June 24, 2013.

So I got this really bitchin' cut the other day. I'm pretty sure its going to leave a fabulous scar.

Since everybody knows that chicks dig scars there's that as an upside. So how did you get this grand cut you ask.

I could tell a splendid tale of the Bengal Tiger run amok in Eastport but I’m pretty sure that would have made the papers.

Or there might be the story about one of the Great Whites of the Chesapeake mistaking me for a local Manatee as I enjoyed my evening swim.

While I’m sure I could spin a convincing yarn either way those stories might be expected in the blog nearer the beginning of April rather than now.

A more realistic and believable culprit that is the bane of many a nautical repair person, the hose clamp. Hose clamps can be vicious little bastards that take great joy in ripping chunks of flesh from the unsuspecting. You can almost hear them laugh as they grab the back of your shirt and slowly tear the material while you attempt to twist away and free yourself without getting sliced. As much as I’d like to see a hose clamp tried and convicted for this assault, I cannot press those charges. For they were not involved in this violation of my flesh.

The perpetrator was one of the hose clamps monstrous stainless steel cousins. Thats right, the cotter pin. I know, I couldn't believe it either.

They're so simple, so unassuming but evidently f'ing evil. I always thought you shoved them through a hole, twisted them like a pretzel and they just sat there. Now I realize they're actually just lurking, waiting for an unsuspecting dunderhead to come along and get careless.

Hello, my name is Bill and I'm a dunderhead. I had my arm wrapped around a mast and I thought to myself “this really hurts more than it ought to”. So I withdrew my arm but the cotter pin I was impaled on decided not to let go. I pulled, it sliced, I tugged, it tore. It was a battle of wills but luckily I ran out of arm to shred. So it stands Cotter Pin 1 – Bill 0. But I did get this chick magnet....