Cuts and Bruises

Along with the summer streaks in my hair and my reluctant freckly tan this summer is evidenced by cuts and bruises and blisters.  The skin on my hands thickens from holding the mainsheet line, or the spinnaker sheets, often wet.  The callouses peel from time to time.  My fingernails are short and usually a little bit dirty underneath, from weeding the garden or pulling something out of the back of the garage.  I crewed in a 420 dinghy sailboat on Monday night, which always bruises my legs up pretty reliably.  On my last run as I stretched I saw that my right upper arm had a dried trickle of blood on it -- did I scrape a pricker bush as I ran by?  On Wednesday I scrubbed the bottom of the boat, treading water in my black bikini as I worked the scrub brush along the submerged hull, like brushing the teeth of a giant underwater creature.  I climbed out of the water, up onto the dock, by clambering up some rusty chains, and when I got out I saw I was bleeding, again on my upper arm.  The scrapes go across a big scar I have from an operation when I was twelve.  For some reason I never knew scars could bleed, but they can, it seems, just like the skin around them. 

Comments

[Outer Life]

Umm, rusty chains?

Though a first-hand account of your struggles with tetanus lockjaw would, no doubt, be of great interest, I, for one, hope never to see it.

[Tillerman]

It's not a real sail unless you draw blood.