Quite a celebratory Post Race Margarita Event, with the crew on Hotel California Too.

(photo credit to Pam Bayless)

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It all started out quite innocently enough. Jon asked us if we wanted to crew on Hotel California Too for the upcoming weekend's St Thomas Regatta.



"Sure", we said, "why not?" Especially pleased was the Capt'n who misses his Racing Days of yore!!

The weekend was gorgeous, lots of wind around for the 70 foot Santa Cruz to sail, and with a boat that make size, glide easily, smoothly and comfortably through all the gusts and seas. Impressive.



There were well over a dozen of us, most strangers to each other, from all woks of life all, and all out for some fun and racy type of adventures.



I was just happy to sit on the edge for a couple of days and be Rail Bait.



Watching the other racers of all makes and models,



out on the water, yelling and smiling and laughing as they followed the markers for the course lines.



I think what impressed me the most, and concurrently giving me a taste of what real racing might be like, was to witness over a dozen strangers come together, and with their combined skills make the boat move and manoeuvre in the wind and through the waves, quite brilliantly. And amid the shouts of "pressure, pressure coming", and "ready for tacking", all the owner, Steve did, was to listen, and steer, and all the dozen or so of us Rail Bait had to do, was to successfully crab walk our way across and to the other side.

The trick in making it acrosswhen was not to get smacked in the face by flapping sheets before they got winched in.

Sunday morning's task had me volunteering to squeezing a big bag of limes for the celebratory post race margaritas that Hotel California Too seems to be famous for. There must have been two dozen limes in the bag and the juice was all over my hands, but I knew that the end result would be ice cold and delicious.

Task done, hands washed, and racing gloves on !!

That evening we went ashore,



where we all got to enjoy a First Place Moment on the podium!



Great fun and a pleasure to have been invited along. For the people we met, the laughs and smiles, the experience and conversation, and the margaritas, of course!



Monday morning had my hands a little itchy. By Monday night, my skin was really itchy and now a little bumpy. Tuesday was more of the same, perhaps a bit worse. Tuesday night the combined itch and pain and sting of a thousand needles piercing my skin woke me up. Wednesday was the same with extra doses of Benadryl which did nothing to ease the developing redness and bumpy inflammation. I had no idea and racked my brains trying to figure out what I had done or touched. By Thursday morning it was worse still and time to seek medical help.

I saw the pharmacist in the Starfish Drugstore and she immediately said,
"Oh honey, that looks bad, you'll need more than I can give you" as she pointed out the off the shelf cortisone cream. Then she asked me, "Have you eaten any mangoes recently?" to which I responded "No."

She pointed me to the clinic upstairs and suggested I might need a prescription for this. "Before the long weekend" she said. "Oh Shit" I said as I ran upstairs, hands paining and red and inflamed and my anxiety at an all time high.

I was relieved to find the clinic door open as I entered the office, the receptionist sighed as she looked at her watch. It was a few minutes to noon and time to close up for the long weekend, but I pushed on and bravely showed her my hands and with just a few hints of tears in my eyes, moaned my story to her. She smiled and said, "The doctor will see you now" barely two minutes after I had painfully held the pen and scribbled out the responses on the two page questionnaire of forms I was given to complete.

The doctor said "Ah yes, have you been eating mangoes?" to which I replied "Funny, the pharmacist asked me that too". And after a few painful pokes and prods, he said "allergic contact dermatitis with severe burns" and starting scribbling illegible prescriptions on his pad of notes.

"Burns?" WTF?? I dizziingly listened to his recommended instructions of what to apply when, and what to ingest when, with food, and side-effects and oh, am I allowed any sundowner margaritas?

And then I remembered. Margaritas !! The bag of limes. The squeezing of two dozen limes to make juice for the post-race margaritas. Acidic Fruit. Lime Juice. And a day of sitting in the sun. Du-oh.

Given we were in the good ole U.S. of A., the ten minute visit at the doctor cost me $94. The meds were plentiful and cost me $135. Prednozone that left me anxious and agitated and my restless sleep intermingled with nightmares of aliens snatching me underground. To which I then lay awake the rest of the night with unbelievable intense itchies and pain. The cortisone cream hurt to apply. Watching for the blisters on the burns not to break and if they did I needed to apply more chemical creams to ward off any potential infections.

My hands hurt to flex, the skin stretched so tight I couldn't bend my fingers. It is unbelievable how much one uses ones hands in every single movement of every daily action you can think of, and ever tense and flex of the muscle reactivating the piercing needle type pain.

But in all that, you know what was priceless?? The ensuing Google Result...

Officially known as phytophotodermatitis, what I had was my skin's reaction to coming in contact with sunlight and limes (among other vegetation such as mangoes).

Or better known as... Margarita Dermatitis.

I've come to really enjoy my Margaritas and now I had Hotel California's Secret Recipe. And yet, as I sit here today a week after the fact, typing this blog with still itchy and painful and blistery hands, my fingers hurting to bend, I don't know if I'll ever bravely touch another lime in my entire life again !!

Lime Disease ?