Next message: Frank Lawlor: "TWL: Re: Sealand T Pump"
There was a recent thread on having a defibrlator on board for a
cardiac emergency. Fortunately I have never encountered this type of
medical emergency while cruising. However, we did encounter an
equally life threatening incident this summer in the popular Block
Island anchorage known as Great Salt Pond. About midnight we heard a
fast moving dinghy hit a nearby anchored boat. It woke us up: a
roar, a crash, silence, cries for help. I got over to the other boat
very quickly and hauled an unconscious guy into my dinghy. The other
crashed dinghy passenger was afloat and conscious with superficial
cuts. The first victim was perhaps more accurately described as
semiconscious and was in bad condition having much difficulty
breathing. To make the story short and to the point, the owner of
the boat that was struck (a small sailboat) was an EMT who had oxygen
and a mask for administering it on board. He was able to check
various vital signs, clear the airway and administer oxygen within
minutes of recovering the victim from the water. It struck me at the
time just how valuable emergency training can be and how important it
was in this case that rather low tech equipment was at hand. It was
certainly unlucky to strike a boat at high speed (stupid as well),
but imagine the luck of hitting a boat manned by an EMT with life
saving equipment on board! It was almost an hour before the Coast
Guard arrived in a high speed 250 HP inflatable and an ambulance
arrived at a nearby marina. A medivac helicopter then took the
victim to a mainland hospital. We later learned that at the hospital
he was also found to have a ruptured spleen. We don't know if he
survived. In any case, he was surely a goner without the prompt and
professional help he received in the nick of time.
We were struck this summer, our first cruise in about 5 years, that
there were so many daily Mayday calls in this busy New England
boating mecca, some of them even more serious than the one we got
involved in. A few days later two or three people were killed about
15 miles from our location in the crash of a speed boat into a jetty
at 3 AM. Two men on an early morning fishing trip went missing a
dozen miles away off Connecticut. We found the frequency of
disasters, emergencies, perceived emergencies, and plain foolish
panic on Ch 16 to be astonishing. Any day in August far exceeded our
experience of such events in any one month even so recently as 5
years ago. What is going on?
Frank Lawlor
HOBO
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