Surely it is
time to update our weblog. We left the
story with us having a health crisis.
Indeed, when we last wrote, we were pretty sure that Laurie had Stage IV
Colon Cancer, after a CT Scan done on November 10th showed a 2”
tumor in the cecum region of the colon and spots on the liver.
Happily, that
got scaled back to an early Stage II tumor, and normal lesions on the
liver. Five doctors were consulted,
various technicians attended, a dozen nurses assisted, dozens of needles were
used and discarded, two CT Scans were performed as well as an abdominal MRI, Laurie
received a colonoscopy, and it all climaxed on November 30th when 18”
of bowel was removed and sent to Pathology.
The work was completed using modern titanium stapling technology for the
resection, and a combination of sutures and staples for the incision. If you wish to see it done, search YOUTUBE
for bowel resection using stapling.
Laurie went
through 4 nights in hospital, a 6-week recuperation at home, and is now feeling
great. A little left-over anemia makes
him a little slow to bounce back from physical activity, but that will slowly
abate.
Spending the
first December and January at home since 2008 was an eye-opener. The shoveling was enough to get both of us
exercised. We did find that the
winterized cottage might not be as winterized as we thought, but we were able
to make it cozy enough. We also had a
lot of help and support from relatives, neighbours and friends to get us
through this bit of adventure.
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| Winter wonderland back in New Brunswick, Canada |
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| The day before we left, we put our car into our neighbor's garage...it took a wee bit of work to get the job done! |
We flew to
Grenada on January 25-26, with a lay-over in Toronto, and put in 9 nights in a
little apartment at Cool Running, across from the boatyard. A highlight was an
upgrade to a “Royal Suite” half-way through our stay. It was quite beautiful, but the kitchen was
suffering an infestation of those tiny brown ants that love crumbs and swarm
the counters during food preparation. We
would have been happier staying put.
Still, the nights were comfortable after each hard, and sometimes
frustrating day.
We launched
the boat on Monday, and hope to finish provisioning on Wednesday. We have a target of Thursday to sail to
Carriacou, ahead of wind strengthening on Friday. In the meantime, we were able to have a bit
of fun with a meal at the Umbrellas Beach Bar, Grande Anse Beach.
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| After 8 days of working in the boatyard on Cat Tales, we finally launched on Monday, the 4th of February. |
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| Lunch out at Unbrella's Restaurant on Grand Anse Beach...ah...cold beer after a long and dusty walk! |
TECHNICAL
The boat sat
for nine months on the hard instead of the normal six months. Still, it seemed to be no different. The tarpaulin we had rigged to cover the
dinghy on the foredeck was disintegrated; it was difficult to find a piece of
it, but the main tarpaulin over the salon was in fine shape. Dawn took on the cleaning and the feeding,
and just about wore herself out washing and waxing the hulls.
Besides the
usual work of putting the equipment back in working order, we had some special
chores that had to be completed. We had
some osmosis golf ball bumps above the waterline, and had half-completed the
rebedding of an escape hatch. Repairing
these two items, as well as rebedding the back bumpers all had about 9
iterations to them. For example, the
hatch had to come off, have all the calking scraped down to bare metal, the
removal of oxidized aluminum that had caused the leakage, painting with
phosphorous acid to stop any oxidized aluminum from causing further corrosion,
painting with zinc chromate, painting with primer, installation of the frame
with proper calking, then the same sequence for the window itself, with the
addition of installing new gasket material.
A seawater
pump, for the port engine, had ceased to turn since being removed – a common
problem with them, as there is no way to re-grease or lubricate them. We had it sent away, and it returned in time
to be bent on for launch.
This all
complemented the work of the season before, as we had installed new bottom
paint, ordered new chain, had the mainsail repaired, ordered the new gasket for
the escape hatch, and set out new anodes and other consumables for
reinstallation. Oh - - A special thanks
to Fran and Chris of s/v Changes for taking delivery of some of our parts and
getting them stowed aboard for us.
Launch went
well on Monday, but the outboard engine for the dinghy almost broke our hearts
later in the day. We got it sorted out
Tuesday morning, and it is again delivering stellar duty.
We have on
board a gauge that can be connected to the engines instead of the oil pressure
sender, thanks to Roger Michaud. This
will help to determine if the engines are suffering a deterioration of the oil
pumps – which could cause ultimate engine failure. We’ll try them in the flat waters of Tyrell
Bay, Carriacou, in the coming weeks.
