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Ecuador

     We sailed to Salinas, Ecuador to meet two cruising boats that lost their outboard motors to the local economy. Ecuador had no replacement outboards in the desired sizes, and also charges a 50% duty on everything imported. So, High Drama smuggled two outboard motors as deck cargo. When we arrived, the two boats had a party for us. They filled a basket with beer and cheeses and strange snacks, all of which were produced in Ecuador. Their thanks was a wonderful arrival treat.

     While we enjoyed the great sail from Panama, our 13-year-old auto helm did not. It failed about half way down here so we ended up hand steering for several hundred miles. Most cruisers agree that steering by hand gets very old very fast. We were fortunate that there were 4 of us to trade off in the late night watches. Also, while we were at sea we received an email indicating that Ann's dad, Mac Lyon had a health problem. We believe that once we finally take off from the South American continent air travel will be a matter of weeks away from us. When we arrived in Salinas we caught a flight to Los Angeles and squeezed in a quick visit to Mac, my mother, our kids, and a few friends in Phoenix. Ideally our broken auto helm would have been replaced while we were gone, but that was not in the cards.

     While Jeff and Ann were in the USA, Mike and Stacy visited Peru and the ancient Inca ruins at Machu Picchu. Mike had longed to visit this place and was not disappointed. The ruins were up on mountains at 8000 feet of elevation. Eerie, awesome, quiet, and beautiful are terms Mike used to describe this place. In the few days since we have been back in Salinas, there has been a temporary addition to High Drama's crew. Tali, the rust colored cat from our starboard side neighbor (Talisman ) has adopted us. The beast serves as a surrogate daughter or surrogate granddaughter for High Drama's female crew.

In short, this poor cat is smothered with maternal love and affection constantly when she is aboard. Tali trained Mike to pull us closer to Talisman when she wants to eat or do other business. The beast almost always makes the 8-foot leap between boats without assistance, but now that she has Mike to help, she just sits there and cries until he valiantly comes to her assistance. Once recently, however, she missed. According to Peter and Ginny on Talisman, Tali has a fairly significant history of misses!