I know what you are thinking! "Ha! The Ugly Yachtsman knows not the proper nautical spelling!" Well, avast snickering. Where "Aye Aye" has always signified compliance with a verbal order and the simple "Aye" alone is usually basic acknowledgment of understanding, the title here has to do with another aspect boating.... INJURIES!!! I have amassed quite a collection of injuries and mishaps over the past few years. I am not talking about the kind of injuries one sustains on a commercial vessel or a warship. You'll probably all be surprised to know that I have taken more than one lead filled "monkey fist" head shot while handling lines on submarines.
The sail boater can collect many different types of sprains, strains, punctures, bruises, contusions, burns, and other things. I will try to chronicle some of the most noteworthy.
My first recollection of sailboat injuries came one winter when a close friend showed me where the end of his finger had been before he had been making something for his boat on his table saw. Teak. Get's in your blood I guess. Later that year, during the summer months, I noticed a hole in his mouth where a tooth had once echoed back a smile. Gone. "Kissed the end of the boom". This meant nothing to me other than a tough way to loose a tooth. If it had just been a case of "clumsy" then he would have probably done himself in at work but this seemed to revolve around the "boat". Hmmmmmm.
From our first boat. The "BlowFlex" exercise machine has NOTHING on the widget that suspends an outboard motor from the stern of a sailboat. I can almost guarantee you'll strain muscles that don't even have names trying to raise and lower the outboard with this contraption. Every moving part is designed to reach out a grab a slice of flesh before the mechanism jams. I do not have to tell you the damage one can do with the hammer that you'll need to free this mechanical monster up. Every marine magic potion or bottle of nautical snake oil you can buy at BOATS-R-US requires gloves at a minimum. Got gloves? Take teak cleaner for instance. How many small cuts can you find on your hands before you go into a coma? Where did the small cuts come from? Trying to open those hard clear plastic "bubble packs" that darn near everything else comes in maybe?
How about that "boat knife"? Buck, Camillus, Boatswain's, TL29, K-BAR, samurai, doesn't matter what type you choose, every boat has at least one. They seem to fall into one of two categories. The dull rusty knife or the surgically sharp cutlery. You can tell what type of knife by the type of wound. If you have the dull rusty knife, you are most likely to stab it into your "hold it still" hand because you got a little rambunctious after 20 minutes of sawing away at that piece of line. Nasty puncture and infection are sure to follow.
The surgically sharp knife cuts with the first swipe. Very efficient. You didn't even notice how close you came to your thumb nor did you feel anything when you laid it open. If you look around the cockpit and it looks like someone butchered a mastodon you can usually track this back to your hand. Sail tape comes in handy here.
HINT: Don't even THINK about using the Teak Cleaner after you've taped up this wound.
Lesser wounds are inevitable from the "all purpose" rusty screwdriver you found in the bilge when you bought the boat. Make sure and wear eye protection when using the "all purpose" screwdriver as a chisel and your crescent wrench as a hammer. (you lost your hammer over the side trying to lower the outboard remember?) Squinting doesn't count either.
A while back I had a particularly bad run of luck. While trying to get an unruly main down onto the boom I flipped a handful of the sail back toward myself and caught a dacron-camouflaged batten in my left eye. This hurt like hell and I couldn't see out of it. After a gallon or two of tears and some time I could see out of it again. Guess I'd have a "shiner" for a while. I could always say my wife did it and save face.
A couple of nights later, after work, my wife, HawkEye, Old Friend, and I, went for a leisurely evening sail around Fisher's Island Sound. It was sunset and the winds were dying down so I lit off the "iron wind" and started maneuvering to get back to the Mystic River. Something just didn't sound right. "A three hour tour, a THREE HOUR TOUR...."
A quick look over the side revealed that I had no water coming out of the exhaust. We had eaten the sea water pump. Since we have a heat exchanger I still had anti-freeze moving through the diesel but no way to get the heat out of the antifreeze. I slowed the engine ot a mere idle and put the sails back up. We started inching back toward Mystic. Now it was getting dark. Like most boats with hot water systems, ours is heated by coolant from the diesel. Ha! I am so tricky! I periodically ran the hot water to lower the temperature in the hot water tank. The diesel heat from the antifreeze transfers to the hot water and right over the side!! This appeared to work!!!! We were inching back to the mouth of the river. We flat had some hot water too! I think I arrogantly used this abundance of hot water to wash my hands during this ordeal. It was time to run the water again.... wait...... splash... splash.... NOTHING. The fresh water tank was dry. Within five minutes I heard that sound. This sound ranks right up there with the submarine Collision Alarm, police siren when you don't have your new insurance card with you, or, one of the MOST terrifying.... three small grand kids playing and NO sound other than one small "giggle". Yes, the gut-wretching, blood-curdling wail of the YANMAR "aw shit" alarm pierced the evening air. "ALL STOP!" "KILL THE DIESEL!" We were almost to the mouth of the Mystic River. No wind, iron, or otherwise. This was a really bad place to drift around in the dark with no propulsion. HawkEye tossed the anchor over and we stop drifting and came to swing on the edge of the channel.
(I know, I know, you are wondering what all this has to do with the topic. At least allow me to minimize the impending stupidity)
Now what? Call SEA TOW? Naw! We had gotten this far on our own and we would make it the rest of the way ourselves. Once again the submarine experience, or damage, depending on how you look at it, came into play. The boat came with a good supply of spare parts that I had been adding to ever since we bought the boat. At least two of everything even if I didn't know exactly what it was for. Also, never throw away something that is "kind of" broken. Well, after searching through the parts lockers I found my supply of pump impellers. These little black rubber dammits just might save the day. Old Friend disassembled the Nav Station to get at the diesel so we could see what it was going to take to get at that pump. All that running water had had it's effect so I excused myself and hit the head. Since I was not sure how long we were going to be stranded there I was really taking it easy on the electrical loads. If I were to open the port light - port hole - window - (whatever you want to call it) in the head I would probably have enough ambient light so that I would not have to eat up precious amps with the light in the head. I undid the "dogs" on the port light to open it. These port holes are miracles of modern engineering. The Plexiglas port window is spring loaded to open when released. Now, it's dark and when I flipped the last of the little knobs down and out of the plastic forks that hold the window closed, hinged at the top, the window flies up and open like a jack-in-the-box-lid. Since the headroom in the head is not as much as the rest of the boat I was kind of in an awkward position facing this port light when one of the little plastic fork dammits neatly nails my right eye and eyelid as it rocketed by. My bladder then dropped about ten levels of priority as explicatives filled the air. I grabbed my eye and banged around in pain. Since I couldn't see out of my right eye, my left eye teared up out of sympathy, remembering it's recent mistreatment. Opps, a little tinge of blood on the tissue I had grabbed. Yup, I had cut my eyelid. Good-oh. My wife knew not to laugh openly while the explicatives were still flowing when I have done something dumb and injured myself. After I told her what I had done, and she's sure that I was not going to die, I sensed she was holding back laughter. Luckily, as I started to regain my vision, Old Friend had removed the pump and readied it for the new impeller. I could almost watch him finish the job! We were ready to go. The diesel started and we had cooling water! HawkEye acted as lookout as we motored back up the darkened river to our marina.
Lessons learned?
Get "Lazy Jacks" for the main, and wear safety glasses when going to the head, in the dark, on a 1980 Hunter 33 and ALWAYS top off the fresh water tank before getting underway.
Last but not least, wear safety glasses when using a hand grinder to cut off the corroded hose clamps that hold on the exhaust hoses you had to replace after you cooked them running the diesel with no sea water to cool the exhaust.
Why is there diarrhea medicine in our "Marine First Aid Kit" ?