From busted knuckles to fire and rescue. Have you given "skin" for your boat?

OldSkool

OldSkool

Active Member
May 8, 2010
4,360
Boating on Raystown Lake, Pa
Boat Info
restored 1976 SRV200
Engines
188 Mercruiser I/O
My first boat was a 20 ft tri-haul Glasspar . She was big and heavy and needed a push to get off the trailer. As I was pushing her off at Big Cedar Lake in Wisconsin, I jumped from one bunk to the other which was 8 in. under water. I missed the second bunk however my leg didn’t miss the license plate ¼ in. bolt. Caught me at the ankle and took it to the knee. Doc said he had never seen thread marks on a shin bone like I had. The boat house folks called 911 and reported an accident on the water and they sent every piece of equipment known to man for water rescue. Very embarrassing but glad to know fire and rescue had the stuff if there would have been a real emergency.

Still have the scar and many kids now think there are sharks in Big Cedar. Must have been something I said….
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Took a piece 1/8" piece of gel coat sliver under the finger nail, a nut shot from slipping on the trailer climbing over the bow, and a cotter pin into nice vein on the back of my hand.
 
Got a metal sliver in my thumb from the out drive zinc, ended up having to have my finger opened up to drain the infection and then 3 weeks of IV antibiotics. Nice way to spend time.
 
The round white cockpit table has taken more flesh off of me than I care to talk about. The 1st time, I was wiping something that had spilled off of the cockpit floor, when someone did something stupid on the dock. The admiral yelled "Quick honey! You gotta see this...". I stood up in a hurry, not realizing that I was still partially under the table. As I stood up, the bottom edge took a strip of skin 1" wide by 4" long right off the center of my lower back. Everywhere I sat on the boat for the rest of the weekend had a blood spot on the seat back. Looked like Charlie Manson's boat.

That stupid table has gotten me 3 more times, as well as several guests. Now I remember that sanding the sharp edge off the bottom was on my list of things to do over the winter.
 
My swim platform ladder bit my middle finger this past weekend and almost had me in the fetal position. Good thing I already had some anesthestics on board (and I don't just mean on the boat). This was a week after my daughter closed the little flap on my cabin door and pinched that same finger and nail in two metal jaws of death.
 
Wait until Dr Accident posts! Bits of skin? Pshaw! I'll bet he sacrificed entire organs.
 
Yeah - Gary should have some interesting content to add on this one...
 
Dislocated shoulder and torn rotator cuff falling off the flybridge and onto my fishing buddy. At least he broke my fall.
 
OK I will admit to changing out the lower bilge pump switch. All sweaty my not so small body fell deep and with one arm folded up under me and could not get out. Now upside down unable to push myself up and no one around. My head is bleeding from trying to push up with it,arm also in blood.
3/4 of an hr later decided to yell for help. 2 guys later pulling me back up Im out. What a day that was. Blood and guts.:huh:
 
Another trailer slashing here. Back in about 1990, I slipped on my trailer while loading my boat and sliced the bottom of my foot open from the big toe joint all the way across, right where the "ball" of your foot is. I don't recall the number of stitches, but there were several and I had to walk on the heel of that foot for a week as the slice was right where your foot pivots at the toes. It happened on a Sunday and I had to be on an airplane first thing Monday morning to travel to a mfg plant in Calif for business, which req'd me to be on my feet most of the time. I was in pain and drugged up on Tylenol 3 w/codeine that entire trip. That sucked! :smt009
 
Another one, not an injury, unless pride counts.

In 2003, jumping off my boat on it's trailer after loading it up, my swim shorts hooked onto a cleat and ripped them completely up the side to the waistband. Luckily they stayed on, but I was showing some serious thigh. :lol:
 
I have never lost an organ... well... maybe my liver from drinking too much beer on the boat but not from a traumatic injury.

I've done the usual and customary boat injuries like driving a fillet knife through the top of my foot and having it come out the bottom and stick in the floor... and fillet knife through the hand... wrapping a power cord around a rotary polisher because I looked up to see some women on the beach in bikinis... That's all normal stuff. ( http://clubsearay.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11307&highlight=polisher )

The worst I've done is kicking that damn T-handle on the engine hatch while bare foot. The 480DB has a T-handle (no electric lift) that is normally flush with the deck and you rotate it up and twist it to open the engine room hatch. Looks like this:

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In my infinite wisdom, I leave the thing sticking up sometimes... I guess my logic is why burn the 4 calories of energy needed to put the thing flush when you are just going to open it again. One day I jumped into the cockpit from the dock and kicked the thing... My leg powered my foot perfectly with bulls eye accuracy with enough force to kick a 70 yard field goal... the blunt square T-handle end impaled my foot between my toes... I kicked it so hard it pulled the webbing/skin between my toes back and exposed some very ugly sh!t that is under the skin... and it stuck. I had to pull my foot off the handle. It made a suction noise as it came off. You would have thought I was bit by a shark there was so much blood all over the cockpit (up about 3 feet on the door, etc). I called my wife crying and she came and got me... she was shocked when she saw the boat. Anyway, the hospital pulled the webbing back and sewed it all up. Hurt like hell...

The real issue is... I did the EXACT SAME THING one year later but on the opposite foot...

I now wear shoes... at least try to.

A few years ago I slipped on the steps on the front porch and it rotated my foot sideways and the bone severed a couple tendons that retracted up my leg... spent some time in MCV in Richmond getting that repaired... but that's not boating related other than my feet are now in pretty bad shape and I know have a limp... Oh well... need to get a cane.
 
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On late 80's Weekenders and Dancers the edge of the step from the swim platform to the cockpit is shin high and at an acute angle. When jumping onto the platform when it was wet I slid into it with above noted shin. Of course this was done on a Sunday afternoon at a happening restaurant in front of several dozen complete strangers. Held my breath until I got into the cabin and closed the door, then the blood and tears started. Still have a beauty of a scar twenty something years later.
 
Gary, that is awful!

When I was a kid, my dad dropped his car keys in the drink at the marina, and sent me into that nasty water to search around for them... I found a filet knife, sliced my hand open from side to side, but still managed to find the keys.

I also misjudged a step (hadn't even had one beer!) going from my platform to a buddies, fell and took off all the skin on my shin... There was a big ball of skin and hair on his platform. Hurt like hell the next morning (after having had several beers) when I woke up on the boat and my leg was stuck to the sheets... My wife was not happy with me.
 
I think the peeling skin injuries are tough... nothing you can really do but suffer.
 
The weird thing about my shin slice was that it never hurt. A nurse and her husband were docking when it happened and she kept the cut together until EMS showed. She let me look at it once and it looked like someone had filleted my shin to the knee. Nothing but bone with coarse thread bolt marks up to the knee. I felt bad for them, they had to wipe my blood off of their white boat.
 
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I fee like an amateur, the worst thing i've done on the boat was glue my hand to the dinghy gas tank.
 
Well, I got mine this past weekend...:smt021

Was gonna leave the slip...turned off the shore power, thought I turned off the shore water...oops. (Turned it full on instead) Went to pull the quick disconnect for the water and BAM!, House came out of transom and proceeded to pound the crap out of my foot before running out onto the dock. There I was hoping on one foot chasing it soak and wet while the Admiral was laughing so hard she nearly peed herself. Was lucky and only have a couple black n blue marks on my foot to show for it.:smt013
 
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