Day 193, Year 6 Cinco de Mayo Successes
Date: Thursday, May 5, 2011
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Cayo Obispo near Fajardo, Puerto Rico

Cinco de Mayo was a day of successes for us. First we made the hard decision to not stop in the Turks and Caicos on our way north and to not stop in Florida to visit with Mark’s family. Instead, we will leave here on Saturday morning and head directly to North-South Carolina where my sister lives just minutes from the Inter-coastal Waterway and marinas where we could keep Windbird. With that decision made, we called good friends Leroy and Lynda who live in Little River near the North-South Carolina border and the Inter-coastal Waterway. We met L & L while living in West Virginia in the late 1970’s and have kept in touch. Leroy is into the boating scene and we knew he could find out if we could get a slip in a marina for Windbird if we arrive there in about twelve days. We called via Skype from the laundry room at Isleta Marina. I did load after load of towels and sheets while Mark talked. While talking to Leroy and Lynda, Mark explained his medical condition and asked for advice about urologists in the area. Before I had the laundry done, Leroy called back with details of an appointment for Mark with a urologist in Myrtle Beach on May 18 and of a slip at the Lightkeeper’s Marina for $275 for a month. We couldn’t believe they could actually get an appointment for us and we were ecstatic. Our job was to now go back to the hospital here and try once more to get a copy of all the testing done while Mark was in ER on Wednesday. We called my sister and told her that we would be arriving a couple of weeks early and we called Mark’s sister Mary Ellen in Florida and told here we would not be coming to visit. It was just too hard for us to think about leaving Windbird on the east coast of Florida while we traveled to the west coast to visit with family and get the medical attention Mark might need. In the Carolinas, we can live aboard Windbird while getting medical attention and visiting family. Both places are just about the same distance from here, approximately 1,200 miles, so we will complete our departure preparations and leave here on Saturday morning. With wind and a little luck we could arrive in Little River in ten days doing 5 knots. That’s what we need to do in order to make the May 18 appointment, but it looks like we could have very light winds. We’ll just have to get out there and see how things go.

Mark returned the rental car early this morning, so we spent the afternoon walking from the ferry dock to the hospital (and back) to try and get copies of Mark’s testing. We had tried this yesterday morning and were told that there was no way to get the records until May 18, but today we tried a different tack. We now know our way around the hospital and know how to find people who can speak English to help us out. It took persistence and assistance from some wonderful hospital employees, but by the end of the afternoon we had a CD with Mark’s body scan results and all of the blood and urine tests as well as a copy of the physician’s notes. So we can hand deliver these to the doctor in South Carolina which will speed up the diagnosis on that end.

I lied–not intentionally–in last night’s log. I said details of the past few days would be in tonight’s log, but that just isn’t going to happen. It is only 7:30 in the evening, but I am already fading. I’m looking forward to the ten day passage north. It will give us a chance to recoup and regroup.