I continue to repeat my "bare feet on wet fiberglass" story every time I see someone attempt to board our boat without deck shoes. If they ignore the message, they get shouted at, but I never fail to be amazed at the number of folks who say "I have better grip with bare feet".
This weekend another individual got the message, the hard way. It was after dark and I was in the salon and online when I heard a loud bang on fiberglass. It was so loud that I was convinced that a small boat had run into our stern. I went outside and saw/heard my neighbor looking down towards the water and screaming her husband's name. My first thought was that he had gone overboard and I started looking for signs of him surfacing around the boat. I then noticed a dark shadow in one corner of our swim platform and realized it was my neighbor. He was unconscious, but coming to and bleeding quite a bit.
Fortunately, we have several nurses, physicians and paramedics in our boat club and, leaving the injured party with some folks, I went for help. Our club also carries an extensive first aid kit, which includes a defibrillator, when we raft out or tie up at a dock. We had two nurses, a doctor and a paramedic on scene in short order.
My neighbor had decided to step across adjacent swim platforms with bare feet. He didn't realize the platforms were wet due to adjacent boats having their generators running, and he stepped onto the very slippery gelcoat edge of our platform. As he said later, he had no time to react and protect himself from the fall. Our platform has a cradle on which we normally store the dinghy and he hit one of the arms of the cradle as he went down hard. Fortunately, his eyes missed injury, although not by much.
He's now a convert and says he won't go barefooted again.
Both instances were over 5 years ago and I subsequently had surgery on one knee. One of these days I'm going to get the other one fixed and maybe then I'll quit complaining about it.
