SV Panta Rhei Retirement Trip

We are still at the dock in San Carlos. We are enjoying our friends, our air conditioning, our continuous power from the dock, and the vendors that bring us fresh crab, shelled and ready to eat and lobster, tail only, prepared for barbecuing. Alternatively we could be watching our power closely, running the gen set each morning, sweating and living on food we bought up to a month ago while pretending like we are survivalists in the wilderness. Can you see why it is hard to leave the dock?

But the master plan calls for going north to give the best possible clearance between us and hurricanes. I do wonder whether the extra 150 miles is worth the hardships and after all, we are leaving a dock....the ultimate anchoring system. A lot of our friends have already gone, we are "tail end charlie's". There is also the goal of spending some truly quiet time at anchor. We expect to enjoy that. And swimming in warm water right off our swim step is a constant wonder.

So we will leave soon, first for Santa Rosalia then for distant anchorages further north in the Sea of Cortez. Anne Jennings, our eye infection patient/friend, is recovering. I don't have enough experience to say whether the recovery is on schedule and no one is projecting the outcome, but the flow of medicine continues with surprising twists. Most recently Anne finished her IV antibiotics and got a new one in her tush. She now has a "do not remove" contact lens that must stay in day and night for 10 days and let the doctor remove it. Eye drops continue. Anne is a very brave patient who is diligent in her conformance to doctors instructions. It sounds easy, but the doctors instructions are complicated especially when executed 24/7 for weeks with almost daily variations. All this of course has an uncertain outcome. Her husband, Hugh, is back now (everyone is glad to see him!). The nightly med schedule has eased somewhat (there are still eye drops in prodigious quantities). We're sufficiently impressed that we've purchased some of the eye drops for our own medicine chest as a course of last resort should this happen to us when we are far from medical assistance (which per the plan is a lot of the time). Anne and Hugh are preparing to leave too, but of course that depends on Anne's recovery. Still, Hugh is working on all the tasks that need to be done to make the eventual departure a happy experience. We'll stay in contact via the ssb and email. We're not all that far away except as it relates to boat speeds.

I've included a picture of the lobster Karen bought for dinner the other night. She got 12 lobster tails and 2 kg of shrimp for 520 pesos. It is all delivered completely ready to cook (and small for fitting into the boat refrigerator).