Message-ID: <14150115.1075860057848.JavaMail.evans@thyme> Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 09:19:00 -0700 (PDT) From: mark.taylor@enron.com To: gpier@doubleclick.net Subject: Friday/Sailing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-From: Mark - ECT Legal Taylor X-To: "Pier, Greg" X-cc: X-bcc: X-Folder: \Mark_Taylor _Dec_2000\Notes Folders\Sent X-Origin: Taylor-M X-FileName: mtaylor.nsf I'm looking forward to seeing you Friday night. I'll bring along some sailing info. but thought I'd let you know now what we've got in mind. Dan & Jamie are lined up so if you guys are still interested there would be 6 of us. We have gotten a quote for a relatively new 46' sailboat in the British Virgin Islands for the week of Thanksgiving. We'd fly down there on Saturday the 20th, pick up the boat the next day and return either Saturday the 27th or Sunday the 28th. [The return date is still under discussion - so far we have (i) Jamie who wants to fly Saturday so we have a day at home before going back to work, (ii) Mark who likes to spend as much time on the boat as possible so wants to come back Sun., and (iii) Ted who when he heard the question said "Let's start back Saturday and spend the night in South Beach!"] The charter company is the Moorings (their website is www.moorings.com) and the specific boat we reserved is called a Moorings 463. You can see a floor plan and photos on the web but the boat has three separate double cabins each of which has its own bathroom. Each day's schedule is usually pretty flexible - get up whenever (I seem to remember Jamie getting up pretty early & making coffee), have breakfast on the boat, decide where to go and sail off to the next island we've picked out, maybe stopping at one or two interesting looking spots on the way, maybe not. Maybe stopping for lunch somewhere, maybe making sandwiches while we sail and maybe waiting for lunch til we stop for the day. Most days we only actually sail for a few hours and are anchored in a little bay by 2 or 3:00 and spend the afternoon swimming (Ted's favorite), snorkeling (the masks, etc. come with the boat), hiking on shore, exploring the coastline in the dinghy or sitting around on the boat or beach reading, chatting, napping or whatever (my favorite). There's a CD player and we listen to a variety of music - luckily Ted has so far been able to restrain his heavy metal proclivity for the duration of the trip. If you scuba dive there are dive companies that will come meet the boat and take you on a dive trip - there is at least one really good wreck dive (in 70 - 90') in the BVI. If you want to learn to dive, you can take the classroom and swimming pool instruction in NYC and do your certification dives in the BVI (Dan & Jamie might be diving, Ted & I probably won't). Sunsets are often spectacular and signal cocktail hour for me. There's usually at least one restaurant on shore in most of these anchorages where we go for dinner but the charter company stocks the boat with food (there's a fridge, stove & bbq grill on the boat) and as you might guess Dan and Jamie are pretty good cooks so we can always eat on board if we don' feel like going ashore. While no one is excluded from any activities and everyone can participate in planning the itinerary, we don't always do everything together, either. Everybody usually pitches in and shares what work (cooking, cleaning up, sailing stuff) there is, although if only from our keen sense of self-preservation you and Ted probably wouldn't be expected to cook. In the past Jamie has been the only smoker and he has invariably confined his habit to the downwind portion of the deck. As for $, the boat, provisioning (food on board for breakfast lunch and a few dinners), taxes, airport transfers and a hotel room for the first night we get there all comes to about $760 per person. Extras include drinks (only fair since you and Jamie won't be imbibing as much as the rest of us) and any dinners ashore and of course the dreaded airfare. I've tentatively got flights for you (through the boat company) that come to $544 per person, though if we decide to come back on Saturday that might go down. Ted & I usually try to see if there is some way to use frequent flyer miles but we're not always successful. It's such a popular week to sail we need to decide pretty soon so we can put a deposit down - the boat is not actually reserved until we do. I'd better stop & send this - it's turned out to be a good bit longer than I intended but I get carried away sometimes when I daydream about sailing! Check out the website & let me know if you have any questions.