at ease at sea

Sea days remind me a lot of why I moved to Mexico.

My time is my own.  There are no schedules.  Everything I need for the good life is at hand.

When we left Tokyo last night, Roy and I discussed the seas we would be facing as we headed north to Russia through the Pacific past the Kuril Islands.  We both thought we would encounter choppy, if not stormy, seas.  After all, we would be sailing just south of the same waters that have made Deadliest Catch a hit.

We have both been on cruises where the weather has not been kind.  On one of our Transatlantic crossings, the bow slapping against the sea sounded exactly as if we were impaling whales on our bulbous bow.

So, imagine our surprise when we opened the sliding door to the deck this morning and found what you see at the top of this essay.  The skies were clear.  And the sea was almost lake calm.  We could feel no motion on the ship.

The calm was almost eerie.  If this had been a John Carpenter movie, we would have known that Something Really Bad was about to happen.

And right on cue, we entered a fog bank.

You know the type.  Where ghost pirates haunt the air and seek revenge for treachery long left unrevenged.

Well, nothing of the sort happened.  After a couple hours of zero frontal visibility, we were back in the sun -- and calm seas.

One thing I do not have in Barra de Navidad is a hot tub.  But the ship does.  Eight of them, I think.  I only needed one.

After a light lunch, I grabbed my Kindle, slipped into a hot tub for a couple of hours, and made a big dent in the latest editions of The Oregonian, The Economist, and National Review.  I am still amazed that technology can deliver them to me wherever I am -- even in a hot tub at sea.

I also knocked off another chapter of Robert Middlekauff's Washington's Revolution.  When I turned off the Kindle, George had just arrived at Yorktown with his somewhat troublesome French allies.  But, you know.  I think he

 just may defeat the British.  I don't want to spoil the plot for you.

All in all, it was a practically perfect day.  By the time you read this, I should be dining on venison in one of the ship's specialty restaurants.

But food is a topic for another day.  And I promise you are going to hear about it.