Mashed my Son's Fingers

Posted By: Mark
Date: 6/2/07 3:22p.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

I used to sail with the Pop-Top up all the time. My 1980 had the pop-top retainer on the mast, it was really just a threaded mast slide, a stainless finger, and a wingnut. Pop the top, push all the way to the mast, ensuring that the Pop-top was centered ino the mast, slide the tang up to catch the lip and secure the wing-nut. That said, sailing off Mission Bay in San Diego, CA, the wing-nut slowly loosened. On a particularly nasty roll the top dropped down, right onto my son's left hand fingers. Fortunately the top is not particularly sharp, his fingers were very tiny, being but 5 years old, and aside from some short term dents in the skin, some minor bruising, tenderness for a week, and some well deserved tears, nothing very serious. We did not hesitate to sail with the top up, but we checked and re-checked the wingnut, also checked it often under sail, and ensured that no one kept their fingers under the path of the dropping top. From then until we put Ingra up for 12 years we never suffered another mishap.