Hero falls ill, feverishly awaits turnaround

Fever-wracked and forlorn, I'm on my sickbed. Flight to Lisbon postponed at great expense until Sunday; extraordinary patience of hosts Eric and Aurora confirmed to be limitless, having last night withstood a withering Force 8 gale of complaints from Mike. This afternoon I fired off emails to both of them at their P.O.W. (Places of Work) demanding they arrange for a nurse to help me through this difficult Friday night a-bed. I even suggested they contact a young monja I met two nights ago named Azahara. Still no word.

The state of my health hardly matters. Paul and the Solo are banging into 28 knots sustained winds on the nose, still 12 hours or more out of the Cascacis and Lisbon, Portugal. The appalling conditions contradict the weather report I read from the MET UK office yesterday, but what the hell do I know about weather? I'm sloshing about in manzanilla tea and breathing vaporized medicine. Fittingly, this morning I picked up the Solo's new medical kit. Assembled quickly by a local anesthesiologist, its eclectic contents reflect a keen, albeit well-intentioned, disregard for life at sea. For instance, it includes triply-redundant treatments for gastritis and diarrhea (both of which culminate thrillingly with the deployment of "Sipositorios de Glicerina"), yet it falls well short on the matter of seasickness (one packet "Biodramina") and infections (one envelope of Antibiotica Pomade, which is precisely what it sounds like and resembles a packet of McDonald's ketchup).

This afternoon my friend Almudena dropped off a DVD of Mutiny on the Bounty. "A little something of the sea for you to watch tonight, Miguelito." I find her humor vexing.