a sore toe...

Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Tue 14 Jul 2009 10:23
Tuesday 14th July 2009
 
We rattled around in the boat all day like lost souls.  It's wonderful to see the people you miss badly, but so painful when they go home again.  We would have set off for some sailing but the outboard now needed fixing and we need it when we anchor.  So we would be here a day or two while jobs needed doing, and of course the weather would have a chance to settle down as it was still blowing hard.
 
We had drinks yesterday evening with Tiff and Tim from Ride of a lifetime, who we know from wintering in Marmaris.  They are new to this area so we passed on the info we had gleaned from Stewart and others.  They have a friend arriving today and they are planning on sailing the area with him, just as we did with the kids.  We waved them off in the afternoon, feeling envious that they were getting out of Skiathos town, but at least we had arranged for the outboard to be looked at, so would be off too in a day or two.
 
Or so we thought...
 
Tuesday evening we went out for dinner - gyros and chips - neither of us had much appetite so it didn't really matter what we had.  Before we went out we had lifted a couple of floorboards to allow the bilge below to dry out.  When we came back, Chris stupidly didn't put the light on, forgot about the floorboards and put her foot down into the bilge.  This would not normally be too much of a problem as this bilge is only a foot or so deep, but the transducer for the forward looking sonar is in this bilge, and she managed to catch her little toe on the metal bar as her foot went down.  Ouch!!
 
The offending metal bar!
 
It hurt - a lot - but the damage wasn't apparent until Steve put on the light and saw the blood.  He looked at the cut to see how deep it was, and decided a trip to A&E was necessary.  Chris was already in danger of passing out and this news didn't help!  So after a lie down to restore blood flow to the head and her foot padded up with kitchen towel and masking tape, Chris then had to negotiate her way back off the boat.  Steve got a taxi and we were soon at the hospital where Chris was seen immediately.  They put two stitches in the underside of the little toe, bandaged it up, and sent Steve back into town to the pharmacy (by now it was midnight!) to collect a tetanus jab and antibiotics.  We assured them we both had a tetanus booster last year, but they insisted it was necessary, so off he went.  Nobody seemed to know the number for a taxi, so he was given a lift part of the way by a police car that just happened to be there, and then walked the rest of the way to the pharmacy, and then all the way back again. 
 
Having been duly jabbed, we then managed to find someone who knew the taxi number and we got a taxi back to the boat and finally to bed.
 
We would like to say that we have now had as much excitement as we need, so whoever is deciding these things up there somewhere - ease off!!