November 26th: Coco Point, Barbados to Deep Bay, Antigua

Despite not needing an early start this day, we woke up early anyway, in time to see the glorious sunrise from Coco point. The beach, the water, and the sun came together to create magical lighting for us as we ate a leisurely breakfast, and then prepared to get into the water.

We elected to all swim into the beach. But the visibility had gotten much worse overnight, and we saw next to nothing on the swim. We left the kids to play on the beach while Arturo and I went to scout the south side of Barbados, hoping for something better.

 It was indeed better after we got past the rocky section near the beach which was just as murky as the West coast. It would have been better if we had snorkeled there yesterday, however. I got a few pictures and then after that we went back and I swapped with Xiaoqin while Arturo led Xiaoqin on another snorkel.

The two kids were happy to play on the beach, and with conditions as murky as this I didn't bother trying to sell them on getting into the water except to return to the boat. By the time both Xiaoqin and Bowen were done it was 8:30am, and we swam back to the boat, ready to head to Deep Bay and try the Andes.

The wind was once again too weak to sail, and as we approached the Diamond Reef passage a storm blew through, tricking us into raising the sails only to discover moments later, that we were back to sailing at 1.5 knots, which was unsatisfying. The reason we were headed to Deep Bay was that my family needed PCR tests to fly back to the USA through Canada, and a doctor had agreed to come out to meet us and take PCR tests so we wouldn't have to take a taxi to a hospital

Arriving in Deep Bay, we spotted the buoy marking the mast of the Andes, and two Catamarans, clearly tourist boats, beached on the Bay. It turned out that not one, but two cruise ships were visiting Antigua that day. We anchor'd close to the beach in about 3 meters of depth, and to my dismay, when we did the dive check for the anchor, we couldn't see much. In fact, Arturo had to follow the anchor chain down so I could spot where it was!

We lowered the dinghy. The guidebook had a section marked on the other side of the Bay marked as "dinghy entrance", and it had the bridge that the doctor had wanted to meet us at. Just in case it was a better entrance, we decided to check it out, after determining that visibility at the Andes was no better than at the Chinook. The bridge was there, but there was no way we were going to steer the dinghy into the entrance in those conditions. "Why is there such a north swell? Why is the visibility so bad? Is there a storm?" Arturo looked at his phone. "Oh yeah. There's a tropical storm West of here down South." Our hopes for doing a good snorkel at the Andes, which was famous throughout Antigua was shot.

I received a text via WhatsApp from the doctor that he was headed our way. We got everyone into the dinghy, and got ashore, tying the dinghy to a tree. We raised the outboard, but neglected to pull the dinghy all the way out above the waterline, something we would pay for later. Walking over to the bridge, we had to wait a few minutes but sure enough the doctor showed up to give the 4 of us our PCR tests.

Mario had told us to hike Fort Barington at sunset, so we dutifully went back over the bridge, up the other side, and climbed up to the fort.

Far in the distance, we could see Mont Serrat's volcano erupting! People living near the volcano were evacuated even as we witnessed the smoke coming out of it.

At the fort, we finally got a group picture for the first time on our trip. Past that, we could keep going all the way to the point where the North Swell had flooded the channel that apparently in calmer times would let you walk or wade over to the headland guarding the Bay entrance.

It was approaching sunset when we returned to the dinghy when to our horror the surge and incoming tide had repeatedly dumped sand into the dinghy. We didn't have anything to bail with, so there was nothing to do but place everyone into the boat, but in the ensuing confusion and chaos (as the tide was relentlessly pounding away at us as we loaded the boat) Arturo got the rope in his hand at the wrong moment and pulled in it just a bit too hard and got rope burn. Nevertheless we got everyone back onboard the Chinook, and ice out of the fridge for Arturo's hand. I was a bit shaken: the memories of that trip in St. Vincent when a dinghy capsized and threw me overboard returned to me. We got away with just rope burn on Arturo's hand. Fortunately, all our important documents  (needed for our PCR test) were in a waterproof backpack that had stayed dry and secure in all the antics. In retrospect the non-waterproof camera should have also gone into that backpack.

Over a somber dinner, we debated what to do the next day. We were too exhausted to deal with the dinghy, so just tied it to the Chinook overnight. Being familiar with North Swell conditions, I proposed that we return to the South end of the island to Carlisle Bay and English Harbor for our last night aboard the Chinook. I revealed my agenda, which was that tomorrow was Xiaoqin's birthday, and going to English Harbor would allow us to get cake at the Tank Bay supermarket. Arturo shrugged. We really wanted to do the Andes snorkel, but I was pessimistic about it.

Review: A Small Place

 A Small Place is Jamaica Kincaid's short essay about Antigua. It drips with sarcasm and tastes of bitterness. Right off the bat, you get an examination of how history glorifies the industrial revolution when the reality was that a huge amount of its wealth came from slavery:

he West got rich not from the free (free—in this case meaning got-for-nothing) and then undervalued labour, for generations, of the people like me you see walking around you in Antigua but from the ingenuity of small shopkeepers in Sheffield and Yorkshire and Lancashire, or wherever; and what a great part the invention of the wristwatch played in it, for there was nothing noble-minded men could not do when they discovered they could slap time on their wrists just like that (isn’t that the last straw; for not only did we have to suffer the unspeakableness of slavery, but the satisfaction to be had from “We made you bastards rich” is taken away, too), and so you needn’t let that slightly funny feeling you have from time to time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledged unease, discomfort; you could ruin your holiday. (page 9)

 Even though Antigua has been an independent country for some time now, Kincaid doesn't let up on its former colonists, which she blames for teaching its corrupt leaders how to behave:

Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? (Page 34)

The book exposes all the corruption, and the sad state of governance on the island, interspersed with scenes from the island describing its beauty and its colors and people. To a large extent, I do wish Kincaid's visited some other former colonies of England's that weren't mismanage. For instance, Singapore was also a former colony, but wasn't nearly as badly mismanaged, and its population is also much larger than Antigua's, so you can't even use the excuse that managing Singapore was an easier job.

To some extent, of course, was luck. Singapore's leaders while every bit as dictatorial as any tyrants could be, at least recognized that rooting out corruption was key to have a successful economy and country. Ultimately, that makes its rulers better off as well, enabling them to have a dynasty that's more stable. The question I'm left with is, "At what point can former colonist countries stop blaming their former colonists and start taking responsibility for the fate of their country?" Kincaid doesn't answer that question. I'll answer it for her anyway: "At what point do you as an adult stop blaming your parents for not giving you a good character forming childhood and start taking responsibility for your actions?"

November 25th: Long Island to Coco Point, Barbuda

 We woke up at 5:50am, made breakfast, and got going just after sunrise, using dual lookouts to navigate the Prickly Pear Channel out into open water before engaging the auto-pilot. The Garmin auto-pilot on the Chinook was the most sophisticated panel I'd ever seen, capable of going around marked obstacles on the map! I didn't trust it though, and would still disengage it whenever I saw a reef or shallow water marking on the map, as it tended to behave as though you could sail right on the edge of a reef. I personally much prefer to give such objects a ton of leeway, seeing as neither GPS nor my old eyes are very accurate.

To my delight, the anchorage at Coco Bay had only a few boats, and none right on Coco Point, where I wanted to place my anchor. The guidebook makes a big deal out of how challenging entering Coco Point was, so I had all crew onboard go forward and help me work my way into the reef. It was worth it though, since once on the boat we could easily swim to all desirable destinations, and the snorkeling was great.

It is hard to over-estimate what day after day of continuous snorkeling does for your kids' skills. They were now completely comfortable exploring the reefs, and playing. Boen would stick to Arturo and play with him in the water, pretending punches, etc.

When we were all done with the snorkeling, we had lunch on the boat, and then decided to head to the beach. I opted to take both kids to the beach by paddleboard, and it didn't take very long before I realized it was a mistake! The last time I'd done this was 3 years ago, and the kids had grown substantially in that time, so the paddleboard was lopsided. Despite the kids staying as quiet and centered as possible, I still fell off the board as we approached the sand. Since everyone was at least wearing swim suits there was no damage (my camera was waterproof!).

The white sandy beaches of Princess Diana Beach was a sight to behold. The resorts which were under construction after Hurricane Irma were unoccupied, so we had the place mostly to ourselves, seeing no more than 8 other visitors during our entire visit. Arturo swam ashore, and told me Xiaoqin had asked me to go fetch her with the paddleboard. I demurred, reasoning that if the two kids were sufficient to overbalance me on that chintzy paddleboard, trying to get my wife ashore in that would be a disaster.

Instead, we played with the kids until Niniane swam ashore, and then asked her to watch the kids while Arturo and I went for a walk. It was a walk with a purpose, since Mario had told us that Enoch would provide with a lobster dinner that night. Arturo had called while we were in transit to make reservations for that evening at 5:00pm, but I was having second thoughts. The reefs were navigable by day, but trying to get back in the dinghy at night looked very questionable.

We walked past empty outdoor gyms, the unused airport, and the reefs didn't look any better. I suggested we do dinner at 4pm, but Arturo thought that was too early. We finally arrived at Enoch's Shak A Kai after a 20 minute walk, and Enoch told us that he'd seen us anchor. He then told us how dangerous the reef was, and suggested we drop by at 5pm to do takeout!

That sounds like a great idea, Arturo said.  We bought a couple of drinks from Enoch, who had a blackboard that said, "No wifi in paradise!"  We then walked back to the boys, where we discovered that Xiaoqin had swam to the beach and was dealing with them.

The sand did indeed look pink if you had the sun at the correct angle and there was a little bit of water to tint it, but otherwise it was a white sand beach. Xiaoqin would later say that was the best sand she'd ever had in her life, soft and spingy at the same time, and it was fun to walk on.

I then ferried the boys one at a time from the beach back to the Chinook with no problems, but when I got back to the boat and tied up the paddleboard, Arturo swam back and told me there was more snorkeling to be had and he saw substantially good stuff near the beach. So I got back in the water.

This time we saw a barracuda, a spotted ray, and conch snails, eating the seagrass. It truly was as good as Mario promised. The boys were excited about today, because it was Thanksgiving. A few years ago, Mark Brody had suggested making a veggie turkey, and this time they replicated it!

Arturo and I went on the dinghy to pick up the lobster. As promised, it was tricky going but at least I could see the reefs and help Arturo steer around them. Once ashore, we hooked up the dinghy anchor and visited Enoch again, picking up the lobster, buying a loaf of bread, and picking up a drink for Niniane. Seeing how full my hands were, Enoch came out to the dinghy to help us launch it. He stuck around until we had navigated the reefs near his shack before turning back, getting into his van, and driving off. We were his last customers of the day, it turned out.

Between the lobster, the turkey, and the sunset, we had ourselves a glorious time. We looked forward to doing more snorkeling the next morning before heading back to Antigua.

November 24th: Green Island to Long Island

 We woke up bright and early at 5:00am, made coffee, and to our surprise discovered that other boats in the flotilla moor'd and anchor'd behind us were already moving. They must all be on the same plan we were on! Once we were done with breakfast, we moved the boat back out the way we came in and raised the sail! I was delighted to be sailing, and a long sail seemed like a good idea, even though Arturo had said the night before that middle reef had supposedly great snorkeling. There were still enough boats in the Bay that I didn't think it was worth it to try to snorkel there.

An hour later, Arturo said to me, "We're only doing 3 knots. It's 27 nautical miles. This trip will take us 9 hours!" I looked, and sure enough, we were getting at most 6-7 knots of wind, not enough to get to Antigua on sail power alone. We could drop the sails and turn on the engine, but instead we pulled out the charts and guidebook and looked for alternate destinations.

Great Bird Island jumped out at me as a potentially great snorkeling destination, and it had the advantage of putting us into the North Sound, where an anchorage at Long Island would put us at least within decent motoring distance of Barbuda, given the poor wind conditions that were predicted for the next couple of days. "Long Island is near the Antigua airport, but the island doesn't have many flights."

We pulled into the Bay of Great Bird Island at 11:00am, after sailing slowly north, and then turned on the engine. There were no other boats in the Bay when we arrived, but soon after we laid down the anchor and snugged it up, a trio of motorboats sailed up, followed by a commercial boat carrying snorkels. The day had warmed up and was hot, so after I checked the anchor I immediately swam out into the reef and saw to my delight my first glimpse of glass fish!

From the boat, Xiaoqin spotted a turtle, and soon after that everyone was in the water! There was much snorkeling to be had and it was of very good quality. Even after we were all in the boat, Niniane hadn't had enough, and opted to swim all the way to the beach. That sounded like a great idea to everyone else as well, so I helped Arturo lower the dingy, which still needed fixing anyway. Then I got out the paddleboard and paddled to the beach.

Niniane had already arrived by the time I got there, and she was eager to try paddleboarding. I gave her a few tips and she was ready to head out when the dinghy arrived. The kids immediately set about getting wet and sandy, and Xiaoqin and Arturo explored the island while I man-handled the dinghy. We hadn't figured out how to tilt the dinghy's outboard, so you could'nt leave the boat unattended --- you didn't want it to drift away, which was easy to solve with an anchor, but you also didn't want the tide/waves to push it onto the shored, which would hit the outboard propellor and rudder!

When everyone was done, we took the dinghy back to the boat. Niniane was already there, since the paddleboard was very fast, and we had lunch while Arturo watched a youtube video on how to tilt the dinghy outboard. It turned out that the ring that was supposed to control the tilt feature had been lost from our outboard, so he had to find the lever by hand. Once he had done so, however, he could tilt the outboard. The problem, though, was that the davits on the Chinook were so badly designed that someone had to use their feet to push the pontoons on the dinghy while raising or lowering it --- not paying such close attention would result in the outboard striking the body of the boat, damaging both the Chinook and the outboard. I was determined not to find out about that the hard way.

After lunch, we motor'd through the sound to Long Island. I would have been happy to spend the night at Great Bird Island, but I figured that putting us within striking distance of Barbuda first thing in the morning was a good idea. The guidebook had also talked up Jumby Bay as being a beautiful beach on a resort.

On arrival, to my dismay I saw motorboats towing wakeboarders at speed all around the bay. We anchor'd one time, then realized that we'd anchor'd right in the way of the ferry coming from the mainland Antigua, and moved and reanchor'd the boat, reasoning that being closer to the reef would make for nice snorkeling.

Our first sight after the anchor check was a beautiful starfish, but swimming out to the reef brought no results. There were tiny bits of coral, but the reef was too rough to get to, and too shallow. We returned to the Chinook to report, and decided to swim to the beach, with Boen electing to join us.  We were much further from the beach than anticipated, having learned our lesson from Carlisle Bay about being too close to loud music at night, but Boen was game and swam strongly. Upon arrival, he reported that he had lost a tooth! It was his first baby tooth lost, and it had disappeared into Jumby Bay so he truly left a piece of himself in Antigua.

Upon arrival at the beach, security showed up and told us that we weren't allowed into the resort because of COVID restrictions. "You can stay in the water." We chose to let Boen play as much as he liked on the beach, and then swam back, finding a Manta Ray and various more Starfish on the way back to the Chinook.

The sunset was once again beautiful, marred occasionally by flights coming to and from the island (Arturo had an app that told us that the last flight was at 8:30pm, so we truly were not concerned about noise from the airport) At 9pm a private plane flew by, disturbing our peace, but overall it was still a much more restful night than Carlisle Bay had been.

Review: Principles

 I was assigned Principles as part of an onboarding reading. I'd never heard of Ray Dalio or Bridgewater Associates before, and I was dubious about yet another business book. But I gave it a shot anyway.

The first 2/3rds of the book were irritating. I generally agreed with Dalio that the most important thing in the world was to face reality, and that you need to iterate constantly towards your understanding of reality and to challenge your view. But I got very annoyed by his choice of words. For instance, he used "evolve" when he meant "improvement." This is a pet peeve of mine, since evolution doesn't actually have any direction or aim. I was also very annoyed by various statements about how the system he found himself in was a good one. I certainly don't think that viruses or mosquitoes do any good. We just have to live with them. I suppose if you become mega rich like Ray Dalio did, you can't help but believe that the universe you live in must be the best of all possible worlds, even if objective reality of the majority of people living around you says otherwise.

The last 3rd of the book ("Work Principles") were however a treasure trove of great ideas and deep insight. For instance, here's a brilliant section on why you need to talk to your skip-level reports, a major mistake many directors (new and experienced) make:

Probe to the level below the people who report to you. You can’t understand how the person who reports to you manages others unless you know their direct reports and can observe how they behave. f. Have the people who report to the people who report to you feel free to escalate their problems to you. This is a great and useful form of upward accountability. g. Don’t assume that people’s answers are correct. People’s answers could be erroneous theories or spin, so you need to occasionally double-check them, especially when they sound questionable. Some managers are reluctant to do this, feeling it is the equivalent of saying they don’t trust their people. These managers need to understand that this process is how trust is earned or lost. Your people will learn to be much more accurate in what they tell you if they understand this (page 459)

Here's another one about how to properly run a post-mortem:

 Avoid the anonymous “we” and “they,” because they mask personal responsibility. Things don’t just happen by themselves—they happen because specific people did or didn’t do specific things. Don’t undermine personal accountability with vagueness. Instead of the passive generalization or the royal “we,” attribute specific actions to specific people: “Harry didn’t handle this well.” Also avoid “We should . . .” or “We are . . .” and so on. Since individuals are the most important building blocks of any organization and since individuals are responsible for the ways things are done, mistakes must be connected to those individuals by name. Someone created the procedure that went wrong or made the faulty decision. Glossing over that can only slow progress toward improvement. (Page 479)

 Use “public hangings” to deter bad behavior. No matter how carefully you design your controls and how rigorously you enforce them, malicious and grossly negligent people will sometimes find a way around them. So when you catch someone violating your rules and controls, make sure that everybody sees the consequences. (Page 514)

The book has a ton of common sense, and ultimately, if I'd summarize the theme of the book, it's that the management team need to approach an organization the way an engineer approaches code:

 Great managers are not philosophers, entertainers, doers, or artists. They are engineers. They see their organizations as machines and work assiduously to maintain and improve them. They create process-flow diagrams to show how the machine works and to evaluate its design. They build metrics to light up how well each of the individual parts of the machine (most importantly, the people) and the machine as a whole are working. And they tinker constantly with its designs and its people to make both better. They don’t do this randomly. They do it systematically, always keeping the cause-and-effect relationships in mind. (Page 451)

You will note that many management books aspire to inculcate this sort of thinking. One good one, for instance, is the Fifth Discipline. I loved the Beer Game as described in that book, because it made a big deal out of how long feedback cycles derail non-systematic thinking. But the rest of the book didn't cover the practical details of how to build a learning organization, whereas Dalio's book does.

Dalio claims that one key approach that makes Bridgewater different, is that it makes its potential employees take a personality test. The resultant attributes are placed together with your track record to create a personnel summary (I imagine this to be something like a D&D character sheet). Then, when you need a team to do X, instead of randomly grabbing people who happen to be available, you can search through your employee database to find the best matches in terms of personality and track record, much like a team of D&D players might say, "We need a cleric, a bard, 2 fighters, and a wizard."

There's also an emphasis on "believability weighted decisions." The idea is that when making a decision, you want the people with the highest believability about that domain. Dalio claims that the believability is based on 2 principles: (1) having done the task (or similar tasks) at least 3 times before, and (2) being able to explain how and why the decision should be made. This is a nice balance between the dummy "democratic voting approach" or the even more dummy "I'm your boss so I'm going to call this shot for you" approach.

I tried the personality test, and got some results. Unfortunately, it still reads a little bit like a horoscope to me --- too generic and not generally all that interesting.

Nevertheless, I really thought the last 3rd of this book more than paid for itself in time spent reading it. It's in a far better class than books like Beyond Entrepreneurship or The Making of a Manager. Your time will be much better spent reading this book instead of any of those.

Highly recommended.

November 23rd: Carlisle Bay to Green Island

 I woke up at 6am, the latest I would wake up for the rest of the trip. We made coffee and breakfast, and weighed anchor, and started heading over to English Harbor via motor into a headwind. Arriving there, we identified the Pillars of Hercules, marked in many locations for good snorkeling, pulled in around the point, and anchor'd as close to the reefs as I dared, letting out about 20 meters of chain in 2.5 meters of sand. The snorkeling was much better than at Carlisle Bay, with lots to look at.

Boen's snorkeling equipment had been fixed, and he was now very good at snorkeling. The difference in just a couple of sessions was nothing short of astonishing. 

When we were all done, we knew we had to visit tank bay to reprovision the boat, as our provisioning had been incomplete two days ago, and we knew now what we needed. Deli meat, fruits, more bread, more eggs, and most important of all, chocolate! But first, we visited English habor (by accident), and found the bakery that Niniane had talked about (she'd stayed in English Habor before joining us at Jolly Habor), which was open and ate meat pies and other delicacies before we found our way to tank bay.

Tank Bay's supermarket was conveniently situated right on the water with a convenient dinghy dock. We purchased everything we needed, and then headed back to the boat for a quick lunch before driving the dinghy back to English Harbor to visit the old fort.

Doing the hike in the afternoon proved to be a mistake. It was hot, though we brought cold water in insulated containers, and the one mile hike was fortunately short enough that it wasn't a problem.

The view of the bay and water was great, though, and on the way back we saw not one, but two goats!

After the hike was over, we dingh'd back to the Chinook, and there realized that at 2pm, we could keep going and get a head start on Barbuda one day early. We hoisted anchor, headed back out, and headed East. motoring under full power, we realized that the outboard motor from the tender would hit the water and bounce back up, which was not good. A reduction of speed to 5 knots solved the problem, but we knew we would have to solve that sooner or later. Rounding the South East corner of Antigua at St James Bay, we raised the sails and that took care of the tender's problem.

A flotilla of 3 boats passed us, motor sailing. The wind was light, giving us no more than 3-4 knots, but anything was better than listening to an internal combustion diesel engine, so we were more than happy to sail into Green Bay, where we pulled pulled into a Bay of what looked like a flotilla of 20 sail boats and a couple of power yachts. Taking advantage of our shallow draft, we pulled deep into the Bay, well ahead of other boats, dropped anchor, and snugged it up, taking only one final swim to check on the anchor before settling in for the evening.

We were going to sail to Barbuda the next day, and I was excited about it!

Review: How Magicians Think

 I'm admitted a snob for the written work, but How Magicians Think managed to get me to watch a few youtube videos, which is an amazing accomplishment. The book is about stage and close up magic, and reveals to me several things about magicians that I'd never known or thought about before.

The book is structured as a series of short chapters, each of which is only a few pages long and focuses on one item. Yet there are themes that span the entire book. One big theme is how much time a magician spends practicing his shows. At one point he quotes another magician saying, "In the time I spent learning to do this trick I could have been a doctor." That develops into several other themes, such as how while other professions might be openly bragging about how hard they work to achieve their effects, no magician can ever do so. The entire point of the practice is to make the motions effortless and invisible, so you cannot draw attention to that effort. But Joshua Jay describes grueling hours in front of a magician's mirror, as well as time spent practicing in the dark.

Another interesting theme is that of presentation. The perfect presentation is actually boring. The important piece that he emphasizes is that you have to have a narrative that fits the trick you're trying to present, and that technical perfection is actually not as important as the narrative. This got me to watch his stint on "Fool Us", which was great.

Jay's admiration of other magicians is also awesome. Through this, he got me to watch more videos, such as Pierric's 2015 FISM performance, as well as Penn and Teller's Cup and Ball. Even with the tricks in full view, the latter showed me how smooth and how practiced a magician has to be. Then I finally got around to watching Shin Lim and that guy was amazing too!

There's a series of articles about visits to other magicians' homes, as well as to the magic castle. Every article was worth reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed following up on the names he mentioned in the book. This book got me to watch way more magic videos than I ever thought I would. Highly recommended.

November 22nd: Jolly Harbor to Carlisle Bay

 We woke up at 7:00am, made coffee, and got everything ready to go. To my surprise, Mario showed up precisely at 8:00am to do a chart briefing. He started by asking us what we wanted, and we told him our constraints about having to do a PCR test on Friday but still wanting to go to Barbuda. Mario proposed we did a loop around Antigua counter-clockwise, heading south to English Habour to pick up final provisions, and then doing a 5am sail to Barbuda under favorable conditions. Our past trips to the Caribbean have featured consistent wind, so I didn't even think to ask for a wind check, which might have made me change my plans.

After that, we got a technical briefing, covering the ship systems. The ship had a water-maker, and even better, one that didn't require constant monitoring. The boat was in very good shape, though the main door wouldn't close. That would have been a problem if we were doing an ocean crossing, but for Caribbean cruising, they just tied the door open. I finished off the paperwork and reminded Ashley that I'd ordered a paddleboard the night before. Niniane and Bowen both borrowed fins from the charter company. The maintenance chief took me to their workshop, where I was shown a selection of very beaten up paddleboards, one of which looked actively dangerous. While walking there he said to me, "Are you Chinese? I've seen Chinese in Antigua, but you'd be our first Chinese boat Captain!" I told him that I was Singaporean, and that satisfied him. After more scavenging, we picked out a paddleboard that was in the least bad shape, and I took a picture and showed it to Ashley in the office when finalizing the checkout. She looked at it in horror and declared that the paddleboard rental was free!

To my surprise, by 11:00am everything was ready to go, including the laundry that I had dropped off at 8:30am. Unlike many charter companies who would drive off the slip for you before handing you the wheel, Dream Yacht Charters chose to give me the wheel, and some minor instructions and then just untied all the lines and bade us on the way. 

Motoring out of Jolly Harbor, as soon as we were clear we put up the sails, we were so eager. Arturo and I gave Niniane some instruction about raising the main halyard and unfurling the jib and soon we were off. It didn't take more than half an hour, however, before we reached Johnson point, and in light winds the boat started coming about by itself and in our jet-lagged state we couldn't quite come about fast enough to regain forward momentum, so we furled and lowered the sails, turned on the engine, and anchor'd for our first snorkel.

Johnson point was unremarkable and not really worth a stop except that everyone was hungry and we wanted lunch. But any snorkel in the Caribbean is a good one, and gave us a chance to shake out our gear. The warm water made me realize how much I missed sailing here, though by the time we were all done it was 3:00pm and our chances of making another stop before heading over to Carlisle Bay was gone.

We motor'd all the way to Carlisle Bay into a headwind, foregoing sails as advised by Mario, and once there went deep into the bay to anchor, as was my wont, for that offered the best shelter. This would turn out to be a mistake later, as we discovered that the resort there had an ultra-loud concert every night, going well past the 11pm curfew. That explained why many boats were parked much further out in the bay --- wise captains will take note if they value their sleep!

We quickly started our next snorkel, given that sunset was at 5:30pm. This was Boen's first sailing trip after he'd learned how to swim, so we had to work out what was wrong with his snorkel: turned out that the mouthpiece had been broken by chewing too hard on it! Fortunately, I'd brought other snorkels that he could use, and swapping out one for another with a good mouthpiece did the trick.

Niniane got lost for a bit in the water, surfacing near another Catamaran that looked just like ours. Fortunately, she made it back to our boat before sundown, and we all got to enjoy the glorious Antigua sunset, after which we had a pizza dinner.

The boat had a watermaker, but we discovered at this point that it was very slow, producing about 3% of the boat's tank capacity every hour. We'd left port with only 80% of the tanks full, and this was a very expensive way of getting water, by translating diesel into freshwater. It did mean we wouldn't have to spend time tying up to fuel docks in order to get fresh water, which we would have had to do at least a couple of times on this trip, assuming that there were even service stations available. We all went to bed early, hoping the sun exposure would have freed us from jet-lag.

November 20-21: Prologue: San Francisco, California to Jolly Habor, Antigua

 We'd originally planned the trip to Antigua for Spring break of 2020, but with COVID19 outbreak at that time, everything got cancelled. There was a ton of miscommunication between our yacht charter company, our yacht broker, and AirCanada. First of all, Dream Yacht Charter thought we were rescheduling for Thanksgiving 2020 instead of 2021, then after (with some expense) we got it straightened out, AirCanada rescheduled our flights (we were intended to arrive on Saturday, but we got rescheduled to Sunday). Fortunately, our sleepaboard had been scheduled on Sunday anyway, so all this meant was that we had to spend an extra night in Toronto in each direction while at the same time not having to spend any nights in hotels in Antigua.

Joining us this time was Arturo (who was flying to Antigua via Miami) and Niniane, who was going on her first sailing trip and was already situated in Puerto Rico and had to scramble at the last minute to find flights to Antigua when Mark Brody discovered he suddenly couldn't make the trip.

We got up at 4:45am, got into our Lyft ride, and made it to the airport and through security without major hassle, and an uneventful flight which got us into Toronto at 2:45pm. Since we were staying overnight, we had to exit, use Switch Health for another round of PCR tests, and then piled into a rental car (which was cheaper than a round trip Lyft ride to dinner) and drove to the hotel, where the receptionist was very surprised to see vaccine cards even for our kids (they were only partially vaccinated, so did not qualify for the PCR test exemption).

Bea was at Niantic but left earlier in the year before we had a chance to work together. Since she was in Toronto and was a foodie (her food pictures were amazing), we asked her to pick a restaurant and after we left our lugguage at the hotel, we drove to Zukkushi. I've heard a lot of people complain about Bay Area traffic, but Toronto's traffic was if anything even worse. It took us a good hour to get to downtown, and once there we had several minutes to walk around the neighborhood before meeting Bea for a scrumptious meal, where she was surprisingly not terrified by Bowen and Boen, who put on quite a show for her.

The next day we got onto the flight to Antigua, which was on a small plane that didn't have screens but had wifi which you could use to access onboard content. We managed to watch several movies we'd missed including Black Widow, Luca, and Thor Ragnarok. Arriving at Antigua, our PCR certificates got checked and then we were at Jolly Habor in an hour. It didn't take long to find the dock, where someone told me I was clearly there for the Chinook.

The Chinook was a Fontaine Pajot Astrea 42 sailing Catamaran in an owner's configuration, which is a complete waste of space with the starboard side of the boat filled with an owner's suite with an extra large bathroom. There was fortunately a V-berth in front for crew, so no one would have to sleep in the saloon. Cleaning was still happening and the cleaning crew was upset that we'd showed up early, but we were allowed to leave baggage on the boat and walk over to the curry house for dinner, just as Niniane showed up. Arturo showed up while we were having dinner, so now we had a complete crew!

When we were finally allowed onboard, the provisioning had been done, and we could now take a look at what was missing. They'd bought us bread and cheese but no ham, I'd way over-provisioned on water, and I'd forgotten to ask for a paddleboard. There was no gear for diving to be rented for love or  money on the island (the rental places had been hit hard by the pandemic and closed, and the shops that were still open were no longer renting for a week at a time). I met the base manager and her staff, and they were very friendly, assuring us that we'd get a chart and technical briefing the next day and the paddleboard and fins would be no problem.

We went to bed thus reassured and ready to sail the next day.

Review: Cyberpunk 2077 (PS5)

 I actually pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077, but the reviews ahead of the actual release were so bad that I cancelled my preorder and elected to wait, hoping that by the time I got around to it the experience wouldn't be the disaster many web-sites had claimed it was.

First, I managed to get my hands on the PS5. Then, Best Buy had a sale on it for $10. At that price, I bit and started playing it, keeping it mostly on my PS5 the entire time.

The most important part of The Witcher 3 was how good the characters were. As I played Cyberpunk 2077, I discovered that the characters were nowhere as well realized. A lot of it was that the Witcher came with baggage --- lots of books, and two previous games, and I had read enough of the books that I had a good understanding of the characters even prior to the game, and had predilections about which way Geralt would decide, but Cyberpunk had no such priors and I don't remember any novels from the setting, even though I actually might have read the RPG manuals ages ago.

The story is actually reasonable, once you take all that into account. You're playing a mercenary in Night City, and in a heist gone wrong end up with cyberware taking over your mind. From there events play out and you have a choice of how to deal with the main story, side jobs, and other ancillaries, with consequences playing out in the story.

The game play is easy: I went for a gun toting reflex driven combat-oriented build, and just chose to go in guns blazing all the time eschewing stealth. It worked for most of the game, though a few (optional) side quests would be locked out because I didn't have tech levels set high enough. The game actually has surprisingly little combat, and what there is wasn't painful as long as you levelled up enough on side jobs.

The game crashed about 5-6 times during my playthrough. Annoying, but with sufficient checkpoints that I never lost a lot of progress. Load times were long, but not as annoying as in The Witcher 3 where you'd pause for minutes when you died.

The graphics were decent. Definitely on par with any PS4 games, but didn't feel good after masterpieces like The Last of Us 2.

All in all, I thought the game was reasonably good (there aren't that many games I play till the end), so I enjoyed it. I thought Ghost of Tsushima or Miles Morales were better games, but neither of those games are RPGs, and this was the first RPG I liked enough to finish since The Witcher 3, so I'll still label it recommended.

Review: Hello World - Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

 Hello World is Hannah Fry's book about algorithms for a lay audience. I expected to breeze through it since I already knew most of it, but what I loved was her explanation, including why every programming tutorial starts with Hello World, which I stole for an explanation to Bowen.

I enjoyed how she described both machine-learning applications and regular programs as algorithms, and walked through the implementations and implications of both for a lay audience. She does a great job explaining that the non-computerized implementations of algorithms have problems as well, in terms of noise.

our reluctance to question the power of an algorithm has opened the door to people who wish to exploit us. Despite the weight of scientific evidence to the contrary, there are people selling algorithms to police forces and governments that claim to ‘predict’ whether someone is a terrorist or a paedophile based on the characteristics of their face alone. Others insist their algorithm can suggest changes to a single line in a screenplay that will make a movie more profitable at the box office. Others boldly state – without even a hint of sarcasm – that their algorithm is capable of finding your one true love.* (Kindle loc 2952)

She points out that all algorithms  have issues:

 I’ve thought long and hard and I’ve struggled to find a single example of a perfectly fair algorithm. Even the ones that look good on the surface – like autopilot in planes or neural networks that diagnose cancer – have problems deep down. As you’ll have read in the ‘Cars’ chapter, autopilot can put those who trained under automation at a serious disadvantage behind the wheel or the joystick. There are even concerns that the apparently miraculous tumour-finding algorithms we looked at in the ‘Medicine’ chapter don’t work as well on all ethnic groups. (Kindle loc 2963)

 I definitely enjoyed the book, even though I'd encountered all the ideas in the book previously.  Recommended.

2022 Book Reviews

2022 Books of the Year have been chosen!

 Non-Fiction

• The Messy Middle
• Renegades of the Empire
• Hello World
• How Magicians Think
• Principles
• Why Geese Don't Get Obese
• Chemistry for Breakfast
• The Remarkable Life of Skin
• Zero
• Crying in HMart
• World War C
• Immune
• T - The Story of Testosterone
• The Dawn of Everything
• The Genetic Lottery
• How Democracies Die
• Evolution Gone Wrong
• Self-made Man
• This is your mind on plants
• A natural history of the future
• The Comeback
• Who Gets In and Why
• Amazon Unbound
• A Thousand Brains
• Packing for Mars
• A World Without Email
• Driven
• Powerhouse
• Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
• Age Later
• The World Atlas of Coffee
• Now
• The Next Great Migration
• How to Take Over the World
• Rationality
• Upheaval
• The World According to Star Wars
• Paradise Falls
• Bookends
• Stolen Focus
• A Brief History of Earth
• Dying of Whiteness
• The Economics of Discontent
• Walkable City
• A Brief History of Equality
• Amusing Ourselves to Death
• An Immense World
• Arbitrary Lines
• The Perfect Predator

Fiction

• Termination Shock
• When We Cease to Understand the World
• Black Ships Before Troy
• Exhalation
• A Man Called Ove
• The Wanderings of Odysseus
• Q-squared
• Sea of Tranquility
• Inhibitor Phase
• The Rider
• Limited Wish

Comics

• Batman Zero Year
• Himawari House
• The Eternals
• The Handmaid's Tale
• Black Orchid
• Valerian & Laureline Books 1 & 2
• The Magicians: New Class

Audio Books:

• Principles for a Changing World Order
• The Order of Time
• The Science of Sci Fi
• The Sandman: Act I
• The Sandman Act II
• How Science Shapes Science Fiction
• How the Earth Works
• The Evidence for Modern Physics
• The Particle at the End of the Universe
• Doctors
• Free Will and Determinism
• 84 Charing Cross Road
• Language Families of the World
• The Philosophy of Science Fiction

Review: Renegades of the Empire

 Scott Macdonald told me that his group at Microsoft (DirectX) was so famous that a journalist wrote about it. The book was called Renegades of the Empire, and not only was it not available at any of the libraries near me, but there was also no kindle version. Which meant I had to buy a used copy from Amazon and read it on paper with a booklight and everything.

The book describes Alex St. John, Eric Engstrom, and Craig Eisler's careers at Microsoft, how they started the DirectX effort, shoe-horned it into Microsoft (killing off WinG in the mean time), and then proceeded to try to create a web-browser (named oddly enough Chrome before being called Chromeeffects) which would fail.

The trio's antics are famous and very politically incorrect. The kind of statements regularly made by Alex St. John, not to mention the antics (hiring contractors using the marketing budget), deliberately dissing their own company at product rollouts, would undoubtedly get someone fired today. There's even a story of a food-fight in one of Microsoft's meeting rooms, with the clean up bill sent to then Microsoft VP Brad Silverberg, who wrote an e-mail saying, "I hope you enjoyed yourself."

Having worked with a few ex-Microsoft employees, I now understand much of their behavior. For instance, there are several instances in the book where a manager going on vacation would come back to discover that his team had been taken away from him. That explains why many former Microsoft employees would never take vacation. (To be honest, I think that attitude permeates much of tech companies today --- even at Google one of my friends once reported that taking vacation was given as a reason to deny someone a promotion, so I won't pretend that things are any better today)

Anyway, the book is eye opening, hilarious in parts, and well worth reading for the insight into the way various people you might encounter at work behave. Recommended.

Review: The Messy Middle

 The Messy Middle is a book about entrepreneurship. Rather than being one about raising money, etc., it's almost entirely about the development of a startup past the initial stages but before being fully successful as an independent entity or being sold. The author started Behance, which was bought by Adobe, and sprinkles his narrative with anecdotes and stories from both his time managing Behance and as a transformative middle manager at Adobe.

The book covers many topics, but the management sections are interesting. In one particular case, he compares a well functioning team to that of a human body system, and describes a well-jelled team as having a healthy immune system, which would wholesale reject any transplant of a foreign entity (such as an new leader being injected into the mix). He describes the manager's role there as helping to suppress the immune system so that the new transplant can contribute. I will note that like many managers, at no point does he consider promoting someone from inside. (And in this particular case, he had been long time friends with the new manager and had faith that it would work out without tearing the team apart)

I switched from the audio book to kindle format in the middle of this book, but there were many anecdotes in this book that were geared entirely towards the product manager, rather than the engineering leader. One thing that particularly stands out is the fact that he considers the most important piece to be self-motivation, mentioning that startups are usually so hard that if you can't motivate yourself you absolutely will not finish.

There are huge sections about motivating yourself, optimizing processes, and right at the end a few notes about getting advice from third parties before any kind of sale happens. It's definitely good stuff and worth your time to read. There's the usual amount of self-aggrandization from any successful entrepreneur, but also enough useful stuff that I wouldn't consider it a problem.