Tribes and temperature.

Although the hurricane season officially comes to a close at the end of next month many cruisers seem to be aiming to head out at the end of THIS month. Perhaps like me they were under the impression that the season ended tomorrow(!). Thanks to 'ranting sailor' for pointing out my mistake...wonder where I got that idea from, or have they changed the date when I wasn't looking!Also as we aren't moving anywhere just yet I wasn't really paying attention- well that's my excuse anyway!

But as Mother Nature is never that confident on dates we will continue to keep a close watch on the weather forecasts. A fellow cruiser reminded me yesterday of the excellent weather site www.passageweather.com. This is an extremely easy to use, and in our experience, accurate weather forecasting site for sailors. Highly recommended.

So there are levels of frustration in the Marina as those who consider the season a prison sentence or find that they dislike the place they have chosen to hole up, champ at the bit to get going. The weather here isn't co-operating right now. There is a particularly nasty 'Norther' blowing down from mainland USA. Apparently temperatures in Texas were as low as 30 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. That enables the strong winds and inclement weather to make it as far down the Caribbean as Guatemala. It is noticeably chilly here and the temperature over in the restaurant at coffee this morning was a cold 74 degrees F!

We,as usual, have a lot of other things to be thinking about! I was happy to receive a delivery from Amazon yesterday. It seems to work very well sending stuff from the USA to Guatemala so long as you use normal surface mail - not one of the DHL style services. They always tend to get hung up at Customs in the city.

Amongst the books we received was Tribes by Seth Godin. A fascinating new publication that talks about the changing world that we live in and chronicles the effect that the internet, blogging and the like are having on the social interaction of us all. It is a good read and contains some thoughtful messages.

I particularly like his description of the groups of people that he describes as 'sheepwalkers'! Wish I had coined that word...

'A sheepwalker-someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you any good. Sheepwalkers don't do very well these days'.