It was now the third week of January and with the Ventura fully gutted it was time to start removing the old balsa. In a very short time I realized that even though the balsa was saturated it seemed almost impossible to remove being that it was coated and fused to the bottom of the boat with fiberglass and resin. I contacted Mark Casper, a friend from upstate New York who is the creator of the International HydroStream Registry website and he pointed me to a friend of his from Maryland who had taken on this same project with his HydroStream Viper. In the length of one e-mail he explained in detail how to tackle this back breaking job and also included the dangers and how to prevent accidents. It was great advice as I would follow his instructions almost word for word. I had planned out what it was going to take financially to undergo this entire project and now it was time to put my ideas to work. I woke up on the third Saturday of that January with a couple errands to run before I got to work on the boat. I was walking down my driveway when I felt a massive pain coming from my chest. With the thought of it being heartburn I continued on with what I had to do. After I finished my errands I decided to join my brother on a trip to the Harley Davidson dealer, and while we were there I got to the point where the pain got so bad I could barely walk and it was becoming very hard to breath. After we got back I was taken to the hospital to find out my lung had collapsed. For the next two months I would see myself reading boat magazines and exploring the Internet.