For the past week I've been sweating my butt off installing our two watermakers. First I had to remove the old Katadyn 40E watermaker because the best place for the new Katadyn 160E unit was in the old 40E location. It's been in the mid 90's here and I've been installing the two units in cabinets in the front head. The new 160E is now over the sink, the old 40E below. The front head is not very big, maybe the size of an airplane lavatory. Have you ever seen the movie Tommy Boy with Chris Farley? There's one scene where he is changing clothes in the airplane lavatory and it's pretty comical. This is exactly what it's like for me working in the forward head. I've never sweat so much in my life! One day I walked out from working in the head and Cindy had thought I had gone swimming. My shorts, shirt, everything was soaked! After 7 days of trying to make mounting brackets, contorting myself, trying to find the right size wire and hoses I was finally ready to flip the power switches. Both units work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a difference in the output of the two units. It's such a great feeling when a big project works! Here's a word of advice for people thinking about adding a watermaker. Cindy and I can be very frugal with fresh water but the 40E just does not provide enough water. Yes we catch rainwater but there have been times when it does not rain for a month plus. "Spend the extra money", get the 160E! Ahhh, time to sit back and enjoy a cold Carta Blanca...
While I was crammed in the forward head, Cindy has managed to do some repair work on both of our sails, make new sheets for our bunk, and begin varnishing the toe rail. The marine varnish made in Central America is very good and costs less than $10 a quart...go figure. I believe that the lack of environmental regulations allows them to produce products with a longer life expectancy; our bottom paint is another good example.
We have also started to learn to dance Salsa! A group of us is taking dance lessons two days a week. Maybe after a few more lessons we will be able to dance together without stepping on each other's toes. It has been fun. Tori would be proud!
On Friday nights at Tortugal we have "movie night". We gather on the large outside deck under the stars and enjoy homemade pizza while we watch a movie on the giant screen with surround sound. People come from other marinas to join us as well. Before the movie we typically show a music video and of late that has been the videos of the two Crossroads concerts that Eric Clapton sponsored. With the surround sound and large screen you almost feel like you are at the concert. Cindy and Janet sewed a new screen and Russ and I are making an enclosure for it to protect it from the elements; it is a sweet setup. Last week we watched a great movie that left everyone talking, "The Ultimate Gift". This week, "The Hangover", very funny movie!
It was too good to be true. After the windless rebuild, galley faucet install and watermaker installs I thought I was done with the big projects... I had decided to clean out our heat exchanger to be ready to go whenever we wanted. I looked into the cooling storage tank and the antifreeze was very low. Hmmm.... I added new antifreeze and then removed the end cap to the heat exchanger. This is the raw water section where there is no antifreeze, or at lest there shouldn't be... Sure enough the raw water had a very green tint to it and the antifreeze level was dropping! Crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I need a new heat exchanger! I'm sure this will be a huge project. Many things have to come off before I can get toe the exchanger. I'm sure getting a new heat exchanger to me will be a challenging task also. As far as I can tell the manifold and exchanger have not been off of the engine, ever. This means 28 years of expansion and contraction, not to mention the salt environment. This should be interesting? I'm going to spend the next several days spraying PB Blaster on all the bolts I can see.
On Thursday (10/22) Russ and Janet asked if we would like to go to Guatemala City with them. They had to do some Tortugal shopping and could use some help and company. We said sure, we could use some things from the city and we'd be glad to help. We also had a hidden agenda...
Several years ago when we started our sailing (?) adventure I had an issue with a kidney stone. At that time I was told I also had three smaller stones in my right kidney but the doctors would only work on one kidney at a time. I'd have to wait to have the right kidney taken care of at another time. I was told the stones on the right might not cause any problems ever, or they could be a problem the next day. Well... toward the end of this past summer they started moving around... My plan was to come back from Australia and have lithotripsy to finally remove them. That was my plan; unfortunately the stones had their own plans. The symptoms were getting worse. So while we were in Guatamala City I made a call to Dr. Karen who many cruisers have used. I asked her for a recommendation for a urologist. She suggested I contact Dr Amenabar. After several interesting phone calls, since I do not speak Spanish, I finally contacted Dr Amenabar on Tuesday.
The doctor asked if I could come to his office at 5:00 the same day! Very cool. He talked to me for 20 minutes, reviewed my CT Scan report from the States and took me to his examination room for an ultra sound. He could see the problem and then said, "how's tomorrow sound" for lithotripsy? I could not get this done in the States before we left because 6 weeks was not enough time... Here I can get it done the next day? Getting medical treatment in a third worldish country was obviously a concern. Anyway, the next day Cindy and I walked into the hospital, had x-rays and CT Scans done with and without dye. They were very thorough and wanted to make sure they knew exactly what they were up against. Very impressive actually. They also ran all types of blood tests. After the tests we walked next door to the doctor's office. Dr Amenabar had us wait while he walked to the hospital to review the x-rays and scan. After looking at the results, he suggested performing the procedure that afternoon. I was checked into a private room where they brought a second bed in for Cindy. The hospital room for Cindy and I with food and the nurse was $85 per night. This is the best hospital in Guatemala. At 4:00pm several nurses arrived with a gurney. Did I mention the people here are small? I climbed onto the gurney and bumped my head on the top rail since I was so tall, and my arms fell off the side. It was like laying on a 2x4... The gurneys are too long, if you can believe it, to fit in the elevators so they have built ramps to move gurneys from floor to floor. So four nurses (none of whom spoke English) got a "running" start with me on the gurney and got me up the first ramp. They were all out of breath and still had one more ramp to go and this ramp didn't have any running room to get a head start! I could see them getting my 200 pound body half way up and me slipping away. I was just about to hop off the gurney when a big male nurse came to the rescue. They wheeled me into the operating room and had me slide over onto the Lithotripsy table. This table was so short my legs hung over from the knees down on one side and my head hung down on the other. They moved a cart over with a pillow for my head. Ten minutes later they knocked me out and performed the lithotripsy. I'm glad I don't remember the trip to my room down the ramps...
This was Cindy's first overnighter in a hospital, ever; we both slept ok. The next morning I had a light breakfast, which was awesome since I hadn't had anything to eat or drink for 36 hours. Later in the day my doctor stopped by and asked if I would rather stay in the hospital for a couple more days or if I wanted to go to a hotel. Even though we had no complaints about the hospital I opted for the hotel.
Cindy went to pay our bill so we could leave. They wouldn't give her the bill until she returned the remote for the TV. She finally convinced them she would indeed return the remote and they gave her the bill... We were told that the hospital would accept US dollars for payment but...they suggested that she go to the bank and exchange the $3000 US into Quetzals. So off to the bank to learn that they would only exchange $500 at a time. Back to the hospital to inform them of the situation. They decided to accept the US dollars at an exchange rate a bit less than the bank was offering that day; no big deal. (They would also have accepted a credit card but Mastercard imposes a 3% foreign transaction fee on all charges outside of the US). The whole process took her hours. Oh and trying to get an "itemized" bill was also a challenge. It is a good thing that Cindy speaks the small amount of Spanish she does. I think it improved with her "forced immersion" in the hospital! We finally got to our hotel around 5:00pm. Between the nurses and Cindy I was well taken care of. We spent several nights at the hotel before heading back to "Tashmoo" via a 4½ hour bus ride on Sunday. I'm still very sore but I am recovering. We can now travel without worrying about these stones. I'm not sure what caused the stones. I haven't made anymore since we found these three years ago. I can't wait to get back to normal. Thank you Cindy.
All in all, the entire experience was very good. The care I received was exceptional, the hospital's equipment was modern and the facility was very clean. I had the same nurse for the 20 hours of my hospital stay, she never left. I was surprised to see her in the morning. And the total bill was a surprising $3500 US.
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
Copyright © 2006-2010
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Comments [1]
Happy Birthday "Tori"!!!
We caught the 6:50am flight from BOS to GUA on Tuesday, 9/22. Cindy's mom dropped us and our 200 lbs of bags off at the airport and luckily we were able to check-in curbside. I was not looking forward to carrying our four large duffle bags at 49 lbs each and 4 smaller bags though the airport. It was good flight with only one plane change in Miami.
We have been nervous about getting through Customs in Guatemala City for several weeks now. We had heard from several people that they had cracked down on bringing goods into Guatemala. Up until now you could bring things in without a problem, just sign the forms saying you have nothing to declare. If you declare anything you have to pay a duty. Sometimes duty fees can be 50% of the item value! We were carrying a $5000 watermaker and ~$1000 of other goods! We picked up our bags at the carrousel and proceeded toward the exit. Sure enough there was a large x-ray machine that was not there previously and all bags were going through it! There was a security officer sending people with bags to the x-ray machine. If they had no bags he would step aside and let them pass to the "Nothing to Declare" Exit. We had a huge pile; two carts carrying 8 bags total... There were two people walking about 40 feet in front of us carrying bags. When they got to the security officer they asked him something and he briefly walked away with them, giving them directions, pointing down to a hallway (sometimes you just get lucky). He wasn't looking back while he was helping the other people. Hmmmm, somehow we must have taken a wrong turn because we accidentally walked right out the "Nothing to Declare" Exit! It was awesome! I kept on expecting to hear someone yell to us but there was nothing. Awesome!
Once we left the building our friends Russ and Janet were suppose to pick us up. We exited into a huge crowd of people most of whom were taxi drivers trying to make a fare. Russ and Janet were nowhere to be found. There we were standing just outside the building in a fenced in area with all our bags while many people on the other side of the fence were trying to gain our attention. I was still waiting for security to grab us. I was nervous! Five minutes later Russ and Janet pulled up, we threw our bags in the truck and made our getaway! Very cool...
We spent that night at the Crown Plaza, a very nice hotel in Guatemala City with a beautiful view of a volcano from our window. We met up with another couple from the Rio and had dinner at A Fuego Lento, a wonderful restaurant serving slow grilled meats and lots of sides in a buffet. The next morning we picked up a truckload of provisions for the restaurant at Tortugal and started our five-hour journey back to the land of the turtles, "Tortugal" and our home, "Tashmoo". The roads are "very" windy with a steep down grade for a couple hours leaving the city. We had a large tarp covering the stores in the back of the truck, which was piled several feet high. About one hour after leaving the city as we were going around a corner I heard a bang! A case of beer that I had bought slipped out, hit the road and "every" can was now spraying and bouncing wildly down the road! Russ stopped, I ran back but I was too late, they were "all" goners... We retied the tarp and continued on. Twenty minutes later, a case of milk had the same fate as the beer. Russ and Janet had made this trip dozens of times in the past and had never lost anything. Once we got to a safe place to stop we retied everything and finished the trip. It was a treat not having to ride the bus for the journey back to the Rio - thanks for the ride amigos!
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| From Tortugal |
El Tortugal
It sure is great to be back on "Tashmoo"! She's clean and mold free!!!
We have less than a week before we need to leave Tortugal, catch a bus to La Ceiba Honduras, hop on a ferry and get to Mango Creek on Roatan. Terry and Patrice are heading home for two months and we're going to manage the resort while they're gone.
9/26 - Things have gotten worse in Honduras. A couple months ago the Honduran people had thrown their president out of the country. He basically was trying to change the government from a democracy to a dictatorship so he could stay in office. The people didn't like this idea so they exiled him from the country. Other countries were okay with this and some were not. Unfortunately, the ex-president snuck back into the country and is now hiding out in the Brazilian embassy. The country is in total disarray. There are curfews and the borders are open and closed at will. Their elections are scheduled for November but again, some countries say they will honor the outcome, some will not. The bottom line is we can't get to Mango Creek! If we do get there we might not be able to leave the country when we want too! Unfortunately we've had to change our plans and we are not going to Mango Creek. We are going to stay in Guatemala. This is a real bummer as we were both looking forward to seeing Patrice and Terry and trying something new.
Russ made me an offer to work on some Tortugal electrical issues and some boat electronic issues. So at least I'm be making a little money toward our New Zealand trip. I also have the new watermaker to install in Tashmoo. I'm sure the two months we now have here will fly by. We did hire a young local man to strip our toe and cap-rails. He charges 100Q/day, or ~$12 US/day. After two days the rails were completely free of varnish and sanded smooth. I did give the guy a good 30Q tip along with the two days pay, he way very happy. Cindy's going to start varnishing in the mornings when it's cooler. It looks so much better already!
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| From Tortugal |
Children of the river.
It sure is beautiful here on the river. I took a dinghy ride up river this morning to cool off. As I skimmed across the smooth water with the reflections of palm trees, air plants, flowers and mountains around me I passed a floating flock of pelicans floating quietly. The shore was dotted with dozens of grass roof homes with small stick docks. Shirtless fisherman in their dugout canoes paddled to and fro checking their lines for fish. There was a Myan woman dressed in colorful clothing washing clothes on a rock, on the side of the river, while children played nearby. A half-mile up river there is a stone fort on a beautiful peninsula protruding into the river, separating the river from lake Isabel. Once in the lake the view for as far as you can see are farm plots that look like patch worked mountains with different shades of green. Truly majestic.
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| From Tortugal |
Reflections.
I hate to sound down but I am. Just before we left Massachusetts to come back down here our close friends son's girlfriend was murdered. We were with her the night before we left to come back here. She was young and so full of life. It was so sad to hear what had happened to her. Tonight, we received a picture of one of my close childhood friends. He's dieing of cancer. Both Cindy and I grew up together in a very small town. This is a very close friend with cancer. I've lost touch with him but the connection is still there. Life is so fragile. Don't let it pass by without living your dreams. Make the most of what you have today. Tomorrow may not be there.
Remember you can click on pictures to see more. Once the Picasa window opens click the blue title below "Belongs to".
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
Copyright © 2006-2010
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| From Sturgis |
The Bad Lands - South Dakota
Okay, so neither one of us landed a job. I "really" thought I had one at Juniper Networks several times but they all fell through. The other place that was a hopeful went out of business. I thought long and hard about looking elsewhere but we actually have so many things to do while we are home it didn't leave much time for work. It was a hard decision; we decided to take the summer off...
In July we loaded up our land-yacht (Honda Civic) and set sail for Cindy's brothers house in St Louis. Rather than driving the 1200 miles straight through to Doug's we stopped at a campground that was on the way for one night. I though it would be fun to sleep in a tent under the stars, Cindy wanted to stay in a hotel... I still love the adventure but I guess Cindy is getting a little refined in her years? I will say it was a good thing we had earplugs otherwise we would not have gotten much sleep. I really enjoyed it though, snuggling under the stars. I am looking forward to more camping in the future. If it's crappy weather I'm all for a hotel but when it's nice out, it's fun...The next day we got to Doug's mid-day and had a happy reunion. There is something magical about having two young nieces shouting for joy when jumping up to give you a great big bear hug!
Don't get me wrong, I love visiting family but since we've been here I've found a new or renewed passion. As any of my old friends will tell you, I've always loved riding motorcycles. Doug's friend Mike let me borrow his Harley Night Train while we're here. I've become a Harley Davidson addict! Doug and Marlo go to work in the morning and Cindy and I are a here with the girls. Cindy, Lexi and Tori take their time in the morning so I go out for a bike ride every morning, usually for a ~10 mile ride and then to a local McDonald's and have breakfast with a bunch of older retired guys. They now know me by name. Cindy and the girls get a big kick out of this. Some nights after dinner, Doug and I hop on the bikes and go riding. It's been "awesome"! Something about riding the bikes around the windy roads along the rivers and past the farms is such a feeling of freedom! It's the feeling of ocean cruising, only on land! The sounds, the smells, the feeling, it's just awesome. I can see me getting a Harley shortly after moving permanently back on terra firma; that's a definite! We had a great time in St. Louis hitting all our usual favorite spots; St. Louis Zoo, Six Flags, Fast Eddy's and just hanging out with family.
What better way to enjoy more of my motorcycle passion than to go to a motorcycle rally and there is no better rally than the Sturgis Bike Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. Several of our friends including Cindy's brother Doug where heading to Sturgis the first week of August for bike week and somehow they talked us into going! Hell, being in St. Louis we were already half way to Sturgis. I've got to admit, we had heard stories of how crazy Sturgis can be. I believe it's the biggest bike rally in the country and maybe even the world? We hopped in with Doug and Mike and after 15 hours of driving thought corn and soy bean fields we arrived in Sturgis. There were hard-core bikers everywhere. All in all, they were "very" friendly. Once we had a Harley Davidson shirt on our backs and a due-rag on our heads we were accepted. It was like we were one of them. One night we went to the largest biker bar in the world, Full Throttle Saloon. FTS is huge! There were two stages with a band on each, a zip-line running above the crowd that people ride and the girls "show there wears" as they're passing overhead, at least 15 bars, and thousands and thousands of bikers! Bikers even drive their bikes into the bar and park in the crowd. The bikers are encouraged to burn out and create smoke shows. It was "CRAZY"! Very loud bikes smoking their tires off, very cool. Walking though the crowd at FTS was like walking through a jam-packed concert full of huge hard-core bikers. The only difference was if someone bumped into you they would say they where sorry. Bikers with good manners? We had an awesome time. The riding around Sturgis is beautiful. The Bad Lands, Spearfish Canyon, Custer National Park, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Devils Tower (Wyoming) were all very beautiful rides. Some day we'll return to the Sturgis Bike Rally, with my own bike! If you enjoy riding, it is a must do. Thanks for talking us into going Jay, Denise, Dan, Mike and Doug! Also, thanks Matt and Jen for being our tour guides :-)
After a month away, we made the drive back to Massachusetts and had a full calendar for our last month in the States. We spent the time visiting with family and friends. Out of the three months we were in the States I think we only had 2 days with nothing to do! Having a job is much easier than not I think. We wish we had had time to visit a few more friends and family but before we knew it, it was time to leave for Guatemala! We did so much this summer that we're actually tired! But it was an awesome summer; West Island pig roast, Mystic, Cindy's morning walks with her Mom, fishing in Vineyard Sound, dinner with friends, Stowe, weekend rides, cookouts and road trips.
Over the past week we tried to say our "very" sad goodbyes to everyone. It gets harder every year it seems. Anyhoo, time to start the next chapter of our lives. Onto: Tashmoo, Guatemala, Honduras, Australia, New Zealand, Panama, Columbia, etc. Hopefully some of you are still interested in reading my ramblings...
Next post will be from Guatemala.
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
Copyright © 2006-2010
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