I can tell you the story of my husband. He was out on the
boat while I went horseback riding. It was a breezy day and as I was JUST about to get on the horse (like literally had my foot in the stirrup) my
phone rings. "Honey, I have a
medical emergency. I need you to come to the
boat." I asked what happened and it seems that with the
wind, he had a hard time getting the
mooring by himself and he hurt his toe. "There is stuff hanging out of it." I asked if he thought he'd need stitches and he said yes. So off the horse, untacked him and off I went in my dirty riding clothes to the boat. I got there and saw he only had one pennant from the
mooring to the boat so I quickly got the other one and set the boat on the mooring properly, and then I went downstairs.
Hubby was laying on our
bed as pale as pale could be. I looked at his foot and realized the "stuff hanging out" was his bone. He had pulled the baby toe on his left foot completely off the bone like pulling a corndog off the stick. Hubby gets woozy at the sight of blood and I had to take charge. I wrapped up his foot with gauze pads and bandages and got him up, called the launch and off to the hospital we went. Fortunately, our dear friend who is an orthopedist was there and he was able to put the toe back together again in surgery and hubby was on crutches for 6 weeks.
So the story goes that he tried to drive up to the mooring and tried to run forward to grab it but hit his toe on the chainplate/shrouds when he ran forward. He knew something bad happened but he still tried to grab the mooring but couldn't so he had to walk back to the
wheel (we have a
Catalina 42) and steer back around to the mooring to try again. This second pass failed as well so he had to run back to the
wheel and try one more time. This time he JUST got the pickup stick and manhandled the boat in enough to get the pennant on the one cleat and left it then went downstairs to see what happened - and almost passed out when he saw it. That was when I got the call. And yes, he has learned now that he is to always wear shoes on the boat.
Does your finger feel better? Keep an eye on it. It can easily get infected and you might need antibiotics. Soaking it is a really good idea and see if you can get it open enough to get that
salt in there to clean it out.