Starry, Starry Night

Hey, I'm 5ft 8 1/2" and if I remember my "normal" tables correctly, that's exactly average. So where do you fit - above or below average. It makes a difference when people are designing items for the consumer. Hair on the top of your head serves a number of purposes. It can make you look younger, or lack of hair can make you look older. It can insulate you from the sun's rays. It can insulate you in the cold Canadian winter. Keep you cooler in the hot, tropical sun. It protects your scalp from blows and wear & tear. Since I lost my hair to Nathan's bet many years ago, I have lost all the advantages of hair. So when the boat designers make the forward head door 5ft 7", it tends to wear the skin off the top of your head if you're too old and senile to remember that this door isn't tall enough. The forward head door isn't the only assault on me, the dodger has also been built to that 5ft 7" standard and it also inflicts its wear & tear on my hairless scalp. These two items have been built too low for me but at night when I go to put my main halyard away, I can't reach the darn thing because 5'8" isn't tall enough! If the skin on my scalp gets a chance to grow back, I promise to treat it better for the rest of this trip.

After our last blog & seeing Trev off on the ferry, we spent a couple of days at Nanny Cay Marina docks trying to get our boat registration paperwork straightened out. No luck yet, but hopefully at some point soon, we will have this boat registered as a Canadian vessel. The last four days we have spent in the idyllic anchorage of Deadman's Bay on Peter Island - one of the more exclusive resorts in the BVI's. There has been quite a bit of algae and barnacles growing on the bottom of my brand new dinghy, so one of my priorities was to get to the beach and scrub the bottom. There was nobody at the little beach area in a secluded spot, so that's where I went to do my work. Half way through scrubbing the bottom of the dinghy, resort personnel pulled up with 2 guests. They were a bout to have a private lunch at the honeymoon beach and I was asked politely to leave - half way done. I agreed and the resort worker headed off leaving the couple alone. As soon as the resort worker was out of earshot, the couple said that I was welcome to finish my work. I did a hurried job & left, but did finish it up 2 days later at the yachters' beach where we are segregated off from the resort.

With this much idle time on your hands, you spend alot of time watching the goings on around you and I am sure I have provided amusement for others watching me. One of the more interesting observations for me is watching the behaviours on the mega yachts. Yesterday afternoon I saw 2 crew members dinghy into the beach to pick up the owners. Once they had them on board, they took them back to the ship immediately. They had room in the dinghy, but didn't bring back any of the beach articles - chairs, umbrella, towels, toys, etc on this trip. Instead, the owners were dropped off & the crew returned to the beach for the mundane job of gathering up the beach gear. I can only assume the beach gear didn't have enough social standing to travel in the same dinghy ride.

Peter Island is so well run that every morning a tractor with beach combing equipment rakes the beach & cleans up any debris that has been brought in on the night's waves. This morning, 2 crewmen came from the mothership (mega yacht), dropped off all the beach gear and 1 crewman, while the dinghy operator went back to the yacht. The crewman left on shore started to spread out the beach chairs, umbrella and towels. Then, I couldn't believe it, he had brought a rake and started raking the beach all around where these people were going to set up. Cloud cover came in and within a short while it started to rain and then to pour. No one from from the mothership to pick up this crewman. They simply left him to stand in his nicely raked sand in the rain. The clouds went away and the afternoon was nice so at least his work wasn't wasted. I've always had the words "service" and "servant" in my vocabulary, but haven't really thought much about the "servant" word as it wasn't part of my world. After having watched the activities on a couple of mega yachts, I think these crew fit more into the servant category than the trained professionals that they actually are.

This blog is coming to you on a starry, starry night - sitting in the cockpit (swatting at a few mosquitoes), looking at the mountainside lights of Tortola.