Blinded While Kiting!
 

Kent Marinkovic is a real active waterman, has been for a coons age, Olympics, distance and course races and more. He has been a regular at the Wednesday night "Shake-A-Leg" sailing races down in Miami ala kite in recent years. He and Garry had just launched and rode up to the starting line in the vicinity of Vizcaya on Northern Biscayne Bay.

http://www.fksa.org/albums/album384/Kent_s.sized.jpg
Kent speeding along recently at II09 in Islamorada, FL

The wind was around 15 kts. out of the ENE and Kent was well powered on a 13 m BOW kite. He was cruising along to the line at around 7 pm when when some water splashed up into his face. Big deal, happens all the time. Well not quite this time. His eye exploded into intense searing pain as if it was just spiked by something. Or, maybe more like fuming sulphuric acid, hard to say but damn it HURT! In short order it was so swollen that he couldn't even see out of it. He dunked his head underwater opened it as best he could and ascertained he could still see at least UW. He went over to the committee boat and said he was out. He proceeded to kite about three miles downwind, landed his kite on a sand spit and then swam the lot about 700 ft. into the docks. He went into the bar ordered a double Glen Livid and a glass of milk. The Scotch went down and the milk went into his eye?! Slight relief but still hurt like a mother. A bartender coached Kent to pour vinegar in his eye, no way! Real bad idea.

He got home and his wife Paula spent the next hour pulling Portuguese Man-O-War tentacles out of his eye with a Q-tip. Two were about 1/4 inch long and were located BENEATH his eyelid pushed their by the movement of the eye. She proceeded to pull more lumps out with fairly painful results. Kent opted to avoid medical treatment, a real bad idea but hopefully one with no lasting consequences in this case.

Today the swelling has gone down, his vision has been restored but it still hurts somewhat. What are the odds of something like this happening?

Strangely enough a couple of days before he visited a board shaper in Miami who happened to have a messed up eye. He had caught some Portuguese tentacles while ducking under a wave while surfing up the coast. Kent had speculated at the time, wonder what would have happened if it went into your eye instead around the eye? He sure knows now! He wondered what would have happened if he caught tentacles in both eyes and while offshore, not good at all. At least he could still see out of one eye.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...anOWar2419.jpg
The goomer in question, intact in this view
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/

Portuguese Man-O-Wars have caused pain and discomfort since people have been going down to sea. If you suffer anaphylatic shock it might be the undoing of you as might have happened to a kiter racing to Bimini in 2005. I had one put me in the hospital in convulsions with a boat load of nervous German divers when I was 16. Hit many dozens since then with less dire consequences. I would guess a boat may have torn up the Portuguese that reached out and touched Kent. Can recall reefs of small Portuguese floating towards shore years back. A boat would go through the mess and instant small nasty painful stuff to zap you with in the water.

If this happens to you, what to do? Here are some ideas:

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/...ntid=100072747
http://www.aloha.com/~lifeguards/portugue.html
http://www.key-biscayne.com/beach_pa.../manowar.shtml

Feel better Kent and next time, uh ... look the other way, wear googles, carry a hungry loggerhead turtle? Some accidents are stranger than others but still painful all the same.