Jon Simpson has raced with us on Silverheels for more than 10 years. He excels at the Pit position and he hikes like a maniac. He’s easy going, well liked and is just an all-around great crew member. But as of Toliva Shoal this last February Jon is out of commission for at least 6 to 8 months, maybe longer.

As we were setting up for the race and maneuvering around the starting area Jon fell and we found out later that he had ruptured his Quadrecep tendon. Luckily Jon’s injury didn’t constitute a life threatening emergency. There were no broken bones or open wounds, no one was hemorrhaging blood. Yet he was in severe pain and unable to move. We notified the RC and returned to the dock as quickly as possible.

As we motored back to Swantown I thought to myself just how lucky we have been on the Silverheels with only things like a dislocated shoulder or maybe a whack on the head by the boom in the last 16 years of racing. We have never had a medical emergency requiring immediate help and I had not thought much about one. All of us have given much consideration in recent years to the person overboard scenario. Other life threatening emergencies can easily happen while boating in the South Sound.

Several years ago SSSS Member Rick Bergholz had just such a situation while racing his Ranger 29 Inati. One of his crew suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the deck. Rick immediately made a May Day call on VHF channel 16 while another crew member administered CPR. They were positioned near the No. 5 channel marker at the time. The Olympia Police Harbor Patrol was monitoring channel 16 and immediately came to assist.

The Harbor Patrol was out that day and heard the call. They used their portable AED, Automatic External Defibrillator, on the victim and between that and the CPR they regained a pulse. All of this happened within minutes of Rick’s May Day call. And by the time the Inati reached West Bay Marina the Paramedics were at the dock ready to continue resuscitation and then proceed to the hospital.

This is an example where everything went right. The skipper made an emergency call immediately. There was someone on board who was trained in CPR. Help was close by that could come to their aid very quickly. And they were close to a dock which was accessible to emergency medical personnel.

Boating in the South Sound has the advantage of never being very far away from a landing where help can access your boat. A call on channel 16 will notify the Coast Guard and if for some reason that option fails calling 911 on a cell phone is a good plan B. Once the authorities know your position they can make the determination as to how to reach your vessel or what extraction point you should head to.

In our case a call to an ambulance service while motoring back to the dock was all that was needed. When we told the ambulance dispatcher that we had a 315 lb. man who couldn’t stand they said that they would have to call the fire department. But we convinced them that we would be able to help get Jon off the boat.

It was time for a LifeSling drill. After Jon got himself to a sitting position on the cabin floor we put the sling on backwards with the halyard attached behind him and winched him right out of the cabin up through the companion way and onto a cockpit seat. Jon was in pain but he didn’t complain because we were able to lift him up without placing any weight on his bad knee. From there we were able to slide him up the deck, under the life lines and onto the gurney. Then it was off to the St. Peter’s emergency room.

If we had been more than 20 minutes from our slip at Swantown we might have had to consider another way to get Jon help. But getting him off of the Silverheels and onto another vessel would have been a very difficult thing to do possibly causing more harm. And this was not a life threatening emergency.

If the Silverheels were out around the Toliva Shoal area and someone on board got hurt badly, then an emergency call to the Coast Guard along with our GPS position would be the correct thing to do. This is why I am now properly motivated to make my long overdue purchase of a handheld VHF with integrated GPS, one which will automatically broadcast my position when making an emergency call.

Tucker Smyth, Silverheels