Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

This week I had my first personal experience of one of the grubbier aspects of life in the USA.  My son and I were both served a summons accusing both of us of negligence with respect to a low speed accident my son had in my car last year.  It was an accident most of us have had at one point or another.  My son was stopped behind another vehicle at a junction.  When the vehicle in front moved off my son released the foot brake and checked for traffic.  The car in front had stopped and my son bumped into the other vehicle at no more than 5mph.   There was no observable damage to either car.

We see from the police statement that the other motorist is claiming that my son knocked him forward 6 feet into the junction having hit him at high speed.  The lawsuit is seeking damages for past and future mental anguish, medical bills and loss of work as the claimant is suffering extreme pain in head, body, arms and legs.

It’s all lies of course but knowing that doesn’t help.  I barely slept the night after receiving the summons worrying that all we have worked for for 25 years was at risk to someone who has so little character as to be prepared to lie and sue and be backed by the lowest form of attorney.  What they think they are doing I don’t know.  In reality they are making peoples lives a misery and making insurance expensive for everyone.  This of course is not a big insurance company or a wealthy individual they are hurting.  It’s every hard working family who pays their bills, scrapes by in life and most importantly don’t lie and cheat for personal gain.

Anxiety ultimately turned to relief then anger when logic prevailed and the emotions calmed.  Chances are he may get a settlement from the insurance company of a few grand cos that’s the simplest thing to do.  He’ll probably think he’s clever and we’ll feel soiled by the experience.  I have spoken to many friends and colleagues and perhaps the best observation I was given was that the worst you could wish on these individuals living at the bottom of the moral heap is that they merely live the lives they already live.

How does it relate to cruising?  On the one hand it makes the urge to escape the rat race ever greater.  Escaping the rat race is a common statement given by cruisers.  I have to remind myself of the fortune of birth that dropped me in the rat race in the first place and made me able to survive long enough to have the ability to even contemplate escape.  The majority of the worlds population have it far harder and have fewer choices.  So I don’t like to think of it as escape.  Perhaps the better word is transcend.  Some day soon I hope we can declare we have done our time and it’s time for a change.

…. almost gone.

This week we exchanged preliminary contracts of sale on Timeless – subject to inspection. Inspection occurred this morning and the buyer appears willing to proceed. Of course, much could happen between now and when the money passes hands. This may take up to two weeks as a result of the buyer being out of town. If this goes through it will be the end of one era.

One of the risks of life on a boat that needs to be addressed is that of illness and injury.  These issues can occur away from immediate medical care.  Training ourselves to become full doctors is out of the question.  However, being able to triage a situation to buy time until proper medical care can be accessed becomes essential.  Fortunately, this space is well covered and effective training exists.  Aimed at adventure leaders the “Wilderness First Responder” course is (typically) a 9 day, 80 hour course aimed to cover many of the medical situations we might (but hope not to) encounter.  Here is a syllabus to give you an idea of what these courses cover.

Helen and I have decided to make this our training goal for 2008.  This morning I have been looking around for available courses.  Most of them seem to be in first half of the year which does not fit our schedule.  I guess this is because they’re targeting the training for folks about to take on summer jobs as recreational leaders.  But there are some (a schedule) in July and August which we will look more closely at.  It would be great if we can go to a venue where we can enjoy our time off and perhaps a day or two around the course.

We may make this a family trip too.  For Ben and Sam who will be 18/21 at the time, this training can only be useful.  There are indications that they may be able to receive up to 5 college credits for passing this course – need to look into this further.  For Ben, who is aspiring more and more to go onto medical college, this may benefit his chances of entry.

More research ahead.

Here is a summary of the visitor statistics to this website for 2007. The data was gathered by awstats which comes with the package my service provider provides.

There were a total of 6,606 site visits in 2007. There was a spike in visitor activity May through July which coincides with my blogging of Dignity’s delivery and our trip to the BVIs on Gato Chateau. Activity then fell off but gradually built up to near maximum again by year end.

The popularity of visits by day of week was in the following order : Sunday, Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Saturday, Friday. I was quite surprised by the difference between Sunday and Saturday.

The top 5 countries of visitor were US (first by a long margin), South Africa, Canada, Poland, Australia. The site received visitors from many more countries including China, Russia, Pakistan, Japan, Egypt …. The list goes on.

The top 6 search phrases that resulted in a click to this site were : “lagoon 420 dignity”, “lagoon 420”,  “lagoon 420 aboard dignity”, “aboard dignity”, “dignity lagoon 420”, “bayfield 32”.  Looks like most people are searching for this site by the name of the boat.  The last one is probably the Canadians who have a fondness for Bayfields as they were made there.

Further down the list are some more interesting phrases that led to visitors coming to the site: “where can you opt out for nj boating license”, “i want to buy lagoon 420”, “weather forecast for tomorrow bay biscay wed 12th dec 2007”, “when did the mongoose came to the u.s.v.i.”, “nautical miles from vilamoura portugal to canary islands”, “rhone wreck catastrophe”

By far the most site referrals come from Cruisers Forum where I hang out from time to time and leave the odd message.