Sewing kit saves sailor Gary

A Scottish sailor who was badly injured when his boat capsized has had his life saved by his wife - with her sewing kit. Gary Blackwood, 52, gashed his head during a storm in the South Pacific on a voyage from New Zealand to Fiji. But with medical help hundreds of miles away, it was down to his wife Lisa to stitch him up with the only tools available - a needle and thread from her sewing kit. Mrs Blackwood, 35, said the wound ran from his forehead to the back of his skull and it needed 23 stitches to stanch the blood. She has no medical or first aid experience, and said: "My mum would be proud because I don't even knit or sew". She added that "he was probably in a bit of shock anyway so he might have not felt it...there was no anaesthetic, no nothing." ...more