“Quick”, I cried to Howard, “Bring me a pillow!”

I put it under my moaning husband’s head. He was bleeding profusely from a cut in his head and in a lot of pain, although still coherent.

We had been  with Howard and Jill who were on holiday from London, taking them  around the Bay of Islands in Northern New Zealand in our sailing yacht. On the trip back to the mooring  Keith let Howard steer  the yacht while sailing.

Heading up the channel, the wind was coming directly behind us. The sails were set to the  “goose-winging” position with both sails on different sides of the yacht. It was tricky keeping the wind full in the sails while doing this and Howard accidentally let the wind out of one of the sails. It then swung sharply across  the cockpit track taking the halyard with it. This caught Keith on the side of the head throwing him sharply onto the  gunwales .

Jill and I were inside packing things ready to go ashore, and  didn’t see what happened. Hearing Howard call out, I rushed outside thinking that the boom had caught Keith on the head, which is always a danger. But Keith was able to tell me what had happened and then said to  pull the sails down, and motor in to the mooring. I did this while Howard kept steering towards the mooring. My mind was racing ahead. What should we do first?

The radio wasn’t working, so there was no point in wasting time there. Completely forgetting that it was a Friday and a working day, I sent Howard ashore to the end house in the bay with a message to ring Colin who lived up the hill. The time was 4.30 p.m. He would have been home on a Saturday (which I thought it was), but the man in the house knew quite well that it was Friday and that Colin would be at work.  So he sent Howard back to tell me this.

Just as Howard turned to go down the path a car pulled up at the gate, and there was Colin!  What a miracle this was! He was the only one in the area who we knew could help us, and he hurriedly came out to the yacht with Howard to see what the problem was. By this time, Keith wasn’t with it and the pillow was saturated with blood. Colin grasped the situation immediately and called the coastguard from his own yacht , asking that an ambulance be sent  to the bay straight away.

The ambulance finally arrived, with two women manning it. My heart sank. How ever would we get Keith ashore and into it like he was? The tide was now high, and Colin took our yacht in closer to the ramp, with only a short distance to row ashore. Somehow we manhandled Keith’s limp body into the dinghy and then ashore into the ambulance .  I went with Keith while Colin put the yacht away.

I wasn’t sure whether Keith would come through or not. A doctor to met us on the road, and put some plasma into him to keep him going. This helped somewhat, and he started talking a lot of nonsense! At the hospital, nurses met us at the door and gave Keith a blood transfusion, which revived him immediately. He couldn’t see why he shouldn’t be able to go home with the rest of us!!  Howard had followed the ambulance to the hospital in our car, and we drove home marvelling at the way things had worked out.

Later we asked Colin why he had been at the bay when we needed him. He said it had been a slack day at the office and he thought he would go home early and take some money he owed to the man at the end house. He would have left the office at the very time that Keith had been hit! It amazed us how God used  circumstances so that even a non-Christian man  worked His purposes for us. Colin was truly an angel in disguise whether he knew it or not!!

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