San Diego: Health and Weather Woes

By David

First the weather.  It's howling outside right now, with gusts to over 50 mph.  The national weather service says it will "probably be the strongest storm of the winter."  Walking requires focus to keep balance and sand stings the cheeks as clouds of it blow across the road above the breakwater.  Watching boats on moorings outside the breakwater as they twist and turn in the waves makes us more than grateful to be in a marina.  Several boats are losing sails and moving ever closer to the rocks.  Even here in the marina though, the deafening cacophony of halyards slapping against aluminum masts and wind shreiking in the rigging is unnerving.   The worst is due in tonight.

Wave by wave, 200K worth of sailboat inches closer to the rocks

Tomorrow it's forecast to abate and Sunday or Monday is still looking good for a departure.  Winds may fall light on Monday, but good sailing winds should pick up again by Tuesday through the remainder of the week.  Hopefully by then we'll be far enough south to avoid the next storm.

A roller furling headsail self-destructs in the wind.

As if the weather isn't enough, last evening while I was posting the blog page I began feeling lower abdominal pain.  By the time I got back to the boat a few minutes later I needed to lie down.  Four ibuprofen didn't help much, with the pain steadily increasing as I groaned and writhed on the bunk.  A passerby on the dock would have thought someone was dying.  A couple hours later Pearl gave me a couple stronger pain killers.  After another hour the pain began to recede but then I began to feel hot and close to passing out.  I then vomited and finally fell asleep.

Given my history of passing kidney stones, I mentioned our plans to my doctor last fall and he ordered an x-ray that showed two stones.  I passed one about two weeks later and hopefully last night's episode was the second and final one for now.  I've probably passed half a dozen in my life, one of which had me hospitalized for 3 days when it became stuck and the doctors became concerned about kidney infection.  There's no doubt that being far from medical help involves risks.  Hopefully this one is behind us for now.  

The power just went off, so I'd better close.  Needless to say, I'm feeling much better today and we're still on track for a departure in the next few days.