Best Laid plans

The problem with adventure travel, is that sometimes it’s a bit … well … adventurous!

While I was back home living reality day to day, Dale remained in Indonesia, to continue sailing. He actually spent about 4 weeks in beautiful Waicicu Bay, before collecting two young Backpackers for the next leg of the journey to Sorong.

These adventurous 25 year olds - Leon, German, and Karmen ftom South Africa, were travelling cross country aiming ultimately for Australia, but asked to sail with Dale to Sorong so they could explore Raja Ampat. They aren’t sailors, but young, fit and energetic and good company.

During his time at Waicicu, he took care of a few maintenance items, and accidentally scratched his leg a little when he slipped. Very minor injury, life goes on. Or does it?

They started their crossing towards Sorong - a 7 to 10 day passage.

A couple of days enroute, Dale commented that he might be coming down with a virus - aches, and feeling tired. He sent me photos of his leg, as it ached a little. Seemed like a very minor scratch, not red. He started treating it with antibiotic cream we had on board.

By sunset when they anchored at Tomea Island in the southern Wakatobi area, he was ill, high fever and his whole left from the knee down was swollen and shiny red! I shared the photos with a nurse friend, who advised getting to a hospital. A bit of online sleuthing established that the closest regional hospital at Bau Bau was 22 hrs sailing away, and a decent one was 36 hrs north in Kendari. No airports anywhere nearby either. Obviously medical help was urgent, but it was too dangerous to try to get to land without at least moonlight, in an unfamiliar bay.

I spoke with Leon and Karmen about Dale’s diabetes, and asked them to set an alarm to monitor him (and his Glucose levels, every 3 hours. With fever making him a bit delirious, I was concerned that he wouldn’t manage to monitor it himself, and the last thing we needed was him losing consciousness due to low sugar.

The morning saw the trio in the dinghy, heading up shore. Due to the low tide, the dinghy motor soon became inoperable. Leon and skater tried paddling but that wasn’t really getting them anywhere, so Dale jumped overboard and pushed the boat to shore. The worst thing you can do with open, infected wounds!

There is a common belief in cold climates, that bathing wounds in seawater in beneficial. If that is the case in some climates, it most definitely isn’t in the tropics!

Dale at the medical clinic where he was treated with broad spectrum antibiotics by IV, and given a course of oral ones to start, pain meds and antiseptic etc.

The following morning they set sail at dawn for the crossing to Ambon - about 3 days sailing (24 hrs a day). I called at about 8:30 to check in on the patient. He reported feeling better - no fever, and the leg was painful, but manageable with pain killers. Then he sent photos of the leg which had developed a series of large, dark purple patches, with a black lumps erupting in the centre of each patch. It looked like aliens were trying to escape from the flesh.

Again I consulted with medical friends - Dr daughter and nurse friends. They were unanimous- get to a hospital - preferably in Australia. I called him and suggested turning back to Tomea, and lying down with his foot elevated until they arrived. But as they say, if it doesn’t rain it pours - in this case they were in the middle of a storm so changing direction - managing sails etc was difficult, and not without risk, even for an experienced sailor. Without doubt, it was beyond the abilities of our backpacker guests. Dale actively managed the boat through the storm and back to Tomea.
As soon as they returned to Tomea, they went to the local hospital clinic. Dale was given a double IV infusion, the leg dressed, and a transfer arranged to Hermina Hospital in Kendari, a city to the north for the next day.

After treatment they returned to the boat for the night, then by 6am Dale was back on shore. Leaving his precious yacht in the care of 2 young travellers who he’d known for about 4 days.

The arranged transfer consisted in being booked on a ‘fast ferry’ which left from the other side of Tomea, and a ticket on the local inter-island ferry. Dale got a lift on a scooter across Tomea to the first ferry, then from the dock at the next island, Wanci Wanci, to the main ferry wharf there, to catch the local ferry. All of this with a hugely infected, very painful leg.

The main wharf area at Wanci is bustling, chaotic and very ‘colourful’. Wonderful to experience when you are well. Dale wasn’t well! On arrival at the boat he had to go back to the street, to the ticket office where he showed his digital booking, and buy his physical ticket. And of course get back onto the boat.

He’d been advised to request a bunk, but of course being the end of Ramadam, the major public holiday, they were sold out. The boat was absolutely crowded. His ticket merely gave him access to the boat,

Boarding these ferries is via a steep, narrow gang plank. Carrying luggage makes this quite an effort when you aren’t ill or injured.

The ferry ticket does entitle you to a bunk if you arrive early enough. There are no seats on the ferry, so if you can’t get a bunk, your options are to stand, sit or lie on floor. As the ferry was at capacity (most like at double its intended capacity) all of the floor area in the lower decks and passageways were full. The unlucky were the top deck, open to the sun for the 10 hours.

Dale found a sheltered nook between stacks of cargo, in this case, polystyrene boxes. He spread his towel on the deck, elevated his keg using his bag, and slept for a couple of hours.

On waking he found he was lying in water - oozing from the seafood on ice, that turned out to be in the stacked polystyrene boxes. Fishy water.

This wasn’t the only thing that was oozing. Dale’s bad leg was oozing liberally - through the bandages, filling his thongs, and dripping on the floor.

When the ferry docks at Kendari, hopeful porters, taksi motor (bike) operators and mobile (car) taksi drivers swarm the boat looking for customers, adding to the noise and chaos of disembarking passengers.

Hermina hospital is a 30 minute drive from the ferry, with road traffic typical of Indonesia- cars, trucks and a multitude of motorbikes and scooters dashing in and out of the traffic.

Hermina is a private hospital and although the surrounding streets seem rather ‘rustic’, the hospital was surprisingly modern and clean. And seemed to be similar to hospitals at home.

The ED wanted him to go straight to surgery, but as none of the Drs he saw that night spoke English, he demurred. He was concerned he’d wake up with his lower leg amputated. I was concerned that without the surgery, he wouldn’t wake up.

Instead he was cleaned up (towel 🤢 thrown out), given an IV and sent to bed. Around late morning a doctor who spoke good English, examined him and spoke to both him, and me, via video call.

She was able to explain that they needed to surgically remove infection and remove suspected gangrenous tissue. We queried whether he was receiving antibiotics in the IV. She confirmed that it was only saline due to his dehydration, but they would now add the antibiotics. Best of all, it would be a epidural anaesthetic, so if they suddenly decided to get out the saw, he’d be awake and could protest!

A nurse videoed the procedure for him, and the surgeon removed the necrotic tissue around the black patches that had appeared, debraided (scraped out) the remaining infected tissue and expressed the huge channels of infection that had developed in his leg.

Post op, Dale video called and he was bright, pain free and optimistic. He commented that he accepted that it had been a serious problem, and that it’d be 3 or 4 days until he was able to return to the boat. As I said, post-operation, he was delusional!Read more