I think Georgs brought up a good subject. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been working at the Seattle BS. While there, over the past 10 days, a number of cruising friends came by and we re-lived some of our mutual cruising adventures in Mexico and Central America. Interestingly three of these are now operating trawlers (getting old, I guess). We enjoyed every place we went, but probably the most spectacular was the Vestman-islands, located just off the south west coast of Iceland. After a five day trip from the Faeroes islands, we entered the harbor on Heimaey through a narrow channel boarded by high cliffs at midnight in bright daylight. The most striking feature initially was the thousands of birds wheeling around and the noise of the birds. There were large fishing boats as we got further in, and a modern dock with a few yachts where we tied up at no cost. We didn't realize it at the time, but we also went by the inlet where Keiko the whale (of "Free Willy" fame) was holed up. We later saw him and met the Americans who were taking care of him. It was silly to try and re-introduce him to the wild -- he just wanted to be around people. I'm afraid once we domesticate wild creatures we own them. We were so stoked we left the boat and begun wandering about a very modern small town. There were a lot of people out (after midnight now) and we met a young lady from Poland who was a music teacher on contract at the school. She should us the sights until 0300 when we all went home. These islands are volcanic (still active). Heimaey was almost destroyed in a major eruption in January 73. You may remember when the island of Surtsey appeared in 63 out of the ocean. We climbed the local volcano which had steam coming out of the ground in a number of places. If you buried your hand in the soil 6-8 inches, you could only hold it there a few minutes because of the heat. All the power and hot water is geothermal. The people were great, good looking Nordic stock (no fat people there) and often spoke pretty good English. You could find Puffin, Whale and Dolphin on menus (all good) and yet it would be easy to think you had landed in any small American town. There was a very modern sports center which included an Olympic sized heated pool and heated hot tubs of varying temperatures (called hot pots). We spent many hours in these hot pots and in the swimming pool. Great memories. Regards Robby [robbyr67@comcast.net] Troller "Dolores E."