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karaoke in the Caribbean
Monday, February 23 2026
location: Cabin 300, the Star Clipper ship heading towards Canouan, the Caribbean Sea
At some point yesterday I'd had my shirt off, looked at myself in the mirror, and was horrified to see how red my sun-exposed skin had become over the course of the day. I was so "burned" that I even wondered if I'd applied mislabled skin cream to myself instead of sunblock. (We have unlabled bottles full of creams, and only Gretchen really knows which is which.) But when I asked Gretchen this morning what was in the bottle I'd used, it was indeed sunblock. But it was only SPF 15, and that was the problem. Fortunately, as it happened, my skin, if it was burned, was not badly burned. The difference between it and skin beneath my shirt was dramatic, but that was only because that protected skin was so ghostly white from not having encountered a single ultraviolet photon in months. But this morning I didn't know any of that and I still was working under the assumption that I had a bad sunburn and would soon be peeling. So I resolved to spend zero time in the sun today.
Gretchen took the tender to shore and did some snorkeling and walking around the island of Canouan, but didn't find it very interesting. When she returned to the ship, she reported today was an excellent one for me to spend sheltering in the shade. From the ship, I could see Canouan had a prominent airport and in its harbor I could see it had attracted a menacing-looking olive green superyacht, which almost looked like a military vessel.
My plan today was to take advantage of my time in the shade to get some more work done on my ESP8266 Remote Control system. This morning I took a 120 mg dose of pseudoephedrine and then I went out with my laptop into the Piano Bar and made a series of changes to the code allowing it to work acceptably even when it cannot get onto the internet via WiFi (up until today, with the exception of offline logging mode, it was useless unless it was connected to the internet). I needed it to be able to function this way in order to do further development on the ship, since I had limited internet bandwidth and no way to make an ESP8266 fake its way through the splash screen authentication necessary to take advantage of the bandwidth I'd purchased. Since serial interactions work great with my devices, I could instead use that as my preferred method of communication when disconnected from the internet, issuing commands and seeing the result (this was basically how I implemented and tested the I2C bootloading of I2C slaves).
At dinner tonight, the food was consistently bad in a way that has been rare on this cruise. I ordered the ravioli, which should've been awesome. But it seemed to be a bit freezer-burned, among other things.
After dinner, the ship had a karaoke event up in the Jungle Bar. I'd been led to believe there would also be a music quiz, and if that was the case, I definitely wanted to be on the team that included Kelly, as she had shown herself to be very skilled at identifying pop songs based on nothing more than an opening chord. There were a few quiz questions asked, but no teams had been formed, so there was no real reason to play. Mostly all that happened was karaoke, and there were a few surprises while others lived up to stereotypes. An old codger from Australia surprised nobody when he decided to sing "Waltzing Matilda" (which, as I pointed out to several people, is not a waltz). This was the first time I'd ever been exposed to the lyrics of that song, and the sheer number of absurd-sounding Australiaisms in there was comedy in itself, more so than the highly-pitchy delivery. There were a number of other people who sincerely sung songs wildly out of tune, and I had to wonder if perhaps nobody had ever told them that they definitely could not sing. Someone who managed to hit every note perfectly was Simon when he sang the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" It's not an especially melodic song, but it's possible to sing it off-key, and he didn't do that. Furthermore, his cockney-adjacent accent was perfect for the song, maybe even a bit better than the original. Eric, the tall male half of the young couple Carin and Eric covered Eminem's "Without Me," which was an exhausting firehose of words that he had a little trouble keeping up with. A couple did a pretty good job with Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain," even getting the counterintuitive range of the male and female singers right (the man signs the higher part). And then Gretchen and Kelly did a duet of the Carpenter's "Top of the World." The standout singer in this performance was Kelly, who had an amazing voice that was mostly on-key. She also looked good singing it. Gretchen, on the other hand, seemed convinced that she was off-key and so was singing so weakly that it was hard to hear. I know Gretchen has a great voice and can harmonize effortlessly, so it was a little surprisingly she was suffering from something that amounted to stage fright. Kelly's performance was so good that a guy who had already sung song (the only thing I know about him is that his 23AndMe genetic origin breakdown had him pegged at 100% Ashkenazi Jew) recruited him to do a duet with him.
Meanwhile down in the crew's galley (which is separate from ours), someone was cooking up an enormous amount of fried chicken, and the smell of it kept wafting through the Jungle Bar. Eventually Dirk had to go downstairs and get them to change how the ventillation was working. People on a vegan cruise don't want to be smelling that!
Later Gretchen and I debriefed each other on the karaoke performances, with me telling her that her problem had mostly been singing too quietly. [REDACTED]
A scene on deck near the bow of the boat with a sail raised. Click to enlarge.
Canouan. Click to enlarge.
The Canouan airstrip, viewed from the northeast. Click to enlarge.
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