Yachtswoman stitches head wound without painkiller

A woman said today she stitched a gaping wound in her husband’s head without anaesthetic after their yacht was wrecked by a storm in the south Pacific.

Lisa Blackwood said husband Gary’s wound ran from his forehead to the back of his skull and she used all the sterile sutures on board their yacht putting in 23 stitches to staunch the blood.

“My mum would be proud because I don’t even knit or sew,” Blackwood, 35, said.

She also had no medical or first aid experience.

While stitching her husband’s wound must have been painful, “he was probably in a bit of shock anyway so he might have not felt it … There was no anaesthetic, no nothing,” she said.

The couple set out in their yacht, Scot Free, to sail from New Zealand to Fiji, only to be caught in gales and huge seas about 150 miles from their destination at the weekend. It was the first leg of a planned round-the-world adventure.

They lost their storm sail, the engine room flooded and their radio batteries nearly went flat before an emergency beacon alerted New Zealand’s Rescue Coordination Centre to their plight.

A Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion surveillance aeroplane found the stricken yacht and a nearby freighter, the Capitaine Wallis, picked up the couple.

Canadian Mrs Blackwood said they were worried that the condition of Scottish Gary, 52, might deteriorate because of the cut in his head, putting both their lives in serious jeopardy.

“I had all the faith in the boat and in Gary. The only thing was with Gary’s cut I wouldn’t know what to do if he got sick,” she said.

She said it was the right decision to abandon the Scot Free, even though it was uninsured and meant they would have to start again on their dream to sail round the world.

“It was our home,” Mrs Blackwood said as she struggled to hold back tears.

The couple arrived today in the northern port of Auckland on the Capitaine Wallis.