After a LONG and wondrous voyage from Mexico to New Zealand via the French islands out in the Marquesas (Nuku Hiva), the Societies (Bora Bora), and stopping at Nieue then Tonga, we finally arrived here in Tauranga (New Zealand) on 22 December, 2010.

And I love it.

*** Sorry, but I'm unable to respond to messages for the near-future. This supervisor is on the high seas... No Wifi, no internet, but DAMN! What wondrous sunrises!!! Come saturday morn' on the ebb tide, 14th March 2009, the sv Mariane will hoist anchor and be heading for the French Marquesas islands, leaving wonderful Mexico in our wake. Bye Bye, all!
*** Hey there, reader!
Capt' James here. And that's a licensed sailboat Captain, not some untrained "Skipper"!
Here's the rest of the stuff:
Degreed computer hardware engineer from back in the days when 16 K-Bytes of memory was a mag-core block about the size of a cereal box, and a DOS Prompt command was laughably new. Lived and worked in some 16 countries in a 35-something year career before saying the hell with it & buying a sailboat.
My wife & I now live 24/7/365 aboard our 48 foot cutter-rigged sloop "Mariane" {home port: Vienna, Austria}.
Smiles. Winter where my wife can wriggle her toes in the warm sands of a sun-lit beach. Sangria and sunsets; Marguaritas and merry-making. Meanwhile, we're retro-fiiting the boat in preparation to cross the Pacific on an island-hopping, ten-year tour! From Mexico to French Polynesia and Tonga, down to New Zealand and Australia, up through the Philippians and Malaysia, thence to Singapore and Thailand. Ahhh... Thailand. The land of smiles!
Yes, there is WiFi at sea -- if you've the big bucks for a geo-synchronized antenna! Me, I have to wait until I'm anchored near somebody's hot spot. My WiFi system (half home-made) can reach out about a sea mile or so. And you convert that to kilometers yourself! Biggest problem is trying to crack the codes for a secured net. ;-) Bit of math involved and some serious number crunching. Not that I would ever really do something illegal like that.....
Life is too short to drink bad wine or dance with drunks (except me ;-)
There's always another sunset in another port, in another country, in another part of the world. Don't complain: If you don't like it, do something to change it; if you can't change it, learn to accept it; if you can do neither, then hoist anchor and slide on out of harbor with the next high tide!
Languages? Fluent English I'll always claim as my own while wonton American I'll never disown; Both Korean and German I'll read, write and speak but with the Japanese tongue I've bare 'nuff to eat. Croatian and Russian? Enough to get by (though with dictionary to hand and much winking of eye); While Turkish and Egyptian left me somewhat bemused four years studying French left me totally confused. Spanish I've found easy to speak and to hear (at least when I want good food and some beer); Yet at the end of the list and the end of the day I've never understood what the Thai want to say.

From aboard the sailboat "Mariane"
email: capt_jamus (at) yahoo.com {insert the @ symbol}
TEXT ONLY - NO PICTURES ! NO ATTACHMENTS !