Ya know, guys, you can get to the end of a long thread quickly by clicking "Sort Descending" up in the upper left, next to "Post to This Thread."

Thanks, Kat, for the kind words. I'm not too sure about writing convincingly of the sea, however (maybe I'll contribute a sea monster). Fadac can give us the sailing verisimilitude.

Oh, here's an idea: a tramp steamer in the '50s, with a few passengers on board, bound for Indonesia or some such place. The passengers would be characters that could be developed by landlubbers like me. We could make it nice and claustrophobic: tiny compartments, storms, mechanical and electronic failures, kind of a seabound "And Then There Were None" --seed