Tattoo You: The Maiden Voyage

Turns out that the wheel nut on an Edson steering wheel sits pubic-bone-high off the cockpit floor. Not five minutes into the maiden voyage, I struck a shale ledge that stopped us short and threw me forward. Now I have "EDSON" etched in my bone (see schematic below), on an ever-changing background of hues of black, green, and blue.

About that ledge...
There we--John (Jack the Knife) Post, John (Sweeney) Sweeney, Tina (Tina) Chase, and I (mud)  were on the maiden voyage. John maneuvered us out of the slip, then handed me the helm. Not having looked at a chart, I asked for navigational instructions, as in "can I go there?". Hearing an affirmative, I continued on my merry (actually, joyous) way, till, not a moment later, we stopped very suddenly. Big thud. Not like the thud you hear on the Chesapeake Bay when you ground out in mud, and not like a breaking-up sort of thud when you hit a rock (which I've never done, so I don't actually know what that thud sounds like), but more like a thud you might hear if you hit a stump (or a whale).
There was no sound of water charging in to take the cabin, and the engine was still alive, so we motored out to more open water where the wind rose from about 8 to 15 knots, and Flyer rose to the occasion. My smile was ungovernable; I had no control of it. Flyer sailed beautifully on all points of sail. I thought to myself, "what a good idea it is to own such an awesome boat"...till I discovered we were taking on water VERY slowly. I kept a log of the water depth in the bilge all night. I figured about a half inch every 4 hours or so.
In the morning I bit the bullet and had the boat hauled for inspection. Remember that ungovernable smile? Well you can kiss that good-buy. The bottom of the keel suffered only cosmetic damage, but water was draining from the keel seam at the forward end, and the hull showed signs of bowing at the aft end of the keel. Everyone at Stanley's Boat Yard was extremely sympathetic. They told me flat out that the Barrington Yacht Club was supposed to have planted their marker, which, by the way, says "LEDGE" on it, on the very spot I hit. Evidently the yacht club missed their April 1 due date.
Now I'm waiting for the hull to dry so that the guys in the yard can grind back the keel and hull and figure out what's what. Evidently the damage is not as bad as was first thought thanks to the quality of the build. Never-the-less, I've been nauseous ever since seeing Flyer back on the hard.
More to precede, and more to follow...