My biggest accident so far!

Sailing is a breeding ground for accidents eg. stubbing toes on stray cleats, bumping head on cockpit entry, standing on urchins......the list goes on. Of all the accidents I thought I might have this by far was the one that would catch me. As I'm a keen swimmer to keep fit my biggest fear is getting run over by a boat while swimming, as did a woman in the Carribean who sadly died.

In my case the day started out wonderfully. We were anchored up the river West of Dubrovnik and I decided it would be a great job to take in the rubbish and dispose of it onshore. It took me a little time to start the motor and it was not running completely smoothly when I pushed off. It coughed a couple of times and then the throttle grabbed so violently that the bow lifted and I got tossed off the back. For some reason the accelerator stuck and the dinghy started circling, hitting big Jethro circling again. It was an absolute miracle that I did not get run over. I was screaming to Iain and before we could really come up with any solution it bounced off big Jethro straightened out and headed straight across the river until it bounced up and stopped on shore!

That was the second biggest miracle, there were no boats passing up the river AND where baby Jethro landed on the bank was also between boats parked up against the bank. With some incredible aid from neighbouring boats including David and Jaynee from Adventurous, the boys managed to float the dinghy back to Jethro, get the motor up onto its stand and hoist the dingy onto the bow.

Luckily we only had a few days before getting to our winter marina. A stop in Cavtat to check out and then we were back in Marina Prjanc, Kotor.

Needless to say my disappointment was great- I had damaged our new pride and joy dinghy and motor, and my pride took a big knock- how on earth did I let that happen? But biggest of all was the learning- how so easily an accident can happen, how close I was to being permanently hurt or worse, why there are safety recommendations when helming the dinghy, and how reliant we are when sailing on the dinghy as a mode of transport to shore.

Has anyone else had such a learning?