"Well, I had noted that it might be nice to return to Valparaiso again some day. But perhaps not this soon.
"We pulled away from the dock right on schedule at 7 a.m. this morning. It was barely beginning to get a bit light in the eastern sky. I went on to breakfast and class, and everyone was quickly back into their routine. (For students, "routine" on the day after port means sleeping sitting up in class.) Then about 10:30 we had an "Attention all hands, attention all hands" call over the PA. We were returning to Valparaiso due to a medical emergency and would be dropping anchor in about an hour.
"Indeed, when I came up from class at noon, we were anchored in the outer harbor. Anchoring is MUCH cheaper since we use neither dock nor tugboat services, and in this case all we needed to send to shore was one of the small launches.
"As you may recall, Captain Keever left the ship in Valparaiso and Dan Weinstock, who had been one of the mates, took over as Captain. He was replaced by a woman officer named Betsy, who flew to Chile and met us there. Apparently, Betsy tripped over a hatch as we were departing this morning and - brace yourself for this, Sally - broke her ankle! I have only about third
-hand information about this, but the story I heard is that they initially weren't sure if it was broken or simply sprained. If it had been badly broken, to the point of being obvious, I think we would have returned immediately. In any case, off she went to the hospital for x rays. (We do have some kind of x ray equipment on the ship, so I don't know why that wasn't sufficient.)
"At daily quarters, about 1:00, they announced we might be in Valpo overnight. Which presents another problem. The ship can't make water while in port since it doesn't run the engines hard enough. The tanks are good for 3 days, but not much more. They hadn't had time to start getting water going before we were back in port - with very little water. So we were all asked to super-conserve and, if possible, not shower. If we were to stay overnight, we might actually take the ship out to sea just to run the water generator.
"And to top it off, I found out later in the afternoon that another casualty had gone in with them. Our Instructional Technology guy - the guy who's always seasick and never seems to have email running properly - possibly had a broken hand.
"Anyway, I heard an announcement about 4:00 for the crew that handles the launch, so I stuck my head out. The IT guy, Vance, came off the launch with his arm in a sling, but no Betsy. We raised anchor shortly thereafter and are now headed out at quite a fast clip - hardly circling the harbor while making water - so I presume Betsy has been left mending in a Chilean hospital and will have to be flown back home whenever they're able to move her. I'll presumably find out more at dinner, which is where I'm now heading."
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