December 27, 2010
As captain of M/Y Pegasus, Charles Dugas-Standish and his crew occasionally skied behind the WaveRunner between charters in the Caribbean. That was, until Dugas-Standish wiped out while slaloming and hit his face into the tip of his ski.
The ensuing 12 hours changed the way Dugas-Standish works as a megayacht captain.
In the subsequent eight years, 46-year-old Dugas-Standish has not wanted to talk much about the accident that landed him in a hospital on St. Martin, had him airlifted to Florida and required more than a year of recovery. But now he realizes that his experience can help other crew be better prepared for emergencies.
As a kid in Houston, Dugas-Standish was drawn to the water; so much so that he eventually moved to California to work as a free diver and a commercial diver. He started in yachting in 1989.
“I’ve done it my whole life,” Dugas-Standish said of waterskiing. “It was a freak fall. Maybe it was late, I was tired, my form was poor. I was probably going too fast.”
When he hit the water that day, he knew instantly it was bad.
“I had broken my nose a couple of times before, so I knew.”
He got his head out of the water to signal to the bosun who had been driving the WaveRunner. The bosun raced back, scooped the captain out of the water and drove him to the beach. Once onshore, Dugas-Standish saw the crystal white beach change color.
“I was painting red,” he said, using a slang term he learned as an emergency medical personnel and a water safety law enforcement officer in his 20s. The injury had hit an artery.
“I couldn’t see out of one eye, but I was conscious,” Dugas-Standish said.
And he was determined to stay that way.
Someone gave him ice for the wound, which helped constrict the bleeding, and an ambulance arrived in about 10 minutes, giving him a crucial IV. Dugas-Standish was in pain, but he repeatedly refused medication.
“It was painful, but it was a meaningful pain,” he said. “I was in an environment I didn’t trust and I didn’t want to be doped up.”
Dugas-Standish was taken to a hospital on the French side of the island, and immediately encountered the first of several problems that would teach him an important yachting lesson.
“There was a big barrier, language,” he said. “The doctor wanted me to go to the hospital in Guadeloupe, so he delayed cleaning and sewing the wound. I had no one to talk to, no one to help.”
Pegasus was contracted with a remote medical assistance provider, but no one on the crew, including Dugas-Standish, realized it could have provided a translator.
Captain kept his coolMeanwhile, the bosun took the WaveRunner back to the yacht. He walked to the crew mess dripping saltwater and blood, but was unable to speak, most likely from shock, Dugas-Standish said.
The engineer shook the bosun until he recovered to explain what had happened. The crew then loaded in the car to look for their captain.
Dugas-Standish said the island was in the midst of closing down the old hospital to open a new one and he was caught in the transition. Equipment and supplies were not available and he was wet, sandy and without blankets.
By the time his crew found him 90 minutes later, Dugas-Standish still had not received medication or treatment because of the language barrier. A French-speaking crew member stepped in to get things moving and determine the next step. Dugas-Standish wanted to fly home to the United States, but the doctor wanted to send him to Guadaloupe.
The crew fought to fulfill their captain’s request.
Again, no one realized the yacht’s contract with the remote medical assistance provider could have done it all for them.
Meanwhile, Dugas-Standish told jokes to equalize the drama.
“I had to,” he said. “The crew would come in and turn white when they saw me. Some of them threw up. The hospital just put little pieces of gauze over it.”
The lessons came hard that day, and the next one was a biggie. Medical evacuations require a receiving hospital before moving a patient.
“They won’t let you into the U.S. with an injury and no place to go,” Dugas-Standish said.
It was also not the time to learn that, once approved, medevacs require pre-payment before the plane will take off.
Eventually, Broward General Medical Center in Ft. Lauderdale approved Dugas-Standish’s arrival, and the Pegasus crew arranged for a friend to go to the hospital with a credit card.
Again, the yacht’s coverage would have made the arrangements for them, had they known how to use it. The medevac, the payment and even French translation services, were all covered by services the yacht already had in place.
Without this knowledge, his departure and treatment were significantly delayed, Dugas-Standish said. Finally, half a day later, he was on his way to Florida.
“Once I knew I was getting help, once I knew I was going to a hospital in the states, I called my wife and got morphine.”
'Like a bomb exploded in there'It was three days after the accident before he had surgery, which required 47 screws, numerous pieces of metal and a section from his stomach. There are six sinus cavities in the human head, Dugas-Standish said, and he had destroyed one in the accident. He didn’t realize until he saw the ski that his face had dented the tip.
“It was like a bomb exploded in there,” Dugas-Standish said. “The bone was missing.”
Surgeons can’t just seal internal cavities because they’re hollow.
“They took fat out of my stomach, cleaned it up and laid the existing bone on the blubber,” he said. “Then, they screwed it down.”
The captain spent four days in the hospital and stayed with a friend for 30 days of recovery. He was bedridden with only brief stints of walking and he was far from his Seattle home.
Twelve months later, doctors again operated to reshape the sinus cavity they had rebuilt.
Today, Dugas-Standish works hard to ensure his crew are prepared for just about anything.
He is famous in yachting circles for buying Annie, the practice dummy, and anything medical he can get, including CPR equipment and defibrillators.
He’s also serious about medical training with crew.
“Our guests range from 1 year old to 72,” he said. “We have to be ready.”
Dugas-Standish encourages crew to research their yacht’s insurance policies to understand the coverage and to understand that health insurance is separate from hull insurance.
He recommends that all yachts purchase a medical service such as MedAire or OnCall International for remote assistance and evacuations. But even more importantly, he said, is knowing how to use it.
“For crew, they have to train,” he said. “Am I ready for an accident? Do I know the local resources? How would we evacuate? Is the equipment working? Do I know how to use it?”
Take backboards as an example, he said. Not everyone knows exactly how to use one.
“It’s not like people don’t train, they do train, for fire, STCW. You just have to throw in more medical,” Dugas-Standish said. “I know why now, I have firsthand knowledge.
“Now, when I’m training crew, I say ‘This is real, you have to pay attention.’”
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