Mandalay Cruise

I took a cruise on the S/V Mandalay from July 17-24, 1999, while doing research for my book, "Upheaval from the Abyss." OK, you're saying, "Why in hell does this guy need a Caribbean cruise to do research for a book on ocean exploration?"

The answer is simple -- the boat I took the cruise on, the Mandalay, used to be Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory's primary research vessel, the R/V Vema. The Vema, which figures prominently in my book, was the first scientific research vessel to log more than a million miles at sea. I needed the cruise to get some oceangoing experience before I wrote a book about, uh, the oceangoing experience.

As of 30 July 2004, I've only uploaded images from Grenada. The rest are coming as soon as I can scan them and prepare the Web presentation.

NOTE ON THE MAP PROJECTION: I produced the map above using the Robinson projection, normally used to produce general-purpose world maps without the bizarre shape distortions of a Mercator or a Gall-Peter's projection map. I give praise to John Culberson's excellent Versamap program which allows me to produce the base maps. The map was shaded and annotated with Adobe Illustrator.