I am not entirely sure why street markets in Hong Kong sell dried lizards on sticks like lollipops. I'm also not sure why my assumption that it has something to do with "Chinese medicine" and not "after school snack" makes it any less disturbing.

I grew up a fussy eater—I’m not kidding; I used to pick the seeds off my strawberries—but I more than make up for it these days.

While I’m still partial to comfort food at home, on the road I’ll try anything. No foreign food is too disgusting, obscure, or of questionable provenance. If it’s unidentifiable and fried AND comes on a stick, I’ll probably order three.

A litany of unfortunate menu items

I’ve enjoyed pasta with raw sea urchin, veal cutlets with brain fritters, and indigestion with prairie oysters (a.k.a. Rocky Mountain oysters, a.k.a what ranchers cook when all they have is frying oil and the, er, leftovers from castrating steers). I once ate a whole frog: fried, chilled, and soaked in vinegar—though in my defense, I didn’t realize that’s what I was ordering at the time…

» Read the full story at TheIntrepidTraveler.NET

The free morning Tai Chi lesson on Hong Kong's Kowloon waterfront

“Now mount the tiger, then grasp the swallow’s tail.” The elderly Chinese gentleman was staring right at me, his loose, ivory silk Mao pajamas flapping in the breeze.

My arms ached, my foot was twisted around backwards, and I realized with a rising sense of panic that I had no idea what he was asking me to do.

I stared beyond the barges, ferries, and sampans crisscrossing Victoria Harbour to the endless skyline of Hong Kong cloaked in morning mist, took a deep breath, and twisted my body through what I hoped at least resembled the proper movements…

» Read the full story at TheIntrepidTraveler.net

Hong Kong is not a city. Oh, sure, it’s got towering skyscrapers, tony mega-malls, and thronged street markets.

But that’s just Hong Kong’s type-A side, the sea of high-rises clustered along Hong Kong Island’s north shore, filling the Kowloon peninsula across Victoria Harbour, and gathered in thickets across the mainland’s vast New Territories.

What few people realize is that this iconic urban landscape covers a mere 30% of Hong Kong’s 425 square miles. The rest of Hong Kong is open green space—farmland, forests, and designated Country Park —and it’s criss-crossed by more than 180 miles of hiking trails…

» Read the full story at TheIntrepidTraveler.net

“We’re going to follow that bald eagle up the river,” said veteran Yellowstone guide Leslie Quinn as we watched the magnificent bird flap past. Leslie threw into gear his bright yellow Bombadier—a vintage 1960s snowcoach shaped like a gumdrop reclining on tank treads—and crunched up the snow-packed road into the heart of the world’s oldest national park….

» Read the full story at TheIntrepidTraveler.net

Budapest is the Europe you’ve been looking for.

Budapest is laid along both banks of the Danube: the palatial fortress of Buda rising high above the river to one side, the commercial center of Pest splayed along the flat bank opposite.

It is a city of hearty food, forthright and genuine people, fine wines, and elegant thermal baths.

It’s a city steeped in a wonderfully convoluted past—Romans and Magyars, Mongols and Turks, Austrian emperors and Soviet puppets—yet one that looks to the future, with elegantly odd new buildings going up to replace some of the cement-block scars from the Soviet era.

But these avant-garde new structures and sad Soviet holdovers are outnumbered in the old city by a gorgeous mélange (yes, I said it: a gorgeous mélange) of decorous 19th century Empire structures and decorative Secessionist ones, all jostling for space on busy boulevards.

And, yes, you can do it all in a long weekend. (And, despite all news to the contrary, there is not currently a toxic river of sludge moving down the Danube.)

Those famous Budapest baths

The Rudas Baths in Budapest

Budapest’s famous bathhouses range from broodingly 16th century Turkish (the Rudas Baths; www.budapestgyogyfurdoi.hu), to grand Art Nouveau (the famed Géllert Baths; www.gellertbath.com).

There are also button-down modern spas, exemplified by the Danubius Grand on Margaret Island (www.danubiushotels.com) that feature menus of treatments ranging from spa massages and mus baths to nose jobs, cosmetic dentistry, and laser eye surgery.

Hungary has become famous for this kind of medical tourism, (they have made a particular specialty of dentistry), all of it performed by highly-trained physicians, surgeons, and dentists at prices so low that you can actually spend a week at the spa hotel—including airfare, meals, sightseeing, and the medical procedures— and still spend far less than you would Stateside just for the procedures themselves.

What’s the best way to get to Budapest?

The elegant New York Cafe at the Boscolo Palace Hotel (www.boscolohotels.com)

How do you do Budapest in a weekend? Well, it helps if you live in the greater New York City area, because as of this year Delta Air Lines (www.delta.com)—and staring next year, American Airlines (www.aa.com)—offers nonstop seasonal flights (in about 9.5 hours) from JFK to the rapidly expanding Budapest airport.

Off-season, you can still go, of course, but you will transfer somewhere like Paris or London and the journey will take up to 12 hours.

That might actually be a preferable way to go, because one thing those direct flights are not is cheap.

Coach class starts around $1,000 roundtrip (though I highly recommend their Business First service, if you have the scratch—I don’t, which is why I was only too happy to let Delta pick up the tab for me; speaking of which: yes, it’s perfectly natural to hate travel writers).

However, if you don’t mind transferring in Europe, you can get roundtrip plane tickets for as little as $650, including taxes and fees (found that fare on a LOT flight from New York via Warsaw using Kayak.com).

If you are already in Europe, however (or perhaps can snag an inexpensive fare to London; this winter they’re bottoming out around $397 roundtrip at www.AuroEurope.com), you are in luck, since Budapest is the home base for the low-cost airline Wizz Air (www.wizzair.com). Flights from London’s Luton airport run as little as £25 (about $40) including taxes.

Even better, once you get there, everything in Budapest is pretty inexpensive.

How much does Budapest cost?

Those fabulous and famous Budapest bathhouses? Entry for a day, including use of a private changing cabin, costs about $18 to $21. Once inside, massages run as little as $13 to $20.

It’ll cost $6 for a bottle of really good wine—a bit more for that famous sweet Hungarian wine called tokaj—or $1.50 to $4 for a beer even at the trendiest of “Ruin pubs” (semi-legal squatter bars, like the classic and excellent Szimpla kert [www.szimpla.hu], installed in the courtyards of abandoned buildings; www.ruinpubs.com).

A goulash cooking lesson at one of the upstairs restaurants in the central market

A massive bowl of goulasch will run you $5 to $6, while the priciest main course on a menu may break $10 or $11 (and that’s not even for the famed Hungarian fried goose liver on brioche—best accompanied by a glass of that sweet tokaj wine).

At online booking sites like Venere.com and Booking.com, Hotels in the center start around $26 for two people—though around $40 per night is more typical (international chain properties like Ramada or Best Western start at $60 to $90). Simple guesthouses sell double rooms starting as low as $17.

You can bargain in the central market for handicrafts—and they stall owners are refreshingly devoid of shill or tout-ism. They just sit there quietly waiting for a potential customer to ask them a question, rather than constantly exhorting passersby to come peruse their wares. I love it.

(I also love the prices, where embroidered linens start at $2 to $4 for smaller pieces, and sampler packs of super-fresh paprika cost half what they would at home.)

A prison cell at the Runde Ecke Stasi Museum (East German secret police) in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

They would steam open all your mail, record your every phone call, track your daily movements, and secretly enter your home to copy any document you hadn’t managed to hide.

If they suspected you might harbor anti-government sentiments, they would engage in a years-long clandestine campaign to ruin utterly your personal and professional life—merely to ensure you had neither the time, nor the resources, nor the will to oppose the state.

They were the Stasi, the East German secret police, and their Leipzig headquarters was the Runde Ecke. This stately “Round Corner” building now contains a wonderfully homespun “Power and Banality” museum that documents the Stasi era of terror in the very offices from which they waged ongoing war against their own citizens.

It’s a surprising and disturbing window into the everyday middle management of running a dictatorship and reflexively cruel police state.

Dirty tricks, Stasi-style

A uniform for a Junior Stasi Agent (you could join in 7th grade).

Though the Stasi museum consists of just a handful of oppressively small rooms off a hall done in the dreary institutional yellows and browns mid-20th century, the glass display cases are crammed with the machines and mementos of a secretive state security apparatus.

The walls are crowded with photos, documents, and densely-typed explanatory placards—all, unfortunately, in German, making it imperative to plump €3 for the English audio tour to learn the (often bizarre) details behind Stasi methods.

Why did detention cells have two beds? So interrogators could recruit each cellmate to inform on the other.

What’s with the jaunty school uniform? You could sign up to be a Stasi agent and begin informing on your school chums at age 13.

Stasi "scent files" on dissendents at Leipzig's Rundke Ecke Museum

Did you notice that the handles differ on either side of the doors in the office complex’s antechamber? That was so anyone entering it, either from outside to come in or from the inner hall in order to exit, could simply push down the handle to get into room—but once in, you needed a key (or, more precisely, a Stasi member with a key) to get out.

Those accordioned bits of yellow felt individually sealed in mason jars? Suspected agitators would be “invited” to the Runde Ecke for interminable interviews—after which the swatch of felt upon which the suspect dissident had unwittingly been sitting would be jarred.

This created a sniffable catalog for trained Stasi dogs to peruse and they tried to match a scent to any anti-government pamphlets and propaganda that popped up.

Paging Maxwell Smart

A Stasi spy's breifcase disguise kit (today's cover: generic blue collar worker)

The Stasi Museum doesn’t dwell entirely in chilling Cold War thriller territory. The skeletal “Uncle Sam” anti-capitalist propaganda is almost amusing. As my friend Larry Bleiberg pointed out, there’s more than a hint of Get Smart to the disguise kits Stasi agents would use to keep subjects from realizing they were being tailed by the same person day after day—clownish makeup, false noses, and ludicrous mustaches and beards.

Then there are the briefcases containing quick-change outfits. A hard hat, coveralls, wig, and skin-tint were handy if you needed a new identify fast.

The most popular disguise, though, was “photojournalist”—then you didn’t even have to hide your camera in one of the false bellies or super-spy corduroy jackets with lens holes in the zippers and shutter release cables in the pockets.

(Fun fact: the Stasi helped develop the first camera with a silent shutter—the better to spy in secrecy.)

One of the museum audio tracks even includes a Stasi-era joke: A local man wrote a letter to his grandmother in Western Germany (loosely translated): “Thank you for the pistol. I have buried it in the garden.” A few weeks later, he wrote again: “The Stasi have dug up the garden. You can send the tulip bulbs now.”

The beginning of the end: The Monday Demonstrations

Marchers at Leipzig's Montagsdemonstrationen. (Photo by Gerhard Gäbler)

Every Monday evening, dozens of Stasi agents and contingents of uniformed police would arrive at the Nikolaikirche on the far side of town to keep a close eye on the church’s regular peace prayers. Under oddly Miami-ish columns fashioned like rococo pink-and-green palm trees, the bishop and notable locals—including Kurt Masur, conductor of the famed Gewandhaus orchestra—would make impassioned pleas for a non-violent revolution.

During the Monday prayers of Oct. 9, 1989, the Nikolaikirche was filled to standing-room capacity, and 2,000 people heard the bishop’s call to march on the Runde Ecke—but he had one condition. Everyone must carry a candle in both hands, because if you are carrying a candle you cannot carry a weapon, and if you are not carrying a weapon you give the authorities no excuse to stop you.

When the worshippers exited the church, they were met by ten of thousands of other Leipzigers.

Every single one of them was carrying a candle.

In all, some 70,000 Leipzigers marched up the ring road around the Old City to the Runde Ecke. As Horst Sindermann, member of the GDR’s central committe, later remarked: “We had planned everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers.”

The Oct. 9, 1989, march on the Runde Ecke helped kick off the Wende movement that would eventually lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the entire Communist Block—and would spell the end of the Stasi reign of terror.

Runde Ecke
Dittrichring 24
tel. 0341-961-2443
www.runde-ecke-leipzig.de
Open daily 10am–6pm
Free

Day 1: Key Largo to Rodriguez Key. [Repeat]

Our 41-foot Hunter was called Blue Moon, but we nicknamed it “The Camry,” because on two separate occasions we found ourselves in a situation in which we could sail it just fine… we just couldn’t make it stop.

First day out, we got a late afternoon start because the tides trapped us in the Key Largo Marina. To relieve the boredom of waiting, I arranged to be nearly brained by the anchor of a hanging boat.

In which we almost lose one boat (and I almost die) before we even get out of the marina

Blue Moon was a whole lot bigger than Captain Rhoad’s own boat, a 29-footer (I believe) he keeps on the Chesapeake. So I don’t blame him. He was being forced to get the hang of this gargantuan new boat in a terribly narrow marina channel, in a blasted rush, with the locals yelling at him to hurry up, and at full speed.

This is because, though we had been told we’d be stuck in the marina until 5pm or 6pm waiting for the high tide to open an exit, no one had mentioned that the fuel station, which we had to visit before setting off and which lay just a few hundred yards down at the end of the marina, would be closing at 5pm.

By 4:30pm, we had just started loading our gear and a week’s worth of food onto the boats (most of it was still in the parking lot, being staged and divided between the Blue Moon and our other boat, a 36-foot Pearson called Stargazer), when someone from the fuel station wandered up and warned us of their imminent closure.

We started frantically slinging gear on board both boats. In the process, some people’s personal gear ended up on the wrong boat, other bits were misplaced for the duration, and a few pieces managed to get lost entirely.

Every five minutes or so, the fuel jerks would swing by to remind us of the ticking clock in nasty tones.

Keep in mind there were only four people on this tip who had any idea what they were doing: Blue Moon had 80-year-old Capt. Rhoad, an old Navy salt, Mark and Stew’s former Scoutmaster, and the only one of the lot of us who actually owned his own large sailboat. It also had a hugely under-qualified First Mate, me, who has been sailing precisely once before.

Stargazer had Captain Mark Weiss (who has owned boats) and his able First Mate Stew Lee, both veterans of at least three previous weeklong scout sailing trips.

Stargazer also had Scotty, who has been sailing a few times, but until this trip never really bothered paying attention.

Blue Moon had the Rosenbergs (Ian and his dad Stuart), who do know how to sail, but – with all due respect — are used to puttering around lakes and bays in one-man Lasers, not taking on the open ocean in a 41-foot sloop. I was mightily happy to have them aboard my boat, but they had a steep learning curve as well.

Nearly all of the other boys were willing and eager to help, but they were, to a man, all landlubbing newbies to whom all the boat terminology (and protocol and operation) was a totally foreign tongue, so at first they got more in the way than anything,

So, while the boys finished flinging food and packs helter-skelter below decks, the officers hurriedly unhooked both boats’ various umbilicals and stowed them (water hoses, power lines).

We cast off the Stargazer before its entire crew was aboard, and then quickly cast off Blue Moon in such a hurry we left Ian behind on the dock, still holding one of the mooring lines. He looked a little confused at first, then hurt when he realized we’d abandoned him. He threw up his arms disbelievingly, and said “What?…” Then he grumbled “Aw, man!,” and started coiling his line and turning to trudge up the marina toward the fuel station to meet us.

I probably would have done more to help him, but at the time was busy diving across the deck for my iPhone. In the rush, I had absentmindedly slipped it into my shirt pocket, which was dumb. When I tripped on the jib sheet running below the rail and my chest scraped along the cable of the mast stay, it ripped the button off my shirt pocket and the phone went flying, skittering across the deck. I flung myself after it and managed to snatch it just as it started going over the lip headed for the drink. I secured it in my pants’ zippered cargo pocket, reminding myself later to find my pack in the pile below and dig out the water-resistant cellphone case I’d bought for this trip.

Someone had told Captain Rhoad it might be easiest to back down the marina to the fuel docks, but that wasn’t working, so — with giant fishing charter boats returning every five minutes or so, each dangling 40 to 50 paying passengers form the gunwales and pretty much hogging the marina channel – the captain tried to turn the huge, ungainly, unfamiliar boat around in the tight space.

I was up on the bow, having cast off the last mooring line and stranded poor Ian, standing on call to fend and gingerly rubbing the raw rash on my knee I had just gotten from diving for my phone, when someone suddenly shouted “Reid!” with urgent terror.

I spun around to see an anchor aimed at my skull, about a foot away and closing rapidly. My brain was still trying to work out what an anchor could possibly be doing at eye level, but luckily for my brain my body reacted without awaiting instructions.

I buckled my knees and fell backward, just managing to duck the speeding anchor. At the same time, I reached up my arms to catch the prow of the boat to which the anchor was attached. My brain finally caught up.

“Ah,” it surmised. “This must be that small boat I noticed earlier that was hanging on the far side of the marina.” (Many people with houses on a permanent slip and smallish boats have winch mechanisms to hoist their craft up into a suspended version of dry dock; it keeps the barnacles off).

That sorted out, my brain also starting issuing orders.

I screamed “Reverse! Reverse!” back toward the Captain and did a pull-up on the prow of the other boat to I could lift my legs, plant my feet against the marina’s far wall, and try vainly to push a 41-foot boat backwards.

Luckily, the Captain was quick and slammed us into reverse. This stopped our forward motion. Then I saw another problem, one even worse than hitting the marina wall, and screamed back, “Stop! Stop! ALL STOP! RIGHT NOW!”

The anchor-studded prow of the other boat was now fully cantilevered over the bow of Blue Moon, and it had neatly inserted itself between our mainmast stays and the jib, which was furled and trailing its two taught sheets back to the cockpit. In other words, it was a spider web of steel cables, ropes, and masts, and thrust into the middle of it was the enormous end of another boat, bristling with the pointy parts of the anchor. And we were drifting.

There was only inches of clearance on either side of the invading boat, and with the engine churning, current flowing, and tiller spinning, all it would take was the tiniest nudge in the wrong direction for the prow of the other boat to careen across our decks and rip the rigging right off our boat.

In fact, as I watched, ineffectually pushing with all my might against it, our outer stay slowly rode up along the side of the hanging boat and, with the telltale twang of a braided steel cable, sheared off a few inches of paint.

At that moment, Stuart Rosenberg and our crew captain, Jon Pfeil, materialized next to me and threw themselves against the other boat. Using every last ounce of available strength, issuing strangled shouts back to the captain of “Left!,” “Now back,” and, “No, Right! Right! Right!”, inch by inch we were able to push ourselves off while micromanaging the direction, allowing us to unthread the other boat’s prow from our rigging.

We got a round of disdainful applause from the Stargazer as we pulled up too moor alongside her at the fuel docks.

[to be sung] Sailing, sailing, knowing we cannot stop…

Fully fueled, we still had to wait the arrival of high tide to get out — the Blue Moon pulled a draft of five feet to Stargazer’s four, so we always played it safe – so we left Mark and Oliver on the boats and trooped up the road to the Circle K for giant, insulated 64-oz. plastic mugs of soda, not fully realizing the irony of buying a refillable mug from a chain store when we would spend the rest of the week at sea, far away from any Circle K (the Stargazer crew ended up stringing their mugs into a garland in their main cabin).

Finally, we motored out of the long marina channel, made it to open waters, and raised our sails. Soon, the captain let Jon take the wheel, and I plugged my iPod into the sound system to blast the main theme from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” soundtrack. We were grinning and excited. All was well.

We had sailed — pretty much at random, just to get the hang of the boat — a grand total of maybe 90 minutes before the setting sun and gathering clouds nudged us to turn south to head toward the lee of tiny Rodriguez Key to anchor. Stargazer had already made the same decision, and was maybe 15 minutes ahead of us.

As we sailed into trickier, shallower waters on the lee of the island, we turned on the engine, lowered the main mast and started furling in the jib.

However, as soon as we had the jib furled, something went WHANG! and the jib unfurled itself again, suddenly and violently, yanking the sheets out of the surprised boys’ hands.

In the whipping wind of a gale that simultaneously came down, those free sheets (the lines used to furl and unfurl the jib) snaked wildly around and quickly wrapped around each other to formed a complex Gordian knot. Just then, the sun disappeared and the rain began slashing down in torrents.

As the boat pitched to and fro in the five-foot seas of the gale, Captain Rhoad tried to keep the ship in irons (pointing directly into the wind so your sails don’t fill with it and you aren’t fighting the wind – a fight you will always lose). This kept the jib flapping as Jon Pfeil and I inched our way to the foredeck in the white fury.

We braced ourselves against the deck and the mainstay and used a free line to capture the snaking, tangled, wildly flapping jib sheets and then wrapped the line around a stay to give us some leverage.

We took turns hauling with all our might on the far end of the tangled jib sheets in order to get a tiny bit of slack into the line. This would allow the other person to attack one layer of the multifarious knot. We switched off whenever the slack-producer’s fingers gave out and arms went numb from fatigue. We’d make a tiny bit of headway, then an errant gust of wind would blow the jib, yank the sheet out of our hands, and pull it taught — and the knot tight – again.

After about 40 minutes, with the help of a plumber’s wrench, we finally got the two sheets untangled, which would at least allow us to control and trim the jib. We stumbled back to the cockpit, exhausted, fingers cramped and hands trembling, forearm muscles aching from the unaccustomed exertion. I now know why Popeye has such engorged forearms.

The problem now was, there was no way to furl the jib. That “WHANG!” we had heard turned out to be the jib furling line disengaging and coming clean out of the furling assembly at the base of the mast. It was now nothing more than a spare length of rope.

The Captain and I sat at the bow as we headed out to deeper waters, our legs dangling off the prow and repeatedly dunked into the oncoming (and surprisingly warm) waves as the boat crashed through them. We poked around the furling drum with flashlights and were only able to determine that it was a wonderfully engineered device with a self-contained spring apparatus… and that there was no way to take it apart and fix it without the right kind of tools.

Given the dark and the storm and the wind, the captain didn’t want to risk lowering the whole jib assembly with the halyard, since it would require some hand be up at the bow, gathering in the sail as it came down. One errant gust of wind could easily billow the sail, yank it overboard, and sweep into the dark seas any hapless scouts who were up there trying to control it.

So, instead, we made the only decision we could.

We simply kept sailing.

All night long.

How to turn landlubbing teens into hardened sailors with our patented 10-hour crash course

We taught boys how to tack with the jib, warning the crew with a shout of “Coming about!” then starting the tack with a call of “Hard to lee!”

Once the boat came across the wind, the man at the wheel would yell “Break!,” which was the signal for the deckhand on the now-leeward side to crank in his jib sheet furiously while the deckhand on the other side let his line out for slack. It was a simple, but precise maneuver, and we now had 12 hours to practice it.

We spent the night pacing back and forth in the safe, deep waters, continually passing and re-passing Rodriguez Key, behind which the Stargazer was affixed to a mooring ball, its crew engaged in such soft, landlubby activities as “eating dinner” and “sleeping.”

Luckily, the gale soon abated, the clouds parted, and our perfect heading turned out to be: the moon. So that’s where I set my sail. I kept the full moon at my mast for a mile or so, then tacked and kept it at my stern.

The night was filled with stars and salt air. The only sounds were the gentle rush of water along the boat, occasional luffing flap of the sail or soft snap of a line in the wind, and the creaking voice that boats have always had, whether made of wood or Fiberglass. Looking from west to southwest across the velvet sky, we could see Venus, Mars, and Saturn strung out in a line like gems on the pearl necklace of the Milky Way.

Somewhere around midnight, the Captain and Ian’s watch (Anthony and Oliver) took over, and Stuart stayed up with them, while Jon and I went below to fail to sleep for a few hours. The younger boys were all asleep on their feet, even the ones on watch, and had to be roused when it came time to tack–or, when eager Oliver was at the wheel, jibe. (Oliver also quickly perfect the technique of steering with his feet so he could use his hands to hold his book, a flashlight wedged between his chin and shoulder. This sharp attention to his duties might explain why he jibed so much.)

Around 4am, Jon and I roused his watch’s two deckhands, Gunner and Pretsch, and came back above deck to continue sailing for the moon until I saw Aurora appear on the faintly lightening horizon. We watched brooding Jupiter rise in the southeast — accompanied, incredibly, by tiny Uranus, shining bright silver high in the sky.

Finally, the sun came up to warm our soaked and tired bones.

Now that it was daylight we were ready to make headway, but it was still only daybreak. So we paced past Rodriguez Key a few more times, glaring jealously at a gently bobbing Stargazer, waiting for them to wake up and debating how early was too early to call, considering the relatively cushy night they’d had.

(The best we’d accomplished in terms of comfort all night was to dash below to the galley every once in a while, grab a handful of roasted chicken, and carry it topside to stuff into our mouths in the dark as we sailed. It all felt very primal and manly, if you overlooked the fact that the birds had all been nicely pre-roasted by the grocery store and neatly packaged in plastic containers.)

Seeking the Stargazer

Stargazer finally radioed us a good morning, and we told them to get a move on, since all our scouts were now experienced sailors with 14 hours of hard sailing under their belts, whereas their crew was still comprised mostly of passengers who had merely taken a leisurely 90-minute pleasure cruise the evening before.

They pleaded they had yet to eat breakfast. On Blue Moon, we exchanged greasy grins, our chins still smeared with chicken bits, and called them all sorts of synonyms for sissy. Still, we hollered down below for someone on the other watch to figure out where the bagels and cream cheese had been tossed the day before. (The bagels were under a bench; the cream cheese was, of all the miracles, actually in the tiny fridge.)

Finally, on our umpteenth southwest passage past Rodriguez Key (we had altered our pacing a bit to put us on our eventual desired heading), we saw the Stargazer raising its mainsail.

We gave a whoop and raised our own, thankful that we could continue on our current heading without having to turn around yet again and wear our weary trough in the seas even deeper.

We radioed them to hurry up and catch up, and continued sailing merrily across the sun-dazzled waters, our sails and hearts filled with the second wind of a new day and an actual destination: Channel Five and its 65′ bridge, which would allow us and our 64′ mast to nip under it to gain the leeward side of the Florida Keys, where we could drop anchor in calm waters away from the wind and finally figure out what was wrong with our !@#$%ing jib. It would take us all day to get there, but we could make it.

After 15 minutes of making great time, we still hadn’t seen Stargazer come from behind the rapidly receding Rodriguez Key. Couldn’t raise them on the radio, either. I gave them five minutes. Then five minutes more.

Finally, wearily, I called for a tack and we turned around, yet again, to head back the way we had come and see what was going on.

Time to break Stargazer, too

Turns out Stargazer had run over its own mooring ball as they attempted to sail away, and its thick rope had gotten hopelessly tangled in their propeller. You may be picturing a propeller at the back of a boat, but that’s only on the outboard motors of dinghies or on the screws of a massive ship. On a sailboat, the prop is more toward the middle of the boat, and the rudder is actually behind it — that way, you can make use of the wash created by the prop and flowing over the rudder to turn the boat much more quickly.

Of course, putting the prop down there under the middle of the keel does make things a bit tricky if you have to get to it while the boat is still in the water.

During their radio silence since breakfast, Stew and Mark had spent the past hour diving under their boat with knives, trying to saw through the five-inch braided line and free their boat.

They had finally gotten a smaller line untangled so they could raise the thicker mooring line just high enough in the water to hack at it while still at snorkel level. This was key, because now they didn’t have to dive down, locate the mooring line in the murky water, and have time only to give it one or two saws before needing to head back up for air.

However, this was not before the pitching and heaving of the boat overhead had done its damage to the intrepid captain and his first mate. Banging them repeatedly on the head was one thing. Infinitely worse were the barnacles lining the bottom of the boat, which flayed ribbons of skin off their backs and gouged deep cuts into their arms.

After they finally got free (and being good Boy Scouts, after they retied the mooring ball to its line, which was now about five feet shorter) and were back on board and underway, they had to institute a “blood detail” to keep swabbing down the decks, now slippery with their blood, while others swabbed and treated their wounds to staunch further bleeding.

We had been at sea roughly 15 hours, and already had one broken boat, two injured officers, and one thoroughly exhausted crew. Also, our main cabin was filled with chicken parts that had been flung around all night.

Ah, sailing.

The Ariang Mass Games. That "poster" in the background is a mosaic formed by thousands of kids holding up placards in unison. (Photo by Kok Leng Yeo)

So, now Americans can visit North Korea year-round (not just during the big showcase Arirang spectacle of creepily syncronized kindergarten kids). See: http://www.northkorea1on1.com

The real question is: should we be going at all? I am sure all visits will be as structured, regimented, and closely guarded as ever (a tourism variant on the old Potemkin Village), so would that stifle any of the potential benefits travel otherwise usually brings–a cultural exchange on a personal level in which people from both nations get to learn a bit about one another and, hopefully, foster a greater understanding.

Or will it be more of the same story: tourists blithely contributing to both the piggybank of a repressive regime and helping further its propoganda machine.

In other words, should travel to North Korea be boycotted, as it frequently is to other despotic countries like Myanmar?

I hate the treacly, jingoistic “America the Beautiful” theme that makes every page scream USA! USA! USA! I VOTED FOR GEORGE W. BUSH!

Also why, in a document designed expressly for the purposes of visiting other countries, does every page serve as an ad to stay home and see the wonders of this country? OK, so sure, the first photo/engraving page sports my own hometown sights of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Clearly, they’re trying to butter me up. Won’t work.

After Philly’s contributions, we get Cape Cod, Mt. Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty. We get a Mississippi riverboat, places in the west where buffalo roam beneath Teton-y peaks and men in cowboy hats wrangle longhorns, some flat place in the Midwest where wheat and handplows rule, a train in Utah, and a grizzly eating salmon in the shade of a totem pole in the Pacific Northwest, saguaro in Arizona, and a palm tree in Hawaii. This patriotic march of images culminates in a final photo which implies, by extension, that the U.S. also owns the moon and outer space in general. Nice. And we wonder why the rest of the world finds us to arrogant and self-important.

I also hate the instructions that the document is never to be folded, spindled, or mutilated for fear of damaging the Big Brother microchip embedded inside so anyone with a receiver can steal all my personal data. Don’t they know what travel does to a passport? The one I sent in to have replaced resembled nothing so much as a wad of damp cardboard with a mash-up of some exotic stamps barely visible in it.

Finally: I hate the fact that I have to memorize a whole new passport number. What was wrong with the old one?