Day 12: January 4th, 2008

Breakfast started with eggs and bread and then a rapid inventory of what was missing from our refrigerator. It turned out that we were overstocked on nearly everything except eggs and coffee, so Hector was dispatched to buy groceries while Lea went to find the water guy. Przemek wanted to work on the traveler. I had thought that the traveler would have been the easiest problem, but it turned out that the traveler wound around a capstan that was secured with allen keys. The Rya Jen's toolbox did not include a full set of allen keys, so we were stuck. Or at least, I thought we were stuck. Przemek refused to give up, and started asking for some interesting items, including a twist tie, and a small string.

While Przemek was fighting that battle, I got out the winch handle and undid the hull fittings for the water tanks. Lea came back and announced that the water guy wasn't here yet, but we were first in line. In the mean time, she'd found who the water pipe we'd used two nights ago had belonged to --- it belonged to a boat owner with a permanent slip at the harbor. Unfortunately, that pipe was currently in use, and the hired help cleaning the boat was terrified that his boss would come by and find him lending out his pipe to some strangers. Lea offered to pay him $20, but to no avail.

Przemek shouted out "Who's your daddy?" He had gotten the line around the capstan and now it was a matter of tying off a bowline, getting the remaining line around the other pulleys, and we were in business! Hector came back with groceries and announced that the office would only release his credit card after we'd paid for our water. Fortunately, the water guy showed up immediately afterwards and we started connecting the hose to the tanks. Unlike the other hose, this was a high speed hose and we dumped in close to 100 gallons in less than 20 minutes, after which I used some water to clean off the deck and cockpit areas as well.

There's the inevitable rush to get the cabin ship shape before we leave, but once the water was done, we undid our shore power cable and all that was left was waiting for Hector to pay the bills. Once Hector was back, we cast off with no problems at all and headed across the water towards the islands known as The Dogs. A wind rose up out of the east and it wasn't long before our sails were up and we were well on our way.

Sailing downwind is extremely easy, and the crew had fun exchanging places at the helm. At the start of the trip, Lisa had bought a breadfruit, but unfortunately none of us knew how to cook it, and our overzealous refrigeration unit had frozen it. Hector wanted to find out if the fruit would float or sink, and so tossed it into the water. It sank like a stone.

With an 18 knot wind behind us we made rapid progress and soon saw the North side of Tortola. There was a debate on board as to whether we should stay in Joost Van Dyke or back at St. John's again. On the one hand, staying at St. John's would let us clear customs today, but we had already stayed at St. John and Joost Van Dyke had Foxy's Bar, which was a big draw for the party animals in our group. Joost Van Dyke had no mooring buoys, so we'd have to drop anchor, but I didn't know how crowded the anchorage would be, so I figured we could visit Joost Van Dyke first, and then if there was no room there we could then visit St. John's Caneel Bay.

As we sailed around Little Joost Van Dyke and Sandy Cay, we saw boats anchored at Sandy Cay, a very pretty little island that looked great. It was only a day anchorage, however, so we couldn't spend the night there. As we came into Great Harbor, we discovered that we didn't get there too early. Looking around, there didn't seem to be much swinging room for another boat left. But as I wove my way into the bay I saw what seemed like an empty spot and prepared my crew to drop anchor. Rya Jen had an electric windlass, but we hadn't used it the entire trip, so a quick look at the operations manual was in order for us to remember how to turn it on. Once on, we dropped the anchor and when the crew had paid out about 100 feet of chain I backed the Rya Jen until I felt the tug of the chain. And that was it! Much less work than a mooring buoy (well, I also have about 5 times more experience anchoring).

One of the big benefits of being in the BVI was that you could just put on your snorkel and then dive the anchor to check to make sure it was buried. So that's what Przemek and I did. The water was so clear we could even see the anchor from the surface, about 25' away. We dived to see that it was truly buried, and then counted out how much chain we had. I would later let out a bit more chain just to make sure, since I'm always paranoid, but for the next hour or so we set an anchor watch just to make really sure.

Lisa and I took the kayak to shore, as did Hector. Once on shore, we first walked around looking for the bakery (which was closed), and then finally gave in and ordered some snacks at a different restaurant. The beach wasn't very long, but there was a hammock that Lisa had fun with. Przemek joined us after being ferried by Lea. We ate, bought some ice cream, and then went back to Rya Jen via kayak. Images of Sandy Cay haunted me, so I suggested that we dinghy over there and try snorkeling. Lisa wanted to stay and study and make dinner later, but everyone else thought this was a fine idea.

It turned out that this was a stupid stupid idea. The sheltered nature of Great Harbor had led me to forget that there was 5-foot swells out there, and the wind was pretty strong once we got out of the harbor. I worried about a big wave that would swamp the boat, and asked for a turnaround, which Lea did after she got out of the harbor, just to say she did so. As we turned around, we saw a mega-yacht named Starship. It came complete with jet-skis and a helicopter and landing pad! We were astounded by both the size and opulence of the thing.

Back on Rya Jen, I elected to stay on the boat this time while everyone else went ashore. Hector helped me put away the kayaks, and then I snorkeled around checking out other people's anchoring jobs and ground tackle setups before taking a shower. I picked up one of Hector's books and started reading.

Around 6:00pm, I lit up the oven so Lisa could start baking roots. We waited for the others to come back, and I turned on the VHF to listen in onto Foxy's reservations channel. At 7:15pm, I looked up from my perch and heard splashes. The rest of the crew were rowing the dinghy back. One of the propeller blades had fallen off, no doubt due to the earlier incident at water point. Since the dinghy was no long operational, Przemek got onto the VHF and canceled their reservations at Foxy's.

We made and ate dinner, talked about the trip, and watched the stars, which were beautiful out, despite threatening storm clouds earlier. We set up a night watch schedule and I then turned in.

Review: You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop

I am a fan of John Scalzi, and this book has made me a bigger fan of him. It's a book about writing, but not a book about how to write! It's really a book about the business of writing, which to me is much more interesting than yet another how-to book. First of all, Scalzi is very funny. For instance, in his title column he makes fun of writers, posers acting like writers, and self-pompous asses. What's not to like?

What intrigues me, though, that Scalzi came to writing the way I came to programming --- it was easy for him. And like him, I also came to recognize that my vocation turned out to be real work, if you didn't want to turn out dreck. (In my case, it was having to program DBase III as part of a work-study program) He also has a very professional attitude towards work, which is that clients pay him, and he delivers. That's what being professional means, and I wish someone would write a column directed to many programmers too snobbish to write code in C++, Java, or whatever. He is by turns sarcastic, funny, and even once in a while sympathetic, but he's always honest, and I respect that a lot.

That honesty comes through even when discussing compensation. His writing nets him $100,600 a year, as of 2005. This might sound like a lot, but then you have to realize that despite having published a few novels, his novels are a small portion of his income, and most of his work comes from writing commercial copy. A good technical writer can expect that much, and my friend Larry Hosken probably blows Scalzi's income away. This is not a strike against technical writers (who I respect a lot, and am happy to have on a sailboat any day), but a reflection that if you expect to write fiction for a living and aren't the next Stephen King, you're probably dreaming. And note that despite writing being easy for him, Scalzi's work ethic has him writing 1 million words a year. That's a lot of output, and probably the only other person I've heard public say that he's done that and more is Mike Mearls, who has a reputation for being a caffeine-powered robot.

Another interesting column is one about rewriting, where Scalzi mentions that he rarely goes through multiple drafts. I was very relieved to hear this, since I'm glad to hear that it's possible. (Most of my blog posts don't get rewritten, for instance, though I do trash paragraphs, etc., while writing them) Perhaps this column might come across as arrogance, but I think it is very honest, and a validation of the way a high output writer has to work.

Finally, I really like Scalzi's attitude towards piracy, books online, and Amazon.com's search inside the book feature. All in all, I think this collection of blog entries is very much worth reading (hopefully I haven't cost him too many sales by linking to the three most interesting ones), and is highly recommended, not just for aspiring writers, but for those interested in the business of writing from a writer's point of view as well.

Day 11: January 3rd, 2008

The divers got up bright and early and had quick sandwiches and spread or oatmeal before heading over to Dive BVI's Seacat to join the crew. When we got there they were still loading up the boat, but after a 5 minute wait we were asked to board and away we went! The boat was staffed by Andy Sutherland, Sadie Phy, and Johan Kloppers, and the quality of the staff was immediately evident by the boat briefing that Sadie provided --- short, thorough, and to the point. She also informed us that Casey was mistaken and that there were no afternoon dives for us after all.

Heather was worried because she hadn't dived for several years, and remembered having trouble equalizing her ears when she last dived. Johan immediately took her aside and basically gave her an on-the-boat refresher of what she needed to do. As the boat made its way over to Marina Cay at top speed, I realized that my assessment the night before was correct --- we would have had to sail at 6:00am to have any hope of reaching Marina Cay by 8:30am. The Seacat docked for a short moment at Marina Cay to pick up more dive gear, and had us sign our waivers and do other dive related paperwork. Then we were once more on board the Seacat and on our way to Cooper Island, where we picked up yet a father/son team who were doing their certifications before ending up at the Salt Island Rhone dive buoys.

A quick look around at the site indicated that this was definitely a busy site. Dive boats were tied up at nearly every mooring buoy, and there was always a school of divers in the water. Andy gave us a great dive briefing, helped us get our gear on, and even more importantly sequenced our entries so that Heather, who would likely have the most trouble equalizing, would start her descent first. I was very impressed by the gear Dive BVI had --- it looked shiny and new, and for the first time, I could not see any leaks at all. Andy not only would help us suit up, he would also douse our diving masks in no-fog before giving it to us to put on.

Once in the water, I found myself with no trouble whatsoever equalizing, unlike my dive on New Year's day. Andy assessed everyone's status and immediately led us to the largely intact bow section of the RMS Rhone. The visibility was amazing --- the BVIs are a dive destination because of the incredibly clear waters, and today did not disappoint. As we crossed under the bow spit, Andy signaled, asking if we were ready to do the swim through. We all assented and the swim through began. This section was great, and really gave you the impression that we were exploring. The quarters were tight, however, so it took a while for all of us to work around it. I can't say much about it, and the pictures probably do a much better job depicting our journey than words can.

Upon exiting the hull, Andy showed us one of the intact signal canons, and then it was time to ascend and make our safety stop. Once on the surface, we were given snacks, water, and Andy proceeded to tell us about the Rhone during the surface interval, which was hailed the "Titanic" of her day, with all of 400 horsepower powering a ship with 300 souls on board. We were to find out later that Seacat had 500 horse power all by herself. Technology had improved quite a bit in 160 years.

The second dive proceeded in similar fashion, and we really got a chance to see first hand how clear the water was and how nicely preserved this wreck was. In at least one place, the hatch of a cabin was perfectly preserved, and since everyone was supposed to rub the hinge of the hatch cover for luck, the hatch was shiny. Andy made great use of an underwater slate to tell us what to look at, and what we were seeing, and despite his assurances that lobsters were plentiful, we did not see any lobsters. With the depth being shallower, we had more air and could spend more time shooting pictures while exploring.

When we surfaced, however, I took out my log book and started tallying up the numbers. We were off the PADI charts! This was when I realized that dive guides tend to be a self-selected group of gung ho divers who trusted dive computers a little too much for my taste. While I understood that our dive profile was such that the dive computer probably gave us plenty of margin, I now see how it's possible to quickly get in trouble under-water. It is very easy to accidentally end up deeper than you originally wanted to go (nobody checks their depth gauges all the time), and no matter how carefully you stick to the dive tables, they are only theoretical models that tell nothing about what you as an individual might have as limits. I think before I do any more serious diving (with or without a guide) I'll have to acquire a dive computer.

Returning to Marina Cay, we had lunch at Pusser's, a chain outfit with branches seemingly everywhere in the BVI. The beach was warm and quite pretty, but as we walked around near mid-day, the temperature was such that I did not fancy sitting around. I asked Sadie if there were any dive spots available due to cancellations and indeed there was! Lisa and Heather had had enough diving for the day, but Przemek and I were not done, so at 3:00pm we saddled up again with a class full of British school kids and did our dive off at Diamond Reef. Diamond Reef earned its name because a honeymooning couple at Marina Cay dropped an engagement ring there, and it has apparently not been recovered yet. In any case, this dive was full of wildlife, but unfortunately the water had turned murky in the afternoon, giving us only 25 feet of visibility. Nevertheless, Andy managed to show me and Przemek a good time.

With 3 dives under our belt, by the time we returned to Marina Cay at 5:00pm it was quite cool and I was worn out. The ride back to Spanish Town gave us a gorgeous sunset. Upon returning, we got back to the boat and got reports from Lea and Hector --- they had rented motor-scooters and had gotten a nice tour of the island, including visiting what Hector said was the prettiest beach of the trip. We had dinner at the bar, and discussed our plans for tomorrow, the last full day of the trip. My EEE PC came out as folks checked their e-mail and Przemek finished up some work-related stuff that he hadn't gotten around to doing before arriving in St. Thomas. The food was passable but the service was atrocious, as was the norm for the islands. The marina had a air conditioned toilet but the showers were not hot. I thought we had free water at this marina, but apparently the line we were using the night before belonged to someone else and we had no access to water until the next morning, so it was another lukewarm shower to end the day. Lea also reported that she couldn't find anyone to work on our traveler. An early start therefore, was out of the question for the 4th, since I wanted full water tanks on the boat before departing. I wasn't worried about the traveler, though, since it seemed easy to fix, and it's possible to sail without it.

Day 10: January 2nd, 2008

I woke up at 5:00am due to rain on the roof. After running around closing hatches with Hector (who was sleeping on the deck due to the heat), I started making pancakes. Getting to wake the crew up early is much easier, I find, if there's a hot meal waiting for them. As the crew stirred, I went from pancakes to eggs, quickly snarfed up my breakfast, and went outside to start undoing the noise-dampening solution I had put up the night before.

Lea, Przemek, and Heather had never had spam before, so I quickly fried up some spam for lunch. As the crew made ready for our transit, I battened down the hatches and started up the engine for in preparation for dropping the mooring buoy. When everyone had given me the thumbs up, we shortened the dinghy painter line, turned Rya Jen around, and headed out of Pirate's Bight towards the Indians.

We raised the sails once we had the Indians behind us and immediately a squall came up and blew wind and rain at us. Since we were all acclimated to the otherwise warm weather, this caused everyone to break out their jackets and put it on. As the rain swept around us, however, we were treated to an outstanding light show --- crepuscular beams came through broken clouds, rainbows, double rainbows, and even a triple rainbow appeared no matter where we looked. We pointed the Rya Jen towards Road Town on Tortola, and soon enough the rain lifted and we were treated to our usual sunshine.

Lea took the helm and we came about towards Salt Island and Cooper Islands, but with the head wind it was slow going. To add tension to the matter while adjusting the sails to get us closer to the wind the port side traveler line broke. At the same time the boat got caught in irons due to an inopportune (and quite possibly accidental) coming about. I took the helm back. Sharp words were exchanged and recriminations spread. A dark cloud settled over the cockpit as we individually stewed about the situation. Przemek got repaired the traveler by tying a Triple Fisherman's Knot on the broken ends of the traveler line, which would at least hold the traveler in place and not let it flop all over the place. Having gotten the impromptu repair in place, the Rya Jen headed back on course, though not before we caught sight of a huge cruise liner coming towards Road Town.

We sailed past Salt Island, Cooper Island, Ginger Island, and headed towards Virgin Gorda. While most Yachtsmen headed towards the Bitter End Yacht Club, our desintation was the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor, first, for proximity to The Baths, but also for access to Dive BVI, who was providing us with dive facilities the next day.

We arrived at the harbor around 2:30pm, where we were directed to dock D. Apparently, they didn't provide specific slip numbers at this harbor. Not an issue, as there was a double wide slip available. Unfortunately, the wind blew our nose into the adjacent slip, and it took a bit of maneuvering before we got Rya Jen straightened out and properly tied up. This was definitely a trip full of difficult situations.

Having gotten tied up, the first order of business was to register and then to check with Dive BVI. When we arrived at the dive shop, however, we discovered that due to some misunderstanding, the dive tomorrow was not to the Rhone. To say that we were chest fallen upon hearing this news would have been an understatement. The shop employee, Casey, however, saw our distress and started calling around to see what she could do for us. Seeing her earnestness put my mind to rest, which meant that I immediately remembered that I had to get a replacement traveler line. So I left the negotiation of the next day's dive to Przemek, and went out to the yacht repair facilities, where they sold me forty feet of line for $36. It was interesting to see their yardage counting machine, as well as the heated wire they used to cut and fuse nylon lines.

On my return Przemek said that we apparently had two choices --- we could take the Rya Jen the next day to Marina Cay, where the dive expedition would leave for the Rhone, or we could leave her here, and take the dive boat along with the dive staff, but that would force us to stay at Marina Cay the whole afternoon. I was told that Marina Cay was only 4 miles away, but the truth was that Rya Jen was not a fast boat, and that would require waking up early to execute. In the mean time, we also had two non-divers who would like to tour Virgin Gorda, which we would have to leave stranded here if we were to take Rya Jen. A quick discussion had us all agreeing that it would be a good idea for the divers to take the staff boat and stay on Marina Cay.

Having agreed to stay on Marina Cay the rest of the day tomorrow, we realized that the only way us divers would get to see The Baths would be to see it today. So we quickly ate a little bit of lunch, got dressed, and went out to hail a taxi to the Baths. The taxi fare was only $3 a person, but when we got there at 4:30, as had been the case all through our trip, the ticket agent's office for paying the National Park fee was closed, so we got into the baths, grabbed the last locker free, and got into our snorkel gear.

Snorkeling the Baths was wonderful, as the rock, reefs, and water was clear, and the wildlife was plentiful. Lisa and I took off on our own and saw a manta ray, a flat fish (my first), many urchins, and lots of little nooks and crannies that were very very pretty. By about 5:20 we had tired of snorkelling and emerged ashore to see Hector. Hector excitedly started telling me about this 10-minute hike to explore the caves, which was a 10 minute hike to Devil's Bay that was both an adventure and very pretty.

With that recommendation, Lisa and I had to go explore, and we hurriedly went on our way before the sunset. The caves lived up to their billing as we had to step up over wooden stairs, climbed boulders with rocks, and in general hunt through the trails. Every nook and canny was delightful, however, and we got to Devil's Bay just in time to see the sunset behind some rocks. We headed back to the start of the trail to look for the others, but only found Heather and Hector, with no sign of Przemek and Lea.

As the beach grew dark, I started getting worried and berated myself for not remembering to pack a flashlight along with our gear. But right around 6:15 as it started to get really dark, Lea and Przemek were spotted snorkelling back to the beach. All was well, and we hurried back up to the road in the dwindling light. Our cab driver was waiting for us, and happily took us back.

Przemek volunteered to make us a pasta dinner. I showed Lea where all the water ports were, and borrowed a free water line from one of our neighbors, and started filling our water tanks. Since the line was leaky, it took an inordinate amount of time, but I wanted Lea to know at least how to fill the tanks so she could do so tomorrow if she had time. I had a chance to chat with our British neighbor, who was sailing for two weeks on the same class of boat we had (and in fact, also owned a Beneteau '39 back home in sunny England). He had only four people on his boat, however, and said that it's about the right amount of room. Every one was involved in doing laundry, cooking dinner, taking a shower, or some other mundane task, so by the time dinner was ready, it was 8:30pm. Given the level of hunger we all had, Przemek's delicious dinner was quickly dispatched and then after some time sitting and chatting, Lea, Heather, and Przemek headed over to the bar while Lisa, Hector and I got some sleep. It had been an eventful day, and I was quite tired.

Day 9: New Year's Day, January 1st, 2008

I woke up at 6:30 and heated up some water to make a breakfast out of oatmeal. I then lifted out the bilge to make sure we weren't sinking, and checked the engine's transmission belt, as told to do every day during the checkout. Lea was kind enough to shuttle us to the dinghy dock, where we were to rendevous with Miss Lavelle, the boat we chartered to go diving.

At the dinghy dock we met Brian, who was to be our boat driver and guide for the day. Perhaps one look at the equipment that Miss Lavelle came with, however, should have put me off. The equipment looked worn --- the BCD units were obviously sun-faded. Brian suggested that he take us out to the Rhone, but no, we told him that we were scheduled to do the Rhone on Thursday, and that we wanted to dive the Indians, which were really close.

As a first dive, then, Brian proposed Spyglass Wall. This was an easy dive, that should give us good access to wildlife, with a fine sand bottom at 60'. It should have been a bad sign that Brian motored around the north shore of Norman Island, and then suddenly made a U turn before spotting the mooring buoy. I grabbed the boat hook, went up onto the bow and tied us onto the mooring buoy. Brian shouted directions at me, but I had already cleated both ends of the boat to it, so when he got up to the front he stared and did a double take and said, "Wow, a real skipper-quality job --- you've already got everything done right."

So we dived Spyglass wall. Unfortunately, I felt stuffed up in my nose, and had a very hard time equalizing all the way down. This was pretty strange as the day before I had no problems whatsoever equalizing while diving. I have no idea what changed, but after what seemed like ages (but was really only about 10 minutes), my nose cleared up and I could equalize once more, with the familiar squeak in my ears whenever I pinched my nose and blew. Spyglass wall had a nice sandy bottom, and some pretty sights, but it was definitely an easy dive --- we swirled around lazily. But it irritated me that Brian was just swimming strongly ahead of us, and did not make much effort into pointing out interesting locations --- it was as though he just wanted to make time rather than diving.

When we emerged from the water, it was 30 minutes later, and we had gone to 75', right at the ragged edge of the PADI dive table. This was when I realized that most guides in the BVI relied not on dive tables, but on dive computers. While a dive computer can be accurate and good, my acquaintance Philip Greenspun had gotten decompression illness relying on a dive computer. The PADI dive tables are a lot more conservative than the dive computers (especially on multi-level dive profiles and multiple dive per day scenarios), and are less likely to lead to problems. It was at this point that I realized how rare it was to find a dive operator like Dive Experience which at no point during our 5 dives with them exceeded what the tables told us was allowable. When I blew my nose after getting back on board, blood and mucus flowed out of my nose, but since I was prone to a bloody nose anyway, I didn't think it a big deal (and apparently it isn't).

Motoring over to the Indians was no effort, as was tying up. I was getting good at this mooring thing now. We waited for an hour for the required service interval, and did the dive down to about 50 feet of water. Now this was the dive that convinced me that Brian didn't know what he was doing. The book specified a dive through, and exploration of the wall and low depth. We ended up at 60', and I saw Brian surface several times because he was lost! This was ridiculous. Not only was this a bad use of time, but because he was tied to a dive computer and we weren't, we were effectively getting different numbers out of our dive than he was. Fortunately, it just wasn't that big a deal for this shallow a dive. I should have said something to him, because it was a waste of our precious dive time. I should have just followed the book I had and read it instead of having him as a dive guide. C'est la Vie.

Upon returning to Norman Island we found that the rest of the Rya Jen crew had slept till around 11:00, gotten out the kayaks, and then kayaked to shore for lunch. We joined them for lunch, and then tried to figure out what to do. I wanted to go out to Water Point to do some more snorkeling, though I wouldn't have been averse to seeing the caves again either. It didn't take much to persuade everyone else, so Lea kayaked back to Rya Jen to pick up the dinghy and motor back for us.

Once back onto Rya Jen, we discovered that we had left Przemek's snorkel on Miss Lavelle, so he couldn't go with us. No problem, he decided he'd try the kayak and join us at Water Point. On the way to Water Point we saw the Megayacht Olga dropping its big huge anchor right outside Pirate's Bight. Water Point itself was a rocky beach where we could bury the dinghy's anchor amongst rock. As we approached the beach, however, I heard a thud and the outboard shut off. The outboard had hit a rock! Fortunately, there was no damage as I could tell (or so I thought at that time), so I lifted the outboard out of the water and we started our snorkeling. It didn't take 3 minutes before I spotted a huge sea turtle! I called everyone over, and we watched as it started swimming into the open water. Lisa and I followed it along, its flippers moving gracefully, nonchalantly, with not a care in its world.

As it swam off, we explored the area, seeing lots of beautiful wildlife, though perhaps not in as much abundance as what we had seen the day before. After a good hour or so, Przemek showed up in his kayak! At this point, everyone was pretty done with snorkeling (really, what could you see to beat seeing a sea turtle up close and personal?), and a hike was proposed. Przemek didn't enjoy kayaking, so I switched with him and kayaked back to the Rya Jen while he joined the others in the dinghy. It actually didn't take me that much longer to get to the boat than the dinghy, despite the headwind on the return, but I was pretty tired when I got back. Nevertheless, I was greedy for more adventure and decided to join everyone else on the hike.

The hike up to Spyglass hill and around the western end of Norman Island was beautiful, with a surprising number of hermit crabs, and strangely enough, a helipad on top of the ridge. Well, perhaps not so strange, given what we were to see later in the week.

Back on the boat, I dug up the BBQ and assembled it over the transom. Hector had the most experience with BBQ, and after struggling a bit to light it in the increasing wind, actually got it lit, and started preparing to BBQ some tilapia he had bought earlier. The boat was starting to fill up with garbage, so I hailed Deliverance over the VHF to get them to come and take some of it away. Since it was quite dark, they actually had a very difficult time finding us, so they had to hail us and get us to flash our steaming lights a few times until they had visual contact. Upon their second visit, we bought again some expensive groceries, and asked them if they owned this business --- it turned out that the two women were employed by some grumpy old man, they said, but they were having fun and it did seem at least an entertaining job.

After dinner, we noticed a clanking sound coming from the front of the boat. Upon examination, it was the mooring line lifting the anchor up every once in a while and then letting it down with a kathunk. Our solution was to get out an extra line and wrap it under the anchor so it wouldn't move as much With that, we retired early, for the next day was going to be a day of beating against the wind.

Frame under construction

Yup! Carl has started on my frame!

Day 8: New Year's Eve, December 31st 2007

We woke up to find that there was no water pressure, at all in the marina. Given that we had just ran out of water the night before, this made getting water a high priority before departing. The crew separated to take showers and get further provisions, while I hunted the marina for the dock-master to get water.

At 8:30, the dockmaster appeared at my slip and said: "You're a lucky man. I hunted for you all night last night, and couldn't find you before I had to leave. Now this morning you're first in line, and just as I find you, the water gets turned on." It turned out that it was the policy of the entire island to turn off the water, and Sopher's Hole, being at the extreme end of the Island felt the water pressure last water last. It took me a while to fill the nearly empty aft tank and top off the nearly full forward tank. While I was at it, I looked more carefully at the ship's operations manual and discovered where the tank switching valve was --- it turned out we were supposed to drain the forward tank first, so I flipped the switches.

After that, it was a matter of chasing down the crew, getting our water and docking bills paid and casting off. Leaving Sopher's hole, we raised the sails and immediately starting reaching for Norman Island. Norman Island is well known for being the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island," as well as appearing in the Pirates of the Carriean movies. We sailed along the Sir Francis Drake channel, tacking back and forth between Tortola and St. John Islands. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing hard enough to force us to reef the jib. Soon after Norman Island came in sight, a woman in a small dinghy motored out beside us, dug out a huge SLR that had been carefully waterproofed, and starting shooting away. A look at the insignia on her dinghy showed that she was part of Yacht Shots BVI. The results were amazing looking, though the prices seemed pretty high.

Przemek was eager to take the helm, and we slowly made our way around until at about 2pm we sailed into Pirate's Bight, dropped the sails, and proceeded to attempt to pick up a mooring buoy. All I can say is that I'm glad that we arrived early, because the pick up attempts were hilarious, and not very effective. I think we tried at least 3 times to pick up the buoy pennant, dropping the boat hook into the water once. Eventually one of our neighbors got frustrated with watching us, and three of them got into a dinghy and picked up the pennant. They then held it up high, hoping that our puny boat hook would finally be able to grab it. Unfortunately, as I was manuevering, one of them leaned the wrong way and fell out of the dinghy right in front of the boat! Fortunately, nobody got hurt and after one more pass we finally managed to get moored. I was quite embarrassed --- while docking and anchoring are maneuvers I have ample practice with, picking up a mooring buoy is not, and it isn't something I have occasion to practice either, in the Bay Area. Having finally tied up to the mooring, we then pondered what to do. I proposed a trip to the caves, a place known for the quality of the snorkeling. My proposal was quickly accepted, but before we left, Przemek and I took 3 beers out of the cooler, and dinghy'd over to our friends to thank them for helping us with our mooring difficulties. They were delighted to greet us, and asked us to stay, but we had things to see and do, so we stopped only for a perfunctory visit, and told them we'd be at the floating restuarant (the Willie T) later in the evening.

The dinghy over to the caves was uneventful, and we tied up a red mooring buoy because all the blue ones were taken. The snorkeling, however, was nothing short of amazing. If you don't want to dive, the caves at Norman Island has everything you might want to see without having to strap on a SCUBA unit. We swam, snorkeled, skin-dived, and generally enjoyed the scenery. Unfortunately, at this point, the camera battery died, so I have no pictures of the next day's dive.

Upon return, Lisa had prepared a pre-dinner snack of steamed roots, which everyone devoured with great relish. At 6:00pm, the supply boat Deliverance showed up. We hailed them and paid an outrageous amount for fresh brownies, fruit, and so forth. Then a quick visit to Willie T, which was pretty much a floating restaurant, where we discovered that we were early enough to not need reservations. Dining on the floating boat felt much more stable than dining on the Rya Jen, but as expected, the meals were expensive and so were the drinks.

We then returned to the boat around 7:30pm. Pirate's Bight had an obvious party going on --- the music was loud, and there was apparently quite a crowd there, which we could see from Rya Jen. Around us, we finally noticed that the Bay was filled with boats --- nearly every mooring buoy was taken. Just outside the Bay, a couple of mega-yachts were parked, and one of them was lit up like a Christmas Tree. This was definitely not a wilderness experience, unlike my prior sailing cruise.

Przemek and Lea wanted to go to the party, but the rest of the crew vetoed all of us going there, so we decided to have a party on the boat. We unpacked all our junk food, took the champagne and apple cider out of the coolers, and proceeded to have a great time. At 10:00pm, everyone was sufficiently worn out, and most of us retired while Przemek and Lea went to the Bight to see the party up close and personal.

Having checked that the mooring line was secure and the boat was in good shape, I put on ear plugs so as to block out the noise from the Bight and slept a good night's sleep.

Day 7: December 30th, 2007

I woke up to a gloriously beautiful morning, despite the heaving the night before and the rain in the early morning, a pattern that would recur throughout the trip. I made pancakes for breakfast by 7:30am, and by 8:00, everyone had eaten. The mooring buoys in the national park said that you had to pay $15 a night, but since no one would come to pick it up we would have to get ashore to pay. After some amount of effort, Hector and I got the kayaks down and Heather and I on the tandem kayak with Hector on a single kayak and then paddled to shore.

At shore, Hector and Heather walked over to the campground HQ to try to pay for the buoy, but found that they could not pay there. They did find a store and bought some coffee with the $15 we had brought to pay for our mooring. Upon returning to the Rya Jen to report our findings, we decided that the place was too pretty not to stick around, and spent most of the rest of the morning snorkeling and kayaking in the area.

Hence, it was 11:00am by the time we were done playing, and dropped our mooring buoy to head over to Soper's hole. Just before we left, however, I got a demonstration of why it was so nice to vacation in the Virgin Islands. As Lisa got off the Kayak onto Rya Jen, she dropped her mask and snorkel. In San Francisco or the Pacific Northwest, that would have been it. Here, I jumped into the water, hyper-ventilated, and skin dove down 25' below Rya Jen to pick up the snorkel. My ears hurt like hell due to inadequate equalization, but recovery of mask and snorkel was never in question. Chris had mentioned that it was a mere 15 minutes from Cinnamon Bay, but the reality was that it took the better part of an hour to get there. Once there, we could not find any available mooring (the customs dock being restricted only to ferries and commercial vessels) to clear customs. In desperation, I taught Heather VHF protocol, had her hail the marina and got a slip assignment. Once docked at the slip, however, we were told that we had to clear customs before even doing anything as silly as getting a slip, so Lea, Heather, and I hopped onto the dinghy with all our passports and headed over there to check in.

Outside the customs and immigration office I looked for Przemek and didn't see him. Going into the office I tried to figure out how the clearing customs process worked. I then got the idea --- I had to clear the vessel, go next door to pay for it, and then come back to do immigration for the people on board. Upon exiting the office I found Przemek already talking to Heather and Lea.

I met Pzemek Pardyak 15 years ago in graduate school at the University of Washington, where we shared a few projects together and spent quite a bit of leisure time together. While everyone else was studying Computer Science I learned to backpack, sail, mountain bike, and repair bicycles. I guess I was cut out for doing things other than studying for a PhD, hence I dropped out after just one year of graduate school. Pzemek also dropped out, but much much later, to start a successful company (Performant). In any case, I remember this Polish gentleman of my height as being exceedingly smart, funny, and a good practical person to have around, so I was glad that he made the trip.

The customs paper work took a huge amount of time, and when all was said and done the cruising permit cost $165 (includig overtime pay for coming into customs on a Sunday), and the customs processing cost $17. We headed back to the Rya Jen, which had now a crew of 6, and had a late lunch while we made plans. With Przemek in our party, it became pretty easy to make the decisions --- Przemek prioritized doing more dives ahead of everything else, including the New Year's party at Joost Van Dyke. Upon checking with the local Dive shop (Bluewater Dive Adventures), we discovered to our dismay that the dive shop was booked up for the entire week with no possibility of adding divers or picking up a rendezvous with us.

Thus, Przemek got out his phone and we started going down the list in Diving British Virgin Islands and started calling shops to check availability of dives. We managed to get Sunchaser to agree to a Rendezvous charter (though at an outrageous price), and Dive BVI had a dive to the Rhone on Thursday the 3rd. With our dive schedules filled, we then planned the schedule around the dives --- Norman Island for the night of New Year's Eves and New Years Day itself, followed by Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor for the next two days after that for the Rhone.

Our schedule settled, I then worked on getting the boat provisioned. Unfortunately, all the stores were closed at 3:30pm on a Sunday. I then tried to get the boat refilled with water. Soper's Hole Marina prided itself on being a full service marina, which ironically meant that I had to wait for the dock-master to come by with a pipe so I could fill Rya Jen's 240 liter tanks. But everyone else wanted to eat before it got too dark to go out with the Dinghy, so all of us took the dinghy over to the Jolly Roger for dinner. The dinner there was nondescript but Przemek saw a huge lobster and decided he had to have lobster for dinner while in the Virgin Islands.

Day 6: December 29th, 2008

I slept well on the boat, but Hector complained about the heat, which would turn out to be an incessant complaint for him the rest of the trip.

After I got myself organized and had breakfast, I found that it was already 8am and impossible to find Lea, who had gone off to get breakfast. While hanging around the CYOA office, a man came to me and introduced himself as Chris, the man who would perform our checkout for us. When Lea was ready, we got together with Chris and systematically went over the boat and where everything was.

The checkout was a thorough process, but CYOA was the first company I've worked with where the assumption is that you know what you're doing and not an idiot out to wreck their boat, which made the process a lot more relaxing than other companies I've worked with in the past. This meant that our questions were answered with respect, and our concerns were addressed. We covered local anchorages as well --- discussing what places were good, and Chris offered suggestions as to where we could meet with Przemek --- after considering all the possibilities, Soper's Hole was the obvious choice, with the first night in St. John.

We then took the boat out for a sail. CYOA's slips were unusual. The boats are parked stern to, and instead of the slip leading out along the beam of the boat, all there was along the side was a couple of pilings with the boats tied to them. This was a Mediterranean style mooring, implying that the tides in the area did not vary much. What impressed me was how narrow the space between pilings were --- there was no way I could get the boat out by myself, so I was very curious and expected to see a display of virtuoso seamanship. Imagine my disappointment, then, when Chris said that he would have a man in a dinghy push the bow out. I was even more disappointed to see the side of the boat scape along the piling almost all the way along the beam on the exit. And this was something that Chris called "as good as it gets."

Fortunately, CYOA knew enough to let customers attempt coming back to the slips this way, so I knew I would not have to try to reverse engineer this feat. My fears were further allayed when Chris asked me to take the boat's helm and raise the main. With Hector at the winch, the sail came out and even in the relative shelter of the harbor, Rya Jen practically leaped. Unfurling the jib proved similarly beautiful, though perhaps Chris expressed just a bit too much surprise that the sails were intact and unpatched. I was surprised that the checkout process was so easy --- other places I had chartered with usually wanted you to demonstrate the ability to leave and return to a narrow slip, but CYOA had no such facilities. Nevertheless, with the check out complete, a dinghy came out to pick up Chris, and we were handed our dinghy (number 24), and we were on our way!

Coming out of Charlotte Amelie harbor at 11:30am, we immediately found ourselves in a close reach against fairly heavy seas towards St. John, our first stop for the night. After an hour of sailing, I began to realize that I needed to take Chris' word with a grain of salt --- while a half hour sail to St. John might be feasible for a high powered motorboat, the Rya Jen was a beamy sailboat not designed for speed. The result was that it was 2pm by the time we rounded Dog Island and realized that we'd better do some motoring if we expected to get to a mooring buoy before it got dark, especially against the wind.

So I turned on the engine and we motored our way through the straits, avoiding Cruz Bay (prohibited by CYOA's charter rules), bypassing Caneel Bay, and finally making our way past the Johnson Reef to Cinnamon Bay. There, we found a mooring buoy and discovered that picking up a mooring buoy was not easy, and in fact Lea dropped the boat hook while reaching for it, necessitating a swim to pick it up. After another try we picked it up and tied it down, and discovered to our dismay that the line frequently reached under our anchor and was in danger of chafing it, despite the bluntness of our Bruce Anchor.

Nevertheless, the quiet and beauty of the surroundings was undeniable, and I had an immediate urge to go for a swim. Putting on my mask and snorkel, I swam for the reefs and found plenty to look at before sundown, whereupon Hector cooked some burgers while the stars rose up around us.

That night, I got up several times in the night to check to see if the line would chafe, but each time there was no sign of trouble at all, despite what seemed to be fairly heavy swells. At 4am, I woke again to spray on my face, and immediately ran around Rya Jen closing hatches. Others awoke as well and helped out the haggard skipper. This pattern would recur almost every night, but it really was too warm to sleep with the hatches closed. I eventually learned to leave the hatches opened just a hair, which would create a breeze to cool me, but not cause the bunk to get wet if a big storm come through. Of course, a fine mist on my face would still wake me, but as skipper of the Rya Jen, it was my responsibility to wake up and check on the boat's condition anyway.

Review: Dive Shops in the Virgin Islands

If there's anything I learned on this trip, it is that it is nearly impossible to get a good gauge of dive shops over the internet. We went with three dive outfits on this trip, and while only one was really really bad, two of them had what I consider substandard equipment --- leaking tanks or BCDs. The thing is that the prices don't vary much between dive shops --- you pay pretty much the same amount per dive, whether you're using top of the line premium gear, or junky old crap, so you might as well go with the best. In order of best to worst, here is a brief review of each shop:

DiveBVI: Hands down the best shop we tried. Their gear is brand new, and looks it. There were no leaks in the BCDs or the tanks. Everything fit. The weight belts are labeled and marked with the weights. Best of all, their guides (the one we interacted with was a gentleman from the UK named Andy) are competent, effective, communicate well, friendly, and intelligent. They'll double check your stuff and notice if you've got the wrong gear on. The energy is palpable, and they aim to give you the best experience. Their shop staff is also incredibly accommodating --- we showed up on a Wednesday afternoon to confirm our reservation to dive the Rhone. Due to some sort of error, it turned out that they didn't do the Rhone on Thursday from the location we were at. The shop staff (Casey)literally moved heaven and earth so we could do the Rhone on Thursday. Highly highly recommended. If I were to return to the British Virgin Islands for a dive trip there is no question in my mind that I will sign with these guys.

Dive Experience: Their instructors are great. They have a fast boat with a wide range, and very competent staff --- I saw them moor to a buoy, discover that the buoy was not tied down with divers in the water, and then recover the divers and connect to another buoy without a hitch. Their prices are very good, and they work hard, even when other shops are closed. Their recommendations for the hotel are spot on. There are other shops where the diving is closer (so you can do your surface interval on shore), but I had no regrets about choosing Dive Experience. The equipment however, is a bit old, and their tanks leak and are the heavy kind, which means that your weight settings won't be as dialed in after working with them. Not a big deal, but I suspect that this sort of thing doesn't happen with DiveBVI.

Killbrides Sunchaser Scuba: Avoid at all costs! The equipment is so old and worn you can see fraying on the BCDs. Everything leaked. Worse, the guide we had was a moron --- he clearly didn't know the terrain, but didn't tell us. If he had, we would have opted to guide ourselves and would not have gotten lost and would have seen more. I will definitely not go with these guys for any trip, no matter how desperate I am. My time, energy, and life is worth too much.

All these places and more are listed in Diving British Virgin Islands. When I asked people for recommendations, frequently they tell me that things change frequently in the BVIs, so recommendations can change year over year. But I suspect that the relative rankings here should be stable for at least a couple of years.

Day 5: December 29th, 2007

We woke up early this morning to check out of the hotel and wait by the scale house, where the Carribean Adventure Tours company would come and pick us up. We discovered that they were a dive shop as well, located right by Salt River National Park.

After an initial briefing, we were soon on a kayak, paddling right into what seemed to be a massive gale, though in reality it was only a 20mph wind (but cycling into a 20mph wind is no fun either). The guide delighted in pointing wrecked boats, telling us the date and the name of the hurricane where the damage was done, as well as what happened to the owner. When asked why the wrecks were still around, the reply was that the owners had elected to pay a $2000 fine to the National Park Service, whereupon their responsibility was wiped clean and the wreck now belonged to the Park, which had neither the money nor the wherewithal to dispose of the wrecks.

After the sad stories, we beached for a short hike to Columbus Landing, where Christopher Columbus first visited the Virgin Islands. The guide first pointed us at an Acacia tree, with its paralyzing neurotoxin --- they were introduced by the slave-owning planation owners to surround their planations to prevent slaves from escaping. Apparently, the Acacia grew thick enough that slaves were frequently impaled so deeply that limbs would have to be amputated.

Then an introduction to a native plant called Manchineel that bore fruit like that of a crab apple but was extremely poisonous --- ingestion would quickly cause death through the disintegration of the stomach lining. Even sheltering under the tree in a rainstorm was dangerous, for the sap was acidic and could burn off the faces of those such "sheltered".

The return, via a tailwind, was quite fast. There, we were given a ride to the Seaborne Terminal, where we were put on a wait list for an earlier flight than the one I had booked. While we got the seats, the plane itself was late. The sea-plane (a Twin Otter DHC-6) was considerably bigger than the Cessna that Cape Air flew, and getting onto the plane was a lot like getting onto a boat, via a ladder on the floats. The plane was fascinating --- it truly seemed to be designed to be flown by two pilots cooperatively. The take off and landing were also characteristically different, with the slicing and floaty feel that you don't get with landbound boats. The flight also took only 20 minutes, but had another advantage --- the seaplane terminal dropped us 3 blocks from CYOA yacht charters, which was where we were to pick up the boat. Walking past the post office the MacDonald's, we found ourselves at the Hook, Line and Sinker restaurant, where we sat down for lunch. While waiting for food, I walked over to the charter company, where I was told that our boat, Rya Jen, was waiting for us.

Rya Jen, a Beneteau 39.3 sloop, was designed for casual sailing and cruising --- it had a furling jib, furling mast for the main sail, carried 119 gallons of water, and 36 gallons of diesel fuel. It had a fully functioning electric refrigerator, a propane powered stove and oven, and was furnished with 3 cabins and 2 heads. The truth was that I didn't want a super huge boat for the trip, but I still wanted 3 cabins to host 6 people. Of course, after booking the boat, I discovered that I had a lot of trouble recruiting people for a trip like this, so perhaps I over-reached a bit. Next time, I'll either get a bigger boat or a smaller crew.

We unpacked in our cabin and barely got settled in before the first of our guests showed up, Hector Yee. Hector's an engineer at Google, and also grew up in Singapore. Upon his arrival, he immediately took a shower, unpacked, and we headed out to provision the boat. Provisioning a boat for a week long trip for 6 people is a lot like shopping for a household full of squabbling kids, except in this case, we didn't really know what people like or didn't like, so ended up shopping blind. Fortunately, the pressure was off because we knew we didn't have to provision for every meal --- we expected that some meals would be taken off the boat. Nevertheless, by the time we were done we had $320 in costs.

By the time we were back at the boat, the two other women we had expected to meet were there, settled into the boat which I had locked --- it turned out that they had spoke with the charter company, and they had let them in. It turned out the hatch covers were easily unlatched from the outside and a sufficiently lithe or skinny person could just squeeze through and unlock the boat from the inside. Rya Jen was not designed for security.

Lea Widdice sailed with me 10 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, where she started the trip knowing nothing about sailing and ending the trip versant in handling the helm, the ropes. She did every job well, and she did it without complaining, even when I was. Now a pediatrician in Cincinnati, she was the one who prodded me into finally putting together this trip.

Heather Kelley was between jobs, having given up her salaried position to be a visiting professor at CMU in the coming semester, I knew nothing about her except that Lea had asked her to come along on this trip, which was good enough for me.

We walked out to the waterfront and had dinner at a random restaurant. The dinner was nothing to write home about for me, but gave us ample time to get to know each other, and to brief each other about what to expect the next day. We agreed to shoot for the earliest possible departure the next day, since it was impossible to tell when or whether Przemek was going to get here.

Day 4: 27th December 2007

We woke up to a wet floor, evidence that an storm had blown through over the night and our open balcony could be a liability as well as an asset. We had heard one of the cleaning ladies tell a hotel resident not to leave their balconies open.

We had a late day, with Lisa getting her massage in the morning and I doing laundry and setting up a kayak trip for the next morning. While doing laundry, I met a retired IT manager named Steven. Steven worked for AT&T for 30 years, going from a technician to becoming a manager of about a dozen folks or so. He was probably one of the last folks to retire with a pension from AT&T and he knew it. After retiring, he spent a year playing around and went back to work for ABC News. But after just 2 years, he said he couldn't stand working for the man anymore and retired. My EEE PC interested him, and we chatted quite a bit about technology. He told me that at one time he too, was interested in SCUBA and all that but now he felt too old and just wanted to do nothing. I bit my tongue and didn't say anything, for the owner of Dive Experience, Michelle Pugh, was in her 60s and still diving at least once a week. I asked Steven how he afforded to stay in St. Croix for a whole month on a fixed income. The story, it turned out was that a few years ago the Hotel on the Cay was in financial trouble and was fearing bankruptcy. He happened to stay there at the time, and they offered him a week long timeshare for $900. That was an incredible deal, so he took it. When he got home, they called him again, and offered him an additional two weeks for another $900. They returned the next year and liked it so much that they bought another week. Being from New York, having a warm place to escape to in winter for his retirement appealed very much to him.

Lisa & I then had lunch at the new restaurant at the end of the boardwalk called Angry Nates. They had impressively fast service, and I was very pleased with the meal. We then met up with Gary in the afternoon for the drive to Frederiksted Pier for our pier dive. I picked this dive partly so that I could get a chance to see a different town, and partly because Lisa was getting leery of boat dives for the obvious reasons.

Gary was a transplant from Austin Texas, where he worked for IBM. When choosing a place to retire, he and his wife settled on St. Croix because of the climate, the US dollar economy, and the availability of dive-related jobs. The negative, he said was that they had to give up cycling on St. Croix --- there weren't that many good roads, and the roads were narrow and had no shoulder. For me, that would be an unacceptable compromise, but I guess most people aren't cycling fanatics.

Gary was quite clearly frustrated by the politics on St. Croix --- the situation was such that corruption was rampant, so improvement to infrastructure, education, and even economic development was stunted at a colonial level, which he was unhappy about. As we drove to Fredericksted he talked about how the cruise ship industry passed by St. Croix in favor of other destinations such as St. Thomas, Road Town in the BVI, or San Martin. As a result, the downtown was gutted, and the dive shop where he used to work had closed.

The dive off the pier was fascinating. It's not very deep, so air lasted a good long time. The amount of diversity and natural life was great. We saw sea cucumbers, urchin, shrimp, crab, and many other fish that I couldn't identify. Gary was a great guide, pointing out the fish, coral, and naming them. We then exited through a challenging rock bound area behind a gate.

Dinner that night was once again at Angry Nates, where the food was fabulous and the service slower than at lunch but still astonishingly fast by island standards. What cinched the evening for me was, however, a theft. The table outside ours had four island residents sitting down to a dinner. Midway through their dinner, I saw a blur followed by "Stop!" Someone had ran by their table and swiped the cell phone and ran off. A policeman came by surprisingly fast, but from listening to the after-action conversation it was quite obvious that the residents thought that the policeman might have been in cahoots with the thief. All thoughts of a retirement in the Virgin Islands disappeared from my mind with the witnessing of this incident --- while there are many libertarians and republicans who argue that rising inequality is not of a concern, here was proof that given sufficient inequality, even the system itself would become corrupt and untrustworthy, for middle-class individuals who couldn't afford their own security or private cooks.

Review: EEE PC

Now that I've had a chance to use the Asus EEE PC on an extended trip, I can write my review.

First off, my configuration: One of the first things I did was to get my brother to install a 2GB DIMM on it. There's a little sticky note on the back of the machine that warns of voiding the warranty, but that's not enforceable under California law, so I was in no danger there anyway. The default Xandros installation, however, was configured to only recognize 1GB of RAM, so the next step was to ditch it and install Windows XP. There were a few good reasons to install XP anyway, since (1) the wireless connection manager for Xandros is horrible, requiring you to type in your WPA password every time, and never remembering your wireless settings, and (2) Picasa, the killer app for organizing photos only runs on Windows. For external storage, I found an old 1GB SD card and stuck it into the machine. Using Portable Apps, I installed OpenOffice and a surprisingly large number of applications to it.

One of the big questions is battery life. To a large extent, I think this is a red-herring --- once spare batteries become widely available, the EEE PC's batteries are so light that carrying one or two extra just won't be any burden whatsoever. In the mean time, though, I am happy to report that the battery lasted me a full 4 hour flight from Puerto Rico to Washington Dulles with time left to spare, despite someone else having used the machine prior to check e-mail.

The screen, small as it is, is plenty big to watch several episodes of The Queen's Classroom in bed at our hotel. How did I get the movies into so little storage? It turns out that the ipod is the ideal external hard drive for the EEE PC. Of course, if you're watching movies off the ipod's hard drive, you need the EEE PC to be tethered to a wall socket --- otherwise, the ipod will happily suck all the juice out of the puny battery. With iTunes installed, the EEE PC will also happily play any music from the ipod on its speakers.

With WiFi availability in our hotel, Lisa used Yahoo! messenger to make phone calls back to the US. None of us had friends with video cams attached to their machines, but if we had, video skype or yahoo messenger would have worked for us as well.

All through the Virgin Islands trip, every time we stopped at a port that even had a hint of internet access, the EEE PC was a fought over by members of the crew so they could check e-mail. While lots of people make comments about the small keyboard, except for one person I didn't really hear any complaints about the size of it, and I had no trouble adapting to it or writing relatively long documents on it. (A friend borrowed it to do some urgent work during the trip) I never felt cramped for storage --- though if you're traveling with friends I would definitely recommend setting up a guest account so your friends can check e-mail without you having to log in for them.

When folks had pictures in their digital cameras they wanted backed up, we backed them up onto the ipod. A tip --- you can also use Picasa directly to view the photos on the SD card without copying them to external storage, use the "Add Folder to Picasa" option, and Picasa will display those pictures and allow you to manipulate them directly on the SD card. (By the way, Picasa made converts of even the Mac fanatics amongst my crew, one of whom kept bugging me to do something to bring Picasa to the Mac)

All in all, this is the first laptop I've ever paid for with my own money, and now that it is easily purchased and widely available, I can say, "Highly recommended." It truly is a go-anywhere, fully featured machine with lots of capability. For the price ($400, which hardly anyone believes), it does as much as my much more expensive work supplied Thinkpad X61, but at one quarter of the cost, and 25% less weight. It is the first laptop I'll consider bringing on my next bike tour.

Day 3: 26th December 2007

The morning found us once again at the dive shop getting our gear ready. Unfortunately, I seemed to be doing a good job losing gear --- first, the rubber ring holding the snorkel to the mask, and then also defogger. Fortunately, neither item was expensive. Lisa took some Bonine to prevent further seasickness.

The Bonine seemed to work as the boat to the dive (Cane Bay) didn't seem to affect her at all, and we got through most of the skills tests on the third dive. Unfortunately, while doing the last skill test, Lisa's BCD broke and started leaking, so I once again had to demonstrate the tired diver tow. Fortunately, it turned out to be an easy fix, so we could perform a fourth dive.

Our fourth dive (at Twin Anchors) was fun, because we had already covered so much material that our time with Gary was mostly for exploration. The PADI recreation diving program seemed to be oriented entirely towards recruiting new divers, which I wish the cycling instruction community would adopt.

Our tests were not over, however --- we had to still demonstrate our comfort in the water by swimming and treading water, which we did in the water in the marina by jumping off the boat, treading water for several minutes and swimming to shore. I discovered that despite my perception that diving was not particularly strenuous (the training materials spend a lot of time warning against unnecessary movement and over exertion), it did wear me out quite a bit, and I was tired by the end. We then did the celebratory paperwork to get our certificates, and then immediately scheduled a fun dive for the next day.

I returned to the hotel to find that one of my crew, Przemek Pardyak had business related reasons and had to delay his flight by a day. Since it was pretty much impossible to sync up, I brain stormed a number of possibilities and worked out a few scenarios. Lisa and I then took some time to explore the now fully active, post-holiday town. I walked down to the Seaborne Airlines departure dock and confirmed our flight.

For dinner that night, we found food in a nondescript restaurant where the waiter told us about his job as a commercial hard-hat diver in Seattle. I guess dive junkies not only dive as a job, but on vacation serve as waiters in warm places so they can get their dive fix in. I'm not sure I am that enamored of diving, but since I had gotten my certification, it seemed like I should give it time to see how I liked it.

Day 2: Christmas Day

One of the reasons I picked Dive Experience for our lessons was that they were doing dives even on Christmas Day, albeit a late one. The net result was that we had a nice leisurely breakfast, and walked down to the shop for our first dive only at 11pm. As I walked along, I recalled having a conversation a while back with my co-worker Meng. At that point, we were discussing the popularity of tropical islands as a vacation destination. My statement went something like: "I don't understand why anyone goes to one for vacation. I grew up on one, and don't see the appeal." Meng's reply was, "Yeah, tropical islands are over-rated." It was only after visiting St. Croix that I realized that I grew up on a pretty crappy tropical island. St. Croix was warm (80-85 degrees) but not unbearably hot. Unlike Singapore, though, St. Croix had low humidity, and that made walking around quite comfortable. The waters in St. Croix are also clear, blue and clean, unlike the green waters that I had grown up swimming in. I could definitely see paying to come here again.

Our first dive was to be a simple one, simply to explore and enjoy being under water. The boat took us to Eagle Ray, a 60' dive where our dive instructor, Gary Trommer took us on a leisurely exploration of the area. Diving is definitely a strange experience --- there is a ton of equipment to carry, and it's a pain to manage and use, but once in the water it is not cumbersome and easy to cope with. The sensation of floating and breathing easily underwater is perhaps like that of entering the womb, and the colors were not quite what I expected. It is indeed an alien experience.

Upon emerging from the dive we discovered quickly that there were quite amazing swells at the surface, maybe even as much as 10'. Lisa quickly got motion-sick and threw up, even after getting on the boat. I'm fortunately quite immune to motion-sickness (a good trait considering that I also signed us up for a week long sailing cruise). Fortunately, by the end of the ride to the next dive site (known as Blue Chute) she had recovered a bit, and we started on the skill demonstrations, which turned out to also happen so quickly and fast that we'd gotten through a lot of the syllabus by the end, getting into work we were supposed to do in the third dive as well. I did have to tow Lisa back to the boat at the end of the second dive, but all in all, I was pleased with our progress.

Rested and relaxed, we went back to our hotel early enough to find the bar still serving lunch. We ate lunch and I snorkeled a bit before we retired for the evening.

2008 Book Reviews Index

The 2008 Books of the Year have been announced and picked!

Fiction

• Spin
• The Jennifer Morgue
• Three Days to Never
• The Atrocity Archives
• The Runes of the Earth
• Halting State
• Declare
• Fatal Revenant
• A Fest for Crows
  
• Spin State
• Spin Control
• Crystal Rain
• Altered Carbon
• Broken Angels
• Rolling Thunder
• Woken Furies
• My Own Kind of Freedom
• Little Brother
• Northanger Abbey
• A Song of Stone
• Farthing
• The Best of the Year: Science Fiction 2006
• Market Forces
• Look to Windward
• In the Garden of Iden
• Duma Key
• Battlestar Galactica
• In the Midnight Hour
• Saturn's Children
• The Book of Lost Things
• The Best of the Year: Fantasy 2006
  
• The Best of the Year: Science Fiction 2007
• The Guardians of the Flame: The Warriors
• The Guardians of the Flame: Legacy
• The Last Unicorn
• Tarzan of the Apes
• Steel Beach
• The Guardians of the Flame: To Home and Ehvenor
• Soul
• Matter
  
• Zoe's Tale
• Everything's Eventual
• Lamb
• Lord of Light
• Touch of Evil
• The Lion of Farside
• The Business
• Star Guard
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
• Dauntless & Fearless (2 book reviews in one!)
• Starfish
• Orphans of Chaos
• Flash
• Courageous
• My Name is Legion
  
• Sweet Silver Blues
• A Wizard of Earthsea
• The Tombs of Atuan
• The Farthest Shore
• Wild Cards
• Valiant
• Adiamante
• The Buried Pyramid
  
• Archform: Beauty
• The Dragons of Babel

Non-Fiction

• You're not fooling anyone when you take your laptop to a coffee shop: Scalzi on Writing
• Inside Intuit
• In Defense of Food
• The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
• Welcome to Your Brain
• Bringing Down The House
• The Salmon of Doubt
  
• How to Rig an Election
• Nudge
• On Writing
• How Doctors Think
  
• Value Averaging
• Hungry for Paris
• Traffic
• The Snowball
• The Story of the Tour de France (Vol 1: 1903-1964)
• The Trouble with Physics
  
• The Art of the Start
• The Story of the Tour de France (Vol 2: 1965-2007)
• Buyology
• Brain Rules!
• The Audacity of Hope
• Talent is Over-rated
  
• A Splendid Exchange
• Happiness: Unlocking the mysteries of Psychological Wealth

Review: Spin

I ran out of reading material for the trip back, so I borrowed Spin from Hector Yee, who had finished it on the flight to the Virgin Islands.

The story is about an unknown alien civilization that wraps the Earth in a temporal veil which puts the planet onto a fast-forward mode, hurtling into the future at a high rate. The shield (called spin in this book) also keeps the planet in a comfortable temperature. This creates havoc with existing communications systems (i.e., satellites) What is the motivation for the aliens to do this? Who are the aliens? How would Earth's inhabitants react?

The story's told from the point of a doctor who grows up with a pair of fraternal twins. He falls in love with one, and greatly respects the other, who becomes a major mover and shaker in the space sciences industry due to his father's role. The book deals with his emotional connection with the siblings, society's reaction, and of course, the scientific trappings.

The story, ultimately is a disappointment for me: the premise is interesting, but the solution that Robert Wilson provides does not hold for me --- an alien civilization seeking to preserve organic civilizations from destroying themselves by slowing down time for such civilizations? Wouldn't direct intervention be more plausible? The ending implies that a network of such civilizations might become more stable, but my thought would be that a network of planets that are each on the verge of climate crash wouldn't be able to do much to help each other.

As is usual for science fiction, the romance between the characters are superficial, and everyone seems unusually competent, smart, or pretty. I'm not sure I can believe in this world. While it served fine as airplane reading, I don't consider this a great book (despite the Hugo award --- which was a big draw for me when I saw it on the cover), and will be disappointed if I can't find another more interesting novel this year to read.

Review: Canon WP-DC 70 Waterproof Housing for the SD500

Underwater camera housings are a specialty item, and are priced to match: this one cost $160, along with an underwater weight package to make the whole thing neutrally buoyant (by default, the package floats, which is not a good thing for SCUBA work). If you visit the Amazon page for this product, you'll see mixed reviews. But analysis of the reviews show that those who don't read instructions are the ones who complain the most. It is extremely important that the O-ring around the camera is greased with silicon grease regularly before dunking in water. You don't have to do this every day --- once a week worked for me, but obviously the more often you open up the case, the more likely the O-ring will dry out and the more frequently you need to re-grease it.

Another trick I learned from reading the reviews is the use of a silica gel packet --- get a small one, and stick it inside the casing next to the camera (there are some spaces available for precisely this) before closing the housing. This absorbs any residual moisture inside the case, which prevents the lens for fogging. (I wonder why no diving masks have this feature!)

The case itself is impressive --- every control on the camera is available from the case. The hood around the display ensures you get good visibility when you shoot, and we've field-tested our case down to 80 feet. (It's rated for 130', but I'm not about to risk my life for an equipment review) All the features (zoom, preview, video, etc) work and work well. If there's any flaw it's that if you put on sunscreen and then manhandle the camera, you get grease on the lens that's a bit hard to clean and a hazy halo effect. This goes away as soon as you clean off the lens, which isn't too hard, but if you don't look carefully at the pictures it's easy to miss. The other problem I found was that the weight screw unscrews too easily, and we lost a weight that way. I'm tempted to just super-glue the weight to the case.

Finally, a word to the wise for post-processing for underwater digital photos: Picasa's "I'm feeling lucky" feature works extremely well.

All in all, the case was well worth the value, and the next point and shoot will be a Canon simply because they're the only line of point and shoots that have a full range of underwater housings for their cameras. You''ll pay more for the gear, but it works, and you'll never be orphaned. Highly recommended!