Just relaxing here and doing some Most of my symptoms are gone now with occasional cramps, muscle pains, confusion and occasional dizziness. All are minor so that pleases me. I will leave Montana on wednesday, early and hope to be home my thrusday evening. Lots of driving again.
When I get back I will write more as to what happened and how it affected the expedition. I have been writing as much as I can about it. Should be of some interest.

Just a quick note as an update. I am still not feeling completely well as one could figure. My appetite is vastly diminished which is really weird. Silver lining, no Jenny Craig for this guy. And I save on food! I guess there are plus’s even to the oddest of symptoms. I am also noticing much more muscle soreness and cramps. This I do not appreciate especially when a calf goes off at 3 in the morning. I have been adding, pottasium, zinc, vit E and a multivitamin to my limited diet. Headache is off and on. Otherwise I feel wonderful and fortunate to have been hit by lightening at least once in my life, lucky me.
Went fishing today which was cool. What was not cool was walking up the hill to get out of the river bottom. Let me know that my legs and arms were heavy with fatigue and I did not do anything. More effects I guess. I will be fine in a couple of weeks more and then back to training for my next adventure, Waikiki Beach. Have to start saving for this one! Warm water, warm breezes and warm sand to wrap myself in would be such a luxury now.
Thats all for now. Enjoy your weekend.

Hello all, it is the 1st of august and a good one.

After my little fight with mother nature and lightening I am beginning to realize the gravity of the situation. I went to the VA hospital in Helena because I am not feeling so well, a very odd feeling in my head, confusion and a lack of some motor skills and a complete failure of my multi-tasking skills. that i was good at. Now if I am not focused on a task it is quickly forgotten. Talk about some crap feelings there.

The Va doctor did a EKG, I passed, then some blood work that was fine, a high normal reading on some muscle proteins but otherwise normal. Neurologically my brain is a bit scrambeled though. I have this weird pressure or headache or whatever that bothers my head. It is the wierdest feeling that I think that I have felt in my head. Kind of like a concussion with no pain, just a undefined feeling of something different. Otherwise I feel well. Well not really well.

Last night I finally slept decently. In the 5 days after I slept about 10 hours, I was really amped up and just very hyper. I lost my appetite and ate a few granola bars a day. Just was not hungry. I was also fairly confused, getting through Edmonton was a exercise in aggravation as I could not follow directions well. Wanderlust in a large city.Tom Tom where were you.

It would appear that I was unconscious for about 4 hours in the boat. Cool!!!! Talk about mother nature kicking the crap out of me. My VA doc seemed to realize that I really did not understand the full story on this, which I did not. This hazard I have never analyzed or even thought about to much. Like not at all. She told me that most of the people that become unconscious for that long from electrical shock do not survive. I guess that is when it began to sink in. I was lucky. I was happy to be a little dingy from my shocking and electrifying experience.

I have had some time to look at my GPS units, there is a electrical burn mark on the screen near the antenna. I have not found the second one. My usual anal attention to detail and places for a item seems to have been altered by the event. Both 1200 GPH bilge pumps seem to be shot but good news for my sonar, that appears to be working electronically but it needs some help as it was ripped off the hull and needs new mounting pads as these seem to have been smashed seriously. The hull has some more dents and dings, a few large dents as I was shipwrecked on rocky shores. I did not see Ginger or Maryann and this does bother me as that would have made this event more bearable.

I am still putting this together in my mind as I remember more about what happened. I pride myself in being in control on expeditions and always being able to save myself from injury or death. What is really weird is that I was totally defensive and did not have the ability to help yself for 4 hours. That is a bit scary to say the least.

Hello all,

I am in Helena Montana and will be here for a week to recuperate and relax.

Tuesday evening I was accosted by a very serious thundestorm, actually over 5 hours of constant thunderstorms. These well accompanied by heavy rain, high winds and literally hundreds of ground strikes. Once i ran the boat onto rocks to escape the winds I tried to find some small area for a tent. No such luck on this patch of swampy dirt. So I put up my emergency shelter on the boat. This kept most of the water out of the main hull but allowed lots of water to hit the rear deck. I rn aground about 9or so. I did some filming of the storm from inside the shelter until about 11 pm. Next thing I remember is getting up at 3:09 am. I just assumed that I went to sleep. I had a headache and just felt ‘weird’ but got into gear on trying to assess weather and my escape. First thing was to find the integrety of the boat. I lost 2 of my 3 bilge pumps. Of course the large ones went down. I used my 500 GPM unit to pump the bilge. It ran for a full 15 mintues to clear out all of the water. I found out later that all my rear compartments had flooded. Lots of water. My 2 1200 gph pumps were dead. My sonar transponder was useless as it was ripped from the hull. I also found my 2 GPS units were fried. One gave me a position of about 20 miles variation and the second was on a different continent. So I was going back to dead reconing for my navagation with no ability to see water depth. This I did not like as really would have disliked losing a prop. It was already damaged by going into the rocks. Looks like a serated cats ear after a vicious fight. I am sure its flows characteristics are a bit modified. I did need to get to a safer area as more storms were predicted. My Marine VHF radio survived well as it was isolated from the boat, so I had weather. When these storms hit there was a 20% chance, 40 today. I pushed and pulled the boar off of rocks and go underway and found a great little penisula around Point Roche. Once there I put up a tent, tied of everything well and went to sleep. My head hurt a bit. Spent two days there trying to figure out what happened.

I will add more later as I want to get a campspot and get some more sleep. Drove 15plus hours yesterday to get here.

As fo me I am tired, have no appetite, my head feels really strange, like it is drifting, still alittle disorientation, lack of balance and my math skills even suck more now than usual. I might go to the VA hospital here if I do not start to feel better. Canada Coast Gaurd checked me out when I docked at thier docks when I got back to Hay River. Had a nice talk with Jack Kruger, head of CG rescue in the region. He told me this was a very unusual storm and very intense, no shit. Ugliest storm I have ever been in. It seems I was out for up to 4 hours. Weird for sure. In a day or so I will add further info as I pice this thing back together. Trying to remember allthat happened.

Hey friends, Mingo had some big troubles on the river. He was in a 5 hour elecrical storm the other night, lightning must have hit the boat because all of his navagtion equiptment was blown out, and I am not sure what else got wrecked, but it was bad. He got hit as well, because he is missing a block of time. He is on he way to Montana will be there in a couple of days. Mingo will write the whole story becuse I did not get much we got cut off our phone conversation last night. All I can say is it was not good, and he si very lucky he got his boat off the water, but he is safe now. Thanks all, DEE

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