... the "A" in Antigua ...

... fortunately for humans, our properly functioning brains being of infinite potential, tend to operate in a mode of information-acquisition from birth to death, created as we are with pristine and curious tabula rasa in our crania ... individual and collective intelligence over lifetimes and generations offset knowledge-deficit through accumulated experience ... the learning is perpetual, sometimes frustrating, testing of faith and concepts of infinity, and still the (human) race doesn't ever quite get to the place I'll just call "there" ... even with the drugs ...

... on the brighter, lighter side, the yet to be informed portion of the brain will consciously or subconsciously head for the higher state we've come to identify as "imagination" ...

... my imaginations were aroused last week with the juxtaposition of Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's avant garde yacht, designed by Philippe Starck, with the scrubby hillside backdrop and colonial stone ruins of Rat Island in Antigua ...

















... as I understand it, this is the site of one of Antigua's oldest colonial defenses in what became a strategic outpost for the proprietary British Royal Navy in service of the New World (order) colonial aspirations of the times ... the hillock in the inner harbor at capital town St. John's, which featured four cannon and barracks for a regiment in the early seventeenth century, isn't an island in the strictest sense, being connected to the main island by a narrow causeway resembling perhaps ... a rat tail ...

... Dr. Evil meets MI5 in appearance, this unique gigayacht might have changed the course of history had it stopped in for refueling three hundred and fifty years ago ... I suspect it would fare worse against cannonfire amidship, in multiples of four no less, than against a modern satellite grid guiding cruise-missiles ... any shout of "avast ye landlubbers" has no frequency-band or equivalent and may confound operators of the onboard navigational systems ... even the name of the interloper, the single letter "A" displayed only on the stern, would arouse sentries on the lookout for marauding fleur-de-lys ... (though personally Phil, I'd have gone sans-serif, but wha' do I know?) ...

... Antigua's geo-trigonometry, like that of Bermuda where "A" is registered, is currency on maritime maps and seafarers of all sorts pass though here ... Rat Island, which now hosts the commercial wharves where "A" tied up, must have seen 'em all come and go over the years ... I can't tell you the going exchange rate between rubles and doubloons but, if it costs a million and a half US dollars to fill the fuel tank (at pre crisis-in-Libya oil prices), that cargo-weight in gold bars, jewels and thick, heavy old-time coins would sink anything that floats, I imagine ...