Recipe For Disaster

Take one aged wood railing (circa 1984 preferred)

Press body against the above ingredient. Recipe comes out best if you also lean forward while lifting.

Add salt water to taste.

Forcefully remove eye glasses.

Recipe is a flop if you are still capable of swimming to the surface.

Hitting head on kayak and/or dinghy is optional.

Luckily my recipe result was a flop, although still a flop in the water. Here’s my tale of woe:

I was helping Dave lift the kayak out of the water, when the gate latch on the railing bent and detached itself, opening up the gate. Hanging on for dear life (literally, as our hard plastic dinghy was right below me), I yelled for Dave, hoping he could just grab my hand and give me that little bit of pull, back toward the boat. Unfortunately he had his hands full with ¾ of the two person kayak, and couldn’t make it in time. In almost slow motion, he watched as I went head first into the harbor. Amazingly, New Horizon just happened to swing in the wind and the dinghy went in the opposite direction, so I didn’t land in it! I remember looking up underwater and thinking how lucky I was that I didn’t knock myself out. Then I immediately surfaced under the kayak (which Dave had dropped to try and get to me), pushed it out of the way, and grabbed the broken off railing in the water, which I desperately held on to until the last minute when it broke completely off. Once back in the boat, I looked at my aching shins to find huge egg size blood blisters and bruises forming. Dave ran for the ice, and as I was sitting on the cockpit floor looking around, everything looked blurry. Then, and only then, did I realize that my glasses were gone! That’s when the tears and swearing started. Into the water Dave dove, and about 10 minutes later surfaced with my new expensive prescription glasses, and even the magnetic polarized clip-ons. Later in the day my neck and shoulder started getting sore, so I must have a touch of whiplash. Today I am much improved, but still finding more bruises.

Needless to say, the coconut telegraph works fast here in the harbor. Today we have had many concerned visitors and calls on the VHF, which I really appreciated. At least now we can already joke about it. Our neighbor, John on Palm Pilot, gave me a score of 9.8 for my dive. The ironic thing is that right before this all happened, he kiddingly yelled to us that we have too many boats.

I think there must have been divine intervention, because I could have really been hurt if I had landed in the dinghy or kayak. Being airlifted out of the Bahamas is definitely not on my ‘Bucket List’ of things to do.

Lucky for you too, since I will live to continue this blog!