No matter how gloried and pretentious the vessel, weather rules over it. We are proceeding this evening through a heavy fog. Visibility <1/4 mile. In the lobby on each deck where you get on and off the elevators are trash receptacles.

There are whitecaps in the toilet bowl.

We are sailing south on a bright, sunny day into swells that vary from four to seven meters. We are going against a strong wind, which means that if you step out onto an open, exposed deck, God will rearrange your hair. We are a bit under nine hundred feet long, and we sway and yaw.

It is most interesting how empty the sea is and how it fills up as you approach land.

One of the hardest jobs on these long-distance cruise ships must be finding stuff for the guests to do when you’re three solid days underway and nothing out there but more water. I’m writing two books and thinking seriously about a third, a book about worms (and it’ll be a real page-turner), so I’m pretty much self-entertaining.

It’s nice to be back online. Apparently, we were not geographically positioned to reach the communications satellite when we were in the Amazon. We are now cruising southeast toward the east most coast of Brazil.

I am the only person in the history of the Twentynine Palms Glider Club who ever got sick in a glider. That was fifty years ago, so my credentials as a candygut go way back. I am therefore drugged as I write this, having just popped Dramamine.