A Siren call to the jungle

The place to begin I suppose, would be with the string of calamities that left me struggling for breathe, nearly blind and in a state of absolute panic.

The day before my birthday in 2021, I splashed my boat. We had been working on her for two summers and the moment she hit the water it felt like a dream come true. There was so much excitement around the day. Dozens of friends and others who had helped and been witness to the incredible transformation of my classic ketch came to wish us well and join in the festivities.

So, on the afternoon of September 20, 2021 the boat was splashed, but one small thing was forgotten. The stuffing box had not been stuffed, overcome with pride and bubbling with immeasurable joy I didn’t realize the old girl was essentially sinking slowly.

After dropping the anchor in the bay outside of Cap Sante in the cold waters of Anacortes Washington, she began to take on a respectable amount of water. The bilge system was keeping up but the battery bank that powers the bilge system would likely not.

It only took about thirty minutes of nervous laughing and several of us taking turns at stuffing various sized packing strips into the compression sleeve (the part that keeps the ocean on the outside). Eventually the the geyser withered to a slow steady drip and we rushed to pop the champagne.

I think she was trying to tell me something, with an elephant like “mock charge”.

Less than a week later shortly after dropping the hook concluding our first shake down cruise, I slipped and fell. I heard a crack. I though initially that it was from the massive blow I had taken to the back of my head on the lower salon stairs. I didn’t know it yet but I had broken three ribs and my lung was slowly losing it’s ability to hold precious oxygen.

Traditionally, I am known as a hard as nails stubborn ass, that is fully prepared to “power through”. No bone showing, no hospital. For most of my life this war cry served me quite well. I claim to have never broken a bone, but that is highly unfounded after countless falls from bicycles, horses and the occasional angry ostrich.

But this, this was different…

I decided to sleep on it, like any self respecting kid born in the 1980’s that grew up without health insurance would. The boat bucked and rolled in an anchorage near a small boat fairway in a beautiful bay near Port Townsend Washington. I lay there wishing for daylight. My large berth in the aft cabin felt more and more like a coffin with each passing moment. I found it increasingly difficult to breathe. I blamed it on anxiety after the first shake down sail. In reality my lung was leaking oxygen into body cavity with each painful breath.

By the time the sun peeked over the bay I was in bad shape

Teary and bleary eyed. I called a friend for a ride to the hospital, but this was going to be no small feat getting off the boat. I was going to have to climb over the waist high lifelines, down a rickety wooden ladder in desperate need of repair and into an inflatable soft bottom dingy. If you know anything about dinghies you know this is not the type you wish you had when you have a broken bone or more than a single bag of groceries.

So I did the only sensible thing I could think of, before I attempted this impossible task, I drank as much wine as quickly as possible chased by a left over painkiller found in expired medicine box.

After that the rest of the adventure becomes gloriously hazy.

I spend several days in the hospital refusing various life saving procedures such as a “chest tube” and sedatives that were not called wine. Eventually I was released and advised not to, sail, fly, or get out of bed for 6-8 weeks.

I made my way back on to my boat no more than 10 days later and told myself to not be a sissy. However, the universe wasn’t going to give up so easily. Two weeks later I received a call form a voice I hadn’t heard in nearly a decade. It was my daughters estranged father, informing me he had been released from prison early. More on that, when I know more on that.

Admittedly still in crippling pain from from the fall reeling from disappointment in what my opinion was a slower than hoped for recovery. The cold of the Pacific North West crept into my soul and I knew I had to seek some respite and much needed head space.

horse without a name

We tucked my beautiful sailboat away in a safe harbor and I flew to Mexico to meet a friend with my trusty little black poodle named Poodle in tow.

I received the warmest of welcomes in Mexico and my spirits were immediately lifted. I could breathe again, both emotionally and more so physically than I had in weeks. On the second night in Mexico we met a friend for a few drinks. We laughed and I skipped down the dusty paths in Baja enjoying the famed “one finger nature touch” coined by past travel companions describing a maneuver where I run my hands over every living flora and fauna and simply just “enjoy being alive.” The thought process behind this is; what if heaven forbid I go blind and I have to use my hands to see? I want to remember what everything I feel looks like.

“Should we tell her to stop? Most of that stuff is dangerous”

“No, look at her she’s so happy”

The next morning I woke up before dawn with more than a throbbing head full of tequila. I couldn’t open my eye to see. Case in point.

Welcome to Mexico

I had gotten some kind of desert thorn stuck under my eyelid. This pain was a very special type of pain, that was not going away anytime soon.

My stubbornness has never been in question. Ever. It was high time I take a bit of pause and listen to what the Universe was trying to tell me. For a long time, I have had this little voice inside telling me there is a small pilgrimage of self, that I must embark on in Peru.

Oddly enough, the friend that had met us for drinks in Mexico had just purchased himself a brand new hut of his very own in the jungle and immediately I knew, it was time. I wasn’t ready to see what would be thrown at me next, if I avoided the call.

It didn’t matter what I did, the whites of my eyes continued to swell past my irises.

After a week of literal blinding pain, unable to look at my computer screen or walk the dirt road to the beach, I knew it was time.

A few days later I was on a trip that would land me on another planet in a tiny patch of jungle in Peru.