Something else to be worried about...

The question remains the same, a pretty depressing achievement, and a great interview with Bob McTavish...

The CDC just issued a warning about confirmed cases of the Dengue-like Chikungunya virus in St Martin...

Carried by the same mosquito as Dengue, the Asian tiger mosquito, there is no vaccine and no specific treatment for chikungunya.

Kind of a bummer.

Listening to St Lucia

So it goes...

Much ado about very little...

Last time I checked the various forums were abuzz, online sailing rags were getting serious and not actually pimping something for a change... What, pray tell could be the cause?

Well, apparently, the south seas are rife with cannibals!

Now, as someone who grew up with "Tales of the South Pacific" and various pulp fueled dreams of the South Seas, I'll admit the idea of a scantily clad buxom blonde missionary in a big cooking pot was sometimes an idle daydream but the current manic reaction seems a bit over the top.

Yes, sadly, a cruiser was killed and his partner attacked but there is no real evidence that cannibalism was involved and that this was anything other than a simple botched murder and an attempt to hide the evidence. The cannibalism angle was introduced by a German tabloid (not unlike our own National Enquirer who, as everyone knows, is not the sort of rag to find news in...(unless you consider dog faced boys and aliens mating with Sarah Palin news...).

Yet everywhere I turn I hear questions and pronouncements such as this one from NAS...

"The possibility of cannibalism has shocked citizens of French Polynesia, who believed that such practices were long past.

Our thoughts are with Ramin’s family. And it looks as if another location needs to be added to the “do not cruise” list."


Latitude 38 on the other hand (always the best place in my opinion to get close to the truth on sailing related news and mayhem) looks past the lurid headlines and simply deals with the facts available with a researched and well done article. In other words, they cover the news...

L38 ends their coverage with this paragraph...

"If you were planning on doing the Pacific Puddle Jump and are now worried about personal safety in Nuku Hiva, our opinion is that this murder falls in the ranks of incredible aberrations. In fact, it reminds us of the case earlier this year when a young French woman on ultra-safe St. Barth inexplicably stabbed a harmless 57-year-old Haitian housekeeper to death on the main road into town on a Sunday evening. Apparently even the most serene and peaceful places are not immune to occasional mayhem."

Off hand, I don't think they were suggesting that St Barths should become part of the mythical "Do not cruise" list... Do you?

All that being as it is, I really do wish at least some of those pulp dreams might actually exist. You know the sort...

 Of course, with my luck, this would be a lot more likely...

Listening to Spirit

So it goes...

Pressure drop...

The stressful part of being hunkered down in the hurricane zone through hurricane season is not, so much, dealing with a storm like Earl which looks to be passing us just a kiss to the north but the fact that there is always something else coming... In this case Invest 97L.

So it goes...

Listening to Pressure Drop by Toots and the Maytals

Weather...

Not quite the sunny Caribbean today...

The current weather system does not appear to be too much of a threat for us but it will most likely dump a lot of rain on Haiti who could use a break or two as with the aftermath of their earthquake they are still in a world of hurt.

Which brings up a thought... Just why, of all those pledges of aid and money, have only about 2% reached Haiti?

Just another day in the tropics...

Living on a boat in the tropics gives you a little different perspective from time to time. For example, while sitting on the foredeck this afternoon we were talking about this and that and the subject came around from possible hurricanes and the weather (normal for this time of year) to the price of cheese and on until we started talking about Dengue and just maybe since we've been feeling less than tip top that just possibly we had a mild case of Dengue fever... Could be, as the place we were building the mast was a mosquito farm and I would not be too surprised if a lot of those mosquitoes had stripy legs!

We have both had Dengue before so we know what bad Dengue is like but mild not so much. Down here in the USVI you can't get checked for Dengue as they like to pretend it does not exist (can't scare those tourists away) and even if you do have it there is bugger all that can be done except to ride it out.

Which brings me to a really excellent article on Malaria that anyone thinking of visiting the tropics should read... The Tenacious Buzz of Malaria.