Crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, heading into the Atlantic we passed through a swarm of house flies.  They filled the boat!  Flies were everywhere, hundreds of them.  They were in our food, in our clothes and bedding; we were overrun.  Someone produced a fly swatter and went to work swatting at them with no effect.  [...]

“Jump Ship”, to exit or leave  the boat quickly w/o the captain's permission. May 18th,  0100 hours ( 1 am) , winds east  five to ten  knots,  clear skies, south east swell one to three feet, relative location: off the N.J. coast just south of Sandy Hook. I awoke for my watch to relieve Joel as pilot.  [...]

It all started out calmly enough.  I got an email in mid-December from a sailing buddy who thought I should check out a boat transport gig, from North Carolina sailing to the Caribbean leaving ASAP.  What the hell, I thought and made the contact with really no intention of sailing anywhere during the holiday season.  [...]

What was I thinking?  To fly to St. Maarten in the Caribbean on three days notice, somewhere I had never been before, with a one-way ticket. Then to board a 45-foot sailboat I had never seen before with four people I had never met before. The plan was to sail across the Atlantic Ocean, to the [...]