A weekend to remember
My sister drove down from Richmond on Friday with two of her boys. We had a great time. Went out on a dolphin-watch boat tour, out to dinner, lunch, etc. A really good time. Somehow we got talked into going parasailing. It was actually one of the best times I’ve ever had. The only negative was the weather was overcast, and breezy, which translates into chop and swells. A little power boat in 4-6 ft swells makes for some green faces. However, once in the air, it’s priceless. I highly recommend it. My 8 year-old son had such a blast he went up in the air twice.
On the way back in, the skipper took the boat in a bit fast to make it an action ride. Bouncing from crest to crest and getting a lot of spray over the top. Then it happened…. we hit a massive wave and got a truck-load of water over the bow. It shoved all 10 of us to the back of the boat in about 0.0000001 second travel time. I got the brunt of the pile-up and bashed my left leg against a hand rail. I thought it was broken. Right in front of the entrance to the inlet, between two rock jetties. We had about 2 feet of water in the interior. We stalled and had to pull open the deck hatches to let the water down to get pumped out. After about 10-15 minutes of sitting dead and pumping out, we finally got under way back to the dock. My leg was killing me. My glasses got blown out to sea, along with my new boonie hat. My son’s ankles were a bit scraped up, but in all, nobody was hurt but me and the skipper (he got his foot crushed and was turning blue-ish in minutes).
After x-rays and ER time, it turned out I have a deep contusion of the calf muscle against a bruised bone. It hurts enough to be hobbled and on crutches, but I will recover. In all, it was still worth the time. I would (and will) go again, but on a more calm weather day. Begin 1000 ft in the air, total calm up their, seeing for miles and miles, nothing like it. Having my son with me (close enough to hug in the air without reaching) was incredible. It was a memory we will never forget. Even the accident wasn’t enough to detract from that. Ah, what a day.
