Refit report #2

Saturday, 5 Dec 09 - Condominiums Pilar, San Carlos We are in the “Cruiser’s Condo” for a few days while the boat is getting painted. This is the same condo we stayed in with Bill and Janet on our arrival. They left last week and have now sailed off to the Baja coast. It is a studio style but very comfortable and reasonable since Trish and Doug manage the place for a relative. The ocean is steps away and Rosie has miles of beach for her walks. J-G brought a few projects that could be done here while we wile away the hours, refinishing the door hatches, re-building a head pump and refitting the outboard. The neighbours will love us.... It has been another busy week getting the boat ready for the painters by removing as much as we could from the cockpit and upper-decks. Ideally everything should have been removed as we had done with Antares but we couldn’t afford the extra time needed to remove and re-install if we want to be in the water before the new year. We have briefly seen the work over the past few days and it looks good so far. We now hope to be back to the boat by mid-week. We expect to have the stainless railing work and the new upholstery done next week. Fran had it done to match the colour of the new counter top – anything to make the Admiral happy. The funding drive for Doug was held today at the San Carlos Christmas bazaar and was a resounding success. The support shown by the local gringo community was fantastic. Gil, Lexi and Fran manned the booth, selling tickets and cajoling all passersby that they should contribute and they did a sterling job. By noon, over $1000 US had been raised and much of that came from one individual, Mike from S/V Tazmo. He really wanted to cut Fran’s hair and bought enough tickets to ensure that his number would be drawn, and it was, several times. It was quite amazing to see the support we received from cancer survivors or those who have been touched by cancer one way or another. Once Fran was done she, in turn, cut Doug’s hair. Fran doesn’t look quite as bad as we had expected but under all that lush brown hair was the organic grandmother colour that she will now let grow out. The next event will be next Sunday, a puppet show and silent auction at the Captain’s Club in San Carlos. Doug received some good news on Thursday. His oncologist informed him that the results of the tumour biopsy indicated that it is a very treatable type but will require a different series of chemo that will specifically target the tumour cells, something they weren’t able to do last year. He starts the new series on Monday. More when we get back to Gosling next week.