Boom!

Honey, I forgot to duck.

Well, today things got worse. The wind was already stiff at ten when we started racing. One crew member had gone home, so there was just one remaining crew member and myself with Ken as coach. We got a good start on the race, and we managed to get the mainsail to stay up by tying a slipknot to keep it from slipping out of the cleat – so that, in theory, if we needed to drop the main quickly, we could release that knot. In theory.

We were right up with the rest of the fleet nearing the windward mark, passing a couple of the other contenders. We were making a tack toward the mark, when we got struck by swirling winds off Horse Island that knocked the boat down. We had a major broach when the mainsheet cleat jammed and I couldn’t unsheet it. With my crew and Ken calling out “Unsheet the main!” I kicked repeatedly at that cam cleat until it finally released and the boat came upright.

Then Ken took the helm, and said, “Let’s stop a moment for a breather and collect our wits.” That was welcome. We were just beginning to catch our breath, with the wind off the port beam and the boom extended out to starboard. Next thing I knew, I was lying on my back in the cockpit with a nasty ache on the side of my head, missing my hat and glasses, and my crew member was screaming at me, “Carol Anne! Get up! Get up!” Ken’s face and the front of his life jacket were covered in blood.

Ken wasn’t in great shape, and my crew member was panicking. We got the motor started and the jib lowered, although we still couldn’t get the mainsail down … remember that slip knot? We powered on a broad reach to a wider part of the lake where I could turn the bow upwind and give my crew and Ken time to take that mainsail down. I found my glasses in the cockpit, but my lucky Aussie hat was nowhere to be found. Alas, I fear it will never be found.

Once we got the sail down, I took over the helm. Ken wasn’t in such good shape, and my crew was stressed out, so I didn’t let on that I had been clobbered too – all of the blood was on the side away from my crew and Ken. I took the boat back to the marina, where Larry had just arrived after giving up on the racing himself. Larry and another person from the marina helped bring the boat in, and the other person found a paramedic who was on his boat in the marina, and he looked at both Ken and me and said we should go to the emergency room.

At the emergency room, I got cleaned up and had my lacerated scalp stapled back together. Ken got stitches in his forehead and got a CAT scan to make sure he was all right, and then he was also released.

We rejoined each other at the Strasia compound, where Pat explained why Syzygy wasn’t on committee boat duty – it had a broken fuel line and ran aground near the Dam Site, so Windependent was pressed into duty as committee boat (about what it’s good for, as far as Larry is concerned). Gerald, meanwhile, ended up not sailing, but geocaching with the owners of Cultural Infidel.

Not exactly the best day on the water, and now I have a splitting headache – literally. I think the staples hurt worse than the original injury. And my lucky Aussie hat is lost and gone forever.