death onboard Archives

We made it across…but did we survive the Atlantic Crossing?

17 August 2021August 17, 2021rebecca.childress@yahoo.com10 Comments

Hi all,

I’m sure you have seen the latest video that came out a few days ago (https://youtu.be/x2dfGfLQcQI) but I want to post a written update since so many of you are writing to me wondering if we made it across, and if Michael and I survived as friends or at all…if you haven’t watched the video yet, be sure to before you read this or it won’t make sense.

We are both safe in Grenada..the most southern Caribbean Island.

It took us over 4 months:

6 days sailing to Walvis Bay

38 days anchored in Walvis Bay

11 days sailing to St Helena

30 days on a mooring in St Helena

7 days sailing to Ascension

9 days in Ascension Island

23 days sailing to Grenada.

A great downwind sail…some of the best sailing of my circumnavigation! Michael loved being on the water, day after day after day!

But we actually split up when we got to Grenada. It was an emotional, and horrible time.p for us both.

When you lose your husband to covid, there are no choices to be made…what happens happens, and you have no control of it whatsoever. They just call you with news if you are lucky. There is absolutely nothing you can do to much affect the outcome besides be friendly to the nurses and doctors when they call, and thank them for doing their best..maybe bring some human element to the guy on the ventilator that they don’t get to really see as an alive vital person. But that’s it. You can’t be good or bad at losing your loved one to covid. It just is what it is.

When you lose your boyfriend a year or so later, it’s in some ways worse. It’s a product of ones own doing. One has some control over this. So it actually feels like a failure…Its not all my fault… I have my reasons….my excuses perhaps… and every relationship is the product of two persons. But the relationship ended not because I had no choice in the matter…but because I was mourning, because we aren’t compatible, because our expectations are too great, or our differences too vast, right? It’s not often one persons fault, or anyone’s fault..but there are choices and actions made. How much will she put up with…how much will he put up with? How many differences are OK? Can we love the differences in eachother, or are the differences ones that we just can’t accept about eachother? Is Rebecca mourning too much to not have any business being in a relationship? Is Michael too independent to accept a woman in his life? Are the quarters just too close on a boat to form a relationship..would land for longer have been better before we sailed away? These are all questions, decisions, choices, faults of one or both of us, uncompatibility issues…whatever… So that I lost Michael was not like losing Patrick. Losing Michael was a decision..I had control over it…as did he. A 50/50 decision…the hardest kind..one that I had control of…one that I decided on,but with great ambivalence…

I made some bad decisions…I made some thoughtless remarks and behaviors. I thought too much about myself…maybe because I was in survival mode…maybe just because I’m a selfish person through and through. Maybe I was taking back control where I had none last year, and perhaps even where I had very little control while Patrick was alive..he was a pretty strong personality and I had to let him control a lot.

Now I had fairly agreeable and equal partner in Michael. But everything I heard and felt at every corner of my soul was to “take care of Rebecca”. So I did. I took care of myself. I got myself across the ocean by hook or by crook. No matter what… I was strong…I took the bad relationship stuff, and made lemonade from it…saw some nice islands, enjoyed what I could, kept going, stayed strong, did what I had to do to keep things pressing onwards.

I thought about only myself, as selfish as that is, and felt it was of paramount importance that he was good for me in all ways, or this relationship should not continue past Grenada. Grenada was always the place Michael and I talked about reevaluating our relationship in. It’s as far as we ever promised to eachother. We both knew it would be a miracle to survive past Grenada. I had decided I would make no compromises…I would make no mistakes… I would find the right person to carry on with. I wouldn’t let myself fall in to a less than ideal relationship. This was my last chance in life to get in the right relationship, so I was determined I would NOT screw it up and get in to something that wasn’t perfect. Michael also felt the same and made no promises past Grenada.

So when we got close to Grenada…I made my intentions clear… it was time for Michael to depart. Believe me, he wanted to as well! Life was pretty miserable by then, although watches, and boat chores, and keeping the boat shipshape NEVER fell down. We both knew our lives depended on doing what was right by Brick House. Michael never ceased to take care of the boat not just for the short term but also for the long term health of Brick House. Not many men would do this knowing they were being put ashore upon arrival. But I didn’t see it that way as we were arriving. I just wanted to find better…more perfect…how could I have possibly made a good choice in such a difficult time..I could surely do better now that I was under less pressure and had a bigger pool of people to choose from.

Michael left the boat. I dated … a hundred first dates…nobody I wanted to see a second time really…though with time there may have been some second or third dates. It’s not to say all were bad, but none were quite right. Lots of conversations online..I joined sailing dating sites, and word got around quickly so I had lots of opportunities before me. I enjoyed the dating and the attention..but at the end of the day, it was all so shallow compared to what I shared with Michael. Not everyone has the respect and honesty that Michael displayed right through everything, til the end..past the end…

One particularly influential man I met online, when I was asking him the same old 20 first date questions on the first call…admitted that if I wanted someone to take care of my boat…he probably wasn’t the guy, though he’d pay his share to have a pro fix or maintain it… But if I wanted someone to take great care of my heart… he was likely the guy. He seemed like a great guy…but I told him the lack of maintenance/repair skills was kind of a dealbreaker..I really needed both…someone to care for me AND for my boat. Sort of like a women with a child, or a dog…

Then I thought about it and a few days later, I texted him back…well…maybe we SHOULD have that video call…that second online date. After all, my heart probably WAS more important than the boat.

Then I thought about it a while longer…what was I doing??? I already had that right in front of me. Michael took good care of the boat…AND especially good care of my heart. We wanted the same things. He was truly good to me in so many ways. Why would I give that up???

I mean…he made me coffee in bed every morning. He got me up on the dance floor with no alcohol needed, and he was a joy to dance with. We were often the very first ones dancing, dancing when there wasn’t even dancing music. He held me and laughed with me, and encouraged me to relax and have fun. He encouraged me to look good, a little sexy, for myself… He communicated with me…He was sad when I was sad, happy when i was happy.

He partied with me, and enjoyed social gatherings at the same level as me…he watched great deep movies with me, relaxed with me, hiked, explored and snorkelled with me. He would catch dinner for me, and then cooked it with so much love, making them all pretty on the plate. He is a true companion, living life for today, keeping me in the present. We sing together, and then just kiss for an hour. We talk about things for hours every morning, not rushing in to the day. He understands my bad moods better than I do, and he expects me to mourn for longer than I do. He lets me cry and talk about Patrick probably more than he should. He holds my hand when we walk. He waits for me when we hike uphill, and carries my bag to make it easier for me. We have picnics in hot springs and waterfalls and on lookouts over the ocean, and we linger in coffee shops together. He cooks healthy meals nearly every day for me to keep me healthy and happy…even in the worst of times. He encourages me to exercise so we can have fun for more years, not because he wants me to lose weight. He makes me feel beautiful, and smart. He really gets me. He lives life so much like I do. We are very compatible.

Michael had found an apartment and was living in a beautiful studio high on a hill overlooking St Georges Harbour, contemplating his next move. Maybe he was reluctant to give up on the relationship. Maybe he was just enjoying an island he sailed so far to get to.

He came to my rescue when one of my dating experiments went terribly wrong. When a hurricane was threatening Grenada, he came back to the boat and got it ready for the storm, ready to sail south with me if it came our way. He never stopped caring for me, or taking care of me, even when he was no longer on the boat. Even while I was dating, and generally misbehaving in really hurtful ways, he was standing by ready to help me. So selfless, so incredibly giving. How could I let that guy go away?

But then one day, he decided it was time to fly home. I panicked. I felt like I was about to ruin my life…lose my best friend, lose the one person in the world besides my family, that genuinely cared for me.

I thought and thought. Cried and cried. Slept a lot, went through a mild depression. Thought some more. Then I called Michael on the phone. He was depressed. He was thinking too.…we concluded that we couldn’t live without eachother. But who knows if we could really live with eachother.

We spent many days, 10 hours a day, talking about the past, the present and the future… about whether we should try again… about whether we should let the relationship end. We decided we owed it to ourselves and eachother, to try again.

So Michael moved back on the boat. Both of us with high hopes. In 5 days, we had a fight, and he moved back out again.

We were both completely heartbroken. But one or two weeks later, we were right back to where we started…can’t live with eachother, can’t live without eachother. But he had now signed a longer lease, perhaps as a safeguard. We were both so wary of being hurt again. Neither of us were sure we could survive another break up. Too much drama, too much of an emotional rollercoaster. We are both very volatile people..stubborn and possibly unwilling to compromise on what we want in a relationship. Maybe we needed to start anew…fresh, with someone else where there isn’t so much bad water under the bridge…

But we decided that this is it..we will give it one last try. We will get back together and make sure it works. So much invested in eachother. So much caring between us. So many things realized being apart. Such a great future we could have together. We decided to take it a little slower. He would live in his apartment til the end of the lease… I would live on the boat. We would visit eachother a lot. And see if we can be kind and loving to eachother (mostly me loving of him since he never stopped being loving to me)

One may think I compared Michael to Patrick a lot. I did. But I’m a realist. I have no illusions that Patrick was perfect. He was great in so many ways and there were many things that it had taken decades for me to find in a man. I didn’t want to lose those things that I had taken so long to find, but yet there were some essential things missing too. I struggled throughout our marriage with those shortcomings…but the rest was enough.

But since I had the opportunity, I actually was hoping to make up for those shortcomings in my next relationship. I wanted someone who communicated with me, who told me how he felt about things. That was the biggest thing. Michael communicates. A lot. And even better, he listens…he really hears me, feels me, sees me. I didnt have to say things twice, or loud, for him to hear me. He heard it loud and clear even sometimes when I didn’t say it. He really understands my behavior. He often understands me better than I understand myself.

Michael LOVES being alive. He doesn’t want to work on a boat any more than I do. He doesn’t want to be anything like Patrick in that regard. He knows certain things have to be done to keep going, but he doesn’t want a boat to rule his life. In a boatyard, he works 4 or 5 hours and then finds something fun to do for the rest of the day. He takes long lunch breaks, and eats icecream for dessert. He wants to enjoy what life he has left. He wants me to enjoy what I have left of life. This is a tough one for me to accept at times…I’m used to working so intensely…used to working around the clock in a boatyard, taking Patrick’s lead. . But now, I wonder, is working on a boat what we live for? Michael lives for today, and for tomorrow. He makes sure the boat is safe and right. But he doesn’t do jobs 10 times to get the right light to film it for YouTube. I think this is very good for me…a good change…something that I so hugely appreciated in Patrick…but also something I so struggled with at the same time. Working on a boat or seeing my partner work on a boat so intensely, is not what I want for the rest of my life…to be working and working and working. I want to be retired. I want to enjoy the rest of my life, without such huge demands on keeping things perfect. Seaworthy…absolutely. Retaining its value, positively. But cosmetically perfect…no thanks. Right on top of it all the time? No way…I want to enjoy the days I have left, and die with an imperfect boat, but a wonderful last few decades of my life!

When I started seeing the positive things, the positive parts about being with Michael, rather than focusing on the things I didn’t like…my heart felt like it was finally healing. I felt my own desires rather than what Patrick would want, rising to the surface. It felt like a switch went off..a giant circuit breaker…that I was finally choosing what I wanted rather than waiting for what or who Patrick would choose for me. I didn’t have to choose someone just like Patrick to be happy. It wasn’t betraying him to admit that a totally different kind of guy who lacks some of the things I loved most about Patrick, was actually making me very happy. I realized I’d likely have to trade a few good things for a few good things. Would Patrick approve of Michael? Who cares..it’s about what is good for me and the rest of my life. It’s about what’s good for Michael and his future. A giant weight has left me shoulders here in Grenada as I realize that I don’t need Patrick’s approval, nor do I need the same thing now, as I did 17 years ago, or even 5 years ago. I could go for something different this time…Strive for greater happiness…strive for what I need now, not just find a replica of someone who wasn’t perfect anyways. Better in some ways…different. A new chapter, completely different in many ways.

I’m not done mourning… I never will be. Patrick was a great guy and partner for a long time. Michael is so overly accepting of this. He is one of the only guys who said from the beginning that he could never hope to fill PATRICKs shoes, so he won’t try. Patrick could never have dealt with the emotions of a widow…My moods are up and down…one day I’m loving, the next day not so much…It’s a good thing Michael didn’t come first and THEN Patrick.

Michael seems to understand me better than I understand myself. He finds new ways now to deal with my moods, and they actually are working. Instead of feeling like I want to kill him, I feel even more affection and caring for him on the other side of what could be a negative evening or weekend.

It’s been a month now, without fights. I still am telling him how to do things on occasion, and still being bitchy here and there though hopefully now with less intensity and more love. He is handling my transition very well, and somehow turning my bad moods around. He listens, and holds me, and while he doesn’t just sit back and accept my bad behaviors…he DOES handle my bad moods well now, and knows how to turn things around for us. For this I’m greatful. I’m not sure there is another man on earth that would still be here…and I’m not sure there is another man on earth that could handle the darknesses and challenges of my mourning..understand them…draw me out of them… still love me in the end.

I am so grateful that I found Michael. If we last and continue on the beautiful relationship that we certainly have the best of foundations for, it is because of him..his patience, and compassion, caring and self understanding. If we don’t last..it’s my fault, sadly, a byproduct of the trauma of my past year. I am trying every so hard to not let that be the case…

I definitely looked for a relationship way too fast. I’m not sorry I did..there were a lot of things that made it quite necessary…but it hurt another person in the process for which I feel so much remorse for.

But when I look back and think about when I met Michael, and what attracted me to him…my intuition was in overdrive and I was listening to it. Maybe I wasn’t even 50% aware of how right it was. There were even times in the last 6 months that I felt he was really really wrong for me.

But now I can see clearly that he was 100% right for me, for where I was, where I have been in the last year, and where I am right now. It may not be forever…but it’s definitely a perfect Union for both of us, for the foreseeable future. He got me across an ocean. He was always the MVP. He always held it together to make this trip happen. He still had his heart open to me, and still did his best throughout all the curve balls I threw him. What incredible strength.

I have always thought way too much about the future. Michael keeps me in the present so so well. The past is the past and neither one of us are too hung up on the past. But I am way too hung up on the future.

Here in Grenada, and hopefully for the foreseeable (short term) future…I will be living in the present. I will be enjoying today. I will be loving Michael as best, and totally and completely as I possibly can, today. I will be enjoying my day today. I will be more spontaneous and not be so goal oriented. I will use my time in Grenada to relax and enjoy each day as they come.

I don’t know where I will be, or where we will be in 6 months. But for today I will enjoy life more, relax more, and put a lot of effort in to loving Michael today. And tomorrow. I will dance more, communicate more, kiss more, sing more, and relax more, and sail slower. Sounds like a great retirement to me, for both of us!

A Widow’s Rant…

Farewell Patrick Childress – Sail in Peace my best friend…

Coronavirus Update on Brick House -How did we catch it? and More

8 July 2020July 8, 2020rebecca.childress@yahoo.com15 Comments

On May 15, we both tested positive for Covid 19. We both had felt they we had had the Coronavirus weeks if not months ago, and were surprised to still test positive. We were onboard Brick House in Hout Bay in a marina, South Africa from February 2, 2020.

It is difficult to narrow where we caught the virus, because it is difficult to say exactly when it was contracted and when our symptoms really were covid-19 symptoms and not something else. I had read early that the symptoms varied widely..it’s not just a fever, and shortness of breath. We had no fevers and no shortness of breath in the beginning. I took our temperatures twice a day early on.

On March 23, we both felt that we possibly had started it. Patrick developed an extreme sore throat, had more headaches than he normally would, and some sniffles. After 2 weeks of quarantining, taking some minor vitamins and gargling many times a day, it went away. He never had another symptom until May 12. The only medication he took was a baby aspirin every day, and a half a dose of regular multivitamins most days. He exercised every day, hiking up Chapman’s Peek to the toll booth, doing 100 sit-ups and 100 push ups each day. We walked together to the grocery store each day for some more exercise and he often carried the bulk of our groceries back. I tried to feed both of us more vegetables and less sugar during this period, just to be a little healthier. He was very impressed with himself after 2 weeks to have kicked it, as my symptoms lingered, and he encouraged me to exercise more…

On March 23, I had started to have severe hip pains. I could hardly walk, but I did to try to walk it out. I had never had anything wrong with my hips, and friends told me it sounded like I was a candidate for hip replacement. What? First in one hip, then 2 days later gone, and in the other hip, for a total of about 5 or 6 days. This was not after any harsh exercise. Then I developed an extreme cotton ball in my throat. Not sore…but incessant clearing of my throat day and night. Nothing helped. Then after about 10 days, my chest became heavy feeling. For several nights around this time, I stayed up, sitting up for about 3 nights in a row, researched what hospital to go to if I had an emergency, contemplated waking Patrick to go to a hospital, and then finally succumbing to sleep. I wasn’t experiencing shortness of breath, but I was very worried I would not wake up, and would not breathe by morning. I tried to put off sleep til Patrick would wake in the morning because maybe then he would be hear me if I did stop breathing, and be able to help me.

The heaviness in my chest continued for weeks and I remember by the end of April I put myself on an antibiotic because my spit was white and bubbly, which google told me can indicate pneumonia. I took just the right antibiotic for pneumonia and figured if it did not go away, then I had a viral pneumonia (covid-19), and not a bacterial pneumonia that the antibiotic would cure. It was not cured, and I continued with a heavy chest and white bubbly spit in to May, June, and now less so in July. In May, I did experience shortness of breath, but I attributed it to anxiety over Patrick. I had all I could do to get to the head, 4 feet away from where I was lying, or to fix myself food. I layed on my stomach often as recommended, did lots of breathing exercizes, and was scared shitless. I had heard about a symptom of losing sense of taste or small. But on Tuesday which was probably the worst day, food people were bring me was so salty I could hardly eat it. I ate in anyways because I was starving and knew I needed it.. Someone brought a cupcake to me, and with the frosting scraped off, it was still so sweet I could not finish it.I had not lost my sense of taste…it had Beene extremely exaggerated! I remembered the last few days Patrick was here on the boat with it, the same thing happened to him, and suddenly my usually adequate cooking became inedible to him. Unsalted eggs, were too salty. He hadn’t hesitated to tell me how bad my cooking was…hypoxia was doing the talking. That same week I developed tinnitus so badly I had to blare the stereo to drown it out. Constant high pitch screaming, on and off for days. I read it was possibly from stress.my ear was gurgling and popping. The same one I had had the test in. Within days the ear lost all hearing, and was totally blocked up, and had short jolts of pain. My breathing remained labored. Upon my adamant request, the US embassy doctor I was speaking to multiple times during the day, sent a pulse oximeter to me to monitor my oxygen level. It was in the low 90s at this point, never below 91%. We didn’t know my baseline before this, except the 98% the day I was tested, and the doctor felt this was acceptable.. my pulse was 90 and 100 which is said to be very poor for my sex and age.

I never had a temperature about 100.0 F. I had bouts of a sore throat, headaches which I get occasionally anyways. Besides the antibiotic, I never took anything else. I continued with my normal regimen of vitamins which included 2000 mg of vitamin C, a regular woman’s vitamin, magnesium, and an occasional vitamin.

So where did we catch it? I really don’t know. If we truly had it from March 23, then it could have been anything from the grocery store, to the hardware store we went to for boat parts, masks and hand sanitizer. It could have been the public bus we took to Cape Town to renew our visas, or the crowded visa renewal office. It could have been from carefully handing out a sandwich to the hungry local people near our location, or from the open air market we went to for an occasional meal, or the inside restaurants we went to. We don’t remember anyone coughing or appearing sick, but of course the coronavirus is MOST contagious when people have absolutely no symptoms yet, unlike the common flu.

If we didn’t get it before lockdown started in South Africa (March 26) , then the grocery store, or the hardware store, or the handing food to local people would likely be about the only place we could have gotten it, because that’s all we did during lockdown. I suppose if could have been an ATM, or the cellular store we went to get extra internet too just before we locked down. If we got it during lockdown at any time, those are the only places we could have gotten it. Or from the yacht club bathroom we showered in. Nobody at the yacht club ever shower symptoms, yet all could have been asymptomatic too. I don’t think we will ever really know.as lockdown continue, local township people got visibly thinner, and we did hand out more food. They had gone from asking for money to asking for bread. We were always very careful washing hands, wearing masks etc, though of course our minds like many wandered from being very nervous about it, to wondering if it was even real.

On May 11, we got permission to move the boat to Cape Town, for “an emergency haulout”. There had been a small leak on Brick House for some time, and Patrick had managed to finally find it. We wanted to depart the next week for parts unknown…Namibia, St Helena, Brazil, and south…so we fully stocked the boat, fueled the boat, and were ready to go after this small repair was made.

We hauled out on Friday, he did the small one man repair in the stern, and then launched on Monday. He drove the boat in to the assigned slip. He then, unlike any time in the past, allowed me to tie the boat and did not check the lines, add snubber etc. He did plug the boat in, and then went to bed. I just figured he was tired after the work he had done on the weekend.

When I came in from my exercise on Tuesday morning, and took his temperature, it was 102.9.

I googled flu vs covid. It was indeed flu season in S Africa at this point, and there weren’t too many cases of covid-19, and we had felt we had already had thr coronavirus. Google says a quick spike in temperature, rather than a slow rise, was more likely flu, among other things in the comparison chart. He said it felt like a mild flu, better than many flu he had and felt it was a waiting game to get better. He took Tylenol to reduce the fever, which helped. Gave him lots of fluid, cooked whatever he wanted to eat which wasn’t much. He proceeded with body aches, the fever, headache, and sore throat. He was happy that he had no congestion as he usually develops a sinus infection when he gets the flu, and it want in his head at all. I suggested he go to the doctors to make sure it wasn’t covid, but he convinced me that from everything we read, they didn’t want to see you for coronavirus unless you were having trouble breathing, had travelled to an infected area in the last 14 days, or were in direct contact with a confirmed case. None of these applied at all. But I did get him to agree on Wednesday night that if not feeling remarkably better by Saturday morning, that we would go in.

However, by Thursday afternoon he had developed a dry cough. He still had all of the symptoms. I was getting very worried at that point, but he didn’t want to go to a doctor to be told he had a flu. A rather mild polite flu as he described it. He also had diarrhea by now. I had some too…we figured it was the soup I made that afternoon, or the chicken and rice from the night before.

By Friday morning, I was more than concerned. He was coughing more. He was showing no signs of improvement. Still he said his breathing was fine, that he felt nothing in his chest. I don’t know…typical guy not in touch with his body? Loving husband not wanting to worry his wife…Hours later, he was coughing so bad, he could barely spit out that he could breathe. He did manage to say yes he could breathe through his nose, but he agreed to go to the hospital.

He said I needed to do his laundry first, so to avoid a fight, I did a rush job of his laundry. And he said we must walk there because we could both use the exercise. I looked at google maps and I said absolutely not…a 2 mile walk in the rain was NOT in the cards.

We called an uber, kept his head hanging out the window to be sure, and got to the hospital. He wanted some bottled water first, so I went in to the lobby of the hospital to buy some water from a vendor there, and to ask where emergency was. A polite young man took us around to the screening tent outside of the emergency room.

Upon arrival to this screening tent, Patrick was told to pull his mask up around his nose, and he managed to communicate that he couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe with the mask on. There was a bit of a struggle to get him to pull up the mask, and he was given a lighter surgical mask to put on. His blood pressure was taken…it wasn’t his usual 105 or 110…it was 210! His blood oxygen saturation level was 83%. It should be 95-98%. At 80% the doctors panic. They got him in to the emergency room and put an oxygen mask on him. I wasn’t allowed in…my blood pressure was 140, higher than my normal 100-105. My oxygen saturation level was about 93%-95%.

I was then asked, while I sat outside if I wanted a covid 19 swab test too. I responded I would IF it got me in to the room Patrick was in. They told me that it would, and I went right in. Patrick was already feeling better with the oxygen mask on and his oxygen level was already better.

We were told he was very very sick, close to cardiac arrest, and the oxygen level was a big problem. They layed him prone, and gave him blood thinners, and prepared him for the ICU. Neither one of us could believe he was to be admitted, and to the ICU nonetheless. The ambulance soon came and took him to an available bed at Groote Schuur Hospital nearby. We held hands as the door to the ambulance closed. We promised eachother, no ventilators. We had read the statistics.

That night I was called and told we were both positive for Covid 19.

During the weekend, Patrick was uncharacteristically grumpy and rude to the staff, complaining about the food, and the care. The doctor asked me to bring some food for him. I called local friends until I found someone who could bring him some food and a cell phone so I could possible talk to him.

After a very rocky weekend with quickly escalating oxygen solutions, I was called on Monday to be told they really needed to put him on a ventilator. I wasn’t asked…I was told. When I asked about just bring him home (to the boat)…no…no hospitalized Covid patience could die at home. They told me without the ventilator, he would die that evening. They told me with the ventilator , it would support his body until his immune system could battle the virus, that they had lost very few people on a ventilator that didn’t have preexisting morbity factors. We spoke about issues he had had in the past…which was really just heart arythmia caused only by alcohol, discovered 7 years previously and not experienced since. They said he had an excellent baseline, the body of someone 20 years younger, and that they wouldn’t have allocated a ventilator to him unless they felt it would help him. So I was allowed to talk with him on the phone. He yelled right away it was a bad time to call. I explained that they had to put him on the ventilator for a little while, and that he should not fight it, and that I loved him very much and would be waiting for him to wake up. He yelled at me to not call him again. The grumpiness was the oxygen deprivation. Then I heard him yell OWWWWWW…probably the shot to sedate him. Those were the last words I ever heard him say.

He passed on June 8, with me by his side. More can be seen on this video:

Patrick’s Last Storm

I am mostly recovered now….on July 8, 2020, nearly 2 months after diagnosis, 3.5 months after feeling like I first had symptoms. I have always had weak lungs…even in the best of times, walking and hiking. Never any formal diagnosis. I never pass the spirometry tests during a physical. Many doctors have told me that many people do not, and it’s not the best test anyways…to not worry about it.

I have an appointment for a physical tomorrow. Mostly to see why I still have heaviness in my chest at night. I am researching today which tests I should have, and what to ask the doctor. I am trying to take progressively more strenuous walks, and adding inclines in to the mix. I am listening to my body, not pushing myself too hard, but trying to do a little more every day. A medical friend of mine tells me I am lucky to have not died with this thing. I feel lucky. I wish Patrick had been lucky too.

He somehow made sure to leave me with a completely perfect seaworthy boat, every last thing done, in the safest marina in Cape Town. He had encouraged me to learn how to drive on the left in Richards Bay. He has taught me so much over the years on how to care for the boat, and operate it.

As I struggle to maintain the boat, give up some of the control to professional captains and repairman to keep the boat perfect, and continue to improve it….I feel him with me, guiding me with the repairs, guiding me with the process, and guiding me with the decisions I make along the way.The only person that can ever fill his boots is me, and I am working every area I can to try to do that. Life must go on. Some say he walks beside me. I feel more that he walks within me. I feel stronger, tougher and more competent than ever before. Thank you Patrick for all that you have given me. I will sail on with you forever, and will always remember what you have done for me in this life.