Low Flyer

Is that Spring in Florida, or Spring in Australia...?

Perhaps this: http://thepioneerwom...jor-league-yum/ Sounds delicious...

I don't think it's got anything to do with citizenship. Australia, like pretty much every Western country apart from the US, has very strict controls on anyone owning the sort of gun that Trevor wants to have. They might be able to get a rifle or shotgun if they could convince the authorities that they had a good reason for it - and that would have to be something like hunting or vermin control. Otherwise it's no can do.

I suspect that an aviation emergency raft is probably self-inflating, but there might well be skin cells on the walls of the raft or the paddle if he left that too. I hadn't thought about the raft, though.

I've just been glancing through the chapter again and it occurred to me that someone with Basingstoke's background and level of thoroughness would surely be unlikely to leave fingerprints or DNA on the tracking device. OK, he didn't expect it to be found - Kookaburra would be blown up or sunk some other way - but it still seems rather careless. Surely he'd have worn gloves?

They have the same "feature" in XP. I just tried it and you're right, it makes the fonts really hard to read. Gotta love the way Microsoft try to help...

It is an odd title...

The first part's easy - it's about a mile from the coast of East Wallabi Island to the airtstrip. The second part's harder to be sure about as we don't know the exact course that Kookaburra took, but around 5 miles is a reasonable estimate. They saw Basingstoke while he was still a couple of hundred yards from the aircraft, by which time they'd also dithered about trying to decide whether to try to sabotage it or not, so I reckon the timeline's plausible. I'm sure CJ can give us details of Trevor's course, though. He tends to plan these things to the last inch.

This is a good point. There's no solid evidence of any crime at all - didn't you say that Basingstoke actually is a registered alarm installer, so that's OK. Other than passing himself off as a reporter, he hasn't even done anything suspicious. I'm guessing that it took a fair amount of persuasion to get the Air Force and Federal Police on board at all.

I'm intrigued, what did you notice at the start of the chapter?

Absolutely. And don't forget that all three will have, at some point, to wear Joel's torn shorts so these interviews will have to be quite in-depth...

Exactly the same thought crossed my mind. I've been mulling over the casting. The problem is going to be finding three hunky blond swimmer/surfer types who could pass for brothers. I'm prepared to help with the auditioning in any way that I can, though...

He did call Greg: “Sounds great to me too, but I’d better call Uncle Greg first,” Trevor said, leaning back against the railing to dry off in the sun. A few minutes later, he retrieved the satellite phone from the salon and made his call. It was that phone call that raised Greg's suspicions of Basingstoke's claim to be a journalist. As for the ray - one can only hope. You wouldn't think that CJ would risk killing off any of the current crew of Kookaburra but he just might. It would be supremely ironic if Baskingstoke were to be eaten by a shark on his way from East to West Wallabi Island...

You'd think so, wouldn't you? BUT what bothers me is that asset list that's hidden on Kookaburra. Isn't it kinda irrelevant if Bridget's already in jail? I'm assuming that it turns up eventually, of course. Maybe it was just a plot device to get Bridget on Trevor's trail in the first place. Of course, Sanchez's fingers can easily reach into an American jail so she could be imprisoned and then taken out once there... Any takers?

Quoting further from the same expert: We can concede that New Zealanders discovered the secret delights of the largemeringue with the ‘marshmallow centre’, the heart of the pavlova. But it seems reasonable t assume that someone in Perth attached the name of the ballerina. So the Kiwis invented the concept and the Aussies gave it the name? Seems like a nice compromise.

OK, I've googled for both Australian and New Zealand recipes for pavlova and they look pretty much the same to me - a large meringue sort of thing covered in fruit and whipped cream. So which is Aussie and which is Kiwi and which is the original?

Just as a point of information, the airstrip is actually at the eastern end of East Wallabi Island: It might make a difference to how far B'stoke has to travel once on foot. Either way, it's going to seem a little odd that he just turns up out of the blue. Uncle Greg may live to regret his decision to deprive his nephew of his gun...

I think Australians are just jealous of Kiwis - it's patently obvious whose got the best of most things down in your corner of the globe... As for Bridget, I tend to agree but I think it would be great for her to spend some time with the "poor" people in jail. Even better if the Cartel decides to use their contacts in the prison system to make her life extra miserable (and, perhaps, shorter). LF P.S. Welcome aboard

So no matter how hard she looks for the wreck of Ares, she still doesn't know that it is Kookabura, or does she As far as I remember, she doesn't know that Kookaburra is Ares so is still, presumably, keen to stop any attempt to find Ares. That said, she has more pressing things on her mind at the moment.

The switching between Ares and Atlantis was only temporary, wildone. This is from chapter 102: “Could she believe that Ares and Atlantis were swapped? They’re nearly identical, from what I understand,” Gonzalez asked. “I don’t know. As far as I’m aware she knew nothing at all of the plans for my disappearance,” Rachel replied, and then paused before adding, “Wait, she might possibly have believed them swapped, because I did that to an associate of hers once. Ares was my first boat and I was more particular about her than I was about Atlantis, and Atlantis was the only one whose insurance covered bare boat charters. So, I prefered to send Atlantis out on those. When the person I knew was linked to Bridget requested Ares, I sent them Atlantis. At that time, I did not have the names painted on the hulls, so I swapped the nameplates and license for a while, then switched them back later. As for Atlantis, sometimes she’d be bare-boat chartered for long periods under her own name, and I noticed that they put a lot of wear and tear on her engines and gear.”

Julie wouldn't need to request an interview - Trevor already has semi-serious plans to meet up with her on his way back to the US. That said, she's not going to be the last one to stop Trevor - he'll presumably opt for sailing through the Panama canal which is just down the road from the Cartel's headquarters. Unless his experience in the Suez Canal has soured him to such things of course, but going roung the bottom of S. America is a hell of a journey - I wouldn't have thought he'd be in a huge hurry to head back out into the Southern Ocean. It seems to me that Trevor's continued existence depends on the paperwork on Kookaburra being found ASAP and Sanchez finding himself with more pressing matters to take care of.

That's uncanny, Red. I just logged in to post that very link!

Although I obviously don't want Bridget to get off scot-free, I think her ending up in jail for even just a few years would be a far worse punishment for her than just shooting her and making it look like an accident somewhere. Can you imagine her mixing with "that sort" of person and sharing washing facilities etc.? It would be her worst nightmare! Putting the word about that she's selling information about the cartel to the authorities might be another way of making her end a bit grizzly - she'd be running scared for whatever time remained for her. The shark jaw is definitely ominous, but I do wonder about the logistics of getting all four of the Kookaburra's crew that way. Even if they wait until Lisa goes home, the chances of sharks killing 3 people at the same time are surely very low. Over the last 50 years, the average number of fatalities from shark attacks in Australia is only fractionally over 1 - nobody's going to buy the story that 3 strong swimmers were taken out on the same day. And B'stoke can't let even one of them survive to tell the tale. He'd have to kill all three boys in such a way that it couldn't be detected that they hadn't died from shark bites and then manoeuvre the jaws he's just bought to take a fatal-sized chunk out of each of them. Add in the previous attempts on Trevor's life and there's no way that B'stoke can pass the deaths off as accidental, I wouldn't have thought. Of course, he may not care - he just has to do away with Trevor, dispatch his head to Sanchez and disappear into the night. Of course, what I would or wouldn't have thought doesn't matter. CJ thought of having Henry eaten by alligators so all bets are off, really...

Did she not make a tight turn to port after she was holed? That would cause her to tip to the right, wouldn't it?

This has been said many times on the forum* so it must be true. Mustn't it? LF *Admittedly, mostly by CJ. P.S. Welcome aboard!