This Month's Story

I once had three kites that I used for various purposes in my study of ocean fronts. They were a little expensive; each cost $200. But they were special kites, actually a type of parafoil, that were perfect for my type of studies. Each was specially made for me by a nice-sounding gentleman who lived in Boca Raton, Florida. I never met him since I bought the kites by phone. But he was very nice and recognized me when I called. He was very diligent and he would make them to my specifications and would ship them to me within a week or two. Although I never asked him too, they were very colorful made with a mixture of red, green and yellow nylon. They were six foot squares, and capable of carrying nearly 200 pounds.

They had the wonderful advantage of staying in one spot in the sky for hours with no special attention. I used them to carry specially-made instruments over ocean fronts. They never moved once positioned and sent back a great deal of valuable data.

Paul walking toward a grounded kite with two of his dogs

I’ve included with this story a picture of me recovering one of the kites on the beach on Christmas day. In the picture, I’m walking toward the grounded kite with two of my dogs. I’m sorry the kite in the picture is so small but it can give you a gross idea of what it looked like (the kite is to my right about a hundred yards away). The temperature that day was 72 degrees, hence my being bare foot.

I took the kite with me three weeks later when I went to sea. The weather was rough with very strong winds. Since the pull of the kite was so strong due to the winds, I wore strong, rather large leather gloves. Actually as I found out very quickly after I launched it, the wind was too strong to handle alone and I quickly signaled one of the ship’s crew to secure a pulley block to a metal ring on the deck near me to help hold the kite. He rushed forward and began doing this when the ship gave a rather brutal swing and the block went flying out of his hand and as I had the kite’s nylon line in my hand, the heavy block hit my hand with a vicious wallop.

I let the line go and we stood helplessly by watching the kite crash into the sea carrying with it my special instruments.

We watched it for a few minutes when the crewman pointed to my glove. It was dripping blood. I slowly pulled my hand out of the glove and stared surprised at the glove’s contents: it was filled with blood!

As with most ships of our size, the first mate acts as a doctor and with my hand wrapped in a towel, we went to the sick bay and plunged my hand into a bucket of ice water to deaden the pain and stop the bleeding. It became obvious after the hand was cleaned that several fingers were badly broken. One of the broken fingers was the one that held my wedding ring. One of the engine room men came up with a large pair of snips and he and the mate carefully cut the ring lose.

The mate worked on the fingers for a while and when he was satisfied that were in what he thought were normal positions, he took a large cooking ladle and using, the spoon part of the ladle as a splint, wrapped a bandage around my hand. When he was done, he smiled happily and handed the cut ring back to me along with several aspirins, said I could go back to work.

When we got back to port several weeks later, I went to a specialists and he said the fingers were healing nicely and wrapping the cooks ladle back on my hand in the same position it was before, pronounced me cured!

(Oh! As to my wedding ring? I never did fix it and when Katrina washed my office desk away, the ring went with it.)