Sailing- Potential Cause for PN

[emilyb]

Hello! Just wanted to share my story, and was wondering if there were any of you out there who had a similar experience to mine... if so, hopefully we can spread the world throughout the sailing community to try to prevent any more of us getting injured like this.
I
was a crew mostly in 420s, club and international, since I was 13 years old. I continued racing year round in those and several other dinghies on the side until I was 17 years old (I’d be happy to share more details about my career if anyone would like), at which point my PN became so bad that I could barely walk. I had to stop for two seasons, after which I tried my hand at skippering- the pain with hiking was, however, so bad that I had to be taken off the water and have not been able to sail since then.

What multiple doctors seem to postulate triggered my pain were the trapeze harnesses, which were incredibly painful to even wear walking around the docks. I have mostly used harnesses from the companies Gill and Harken. Has any other sailor experienced this, either dinghy or offshore?

Thanks for your time, lets hope we all get healthy and someday back on the water!
Best, Emily

[calluna]

This brings back memories!

I too used to sail competitively, that's 40 years ago now, and I too used to sail 420's. I used to dislike wearing the trapeze harnesses, I found them uncomfortable whilst walking around and whilst sitting, although fine whilst actually trapezing - but I didn't crew very often (too light), usually I was at the helm, so it wasn't much of an issue for me.

I cannot remember the make of harness at all, sorry.

I am back on the water now in a manner of speaking, we have a narrowboat - rather more sedate!