SailingKnitter

We've arrived in Nicaragua!

Only a half hour after Jonesy masterfully guided the Niki Wiki (which is not easy to do) into a slip here in the Puesta del Sol marina, the paperwork cha-cha began. We didn't even have to leave the boat because all the officials came to us! We had the immigration, customs, navy and marina manager all filling out the necessary paperwork aboard our boat. What service!

Thank goodness Jonesy had picked up the salon area during the night. Although it was only a short overnight passage from El Salvador, it was not a very pleasant trip overall.

I fell down
It finally happened - I fell down into the engine room beneath the salon. I can blame it on knitting. See...while we were sailing along on the first day of the trip, Jonesy was happily making fresh water with our new reverse osmosis watermaker. I was on watch in the cockpit, knitting on a new sock design for the Six Sox Knitalong Yahoo group and needed to measure the foot before beginning the toe decreases. Oh! My measuring tape was in my totebag in the galley. I quickly scampered down the ladder out of the bright tropical sun into the dark salon (dark, because we have shade screens on the windows due to the relentless sun). Oh! There's my totebag - I focused on the bag and walked out into thin air. No floor.

The floorboards had been removed so that Jonesy could fiddle with the watermaker. Duh. I knew that. I couldn't see/didn't even look down. Thus, I fell about one meter (3 feet) down into the bilge, hit my head, and ended up with the hot engine between my legs. No, it wasn't running at the time - but it was hot from when we had it chugging along earlier. I'm very lucky though. All I got was bruises & scrapes, a swollen ankle, a big purple ear and side of my face, slight burns on the inner thigh and a pulled muscle in my back. No broken bones! Isn't knitting dangerous?

Peeses of Beeses
So...there I was an hour later recuperating down in our berth from my hysterics after falling into the bilge. I looked up through the blue mosquito netting we have hanging over the bed, up through the open hatch into the sky and I see BEES! Lots of bees! I'm terribly allergic to bees! I have nightmares about bees in my bed and now there were bees above my bed! Wait a minute...correction...there were bees and there were pieces of bees?

We were 10 miles offshore - away from the land - and a swarm of bees had decided to land on the boat! Thousands of bees! They buzzed around Jonesy and all gathered onto the base of the wind turbine at the back (stern). Then a breeze came up and the long 2-foot blades of the wind turbine started to spin really fast. The bees got mad - the bees flew around - the bees got chopped up by the spinning blades of the turbine. That made the bees even madder. So there's Jonesy out on deck fighting off bees with roach spray - then with a roach fogger. Yep that worked. Poor guy got stung though. We had dead bees littering the decks, cockpit, and salon.

Then the wind really came up and the seas were choppy/lumpy with swells coming from abeam (the side). We were tossed around and crap stuff which is usually quite secure went flying around the boat. The worst was the full bottle of cooking oil that I hadn't put away - it rolled around the galley floor spilling most of its contents. Usually I take the night shift at the helm. But, I hadn't been able to keep my eyes open and was really goofy acting from the head injury. So poor Jonesy had to sail all night without relief and I missed my favorite knitting time.

Okay - the photos above are of some knitting this past week: a pair of gray regulation socks for the Socks for Soldiers yahoo group (to be dyed black) and another ho-hum pair of guy's leisure socks for them as well. The two mittens are both from Terri Shea's Selbuvotter book. We are having a knit-along of the NHM#3 mitten right now (the pink & white one above) on the Selbuvotter yahoo group. My finished mittens will eventually to the the Akkol Orphanage in Kazakhstan as part of the Mittens for Akkol yahoo group.

But life is good again. Yesterday we were invited to the 50th birthday bash for Steve - the captain of the beautiful 110-ft sailing vessel Seljm. We had adult beverages, cerviche, fried plantains & cheese and brochettes at the marina's beach facility while we watched the sunset. Later, we gathered in the marina's dining room for a lobster dinner and excellent conversations. Check out the woodwork and inside of the thatched roof of the beach house!

We'll be here for about a week to 10 days - must go explore the volcanoes we saw on the way into the marina! Later...