and then end badly.” But this was a Socratic exercise in futility, and Burns had no illusions about that. (kindle loc 3352)

A lot of this work was going on and of course, most of it was futile, as we now know. What wasn't futile was the work that went into getting Ukraine to take the threat of invasion seriously and the work that had been done over 10 years:

After it recovered from the staggering first punch that the Russians threw, the Ukrainian army began to benefit from a decade of deep cooperation with the American military. The Americans had instructed the Ukrainians to develop a decentralized command-and-control structure, where well-trained officers had the flexibility to maneuver without waiting around for approval. It was nearly the opposite of the sclerotic hierarchy that Russia imposed on its soldiers, who never understood their tasks until they were ordered to implement them. If Ukraine represented democracy—and Russia its opposite—then their armies were a fair reflection of the contrasting virtues of those systems. (kindle loc 4454)

 The book ends with the midterm elections, and here's the irony about being president --- it's undoubted that Biden was a much better president than Trump, but his poll numbers are still astonishingly low:

Only 38 percent of the nation approved of his performance—roughly the same response that Donald Trump consistently mustered. Klain saw something darkly humorous about the White House’s inability to move that number. Each time the public grew exercised about a problem—the lack of COVID tests, a shortage of baby formula, container ships unable to unload in ports—the administration would drop everything to solve it. These were the practical details of life, where the government touched the quotidian, and Biden obsessed over them, spending hours, say, sorting through the logistics of using the air force to import baby formula from abroad. But each time the Biden administration made progress fixing an issue, it suddenly disappeared from the public’s list of top concerns. The public only lashed the administration, never rewarded it. There was no glory in technocratic troubleshooting. Biden considered his poor approval rating a failure of the media, which somehow neglected to note all the ways in which his administration was superior to Trump’s. It was also a failure of his own White House to effectively communicate. (kindle loc 4689)

It's not clear to me now that Biden has a better than even chance of winning the 2024 election. But it's quite clear that the job itself is thankless and probably very frustrating. I enjoyed the book and learned quite a bit that while the sausage making might be interesting, there's a good reason I don't want to be anywhere near where the sausage is being made.

 

2023 Bahamas - Nov 19th: Conch Inn Marina to Baker's Bay, Great Guana Cay

 

 Being jet-lagged and worn out from the red-eye flight, we woke up at the late hour of  7:00am. I made some coffee and ate a bagel, and then ran around preparing to go to the boat briefing when Rosie, the base manager came along and told us that the chart briefing wasn't until 8:30am. Unlike other companies where the briefer would just sit down with you and figure out what you like and how to customize an itinerary just for you, Navigare had a standard briefing complete with slides. While waiting for the briefing, I discovered that we didn't have a paddleboard and arranged to pay for one.  We had asked for one previously but turned out that they had no records and it turned out that our yacht broker didn't actually convey our request nor had we paid for it. I paid for the paddleboard and it turned out that $200 got me an inflatable paddleboard in a neat compact package that we stowed away easily.

At the briefing proper, Rosie didn't seem to know a lot about snorkeling and dive sites. She seemed to care a lot about which beaches to go to, how to enter harbors (which later turned out to be well justified), and which towns to visit. We kept telling her that we wanted away from noisy anchorages and mosquitoes, and she said: "You're asking too much!" We were given tips on feeding the pigs on Noname Cay, how to buy squid to feed the mantas on Nunjack Cay (which immediately was followed by instructions on where to store the squid so it wouldn't stink up the boat --- which led to me deciding that was way too much work to bother with). We were given boundaries --- the idea was that they could provide service/rescue within those boundaries, which were big enough to explore for about a week. I asked about visiting the Exumas and was told that it was 2 days of sailing each way, which was too far. Interestingly enough, the Bahamas was far North enough, and close enough to the Atlantic ocean that there were tides! This mattered for a few things: first, while anchoring you had to do the math to add up to 3 feet more to the depth in order to calculate scope. Secondarily, there were harbors where you needed at least half tide to traverse the entrace (the Katja had 4' 1" draft, which was much shallower than most monohulls, but the entrance to Little Harbor, for instance, was 3' 6" at mean low water!). This would also turn out to be a limiting factor for dinghy exploration as well!

There was also the crossing from Great Guana Cay/Whale Cay/Noname Cay. There was a treacherous patch between them that could be avoided by crossing on the Atlantic side, but that would subject the crew to rough water, and we should do it under relatively calm conditions. There was also the possibility of getting stuck there if weather/conditions worsened and we had to return the boat, so we should do it early.

After the chart briefing came the boat briefing. We were told unusually enough that we didn't have to check the engine oil every day. "Our engines are serviced every 200 hours!" the technician said proudly. We were taught how to operate the watermaker, the anchors, the sails and the power panel.Interestingly, there was no checklist, and the signoff was all electronic. The generator had to be run 3 hours a day to fill the watermaker, and it was enough to recharge the batteries if we didn't run the engines at all.

After the boat briefing we were ready to go, and set off at 11:00am. We got out of the habor, and set sail immediately for Fowl Cay, where there was promise of good snorkeling. But on the way there, Arturo spied at the island through binoculars and said that it looked too rough for any feasible snorkeling. We changed direction to Spoil Cay, where we could at least get a swim in and there were sea shells to be found --- Spoil Cay was off the dredged channel for use with the cruise ships back when Great Guano Cay was a cruise ship destination (before Dorian destroyed all the cruise ship facilities)

We anchor'd off Spoil Cay and snorkeled ashore, where indeed, beautiful shells could be found, but there was actually nothing to see in the water. After that, it was pretty late, and we motor'd across the channel, where we anchored in about 8' of water for the night. I did my first dive check of the trip and was satisfied. Arturo set up the grill and grilled hamburgers for dinner while we got used to the boat systems, water generation, and diving for the anchor for an anchor check. After dinner there was the customary star gazing, though we noted that the moon was waxing and our opportunities would decrease over the course of the trip.

I slept for about 10 hours, having not fully recovered from jet lag from the sleep the night before.

Review: The Order War

The Order War is the fourth book in the Recluce series, and this time, the protagonist is Justen, who played a minor role in Lerris's story in The Magic of Recluce. Following Dorrin in The Magic Engineer, Justen turns out to be at least as good an engineer, developing not only a steam-engine driven automobile, but also a hot air balloon with which to attack a city using lenses to focus sunlight.

Unlike the other characters who've served as protagonists in previous novels in the series, Justen is a gray wizard, probably the only gray wizard in the entire series, and so isn't subject to some of the restrictions the other characters were. He's also the first to fall into the typical Campellian arc of a hero, first refusing the call to action before being ordered to do so.

We get to see more of the world of Recluce, meeting the druids for the first time, and getting a bit more about the balance between the forces of Order and Chaos in the books. Unlike the other books, there's much less reference to Dorrin's textbook in this novel, despite Justen being the one telling Lerris to read it in the first book in the series. I find it puzzling.

The characters are less compelling than in previous books in the series. For one, the relationship between Justen and his brother doesn't feel as real, and second, there doesn't seem to be any purpose in Justen returning to Recluce in order to build his engine other than to further the plot. Nevertheless, it's a fun read and reads much faster than the page count would have you believe. Recommended.

Review: Marvel's Midnight Suns

Marvel's Midnight Suns is Firaxis' turn based card game set in the Marvel Universe. I usually enjoy Firaxis's strategy games, and when there was a steam 3 day trial I tried it and liked it, but not enough to pay list price ($40) for it. I figured I'd pick it up for $20 or so in relatively short order but the price never dropped that low. I noticed that the local library had the PS5 version on its shelves and put a hold on it. The game was long enough that I would play a bit, save, return it to the library after the 3 week loan period, place another hold on it, and then play it again. It would take 3 such periods to finish the game.

Unlike in XCOM or XCOM 2, movement doesn't matter very much. Or rather, you get one move per turn, but during your turn various attacks made by playing cards move the various characters as well, so you have to take that into account while making your plays and moves. You have 3 card plays per turn, and unlike XCOM, those attacks never miss and the damage that you achieve is always squarely provided on the card itself so you don't have to guess. Attacks can also have additional properties (some attacks require heroism to power, while others may grant you an additional card play if you knock out an opponent, while others may cause stun or cause the subject of the attack to be knocked back), and attacks that knock back an opponent into another object may trigger environmental effects. Overall, the game play is fun and since each character introduced into the game has different cards and different play styles each mission is unique and fresh.

The in-between mission/strategy part of the game, however, is annoying. You run around talking to various characters in order to increase friendship level between characters. There are also puzzles to unlock and chests to open, all of which grant you in game currency that you can use to upgrade each character's card decks, or single-use utility items. There's a research tree that's not well constructed, and various side stories. There are also combat side-quests where you can power up your character or unlock more puzzles and side-quests. This bit of the game outstays its welcome in short order, and I found myself short-cutting things by searching for the best gifts to give each character so I could get these side-quests over with.

The story is not bad, and of course, the Avengers characters are fun to play, as is Wolverine, Spider-Man, and the Midnight Suns characters are also fun to play though not well known. Much of the dialogue and voice acting is horrid, but I could overlook that.

I don't usually play a game to completion, having too little free time and too much to do, so for me to even finish a game is rare, which places this into the recommended category.

2023 Bahamas: Nov 18th Prologue

 The thing with planning a trip a year ahead is that by the time you have to execute it you forgot how you ended up booking a place like Marsh Harbor. I think we had 2 boats available, one in Nassau, and one in Marsh Harbor, and Marsh Harbor wasn't just cheaper, but it was a place Arturo hadn't been to before. Prior to the flight, United changed our flights a few times, to the point where while we were supposed to all arrive together at 1:15pm when we booked the flights, we ended up being separated from the rest of the group and being supposed to arrive at 4:15pm. Even that was in question as our plane was delayed in Fort Lauderdale, and the pilot told everyone to hurry up and sit down as he wanted to arrive at Marsh Harbor before 6:00pm when the airport closed!

Nevertheless, we landed at 6:15pm and the airport stayed open for us. We zipped through customs and immigration far more easily than in most other countries I've been to, and it wasn't more than 15 minutes to get our luggage, get into a taxi, and head over to Conch Inn Marina, where we were told that the boat we had booked, Belight, had had generator problems, and we had been given a new boat instead, Katja. The new boat had a watermaker, which was a nice upgrade --- we were planning to have 9 people on the boat, and without a watermaker we'd be putting in at port every couple of days to refill the tank. The generator let us trade diesel for water, which wasn't a bad thing. What was strange was that the Katja flushed freshwater in the toilets --- the reasoning being that salt water would gum up the pipes eventually. Clearly once you have a water maker on the boat you're expected to use it. As it was, we would end the trip using up 42 gallons of diesel, running the generator for 3 hours a night to make enough water for all of us to shower.

Having arrived late, the rest of the crew had thankfully already provisioned the boat, walking to the supermarket 20 minutes away and then hiring a taxi to cart everything back. One thing that we had neglected to do was bring coffee beans and a grinder! I'd brought the aeropress though, so Arturo had bought pre-ground coffee. There was a list of additional items to buy for the next morning, but it wasn't very big, and the folks who weren't involved in sailing the boat proper could do it.

Along with my family and Arturo, Niniane was joining us for the third time, and both Mark and Arturo had their sisters along! We had dinner at Colors, which had good but expensive food served in a casual environment. I noted that because the wind was so strong there were no mosquitoes!

What I would also discover the next morning was that the boat also had a broken gas alarm that kept going off if you ran the stove. Fortunately, Navigare's technicians were competent and fixed it before we left. We were told that the previous charter had removed the fuse to eliminate the annoying noise!

Reread: The Magic Engineer

 The Magic Engineer is the third book in the Recluce series, and now several foreshadowings that were in the first book finally come to be revealed. For instance, in the first book, Lerris leaves home with a black staff. Well, the lead character in this novel, Dorrin, is the person who first invents and designs them. Similarly, much is made of the book, The Basis of Order, which Lerris reads and finds confusing, and again, Dorrin is the person who wrote it. Similarly, there's a mention of steam-driven boats in the first book, and the engineer who invents it is also the protagonist.

As with Lerris, Dorrin is thrown out of Recluce for even thinking about building machines (you'd think the rulers of the island might reconsider throwing out people who think different), and he, along with other exiles, leave home and traverse a war-filled continent. While his companions could expect to return, Dorrin is given instructions not to come home until he knows who he is.

He becomes a smith, then an apprentice healer, and eventually does finally build his machines. The engineering part is of course complete fantasy. Other than the steam engine, nothing Dorrin builds ever seems to need testing --- it almost always works the first time. (Granted, he does spend a bunch of time at the middle parts building models and drawing) And then he builds those weapons of war, but insists on being the person to set them off or install the mines. One would think that an engineer is too valuable to spend in the field when he could be continually churning out new weapons.

We get a bit more insight into the way Recluce magic works --- the order bound folks who can infuse their devices/weapons/fabrications with order literally can't observe the destruction created or they pay for it with physical symptoms up to and including blindness. Dorrin gets the bright idea to write it down in a book, and we finally understand why its so obtuse --- he never actually fought a Chaos wizard with magic, prefering to build rockets and fire them.

The book's an enjoyable read, and now I'm good and hooked and have the rest of the series handy and will keep going.

Reread: The Towers of Sunset

 The Towers of Sunset is the second book in the Recluce series. Unusual for a fantasy series, Modesitt doesn't tell his epic saga in chronological order or in many cases even tell the stories of the same character. This is nice --- each book is its own self-contained story and you don't have to read every book in the series, but if you do read the whole series the setting becomes richer.

In this case, the book details the founding of Recluce, which is referred to in the first book, with just one or two characters mentioned. The book starts with Creslin, who's a consort in a matriarchal society where men are only good for marrying off to seal political alliances. He doesn't like this pre-arranged fate so escapes while he's being carted off to be married off.

It turns out that he was being groomed for much more than being a consort, but that he's a weather wizard, in fact, one of the best of all time. He tries to escape his fate but eventually (because of a soul link) is tied to the woman he's supposed to marry as well, and they fight bitterly before getting together to found the island nation.

I enjoyed the book though I found the political business tied up at the end all too neatly. There's also a scene where a bomb is used on an empire but I again found it a little too pat. One bomb (even one that wipes out the royal family) shouldn't shut a whole nation down, especially if it's army is as top-notch as it's touted to be.

Nevertheless, it's well written, transparent, and the characters feel real.

Long Term Review: Kindle Scribe

 After I showed my kids the kindle scribe, they fought over drawing on it multiple times. So when there was another sale, I traded in their small kindles for more kindle scribes. What a difference a larger screen makes. They went from not ever reading on the Kindle to reading in bed, reading at night, and even writing notes to each other on the scribe. I find myself using it in preference to my smaller kindles except when traveling, backpacking, and even then I always miss not having it with me. I'm astonished at how much I use the darn thing.

Boen read the first Walking Dead Compendium and watched an episode of the show and declared that the book was better! The realization that you can read the book way faster than watching a show is the day a kid becomes an enthusiastic reader. If your kids didn't like the small kindle, try upgrading them to the big one. It made a big difference to mine.

Reread: The Magic of Recluce

 I remember liking The Magic of Recluce alot, but never read the series past 3 books or so. So when Humble Bundle was selling the entire series for $18, I picked it up and downloaded it to my Kindle. L. E. Modesitt has a under-stated style that's transparent and easy to read.

This first book in the series is a coming of age story, but rather than a call to adventure, Lerris is exiled from his home island kingdom of Recluce for being bored with everything he's being taught to do. It turns out that he's the scion of powerful wizards, and the fact of his exile at a very young age was to show that even the rulers of Recluce live by the rules.

The world of Recluce's magic is based on order vs chaos, and as Lerris discovers which side of the fence he's on, he also gets the world explained to him. I enjoyed his self-discovery and by the end of the book Lerris is no longer bored. 

Recommended. You knew that --- I wouldn't have spent good money instead of checking it out from the library otherwise.

2024 Book Reviews Index

2024 Books of the Year were chosen! 

Fiction

• Practical Magic
• Trigger Warning
• Starter Villain
• The Magic of Recluce
• The Towers of Sunset
• The Magic Engineer
• The Order War
• The Death of Chaos
• Machine Vendetta
• The Last Wish
• Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
• Sweet Bean Paste
• Among Others
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Sword of Destiny
• The Lost Cause
• A Deepness in the Sky
• Valuable Humans In Transit
• Re-read: Altered Carbon
• Re-read: A Fire Upon The Deep
• Re-read: The Big Sleep
• Janissaries
• The Snow Queen
• Re-read: Jhereg
• Re-read: Yendi
• Kik's Delivery Service

Non-Fiction

• Jobst Brandt Ride Bike!
• The Age of Scientific Wellness
• The Last Politician
• Size
• Number Go Up
• Remember
• The Delusion of Crowds
• Democracy Awakening
• The Curious Human Knee
• Built
• Determined
• The Time Crunched Cyclist
• The Fund
• Narrative Economics
• Ours Was The Shining Future
• The History of Video Games
• 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
• Material World
• Humble Pi
• The Language of the Night
• Slow Productivity
• Fast After 50
• The Second Shot
• The Rise and Reign of Mammals
• What Makes This Book So Great
• The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs
• The Wildlife of Our Bodies
• Barking Up the Wrong Tree
• Tapped Out
• The End is Always Near
• Bruce Lee - A Life

Comics

• The Walking Dead Compendium One
• The Walking Dead Compendium Two
• The Walking Dead Compendium Three
• The Walking Dead Compendium Four
• Clover