Jerry Goes to Med School

The Burnetts are happily underway again! After two days and two practically moonless nights of bad weather and Calamity, Jerry has had enough of being the North Atlantic’s punching bag. Greg and Mel too. In fact, Mel’s whole body hurts. But her abs are probably spectacular.

This has been a “shakedown“ cruise for Jerry. A shakedown cruise usually occurs shortly after one buys a boat. It’s an offshore in Sporty Weather to find all the weak spots. The resemblance between the word “shakedown“ and “breakdown“ should not go unnoticed.

Sailing Philosopher Mel has realized that a lot of the mantras that she learned in her medical training and then tried to instill in her medical students and residents apply well to this voyage.

1. An optimistic signout is a bad signout.
   When doctors transfer care of a patient to another doctor so they can take care of neglected human needs like urinating and sleeping, it is called, “signing out”. Good practice when signing out is to anticipate calamity and give the covering doc an action plan. On this trip, Mel has learned that her captain is an optimistic signer-outer.
   Greg, signing out: “Winds are decreasing and they should shift soon in our favor, so turn more upwind in an hour.”
   Mel, one hour later while Greg slumbers in the berth, “The opposite just happened. Time to improvise. Oh look, I’m sailing us to the Arctic instead of Bermuda. Well, at least I am comfortable.”
   Greg, 3 hours later, “OMG! Where are we going???”
   Mel will work on her new first mate task of instilling in Greg her robust ability to catastrophize. That way her decisions will match his. Because when she improvises, it is clear her priorities do not match the Captain’s.
2. Sometimes the best decisions do not result in the best outcomes.
   After “resting“ on our para-anchor for 12 hours, calamity struck. Details are forthcoming, but Greg and Mel then had to do something called “heaving-to“. (Heaving is a good choice of words. Everything in sailing is so well named, isn’t it?) This maneuver helped Jerry (and Mels fragile flower of a psyche) make it through winds up to 55 kts and seas from three different directions up to 20 ft? high. See photo above. Even though those relaxing moments on the now departed para-anchor (RIP) ended up equating to an $1800 one-night Italian getaway, it was an excellent decision to deploy it, and do it before weather got bad. We followed protocol. No one can fault you for following protocol.
3. Giving yourself time to think IS taking emergency action.
   Those who watch medical TV dramas may not realize this, but not all doctors spring to immediate, confident action when their patients crash. If the situation is unusual and does not obviously call up a standard checklist treatment protocol, many of us have to weigh the multiple management options each novel situation presents. This takes a minute, and taking that minute is the safest thing to do. Not exactly gripping for TV drama. But thinking, not reacting, saves lives. One thing both Mel and Greg had to get used to is that addressing problems while sailing has a more relaxed timeline than flying or medicine. Even when the problem is really, really noisy. After the para-anchor calamity, we quickly hove to and then relaxed to think of the next action. During that thinking time, we realized that Jerry was not unhappy at all in that state, and so the next action was just to leave well enough alone. Sometimes, doing nothing is doing something.

Lesson over! We are merely making our way to Bermuda, by way of the Arctic, at least when Mel is on watch. Supposedly we will arrive sometime tomorrow. Happy wakes, Mel