I have an inherent predisposition towards injuring myself. Nothing major, mind you – in 63 years of life there have been two broken wrists and a couple of pulled muscles – a low score that I hope remains low. In what has been a very active life of skiing, rock climbing, white water kayaking, sailing and other inherently dangerous activities there have been no concussions, compound fractures, dislocations, arterial bleeding or other serious injuries. So, I am not careless, per se.

My Mother pegged it when I was still just a kid: “Richard, if you would JUST SLOW DOWN!” Considering how homicidal I would become whenever she said it, it is somewhat amazing that when she passed last year it was at the ripe old age of 91 and of natural causes. Although, what could be more natural than occasionally wanting to strangle the parents we love. I am sure that my son often has similar thoughts about me.

I digress. This is supposed to be about sailing – and it is.

Around 27 years ago a friend put together a sailing charter in the Virgin Islands and invited us along. There were 7 shipmates on a 51’ Benetau. Now, I had sailed since I was a kid on small boats on Lake Pearl in Massachusetts where my Grandmother had a cottage and near my home in Connecticut on Long Island Sound but had never sailed on anything larger than a 16’ Hobie. Sailing and cruising aboard the Benetau was a revelation. From the time I stepped aboard, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. That trip was genesis of my cruising dreams and the starting point of the not always linear path towards realizing that dream which included sailing and navigation courses, a series of charters and a great deal of reading of authors such as the Pardey’s, Robin Lee Graham and many others.

However, one event on that first charter was a predictor of a recurring and all too ubiquitous aspect of my future cruising life.

We had anchored in Trellis Bay (Yes, you could do that back then!) and my shipmates were in various stages of settling in for the evening. Most had showered and some were getting ready to start dinner. While getting the grill ready to use, Kirk inadvertently dropped the grill top over the stern into the water. Since I was still un-bathed I happily volunteered to retrieve it. On that trip, my first to tropical waters, I simply couldn’t get enough of swimming and snorkeling in the crystal clear and amazingly warm waters.

I grabbed my mask, popped in, dove down and, since the boat had swung a bit, did not immediately spot the grill top. I swam under water a ways in one direction, turned and took a slightly different path back. Still not spotting it, I popped up for air – directly into the bottom edge of the rudder! My Mother’s voice rang in my head - directly under my otherwise ringing and now badly gashed forehead.

I was irritated.

It took three more thrashing dives before the errant grill top was located and retrieved. Of course, all my friends knew was that I kept popping to the surface, my forehead increasingly bloody, and diving again immediately after getting a breath of air. They assumed that I was fighting off a shark attack.

With the grill top again aboard and grill preheating all was soon well - but never quite forgotten. The resulting scar on my forehead, still visible evidence of that event, has, unfortunately, become more prominent over time as my hairline has retrieved.

I was much older by the time that I retired, bought Kelly Rae and moved aboard – but apparently no wiser.

Two months after I moved aboard in Rockport, Maine, I had managed to find my way to Provincetown on Cape Cod. At a cocktail gathering one night (and already a couple drinks into enjoying it) I discovered that the cruiser that I was conversing with was a retired doctor.

Emboldened by alcohol, I blurted out “Doctor, I need your help – professionally!”
“What seems to be the problem,” he asked.
“I am very concerned about brain damage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, either I am going to get brain damage from hitting my head on the same things over and over and over again – or – I already have brain damage and that’s WHY I keep hitting my head on the same things over and over and over again.”

He laughed (And here I was being serious!) and shared with me that every time he boarded his boat he hit his head on the same inconveniently located stainless steel railing. He said, “I finally just taped some foam on that railing. I still hit my head every time but at least it doesn’t hurt now”.

So, it’s not just me. However, it would seem that by now I should be getting less accident-prone.

In addition to the ubiquitous old scars and recent scabs on all my appendages, there is other ample evidence to the contrary:

First, a month or so ago a long present “blister” (for lack of a better term) on one of my toes had, once again, grown overly and uncomfortably large. As on many previous occasions, I lanced it and pressed the fluid out. This time, however, it somehow got infected – badly infected. The toe swelled to double its normal size, became incredibly sensitive and, when hit even lightly against anything, horribly painful. This went on for over two weeks – two weeks of moving barefoot around a trip-hazard infested boat deck – as I tried desperately not to hit it on anything more solid than a pillow. Finally, the swelling started to go down, the toe was becoming less sensitive and minor impacts were not as brain-freeze level painful.

Around that time, while jugging water to the boat at Governor’s Harbor on Eleuthera, as I stepped up onto KR from the dink (a move performed successfully often each and every day of my cruising life), my wet foot slipped on the genoa track and bashed into the port side genoa block mounted on the track – inflicting a large, soon bloody gash ON THE SAME TOE! A day or two earlier that would have had me virtually screaming in pain – so this was better than it could have been. But still, REALLY? THE SAME DAMN TOE?

And, more recently, I was short tacking to windward into Emerald Bay at Warderick Wells. It had been a great sail down that day and I didn’t want to ruin that with a 3-mile engine run. “We don’t need no stinking diesel!” is often (but, I admit, not always) my motto.

Short tacking KR is not overly difficult despite the fact that she is certainly no tacking demon. Pacific Seacrafts were never designed for club racing around the buoys. For a single hander there is, however, a lot going on essentially all at one time. Once the jib sheets are cleared and ready and the main traveler dropped to leeward (so it will power up sooner on the opposite tack) I hit the buttons on Auto Autohelm which tells him to turn 90 degrees to windward and I work on helping the 110 genoa find it’s way through the slot between the forestay and the inner forestay. Once through, sheeted in by hand and winched in tight, I spin around to the aft portion of the cockpit behind the helm so I can fine tune KR’s course to bring her hard on the wind. This all happens very quickly.

On this particular day, on one of the 6 tacks performed, as I was settling my lady in on her new course, I noticed that my left foot was feeling a bit sticky. Looking down I saw, unsurprisingly, that there were bloody footprints on the cockpit sole, bloody toes on my foot and a trail of blood leading up to and ending at the new gash in my left knee.

I didn’t even feel it happen – and can’t be absolutely certain what, exactly, it was that “jumped out and bit me” - although the likely culprits are by this point pretty well known. We have conflicted before.

My reaction to any of these all too common events is always essentially the same. First, I swear. The toe gashing wrested a particularly virulent stream of epithets from me. Second, I try to minimize the soon to be necessary blood clean up project by tying a bandana around the wound – not a particularly sterile bandana, I have to admit, just whichever one happens to be handy at the moment. My nurse sister would be aghast at this. And, I finish whatever I was doing at the time of the injury.

But there are a couple of other necessary steps in the process – in addition to the eventual cleaning and dressing of the wound, of course.

I have to fight down my Mother’s voice in my head, “Richard, if you would JUST SLOW DOWN!” Homicidal thoughts no longer seem appropriate (Gallows humor – sorry about that.) but her voice will always be there. If I ever start to forget it, my loving family will always remind me. It is a long-standing family joke.

The final step in the process needs some prior explanation.

When I was young, I was an avid motorcycle rider. While I always rode Japanese bikes so didn’t suffer this particular problem, my friends with the British motorcycles of the day always returned to their bike to find a puddle of oil underneath them. I hear Harley’s were no better but Honda riders didn’t interact with the Harley riders of the day so this is anecdotal. Leaking oil is something that British bike owners just had to live with and, in fact, they would be most concerned if there was not a freshly dripped puddle. That would mean that the crankcase was, in fact, empty.

In a similar vein (pun intended), the final step in getting over whatever bloodletting my most recent clumsiness has created is the somewhat zen-like rationalization that this most recent injury is clear proof that, like those British bikes, I have not, at least as yet, run out.

With this comforting thought, my brain is free to move on – until the next injury, that is.

Best to all.

PS. The Pic. Just another beautiful sunset – proving that it is not only my friend, Cheryl, who can take good sunset pics.