Yesterday afternoon we had our first serious injury, we have had countless stubbed toes and bumped heads, elbows and knees from us not moving carefully enough.

But this is the first time the failure of a piece of equipment has caused us injury.

The injury occurred as I was moving the mizzen boom to its parking position near the starboard rail out of the way of accessing the dingy and for when accessing the rear lazarette minimising the chance of bashing our heads when getting up.

The pulley holding up the topping lift tore apart, allowing the aft end of the boom to come crashing down onto my forearm, the pain was incredible, all I could do was swear and cradle my forearm at my waist. I could still move my wrist and fingers so I don’t think I broke any bones, but everything in the area is painful, the lower half of my forearm and hand is swollen and I have limited movement in my wrist and fingers.

We cold packed my arm and hand, a few Panadol and a tough night trying to get comfortable, trying to find a position to sleep in that didn’t hurt, the next day is a lot less pain but a hand and arm that is not very useful as I can barely pickup a glass of water.

How it didn’t break my wrist or forearm I don’t know and despite the pain I feel very lucky, it is a reminder though of the need to be prepared for things like this, here we probably could have spent three hours motoring back to Kettering, one day it might be harder.