Boy was that an unfortunate event. I'm interested in what cut resistant gloves would do to help prevent this kind of injury. I probably need to re-read the report but I wasn't clear with whether or not the glove fingers stayed attached with the glove and/or if the tips of his fingers were recoverable - or if the cut resistant gloves would just keep the appendages in a recoverable state. I'm assuming that the tips of the fingers and the tips of the gloves were lost? Following Bora on facebook, there doesn't appear to have been any attempt to reattach anything (maybe it wasn't possible given the circumstances...I'm no Dr.). This injury seems more like the result of extreme compression on the fingers. The traveler line is so thick at the point we use it, I can't imagine it making a cutting action like a sharp device that cut resistant gloves provide some protection from. I'm not clear how cut resistant gloves would actually help.

We all wrap lines on hands - I don't think I could ever get away from that. 17knots of boat speed isn't that dramatic either for a high performance catamaran - even non-foilers.

What about a mechanical fuse (or pair of fuses -with one in each end of the split tail where it connects to the boat) in the traveler line? A short little coupling that connects an eye splice to the hardpoint on the boat that is designed to break when a certain amount of force is created? This wouldn't be some kind of new technology - It would take a little testing and some forethought with regards to corrosion - but should be possible with a little material science and research. From a loading standpoint, there should be a pretty big line-tension window between how hard you can physically pull the traveler line and how much tension starts to cause this kind of damage to your hands....it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a fuse that limits the load to somewhere in between those two points.