Safety - Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor's Guide to the Coconut Milk Run - page 88

Family Health in the Pacific
Both our sailing trips have been magical times that we wouldn't trade for anything - not
just for the travel and the sailing, but most of all for the family time we have enjoyed.
Many cruising families we met along the way agree. It's too bad the countless happy stories
don't get the same kind of attention that the few negative ones do. In this chapter, we offer
an example of how easily a potentially serious child's health issue was resolved by the
cruising community in the Pacific.
We were anchored off the island of Taveuni in Fiji along with friends on another boat who
sailed from Europe with their two young sons, ages four and seven at that time. One morn-
ing, their son Nicolas awoke with badly swollen tonsils. Although the family had a variety
of medicines aboard, they were dismayed when they read the fine print of the children's an-
tibiotic their pediatrician gave them to take aboard. It listed swollen tonsils as one of the
few ailments that antibiotic was not recommended for. Since they knew we also carry chil-
dren's medication, they called us on the VHF. Happily, our children's antibiotic did cover
tonsil infections, so all we had to do was row it over to them. Easy.
Meanwhile, another boat in the same anchorage had listened in to our VHF conversation.
They knew of a retired doctor aboard yet another vessel in an anchorage a few miles away.
Although the doctor wasn't listening to the VHF at that time, other boats nearby were.
Within an hour, the doctor had been found and put in touch with the parents. She assured
them that the antibiotic we provided was fine. The doctor also recommended that the fam-
ily not set off for the remote Lau group as planned, in the small chance that the infection
became acute. Thus the parents were able to treat their child and rest easy, not only in the
knowledge that a doctor was nearby, but also that staying back was the right thing to do. In
the end, they had a lovely time cruising islands they had all to themselves because the bulk
of the fleet had gone on to the Lau group.
Not a very spectacular story, but it illustrates several important things. First, a well-stocked
medical kit is a must, and attention must be paid to details such as an antibiotic's spectrum
of coverage. Second, there's a vast pool of resources within the Pacific cruising commu-
nity. There are a huge number of boats out there (we rarely had an anchorage to ourselves),
and everybody gets to know just about everybody, if not directly then in the second degree.
Third, with communications systems like VHF and SSB radio, you're never alone. (We be-
lieve an SSB is an absolute must despite the cost; with it we were able to have twice daily