Ankle-Day: A new windsurfing holiday celebrated March 12th

March 12, 2010 "ANKLE DAY, NZ"

Strong winds from the SE required a 4.1 m^2 sail today. More remnants of a cyclone that is clobbering Fiji. I had to borrow the small sail from Mike Giselle as my 4.1 sail needs to be modified at the head to fit my mast. Luckily we had some redundancy in the combined quivers. Pete, Rachel and "Baby-A" arrived this morning from Boston and Pete caught some nice photos of Mike, Rudy, and "Ace", now AKA'd as "Ankle-Ace" after a day-ending injury following a bad landing off a wave :(

Turns out the X-ray facilities on the island are only open 3-days / week, so after a quick visit to the local emergency care the swelling foot and I took the ferry and a cab to the Auckland Hospital ER. After a couple X-rays, followed by a load-bearing X-ray, then finally a CT Scan, it looked like there were no broken bones, subluxation, or dislocation. The weight-bearing X-ray suggested possible spreading of the 1st and 2nd metatarsals indicative of a Lisfranc injury that requires surgery, hence the desire for a CT scan. So from 6pm to 2am I was back and forth from waiting room to radiology 3 times, then finally "plastered" (the term for placing a plaster cast on the foot) and put in a bed to meet with the orthopaedic specialist in the morning, who confirmed that I could be released.