The Heart of the Matter
By Antonia Small, RYT E-500, Maine AgrAbility, November 2024.
Years ago, I stood in the kitchen of a Monhegan lobsterman, admiring his new son. His nephews, ages 4 and 2, were visiting. Someone made the comment to the older boys that it would be their responsibility to show the newborn “the ropes.”
Our adult brains moved on, but soon after the 2 year-old returned with a piece of line he’d found and shoved it in the baby’s face.…”What’s he doing?”
“OH! The ropes!”
This year I renewed my CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation)/AED (Automated External Defibrillator) certification with Fishing Partnerships Support Services (FPSS) during their First Aid training in Boothbay – taught by a team that knows the sea, fishing, and emergency procedures. I’d only ever attended basic first aid training before, but I’d done man-overboard drills at sea. This was like a mashup of first aid for wilderness first responders and a reminder of those overboard drills.
Good people teaching the ropes.
For my other line of work, I took a class where we learned about spiral lines of connective tissue in the body. We were shown a video of a doctor who discovered how the heart is constructed: 25 years of research revealed the heart was a tube of tissue, twisted and folded in on itself, a double helical structure.
I announced to my next yoga class that the heart was like a knotted rope, only to have the pastor’s wife say: “oh, yes, that’s how you pickle deer hearts: you unfold the rope.”
I bet you wish the doctors talked to the hunters more often too.
When we head to sea for a day, a week, or more, we are moving away from EMTs and medical support we take for granted on land. At sea, being equipped to handle boat emergencies may be more common than medical emergencies. Nonetheless, your life, or life of a crew mate, may be saved knowing the ropes of CPR.
I’ve known folks who made the sea their final resting place, not by choice. In most cases, CPR, or any other of the life-saving skills of First Aid, wouldn’t have made the difference. Mariners live with a closer familiarity to death than many, however, that also cultivates a fatalism that may leave too much room for a tragedy we could prevent.
Without intervention, your chances of surviving sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) decrease 7 -10 % with each passing minute. CPR techniques have been simplified and AEDs are now something a captain might choose to make a priority onboard. Making sure at least one vessel has an AED
when you head out could be a simple collective solution to costs, as well as keeping a team of first responders nearby.
We can’t control what will happen on the water, but we can control how to respond to emergencies. These classes are offered free of charge from Maine to North Carolina, October to June. Safety and Survival, Vessel Stability, and Drill Conductor classes are also offered.
Their schedule is posted on their website: Fishing Partnership
Most of what we learn on boats becomes second nature, when we do it every day. When did you start learning the ropes? Have you ever used CPR to save a life? Being vulnerable at sea is not a mindset we’re comfortable with, but who said this would be easy?
Train to go (learn the ropes). Train to come home (learn First Aid).