How does he find them? Tiny seahorse

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

I spent 2 weeks here routinely, and I never spot critters that small. I do home in pretty well on lionfish.

he may have a vision advantage over you, but I still think home field advantage is key for these DMs.

I stayed overnight at the Houston Airport Marriot (11 hour layover) rather than sit around all night. Used to be easier because there used to be a 4am Phx-Houston flight so you could make the 9:45am flight to Roatan. Alternatively take the Miami route, with a 5-hour flight plus a 5-hour layover. (I hate the Miami airport.)

United has culled the frequency of a lot of their connections to/from Houston.   They cancelled the last flight to SFO in July, forcing me to leave Nassau a few hours earlier (not terrible) and have a 46 min connection (very terrible, esp after plane arrived at NAS 30 mins late).

We still have a 5am departure from SFO to Houston, but I opted on this one to do a long red eye to DC for the eastbound.

A lot of restaurants were shut down - even at 6pm on Friday in the Phoenix airport - so that's a real concern now as you travel.

This is a good note for me to take, as we have 3 hours in Honolulu and then 4.5 hours in Guam, before a flight that arrives in Palau at 11:30pm, where we immediate take another covid test.     We'll need to pack a lot of snack items to protect against this, I suspect.

One last annoyance that you may see - when we planed in Houston, everyone needed to step in front of a camera & monitor and get face recognition, I'm pretty sure based on your passport scan.  who's idea it was (government or airline.) It's the first place I've seen that.

That I did not experience in July.

Coming back into the US I'll have to have a $50 covid test done, which the resort here arranges for me. Thankfully I'm not Canadian as they are required to take a $250 test. The Reef House has not seen a single Canadian visitor since Covid hit.

Yes- it's a lot harder to get a rapid PCR test, or just expensive.   And the target keeps moving - the Bahamas changed their requirements (to none) in the midst of my cruise.  Still needed a negative result to return home, though.   For this Palau trip, will end up getting test 4 times.  The joys of travel.

With so much time out of the water, how long did it take for you to feel competent with the 850 in the water?