Things happen aboard fishing boats, and some make for quite the story. Here’s a story to back up that statement.

My daughter Capt. Tiffany Vague and I worked together for many years on our charterboat WaveWalker. Many of our charter trips were for fishing, and this one ended memorably.

Fishing that day was awesome, and all anglers onboard caught their legal limits of fish.

We were on our way back in, cruising easily up the coast toward Santa Barbara Harbor, with all passengers daydreaming about their upcoming fresh fish dinners.

Capt. Tiffany was knee deep in fish, filleting them expertly and quickly. One passenger thought he could do it faster, and I told him, “If you think you can do it faster and maintain her clean fillets without wasting any meat, you can race her for pink slips.” He sat back down quietly.

Among the fish were several sculpin, also known as California Scorpionfish. They earn that name because they have toxins on their fin spikes and if stuck, can cause very rapid swelling and nausea.

While holding the sharp fillet knife in her right hand, Capt. Tiffany picked up a sculpin with her left hand. Just as she was putting it on the fillet board it flopped wildly, put up its spines defensively and deeply impaled Tiffany in two fingers.

One of those fingers was her ring finger which began swelling up surprisingly rapidly. It swelled up around her wedding ring, both above and below the ring and hurt like the dickens.

In alarming pain, she called me to come down from the bridge and save the moment. As we watched the swelling increase, the unyielding ring caused her immense pain.

We both recognized that the only solution was to remove the ring, and there was no way that ring was going to slide off her finger which was turning purple. For her safety, the ring had to go.

There I was, with passengers gathered all around to watch, using my side cutters to unceremoniously cut through the wedding ring and then bend it open.

The relief was immediate and the pain became manageable. Tiffany rinsed her hand in the bait tank because salt water heals things right up.

Capt. Tiffany still has that wedding ring saved, and we look at it once in a while to relive the memory. Fortunately, she still has the finger to put a new wedding ring on. Same husband, just a new ring.