I woke up early yesterday very much with going out for a sail on my mind. So after rousing Paul, and hauling him up the mast to fix the new anemometer, we set out for an afternoon afloat. As usual Paul was on the helm as we slipped our mooring and I was moving around deck coiling the lines and collecting in the fenders when disaster struck. Walking along the deck on my way to the bow, I was distracted by a shout and stopped looking where I was going. Upshot was I kicked one of the cleats knocking my little toe out to the side - not quite a right angle but heading that way! I pulled it back into position and hobbled back to the cockpit and that, before we'd even left the marina, was the end of the day sailing. Not sure if it's broken or was just dislocated but it hurts!!
It's a bit of a coincidence as within the first week of us being out in the Caribbean in 2010 I broke a toe then. Obviously I didn't learn my lesson about wearing shoes on board.
Getting Paul up the mast before all this happened was a challenge. Helped by a sailing friend, Peter, we attached him to the spinnaker halyard and started winching away - well Peter did most of it. We got him to 5 feet from the top when he called down that the halyard wouldn't go any higher. Hmmm. He was using the topping lift as a safety line so very quickly I got our a spare block, attached it to the bottom of the mast and routed the topping lift through it and back to a winch. Peter started winding away again and we got Paul to within a foot of the top when the block sheared from the mast and he was stuck, again. This time we lowered him back to the deck and started again using the main halyard this time. Poor Peter .... winching Paul the equivalent of 130 feet in 32 degrees of heat .... not an easy task. Anyway, third time lucky we got him to the very top and he was able to fit the new wind instrument.
All in a day's work .....