A gal in my sailing club tells about the time, after several weekends of racing where she got some typical scrapes and bruises, she returned to her locker at her health club to find a brochure stuck in the door for a spouse-abuse shelter, with a hand-written note "Please call these people. They CAN help you!"
Awhile back when I first took the wings of my 18 I left the pin-down brackets (that are attached to the beam to hull bolts) on so I could put the wings back on quickly. My wife and are were out for sail, she's on the wire, the boat takes a wave and she loses her footing, rotating forward and slamming her upper thigh/hip into the end of the forward beam where the wing bracket was. Left the nastiest multi-colored bruise all up and down her hip and thigh that took a long time to go away. After that I was always worried that she'd have a doctor appointment or something and somebody would notify the authorities for a spouse abuse case... I could just hear the conversation - "it happened sailing", "sure, that's ok, we can still help..."
