Life goes slightly pear shaped.
Oriole
Sun 9 Feb 2014 21:07
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Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
Sunday 9th
February
17:01.11N 61:46.26W
Whether it was the overdose of alcohol while
celebrating Andrew and Caroline's wedding, or the anti-mosquito mist at the
restaurant or a side effect of his laryngo/sinusitis and lost voice, but John's
painful red eye with considerably reduced vision did turn out to be rather more
serious than mere conjunctivitis. So before he could start treatment for
his third attack of anterior uveitis in about fifteen years we had to seek out a
good local opthalmologist. We were led to Dr Ian Walwyn who examined
John with enormous care and expertise and confirmed the diagnosis and
an intensive regime of steroid eye drops every hour was prescribed.
Having had difficulty reading the top line of the chart on Monday the
eyesight is now nearly back to normal.
Chris had to take up the role of Ocean Cruising
Club radio net controler while John's voice was recovering, so her dulcet tones
were being heard by our regular contributors from Trinidad in the south to St
Martin in the north. On Monday it became quite apparent during the
net that we were not the only ones with medical problems. We
are pleased to report that all four patients are now out of
danger!
 Now the mate thinks she is doing all the work!
Meanwhile the sick winch motor is driving John to
distraction. Having rewired the electrical circuit just in case there was
a problem, John was amazed to find that it worked. However the next
morning, having told our friendly engineer that would not be needing his help to
install the new motor, it would not work! It is now quite apparent that
when it is relatively cool early in the morning at 25C it consistently will NOT
work. When the temperature has increased to 27C with the sun shining into
the cockpit, it is quite happy to function, but when the temperature falls again
in the evening it goes on strike. So we are back to square one and John
will have to eat humble pie and persuade the engineer to come an help him fit
the new one. The makers have already admitted that there could be an
intermittent fault.
So we have had a good excuse for staying put in the
peace of our anchorage in Falmouth Harbour and enjoying meeting up with a
multitude of itinerant friends and sampling the wares of the local hostelries
which last night included celebrating a golden wedding. However harbours
rot good ships and men and we need to get out!
A fleet of seven Dragon Class keelboats have
been racing this week in Falmouth Harbour with undeclared celebrity helms.
We did not recognise any but the fleet made a fine sight.
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