Nowhere to go but up.

Sometimes when you're at your lowest it's easier to reach your highest. Our friend Ryan on Godspeed was suffering. Everything was going wrong for him. He was trapped in a lonely dirty port a ruthless victim of Murphy's Law and at the mercy of a conniving worthless mechanic. Even the little town conspired against him by refusing to accept his dollars just to buy a little beer. You see when Ryan left us almost three weeks ago he was bound for El Salvador so he unloaded all his pesos prior to his departure. But the world conspiring against him as it was drove him back into a tiny Mexican port devoid of pesos and hope.

Two weeks and about $700 dollars later, very little of that was spent on beer mind you, Ryan was beginning to think things couldn't get worse. We talked with him on the SSB to try to cheer him up a little and reassure him we would be there to help out soon. But it wasn't until a 37 foot boat called Sonrisa (means smile) shared the anchorage with him that his luck changed and an incredible story unfolded.

The owners on Sonrisa from Kansas wanted to go home. Mexico is a long ways from Kansas and I doubt Dorothy ever went that far. So Ryan being of a similar melancholy mindset invited them to dinner on Godspeed. So after shopping for food at the one place he found that would take US dollars, he returned to the anchorage where the guys on Sonrisa waved him over to see if he'd prefer to cook on their boat. Ryan was impressed with the space on their 37 foot Endeavour sloop. The owners again mentioned their desire to just go home and how they've been discussing what to do with the boat. After a pregnant pause Sonrisa's captain smiled at Ryan and said, "With your permission I'd like to give you this boat."

I think we're going to have to change Ryan's name to Sonrisa, because he can't stop smiling.

Isn't that the best story you've heard all year? (See the photo of beautiful Sonrisa below)

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see:

http://www.sailmail.com