Puerto Rico, March 27 1938
Dear Marie and Valdemar,
Cheers to you old guys. Here we are the world firm “Restmore”. Isn’t that smart? We have found a good friend here in San Juan, a photographer, who has that burning wish to get a greeting from us now and again, and so he gave us 999 sheets of paper like this together with envelopes and around 300 postcards with pictures of “Restmore” in addition to sweets and goodies and nice things. Thank you for the letter and it was a relief to hear that you got the package even if Valdemar has diminished in Peter’s mind on account of that smuggling case. That I would not have believed about Valdemar. I will now take Valdemar’s side to let it be known that a Rum tarty is much better for a cold. And after that I will explain the other things the package contained. The Coconut is made from a Danish lady on St. Croix. It’s kind of a covering for a tea kettle. The star is made from seeds and the vertebrae from all sailor’s enemy from the back of a shark. The happenings here on Puerto Rico are quite mixed. We were hauled out so we could get the bottom painted and were motoring after we had finished up over the yacht club. Out came smoke from the motor and when Peter also saw some flames and it is of course a dangerous thing with fire beside the gasoline tank. The children and I got busy jumping into the dinghy while Peter stuck the money in his pocket and bailed water into the boat. The ambulance saw us and came right away with a crew and fire extinguisher so the fire was out in a matter of minutes. It turned out to be the connection to the battery. This and some wires were spoiled including our fairly new coconut blanket in the cockpit, so we were lucky in our unluck that it didn’t turn out to be worse. The day after Musen was ill, didn’t eat anything in the evening, had diarrhea. I had to change her every half hour and it kept on so we had to get hold of a doctor who confirmed that it was a stomach infection caused by a fly which can happen in that area where the boat builder lives but nobody told us so we stayed there a couple of days after we were finished. The doctor prescribed a medicine that helped but she was quite weak and is still not herself. For a whole week she didn’t get anything other than orange juice. Lars also got a touch of it but not nearly as bad and is feeling quite good and both of them are able to enjoy the birthday chocolates. And here we are able to get whipped cream again, so it will be quite a party tomorrow. Some better news to tell is that we get things on account of the good advertisement. We get a new motor from a firm in USA. It’s on the way and now we wait excitedly on its arrival. It is a nice and fertile island but even though it has belonged to the USA for the last 50 years the people are very Spanish. They speak Spanish, they have Spanish customs and habits. Maybe you remember from our description of Spain that they are in possession of all the bad traits starting with undependable or unstable morals on whatsoever. To make up for it last Sunday a Danish farmer came with his American wife visiting and we were invited to the farm. Mostly he is growing sugar cane but he grows oranges, too, grapefruits and pineapple. He has half a million of pineapples. We got a whole bag full to the boat and also a bag of oranges and some grapefruit. Yesterday, Sunday, we were on a round trip on the island to make a picnic in the mountains.