Highlights are easy. I've included a few of those in pictures, but to balance it out I will elaborate a little more on a couple of low-lights. Maybe you have heard, but back in February our boat came very close to sinking in Dominica. Four days before that I had an experience that was equally as disturbing and I think enough time has passed for me to recount it. Also Jon and I didn't end up with Hep C (as far as we know) so that also makes it easier to recount.
It all started while we were hiking around the town of Roseau and ran into a guy selling coconuts. I chugged my coconut in a personal best time of 4 seconds and, after about 5 minutes, I began having severe stomach cramps. We slowly limped our way back to the boat and after about 6 hours of assuming the fetal position and rocking back and forth accompanied by loud complaining directed at Jon we decided that neither one of us could take it anymore and we'd have to go to the hospital. Spoiler alert: it was a huge mistake.
Just the act of getting from the boat and into the dinghy was painful and labored experience. It was already 10:00pm so we were tired and hoping this whole ordeal would be over quickly. After a 20 minute dinghy ride, complete with nausea-inducing waves and sea spray, we paid a taxi $40 USD (Sick or not, paying too much for a cab is a real drag) to get to the nearby hospital where we began our 8 hour wait. The hospital itself had been donated to the Dominicans in 1995 by their French neighbors. It was obvious that nothing had been changed or updated since the day of the ribbon cutting ceremony 20 years prior.
It must have been family night at the ER, because there were dozens of sick kids and their worn-out and apathetic parents everywhere. "Get a free large pizza and 2 liters of Coke for every snot-nosed child who-doesn't-know-how-to-cover-their-cough you bring," must have been advertised in the paper earlier that day. We were told that there was only one doctor working the ER for the night, but that she would be right with us (eye roll).
Around the 7th hour in the waiting room we thought that we were making progress when we were called into 'Room One'. Room One was a very small room where all of the crying babies, hacking coughs, and really sick people were. Oh and the smell. Of death. This was the office of Dr Grim Reaper. I suddenly felt that I would rather die quietly in the woods, or by shark attack, than get tortured here.
Upon entering the room I was given some pill for the pain I was in. I took it and immediately had to throw up. The look of panic on my face alerted Jon to the situation and we rushed a few steps to the bathroom hoping for a respite from the chaos. Instead we found the tiny room's white tiled walls and floor and white ceramic toilet splattered in blood, like a scene out of "Saving Private Ryan." I could see bright red had prints on the toilet bowl where some violently sick person had kneeled before us, no doubt contemplating the end.
Jon held onto me as we stared at the blood and he remembered the bathroom that was out in the main waiting area. I looked into his eyes and shook my head no. I would never make it. I was begging him for help with the look on my face. He looked at the sink, more blood. He scanned the room and grabbed the small garbage can by the sink just in time. There was marginal amounts of blood here too, but we made the best of it. Careful not to touch anything that looked like it could give us Hep C, I exiled the pill she had been given earlier from her stomach.
We made a desperate escape from Room 1 and found a cleaner bathroom in the main lobby. We washed our hands until we were sure we had removed several layers of skin.
I ended up getting an X Ray from a machine that had once helped the Russians launch Sputnik into orbit. The doctor told me that I didn't have any internal punctures and that my appendix was fine. The final diagnoses was gastroenteritis. It was anti-climatic to say the least. We returned to our dinghy at around 5:00am. It wasn't there. It had been swept under the dock and pounded against a rock for who knows how long. Our outboard motor had sustained considerable damage, but we were able to temporarily fix it long enough to get us back to our boat. The dinghy, miraculously, wasn't punctured. I guess springing for the high end model paid off.
What we didn't know at the time is that the "curse of Dominica" wasn't over. It would only be a few days later that our boat would be beached.
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| We are a good team. |
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| High highs and low lows make a sailor's life go round. |
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| Delicious fresh squeezed fruit drinks... No ice. Damn. |
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| The hospital in Dominica. Unfortunately we did not take a picture of the bloody murder scene from the bathroom. Jon literally refused claiming it was too grotesque. Of course now that so much time has passed he regrets that decision. Words do not do that memory justice. |
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| A sailors worst nightmare. After 3 days of being sick I finally felt well enough to leave the boat and go explore the island a little. Within 1/2 hour of us going ashore the mooring broke. |
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| A Sailors worst nightmare, part 2. If the waves had been any bigger, Tarka could have sunk. It would have been a total loss. This experience made us question our desire to continue sailing. We decided to continue on. How we feel about that decision is still in question ;) |
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| Ahhh. I remember these beers well.This was in The Saints, a chain of islands close to Dominica. After leaving Dominica in a soggy, diesel smelling, disorganized boat I was in a bad mental state. Now, I'm not much of a drinker but drinking seemed like such a good way to take my mind off of our current living situation. After our second round I was drunk and the state of the boat didn't seem so bad! In fact, it seemed almost funny. I finally understand why sailors have a reputation of being drinkers. And I'm on board. |
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| Our friends met up with us in St. Kitts! Five in the dingy, fun day trip to Nevis. |
