Well, I took the rudder off the boat along with the assocated parts. Then I took my $250 worth of new metal to make some nice new pins to the house. When I sat down with the parts I found out to my horror the new metal is the wrong size. So now I can't lathe a larger pin. There's no way to get this metal down here, so I've been waylaid again.

On the plus side, we took a 8 hour bus trip to Puntarenas, Costa Rica for a mad search for more boat supplies and Science Diet cat food. Luck was finally with me as the little hotel we picked out from the guidebook was not more than 2 blocks from everything we needed to buy. And we found just about everything I've been searching for! We came back into Nicaragua with 40 pounds of cat food and about 50 pounds of boat crap.

So the slow yard work continues. I've fiberglassed the bow fitting back in and gel-coated it. Now I just need to repair the outside, and decide what to do about the rudder. Of course there are tons of other things that need to be done and only about 2 more months to do it!

One thing that's cool about the yard is there are lots of geckos who hang out and eat the bugs on our boat. Now we have our own personal bug repellants.

While we're adjusting to live in our little rented house (with the white bars in front)
Other animals are adjusting to us being here. We've had land-crabs wander in, other cats, geckos, monster sized moths, huge spiders and even a chicken came to see us. Somethings haven't changed much, the cats still sleep a lot (when they're not chasing crabs, cats, geckos, moths, spiders or chickens).
I've been struggling to find the parts and supplies I need to work on the boat and I'm starting go a little batty. At least the slow paced life here won't stress us out. The traffic in front of our house can be a little slow, but it moseys on by....

Jordan has been enjoying living in a house. She's found having water pressure means she can drink directly from the sink -- great, right?

She's also been busy killing the local wildlife:

Mouse - 0, Cat - 1
Cockroaches - 0, Cat - 20+
Gecko - 0, Cat - 1
Parrot - 0, Cat - 1

All that death, sigh. And we've been keeping the little monster locked up inside at night too!

When we hauled the boat out, there was signs that some water was getting into a fitting on the bow where water shouldn't be getting in. Being the ever paranoid freak that I am, I decided to rip out the fitting and see what is going on inside. Because if this thing failed, the mast could fall.
Unfortunately that meant grinding out itchy fiberglass in the bow of the boat where our bed and clothes are stored. So we had to clear everything out (see the piles of stuff on the sides) and tape up a plastic barrier to contain the itchy dust.
Then inside the bow, I created a second plastic barrier to block the dust and direct it out of the boat.

After a full days worth of preparation and about 60 minutes with a grinder the piece was ground out and free from the hull. The fitting was pretty rusty but still solid. There was some slight pitting in the metal that is the beginning of bad news, so rather than risk it, we bought some metal in Managua and found a great machine shop to fabricate a replacement.
You can see the open slot in the hull where the fitting goes through. Over the last 30 years the bedding compound had failed and let water in. So now it will be new, well sealed and I'll fiberglass it in strong! Better than new. But this three week long project wasn't on the original plan and I've still got many other big things to take care of...oh well that's life in the yard.

After getting a second opinion on the stone and having more tests, I went into surgery the next day to have it removed via an endoscopy technique because the stone looked too big to pass. The surgeon removed the stone successfully and installed a stint that runs from my kidney into the bladder. Surprisingly after the surgery my kidney no longer hurt. I can only hope this is the last time I ever have to deal with this again.

Other than dealing with my kidney we haven't done much. Hopefully when I'm feeling better we can get back to our lives and get some things done! Who would have thought cruising would mean learning so many technical medical words in a foreign language?

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The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for two big cranes, Sherrell and Eric's sanity would be lost.

There's a little yard here in San Juan del Sur and when we went through all the issues we've been facing: kidney stone, boat work, unseasonably bad weather, etc. We decided that hauling the boat out of the water was not a bad idea. In fact two days after hauling it out I had another pain attack from my stupid kidney. I don't know why kidneys can totally disable you with pain, but it's impressive.

Anyway, this yard is unlike any place we've been. We had to make our own stands, there's no power or water and we pay Juan to sleep on it to keep an eye on everything during the night.

Not to be outdone, Ocean Lady decided to set a new record for the yard and have them haul their 50 foot boat, the biggest they've hauled. The swell prevented us from hauling them for a few days, and the basin filled in with sand. So to get their boat to the crane we had to use their dinghy and a large panga to push them through the sand to the wall. Once at the wall, we led the straps around the boat, pulled the rigging out of the way, cleared the rails, and tied the bands together so they wouldn't slip. We had to really hustle to get things ready before the tide dropped too much and tilted the boat too far to be picked up.

Naturally the cranes had a tough time rotating Ocean Lady because of the two masts. As the boat was rotated it also heeled over about 20 degrees to starboard. After about an hour of struggling with the cranes, lines and even a forklift we got Ocean Lady righted and into position.

We've really settled in quickly, as we've rented a little house with Ocean Lady and we're getting ready to get to work on the boat while the bad weather rains down.

As you can see by the photo (if I'm able to post it) the anchorage here has been extremely rough. We've had southwest winds for days and about a 6-9 foot swell. The photo is 50' Ocean Lady, at anchor next to us. There is a large swell event predicted to occur in a few days so this morning we decided to move to deeper water. That's when everything went wrong.

First I took the pressure off the snubber line (a 20 foot piece of line that takes the shock loads off of the anchor chain) and tried to untie it. But the rope had slightly unraveled and was impossible to undo, so I had to cut off about a foot of my line. Then I raised the anchor to find a large chunk of discarded fishing net entangled in the chain near the anchor. While I'm struggling to get this off, Sherrell is trying to drive away from the pounding surf and into the deeper part of the bay. I noticed she was having some difficultly in maneuvering the boat when she screamed for help, because the boat isn't responding.

I dumped the anchor and chain back out along with the mess of net and raced back. I grabbed the gear shift and felt the transmission engage, but when I floored it there was little response. Looking over the side I could see the prop spinning and pushing water, but we had no steerage. While messing with it, the transmission cable came loose, which I quickly fixed, and when we tried flooring the engine again there was some black carbon in the exhaust water (which Sherrell thought was oil) that caused more panic.

Luckily our anchor caught and held us from getting swept into the breaking waves about 500 feet behind us. I grabbed my mask and fins and dove into the water to see what was happening with the prop. There was a solid covering of barnacles that had grown in the past 10 days that was destroying the hydrodynamics of the prop. While I frantically scrapped the prop (in heavy waves this is difficult and I cut up my hands on the sharp barnacles), Ocean Lady was getting ready to come over to assist us. In record time I scraped it clean, and soon we discovered we could steer the boat.

While Sherrell motored us away from the beach to deeper water I hung upside-down off the bow sprit (getting dunked underwater occasionally) and tried to hack my way through the net that was on the anchor. It took a huge effort with my bloody hands and I was covered in nasty goo that was in the net. Finally I got the net off the anchor and on deck. Exhausted, I rested for a few minutes while Sherrell motored back into the bay so we could anchor again.

Now we are safely anchored in deeper water in case the large swells show up in the next couple of days. But we're both shaken.

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It's not your average 6am alarm clock that meows desperately and sends you flying out of bed trying to stuff both feet into one pant leg while running up on deck. But that is what happened this morning. Except that alarm clock was Jordan clinging to our bobstay at the bow of the boat. I leapt into the water and grabbed her exhausted and terrified body and swam to the side of the boat. She was so scared she went limp as I swam with her and I tried to get her to climb the "cat ladder" but she was too beat to do anything. Sherrell reached down and grabbed her by the scruff and pulled her to safety.

We've never heard that cat purr so loudly. Our only guess is she slipped on the deck after last nights rain left everything wet. She normally doesn't chase anything on deck and she's very scared of the water. Now that she's all dried off and rested she has no desire to go up on deck -- wonder how long that will last. Good thing we were here to help her!

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San Juan del Sur has been a blast. We've been surfing and swimming in some great waves. Batwing and Ocean Lady showed up a couple days after my Birthday and we had another party, followed by a day of surfing. Everything seemed right with the world. But then 5 days after my birthday I woke up with a strange pain.

That's when it all changed. The pain was a familiar one; this type of pain you never forget. I knew right away it was a kidney stone because I had one 6 years ago. So after convincing Sherrell that I was about to suffer an incredible bout of pain and that I needed to get to Rivas or Managua for an x-ray and some pain meds, we packed up and hired a taxi. Rivas is only 40 minutes away, but the road is rough and bumpy. I writhed in agony the entire way to Rivas. The pain was so intense that I almost passed out walking into the clinic. I could barely write my name and they rushed me to one of the beds as I stumbled through the explanation in Spanish of my problem. They shot me up with some good stuff and in about 15 minutes I was passed out. When I woke up the pain was gone and I felt like a new person. They did an ultrasound and found the 7.2mm stone lodged in my kidney.

So it seems we're on a mission to survey medical facilities around the world. We went to Managua with the test results to consult with a specialist and now we get to go back in a week. The typical treatment is to monitor the stone and see if it leaves the kidney without complications for about 30 days, but if trouble persists they might have to look at other options. Fortunately they have all the same modern equipment in Managua as in Seattle where I had the first stone.

What a pain in the kidney.

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