SUTTON — Nancy Dryden has been back in her home for more than two weeks now, but she said her mind keeps returning to the night machete-wielding thieves climbed aboard her boat in Guatemala.

“It continually replays in my head,” Dryden, 67, said Tuesday.

Dryden’s husband, Daniel Dryden, 66, was killed in the attack, which happened Aug. 9 as the couple was preparing dinner aboard their 39-foot sailboat, “Sunday’s Child,” which was anchored in Monkey Bay on Lake Isabal, Guatemala.

Courtesy photo Nancy and Daniel Dryden on their boat in Guatemala. An attack by robbers on the boat in August took Daniel’s life and left Nancy injured.

In an account Nancy posted on her family’s blog, the same account she gave to Guatemalan authorities, Nancy says most of what the attackers asked the couple was aimed at discovering where their money was kept. But there was very little money aboard the boat, Nancy said, since they had been relying on ATMs, which were readily available in the area.

Nancy was hospitalized for weeks in Guatemala with a collapsed lung, which had been punctured when one of the attackers jabbed her with his machete.

Now, she’s back at the home she shared with Daniel. She said she is well on her way to recovery.     

“I’ve healed fairly rapidly,” Nancy said, saying she’s now engaged mostly in massage and acupuncture treatments to focus on residual scar tissue and keep her focused on healing.

As far as psychological recovery goes, she said she’s been working closely with Victims for Justice in Anchorage who may be able to provide therapy and grief counseling for her and her family.

The Drydens have two grown children, who Nancy described as “beautiful and supportive.”

In addition to their help, she said she’s been able to rely on a tight-knit group of friends and neighbors in the Sutton area.

“I’ve had wonderful people bringing over dinners for me and my family,” she said.

But, she said, it’s been difficult to come to terms with life without Dan.

“We were partners, very solidly partners for 37 years,” Dryden said. “I also recognize that I am a relatively strong and capable person.”

Moving on, she said, is something that Dan would have encouraged. As partners, she said, she and Dan recognized in one another a degree of competence, strength and self-sufficiency.

The Drydens have known each other since they were extremely young, both having grown up in rural upstate New York near Albany.

“I met Dan when he was 5 and I was 7,” Nancy said.

Dan’s mother, she said, had attended the same college in which Nancy eventually enrolled. She always had an interest in her, Nancy said, though not necessarily as a match for her son.

Then, after college, Nancy was living in London when Dan arrived in England to buy a sailboat. His mother suggested they meet up and they did.

“Our initial teaming together was on that boat,” she said of the vessel Dan purchased.

That was in the 1970s. On the boat, they started a family and sailed the Atlantic together, spending a good deal of time in the Caribbean. All-told they spent 10 years on the water.

With two young kids, Jessica and Daniel, and with Daniel about to enter school it seemed more and more like a move back onto dry land was warranted. Dan went to work on construction of the Alaska Pipeline and Nancy at a hospital in Alaska.

At some point they bought land in Sutton. And that’s where they decided to settle.

Eventually they sailed the boat up the Hudson River and sold it.

“We created a home in Alaska and our children were schooled here,” she said.

They lived on a strict budget to increase their ability to travel and, in the years since, have been all over — Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Ireland and Scotland all came up in a short conversation.

The trips were something they both enjoyed but Dan had an extra reason to leave the state — he had seasonal affective disorder, which made staying in Alaska for winters tough.

During the summer, Dan worked construction as well as renting and operating construction equipment. They husbanded their money, “so that we could be able to leave and find sunlight in the winter time,” she said.

Nancy said the second boat, the one that’s still in Guatemala,  was purchased almost, though not quite, on a whim.  

“We were not looking for a boat when this one became available,” Nancy said.

They bought the boat in February 2007 and drove to Guatemala for what she envisioned would be a year or two spent sailing, after which they would return to Sutton.

That trip was cut short by the August attack.

“Flying over the area that we had traveled on the ground was very sad for me,” she said.