Gladan

Allo Paola bobo in Colombia: more shaken than seriously hurt…

One particular night at Santa Marta marina, Giancarlo was adjusting the mooring lines as the wind had picked up strong… but he hadn’t taken the time to put his shoes on.

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Published on 01/12/2022

By Gilles Ruffet

Issue: 187

Published: Jan. / Feb. 2023

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Who: Paola & Giancarlo
Where: Colombia
Multihull: Lagoon 440
Blog: www.sailingladan.com

To begin, I (Paola) have to say that while at the marina, we often experienced winds of 40 knots or more, coming down off the high mountains of Sierra Nevada that surround the marina. And the boat was often covered in red sand that was difficult to get rid of. Anyway, this particular night I’m telling you about, Giancarlo was fixing the lines, and in doing so, feeling very feline-like, he jumped down the port side of the boat and landed with all his weight on something rather hard. What had he landed on? It was one of the pontoon’s S-shaped cleats and he had landed right on top of it with his right foot. Pain and blood followed. Someone else instead was already sleeping very deeply and soundly, dreaming of walking around Cartagena eating ice cream! Suddenly, someone was calling her name, one, two, three times…Paola, Paola Paola! The sound becoming louder and louder. Rather annoyed, this someone finally woke up and dragged herself up on deck still half asleep. What was in front of my eyes was a war-like type of scenario. Red everywhere, Giancarlo’s foot up on the table. All I could think of doing was…fainting. For the first 5 minutes I could not stand up! I had very limited autonomy as my head kept spinning around, and I had to keep my center of gravity very low when walking around trying to help Giancarlo, gathering bandages and antiseptic spray. What a disaster! One man down, and one woman lying down! Despite my insisting, Giancarlo didn’t want to go to the hospital. He was adamant he was not badly hurt, and we could just go to sleep and deal with it the day after. Thirty minutes later, he was in bed snoring while I was regularly checking his breathing to make sure he was still alive and wouldn’t bleed to death during the night. The morning after, I accompanied ‘DIY Gucci shoemaker’ to the hospital. Thanks to all the marina staff, who were very helpful and supportive, we got in touch with a private clinic that was happy to receive us and look into the matter more closely. Several forms later, Giancarlo was given a real-life tutorial on how to suture his foot. He kept saying we needed to learn how to do it, in case of accidents at sea, so I guess this was his chance to learn firsthand…or first foot!