Sea urchins, sunburn, heat and blisters – hands down our sailors are tough!
AUSTRALIAN sailor Lisa Darmanin’s hands hurt and they look worse.
Pieces of skin are coming off in small hunks, there are small holes and blisters on both hands.
It’s a side effect of hauling on ropes for hours each day in wet gloves in sea water and high humidity.
“They have never been this bad before,” said the Nacra 17 sailor from Sydney’s northern beaches, who is
chasing a medal in the foiling class with her cousin and skipper, Jason Waterhouse.
“It’s the humidity. It has made them much worse than usual.”
Part of Darmanin’s role on the foiling Nacra is to make it go faster by trimming sails and hoisting the spinnaker, which is taking its toll on her hands. Despite also wearing gloves while racing, Waterhouse’s hands are also showing the wear and tear, as are those of Laser sailor Matt Wearn from Perth.
Wearn is one of Australia’s leading gold medal hopes in Tokyo. “They are a bit cut up, yeah,” he said. “I might need to get some super glue.”
The bonding agent – not the common hardware glue but one for medical use – is sometimes used to seal wounds and avoid infection.
The heat is hard to beat at the sailing regatta at Enoshima, with athletes potentially on the water for five or more hours a day.
Between races, crews slip on ice vests and consume cold drinks to help beat the heat and stay hydrated.
Earlier in the regatta, which is being held at the venue used at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Laser Radial sailor Mars Stransky suffered one of the strangest injuries of the Olympics.
The Queenslander was launching her boat and trod on a sea urchin. She then spent some time picking bits of it out of her foot before going on to race.