I swear this is an absolutely TRUE story.
First, a little background:
In the offshore Oil & Gas industry, we often use fairly small vessels (similar to the tug pictured in a recent blog), with a crew of around 20, for surveys and suchlike. Because the area they work in is generally fairly close to shore (i.e. usually within about a 12 hour steam from the nearest port), they often don’t have qualified doctors on board, usually just someone with a first aid certificate – often the Captain. Also, relevant to this story, the potable water in the tanks on board is often of fairly dubious quality & origin – they always carry bottled water for drinking.
Right, on with the story:
About 18 months ago, a young trainee, 20 or so years old, first time at sea was working on such a survey vessel in the Arabian Gulf. Being his first time away from his lady friend, and having been at sea for a couple of weeks, the lad was feeling a little frisky, so took matters into his own hands as it were.
Although he didn’t go blind, he had obviously been rather energetic with his ministrations and he reported to the Captain rather shamefacedly with a badly chafed organ. The Captain (apparently between guffaws) applied antiseptic ointment and a clean, sterile bandage.
A day or so later, noticing little improvement, the clever lad got up enough courage to seek a “second opinion” on the telephone from his girlfriend back in UK, who just happened to be a nurse. She, aware of the above mentioned dubious quality of the water on the vessel, told him to boil some water, then use the boiled (now sterile) water to wash Red Robin, then wrap him up again as before.
Fourteen hours later, the vessel was alongside in Abu Dhabi, with the young chap being driven away in the ambulance, still insisting that his girlfriend had said “boiling” water.
The guy was later flown back to UK, and, as far as I know, hasn’t been offshore since.
As I said, this is a TRUE story!!!!
Clitty
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