Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Rain, Boating, Floating Doctors

I went to town to pick up my next guests, a couple of women from Bulgaria and to check on a diesel generator aboard a large boat which is to be stripped and sunk.  I managed to make it to town through a small window of opportunity between rains.  As I was chatting with my friend Walter I got a text message from the women telling me they were at my house, or so they thought.  Ayaah.

Back to my house.  Just out of town I put another five gallons of gas into the tank.  They, Zhenya (Jenni) and Stani were there, cooking up moussaka.  They finally finished cooking and we ate, me included, despite having just finished a hamburger in town.

Finally another break in the rain and my buddy Chris called, "Are you coming?"  "Working on it."  "C'mon girls, put some swimsuits on, we have things to do.  I have no idea how it took them half an hour to change and get ready to go out the door.

Off to the South Anchorage, we picked up Chris, over to another sailboat, picked up Marcus and off to Saigon.  We pulled along the wreck.  The plywood substrate to the deck was warped up and fully exposed. I hopped the rail and stepped through the floor.  Thereafter I only stepped on large things on the deck that distributed my weight across a greater area.   We made our way to the bow and dropped ourselves through a hatch.   This boat was a complete disaster.  The only thing left of any merit were some walls of finished 3/4" marine plywood in great condition.  Two Detroit Diesels would probably be sunk with the boat.  In the port sternmost was a wooden box that housed the Onan generator.  Gotta get some diesel fuel and a battery and see if it runs.

Dropped off Chris and Marcus and headed to the Cosmic Crab on Carenero to drop off an air hose and a regulator that I had borrowed and we had employed while working on Nothing Wong.  While there I received a phone call from an assistant of Dr. Ben LaBrot of  the Floating Doctors.  He wanted to meet with me.  So, I left the women there and boated over to Carenero.   I was invited to participate in a clinic on Cristobal and a three day clinic this weekend in Kusapin.   Awesome.

I was informed of the fact that the local hospital had managed to get these wonderful people from treating residents of Isla Colon, the most populous island in the archipeligo and the island on which Bocas Town is located.   I am not sure what their motivation is.  The lines are so long at the hospital that people wait all day, aren't seen, are turned away after ten hours and told to return.

Then we hit Old Bank where they got a flavor of something completely different than Bocas Town and headed home.

Frequently cited locations.

No comments:

Post a Comment