Day 153 Lost day

By morning, I ached all over and could think of nothing but sleeping. Kurt "sucked it up" and headed off to surf with Mark and Jim from Liahona. My next moment of consciousness was at 1330 when I finally woke up and knew I needed to get some liquids into myself. The immediate answer was chicken soup since I knew that cures anything. For the rest of the afternoon, I forced soup and tea down to try to recover. Every joint still ached and I imagined any number of alternative causes including the flue and dengue fever but after all was said and done, I think we had eaten some spoiled chicken on our barbecued chicken pizza. I think I will avoid that choice for a while.
There is not much to report about the day except I slept and ate chicken soup occasionally. I don't know if chicken soup is the anti-toxin for chicken poison but it seemed to work. Mark called around dinner time to ask if I wanted to join them but I only felt like sleeping longer so I declined. I seem to have lost a day in paradise but gained a day of rest and recuperation.
To put one more downer on the day, we heard the terrible news that the sailboat "Just Deserts" that we had met in Suwarrow had sunk just off American Samoa. Mike and Dawn were rescued but the boat that had been their home for the last 7 years was lost. There were only sketchy details but apparently Mike sent a "Mayday" at 0830 not long after they had left Pago Pago harbor. The boat was taking on water and he was unable to stop it so they deployed the life raft and waited to be rescued. A cargo ship took them on board and began towing their boat back to the harbor but before they reached safety, their boat sank to the bottom. I remembered Mike giving us a tour of the boat on which he had spent so much time adding all the little touches that he wanted to have to make it easy for him and Dawn to live aboard as long as they wanted. We also remembered every morning in Suwarrow when Mike's voice would come over the radio announcing "another day in paradise". We understand they are now on a friend's boat in Pago Pago harbor. The yachting community was shocked by the news.
Before our next passage, Mark wants to review once again the measures that are needed in the event Southern Star begins to unexpectedly take on water. For those of you that are not sailors, unless the boat strikes something, the only way it can take on water is via a "through-hull" fitting, i.e. some place on the hull where there is a designed hole like the fitting where the propeller shaft exits. Each of these is known and there is a safety procedure for plugging them if they begin to leak. Although the procedure is pretty straight forward, Mike was in essence "single handing" Just Deserts as Dawn did not participate much in the operation of the boat. If a part failed such as the hose that brings cooling water to the engine, water can enter the boat quite rapidly and a lone sailor must react quickly to get things back under control. At least on Southern Star, there are four of us who can team up and outnumber such a problem.