This is the best thread ever!! Mike, that is a great photo of you on the sugar scoop of Jeannius, but those are not my sons with you. That video of Laura is, well, so Laura! All of us have memories of each trip and this thread has reminded me of several. So, if you will forgive the mental meanderings of an old salt I have some to share. OTOH, if you want to click off now, I certainly understand. Otherwise;

While bartering with a group of local fishermen who had been living about a week at a primitive hut on an uninhabited island on the reef off Belize I experienced a textbook case of supply and demand. We received 6 live lobsters and they received 6 ice-cold cans of beer.

While reaching off the south coast of Vieques I watched a large waterspout bisect my wake...right where I had been about a half hour earlier.

Moved a Sunsail monohull from their base on Antigua to BVI (actually, won the 10 day charter via an online auction for $500, but that's another story.) On the last day after leaving SXM at oh-dark-thirty and a rambunctious crossing of Anegada Passage we stopped at Spanish Town to clear in. I thought myself lucky to be second in line and then I waited...and waited...and waited. Turned out the young couple in front of me were entering the country with a dog which had NO immunization record. They were phoning around VG for someone capable and available to administer the shots.

After having our dinner at a waterfront restaurant on Ies Des Saintes literally blown away by a sudden gale and searching around in a driving rain in the dingy while wearing plastic garbage bags as rain gear, we finally found Jeannius not near where we had left her anchored. Our antics the next morning trying to free the anchor from a massive abandoned chain become the subject of the chapter "Unchain My Yacht" in a Manpot book.

My profile photo, at left, taken at my 70th birthday party at a beachfront restaurant on Anguilla (and sailing to BVI later that night.)

Thanks for listening!

Polaris