Com'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Never owned up to this before, so I'm expecting a flaming from the YM fraternity.

Missing the "le bouc" rock off brittany by inches!!

We had passed through the Chenal du Four heading towards Douarnnez. The boat was on autopilot. I was doing the washing-up, there was some confusion as to who exactly was on lookout, my father joined me to do the drying up, whilst SWMBO was reading a book in the cockpit (only 3 of us).

Suddenly heard a scream for SWMBO as she darted for the autopilot to turn it off. She grabbed the wheel as I darted up to see us picked up by a wave that was breaking over le Bouc. The rock was literally six feet to starboard as SWMBO had the wheel hard to port. To this day I don't how the keel didn't strike the rock. I can only presume that the surge took us over. There were some rather shocked lobster fisherman about 50 yards away who couldn't believe they didn't have a rescue on their hands.

Just another reminder for the skipper to always verbally ask who is on lookout and double check the chart, everytime time they go below for an errand.

(For those that don't know Le Bouc it is a few miles off the Crozon Peninsula in the path of several GPS tracks). I have a photo taken when we had gathered our nerves together 5 minutes later. Sends a shiver down my spine everytime I look at it.
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Hello darling, haven't heard from you for ages...trust all is well and that you are getting ever more important in that Volvo thingie! LOL x
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Retail therapy for some boys toys!! Really can't make my mind up but I am sure that when I find the right one I will know, if I don't then there are loads of others to sail on till the right Doris comes along!
xx
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Weekend before last coming into Littlehampton at about 10pm, bit choppy but the visibility was good and I could see the lights of the town fine but not the red flasher at the end of the breakwater (vis. 6miles?) or the sectored lighthouse on the starboard side. Lots of town lights though.

I very gingerly made my way towards the town lights and the GPS told me I was on the right bearing etc. but nothing to see at all. As depth dropped I had visions of going up onto Worthing beach having got something ludicrously wrong somewhere. A small green flasher suddenly detached itself from the clutter of town lights about 20 feet away to my right, which made me turn my head very gingerly to the left because if a starboard channel marker was there, then the breakwater on the port side of the channel must be...right next to me and completely unlit. It was.

Serves me right for not listening to CG notices etc. and the harbourmaster told me the next morning that a ship had gone into the breakwater and broken the light about a month before and it was all going to take a while to sort out.

He also said it wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't had an electrical fault with the light house a while before and had to leave it with fixed yellow/white (which blended in very neatly with the sea front lights).

Doh!
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Lurching around on a pitching foredeck trying to retrieve a blown spinnaker from the water, with a steady 6 gusting 7, very bumpy sea and lots of water, still doing 6knots throught the water while trying to sail slowly. One of those jobs where you have no choice but to just get on with it. I now have 2 grey hairs, but if I cut my hair short enough, nobody notices.
 
Not likely!

She's still on the mooring!

Only when I have stopped tempting Providence for the year will I own up, lest a more alarming experience awaits me!
 
For some strange reason I have a liking for Ryde Sands !!

In all the years of traipsing round Solent - I have avoided the dreaded Ryde Sands ... till 2005.

Two times back to uk, two times out sailing ..... two times BONK BONK BONK onto Ryde Sands ......

What the *&^%$((*& is it with Ryde Sands this year ????
 
Re: For some strange reason I have a liking for Ryde Sands !!

They probably moved it /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I used to run aground all the time on the east coast, in the Solent it hardly ever happens. These days it is usually in the dinghy, trying to get up Mill Rythe to the yard at 4 1/2 hours after HW.
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Reversing out of a marina berth with SWMBO at the helm and two friends in the cockpit .....

I gave the order to apply plenty of reverse and have the helm hard over helping the propwalk to do the equivalent of a three point turn. Plenty of room - should be no trouble..... Gave the order to apply opposite lock (Tiller steering) and to put her into forward - to be told "I CAN'T MOVE IT!"

SWMBO was now stuck behind the tiller and our quarter was heading straight for the midships of a rather nice new bavaria at an ever increasing speed ( two guests appeared to be ablivious of the situation) I made it from Stem to Stern at olympic sprinter speed moving the throttle from full reverse to full forward in passing and putting the helm hard over to have the boat grind to a halt a knats whiskers away from the Bavaria.

Whatever about gray hairs, as I dived accross one of the comings I hit it fairly hard with my shin and I lost the feeling along the front of my shin for about four months!

Another grey hair moment involved my jeep, a slipway, an incoming tide and "Where have the B****Y keys gone????

Just before the water was about to flow into the exhaust the keys fell into my boots having gone through a hole in my waterproofs and been trapped between the waterproofs and my trousers!
 
Meddi moor .... Tallinn

Boat bow lines to dock, stern line to aft buoy ....

Start outboard .... start to go astern out ... tiller was let go by someone we shall not name ... slams hard up against my knee !!! Boy does that hurt ... off course by now boat is moving albeit slowly - but force on the rudder is enough !!! When you are pinned against the cockpit bench with a tiller trying to slice your leg in half, outboard control is halfway down the arse of the boat - it gets a bit difficult to give sensible order !!
 
Re: Not likely!

You coward, com'on own up. I don't believe for one minute that you've sat on your mooring all season and had no "Grey Hair moments" /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

BTW, from my original post, I went down to the club today and checked on the two Twisters I took out and whilst one was fine the other had settled down so that one single prop was taking all the weight - I never realised that a Twister could take the a 2.5" deflection into the hull with out causing damage. I didn't notice that the owner had placed a scaffold plank under the keel supported by blocks at either end with nothing under the centre of the keel - geezs more grey hair /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I wipped up and got the machine (quick, smart) and re-set him so that he's now safe for the winter.

Over the next 4 weeks I expect to move some 2000 tons of boats from the water to their winter storage positions and that is guaranteed to give me more "grey hairs" than I care to think of!! and on top of that I will be instructing on a couple of RYA power boat courses which always gives me grey hairs /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif
 
Owning up

The worst moment so far this season was undoubtedly the death of the old engine.

Now, I admit that I had never shown it sufficient respect, having started sailing with two engineless cruisers and then carried on with one with a Stuart Turner (much the same thing!) I have never developed the sense of engine worship that many people seem to have.

It got its own back.

It chose to die just as we, with wife and two small children aboard, were approaching the last bend in the river before the Bar, early on a Spring ebb, with a fluky fair wind which would become a dead beat over the last stretch to the bar...

...we spent a hideously uncomfortable night, at anchor in the fairway in a two knot tide and lousy holding, and accepted a tow back to the mooring next day.

I planned to make a mooring weight out of it, but someone actually wanted it.

I have been being much nicer to its sucessor...
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Being hammered by a Harmatten for two days, no engine to help. Being mauled by a northerly whilst trying to cross the Gulf Stream, again two days. Punched in the guts far too many times by a Levanter whilst trying to get to Gib. All this in a 30 twin keeler!
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

Picking up pile moorings..... With GL arriving late in the season and only piles being available, every attempt to pick up was a gut in mouth job....Hair's not grey, but there's not much of it left...
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

What hair?

Glad I was not aboard a brand new HR36 when its gearbox jammed in forward coming into Gosport Marina - with its owner dancing an interesting variant of the Hornpipe in the cockpit, to the rythm of crunching GRP....

(last years HR's had a problem with a faulty batch of gearboxes - not nice!)
 
Re: Com\'on, lets own up to those grey hair moments this season!!

My first dutch lock with suicidal dutch yotties all pushing and shoving to be the 1st one out of the lock and nearly pranging into us and each other /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gifnot surprisenly the skipper decided to use the commercial locks (with well behaved commercial traffic)after that little aventure.
The other one was taking part the the parade of sail up the Ij for the last Sail Amsterdam with yet more dutch with death wishes flitting in and out of the convoy which at one point pushed us into the path of the Russian tall ship Mir /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif(who can travel faster at 1/2 speed then we can at full). They didnt seem to think that 37 tons of wood would hurt their boat just as much as several 100 tons of steel plate!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Other threads that may be of interest

Baggywrinkle
Test run of the Lithium system that has been sitting in my cellar for most of this year.
Replies
16
Views
638
Baggywrinkle
Baggywrinkle
stu9000
Which route to Vlissingen?
Replies
11
Views
364
All_at_Sea
A

Share this page

Top