Ocean Watch

FOR YEARS, my sister and I wanted to see the world's famous Renaissance art.

And so I promised that when she graduated from the University of Hawaii, we would go to Europe and visit as many museums as we could cram into three weeks.

That happy day arrived recently, and we decided our art trek would start in London. "Will you take the Chunnel to Paris?" a friend asked as Michele and I studied the atlas.

"And miss the English Channel?" I said. "No way. We're taking the ferry."

"Great," my seasick-prone sister groaned. "She's going to make me take a boat across every body of water we see in Europe."

Well, not every body of water. It was too cold for a tour of the Thames.

Not too cold though for a trip to Greenwich, home of England's maritime museum. Besides displaying the Holy Grail of sailors, Capt. Cook's chronometer, this museum shows the Prime Meridian as a single brass track running through a courtyard.

With feet on both sides of this zero-degree longitude, we could stand in the Eastern and Western hemispheres at the same time. Two months ago, for the split second it took my boat to sail across the Equator, I also stood in the Northern and Southern hemispheres at the same time.

Even for this world wanderer, travel experiences don't get better than visiting Earth's four hemispheres within a couple of months.

Also special was seeing the white cliffs of Dover topped with bright yellow flowers amid lush green fields on a brilliant, sunny day. Britain blessed us with one of its rare perfect days as we crossed the English Channel. The coast of France stood clear, the channel lay flat and the famous cliffs shone like great sheets of white chalk, which is what they are.

For 80 million years the skeletons of marine plants and animals piled up on the bottom of the sea. Then the earth's crust shifted, and those billions of squashed skeletons, transformed to chalk by pressure, became Dover's white cliffs. These massive walls stretch five miles down the coast, and some stand 300 feet tall.

She looked at the card. "Gross," she said.

Michele forgave my boat obsession when we got to Venice, because she got it, too. Everyone there has it. In this city of canals, people jump on water buses, use speedboats for ambulances and tow on barges like what we haul on trucks.

Venice was so much fun, we voted it our favorite city of the trip. I even found a marina there with room for my boat.

I'm proud of Michele. She earned a degree with honors under tough circumstances, trooped through Europe like a veteran globe-trotter and now patiently indulges my fantasy of one day sailing to Venice.

Trips -- and baby sisters -- don't get better.