Ah streuth! Lots of time in hospital!

Ow. This isn't my foot luckily but my boyfriend's, Stef Hilder. He had been holding out on windsurfing here for a week due to damaging his shoulder snowboarding, and on his first session in Australia at Coronation, he falls on a spock (on a wave board), and gets cut by the reef. Its pretty deep as you can see, so we gave it a good wash and thanks to the guys on the beach, wrapped it up and drove straight to Geraldton hospital. They washed it more and wrapped it up again, saying it was best to get to Perth hospital as he would need surgery.

Here we are sleeping in Geraldton hospital car park to drive to Perth hospital the next day (a nice 6 hours), and eating pizza from Ben and Justyna!

Stef spent 5 days in Perth hospital, having operation 1: cutting away the flap and excess skin that would die and cleaning it, and then 2 days later operation 2: hoping the sides would just about meet to stitch it up (which they did luckily). If the skin hadn't have met (there isn't much excess on the bottom of your foot), they would have had to involve a 3rd op and plastics, as skin grafts wouldn't take....good job it got stitched!

I stayed at a friend's, thank you Graham! I visited hospital everyday and got to know Perth City very well! I also had one sail at a place near Graham's, M....something, a cross-on, riding/jumping beach break.

Taking Stef for an escape to get some fresh air, but we only made it as far as getting a milk shake before his foot swelled up too much!

Finally, he gets released on Saturday after some haphazard drug instructions (or lack of).

Sorting out the van to leave Stef's kit in Perth, unfortunately he won't sail again here I don't think. One board didn't even get out of the packaging!

Now we are back up at Coronation beach for a few days sailing before heading back to Perth for another appointment, though I'm not quite sure why we came up here, its so hot you can barely sleep, the wind in the morning is like a hairdryer and the cool wind is only kicking in late afternoon! Hence sheltering in the air conditioned library this morning ha ha! The sailing is fun though, a bit of jumping and riding on some soft easy waves! We are also staying at a nice campsite called Sunset Beach Holiday Park, check it out if you are near Geraldton!

Crutches do have a good use as a drying line! I'm using my C-Skins HDPolyPro rash vest (the super fleecy one!) and some shorts up here, the water is really warm! I think I'll have to revert back to a wetsuit today though as crashing forwards and backloops can give a pretty good slap to the back of your legs!

So not the best start to our trip and poor Stef has a hot swollen foot to keep up. No photos yet as my now pro photographer is still recovering! We will head South after Thursday, which should be a lot cooler and hopefully by then we can do some touristy things as well as me sailing.