We flew back to Turkey on the 9th April, and spent two days enjoying the delights of Istanbul. Some of the sights really are amazing: the Blue Mosque - what wonderful tiles and ceramics, St Sophia`s Cathedral - hard to believe it was almost entirely built in the 6th Century, the unbelievable cisterns for their water-supply, and the Topkapi Palace - stunning jewels, and the quality of the 16th Century clothes hard to believe. We were a bit put out to find that Peter Ustinov had fiddled things to make the dagger easier to nick in the film. Then back to Hygeia on the 11th. Still up on the hard (how accurate that was to prove a couple of days later) and sadly a lot of the work we were having done incomplete.

It was a couple of days later that I had my accident, and we still don't really know what happened. Mie was on her knees on the deck cleaning one of the forward hatches, and I was sorting out the gas-pipe connections in the bow-locker having removed the solenoid, which, as usual, had corroded and broken (I think we have now gone through 4 of them). The boat is very high off the ground as she is chocked up in a cradle, and unfortunately the yard had disconnected the life-lines, as they are replacing sections of the bulwarks on the bow and transom. For some inexplicable reason, I tripped and went over the edge, and crashed down onto the hard five metres below. Poor Mie had a dreadful shock, as the first thing she saw was my inert body spread-eagled on the ground, unconscious, and probably dead with a broken neck. People rushed to look after me and I was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Fethiye, about 15 miles away.

It turned out I had multiple rib fractures - mostly posteriorly on the left, a fractured left clavicle, a number of disparate lacerations - right foot, left hand, left temple, and on the crown of my scalp, a head injury (I had been unconscious for several minutes, and then a bizarre injury to my left axilla. The surgeon who stitched me up described it as an elegant, formal axillary dissection, with the contents of the fossa beautifully displayed - axillary artery and vein well exposed, and even some branches of my brachial plexus visible. He reckoned whatever had opened up my axilla had been within a couple of millimetres of the vessels - a rather important couple of millimetres, as if I had had a tear of one of the vessels, for sure there were no facilities for me to have it repaired.

We've tried to work out how the injury could have occurred, and can only guess. I was concussed and have no memory whatsoever of the accident. One possibility is that as I went over the edge, I impaled my arm-pit on the stanchion that was left rather exposed as the life lines were slack. (those of you who have been to the South Pacific may recall how the locals husk a coconut on a pointed stake - maybe a similar process) The other possibility, perhaps more likely, is that as I went over I managed to hook my arm round the disconnected life-line, which ran out with me for about four feet before the swaged fitting impacted in the stanchion, and the wire then came up tight, and the wire 'cheese-cut' through my armpit. Whatever the mechanism, I was clearly extremely fortunate not to have sustained a really serious injury as a result of a fall onto such hard ground from such a height, lucky I didn’t hit the steel of the cradle, and most of all, lucky that whatever what laid open my armpit didn’t go through either the vessels or the brachial plexus.

So, I live to fight another day. I was patched up, kept in hospital for somewhat rural observation, and went back to Hygeia the next day. I’m now not at all bad though I have had a problem with pain relief. I was sent home on diclofenac, but after a couple of days developed rather bad epigastric pain, and I had a sleepless night wondering when my acute erosions were going to give me haematemesis - the thought of this happening without Iain or Mark, Peter or Bob on hand to endoscope me filled me with deep anxiety, so haven’t dared take any non steroidals since. A quick phone call to Dag sorted me out.

So I remain a bit battered and bruised, and this has had a major impact on all the work I need to do on the boat. Fortunately, I had installed the 7 new 105 AH batteries only an hour before I fell.

We still have to:-

• Replace the electric loo in the aft heads - quite a major job with a lot of new plumbing
• Put on all the new anodes
• Replace the computer in the autopilot(it got wet coming up the Red Sea, a grand’s worth of trouble)
• Reinstall the smart charging system
• Reinstall my old high-output alternator
• Install a new two in/two out splitter
• Reinstall the aerials for the bulkhead mounted GPSs - a major routing job
• Sort out the new electronic navigation system (Euronav)
• Service the engine and Generator
• Put the sails on
• Splice the continuous reefing-line; braid-on-braid and a really difficult job; none of the sailmakers can do it for us. Mie is much better at this than I am.

Anyway, we’re counting our blessings given the seriousness of my accident, and grateful that we are able to carry on. Assuming all goes well we should be back in the water in a couple of days, and maybe heading for Greece in a week.

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