Today at 14:40 I had a serious setback and my trip status went from “enjoyable” to “miserable” in a matter of seconds. Squalls had hit and I reduced sails and Zanshin was pitching, I decided to go below to make sure that nothing was going to bounce around in this weather and my weakened hand grip failed me as the boat lurched beneath me and I fell from the companionway into the galley, landing hard on my back. For a good half hour I was lying there and panting in pain and wondering if I could even move. But when the worst of it was over I was able to move my fingers and toes and thought that perhaps I could survive this setback after all. Luckily the storm hadn’t gotten any worse and the autopilot was doing an admirable job of keeping me on course so I wasn’t in a panic to get up off the floor. After a bit I was able to crawl to the deck and lie down there, then it took me all of 15 minutes to crawl to the aft cabin and get my medical kit out. I wasn’t sure what I should take and in the end just swallowed some powerful NSAIDs and went back topside to lie down again and make plans for the rest of the trip. My worry was that I’d caused some internal damage and that some untoward movement would exacerbate the situation.
I didn’t do much of anything for the rest of the day except go through my options, which were quite limited. I had 4 days to go back to the USA east coast (and considering that there were big storms on the way this would be a bad choice), and I had 4-5 days to go ahead of me. What I could do was alter my destination from St. Martin to either Puerto Rico, the USVI or the BVI so as to shorten my trip by a day.
