Lightning never strikes twice, right?

     Well, the good news is the Espiritu shake-down cruise to the Las Perlas Islands went off without a hitch after our 2 months in Panama City nursing the crippled Espiritu back to health after her lightning strike.

   What a relief. There are a couple of minor glitches, but basically she passed the test with flying colors and is back at sea where she belongs!

   So now, as always, the biggest challenge will be the mental ones.  I'm realizing that there are still several more weeks left in the rainy season here in Central America. Which means countless more lightning and thunderstorms to endure...

Wonderful.  :-/

  If you look back at my blog posts before we were struck by lightning back on June 28th, you'll find that when I thought about lightning, and my fear of it, I merely went to statistics and the randomness of it all for reassurance.

  But now that we HAVE been struck by lightning...and we've spent countless hours and dollars working aboard Espiritu nursing her back to health...I'm wondering, what will be my mental process now in dealing with my fear of lightning?

I could sing! "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens..." Hmmmm.
Doesn't really work on me like it does on the adorable little Von Trapp kids...

    A friend told me that when she was a child, her parents told her that lightning was simply Gramma and Grampa bowling in heaven.

"Hey kids! Gramma got a strike!"

Sigh. That thought, while amusing, doesn't really do much to allay my fears.

The scary fact is, there is no-freaking-where to go when a storm comes.

  And what if the nightmare happens -- and we ARE struck twice? Well -- the thought of it is just too horrifying to contemplate.

  I imagine the emotions I'm feeling now might be akin to parents who lose a child, and then have another one. How do you even let that child go out and cross the street, or drive, or walk to school by himself? Or a spouse whose loved one had an affair...how do you ever trust again?

 That sky...that beautiful sky, that has been the source of such inspiration to Chris and I since our childhood...well...

...she BURNED us.

   So how can we trust her again?

  Well, the truth is, we can't. She may strike again. There are no guarantees.

  So the only thing to do is just step out in faith and sail. Onward, ever onward.

  So that's what we'll do. We're in the beautiful Las Perlas Islands, and we'll spend a week or so exploring and just letting that damn mast stick 55 feet up in the air when the inevitable lightning strikes come...because there is literally nothing we can do...

...might as well just enjoy ourselves. And in the end, we'll just fall back on that little spiritual chestnut that so many of us rely on: