We made an unexpected stop at Friday Harbor on Friday. Petar woke with a feeling that his heart was beating irregularly and he was experiencing chills with a tingling sensation in his finger tips.
Not wanting to take a chance with heart problems, I called the US Coast Guard for advice, not hoping for much more than the phone number of a doctor with whom we could consult. They asked a lot of questions and then said they'd meet us with a doctor in 25 minutes. What service! The Coast Guard crew arrived as advertised and Petar was given a quick look-over. Whatever they saw convinced them that it would be prudent to have a more thorough check by emergency medical professionals. The immediate plan was to escort us to Friday Harbor, but that was taking too long, so they revised their thinking and put Petar on the Coast Guard boat. Then they charged off ahead and we made our way to Friday Harbor at Quijote speed.
After being admitted to the hospital, they gave him a medication to stabilize his heart beat and monitored his stats for a few hours while he rested.
We docked to boat and walked up the hill to the hospital. If you’re going to have medical issues in the San Juan Islands, it’s a good idea to have them near Friday Harbor, since they have the only full service hospital on the islands. We found him resting comfortably, but the docs hadn’t released him, and there wasn’t much we could do, so we gave them our contact info and headed back to tend to the boat. When they finally did give Petar a clean bill of health, we met him in town for dinner. It was a whole lot of excitement without a very satisfying outcome. They couldn’t tell him much except that it’s fairly common. I didn’t talk to them, but they apparently didn’t have a very good explanation for him.
After dinner we returned to the boat and made good use of what remained of our daylight: we motored across the channel to Parks Bay, the last anchorage of the trip.