Daft thing you've done ---- while sailing / on boat !

Probably the most comic for the observer at the time what when I put my back out reaching down for the throttle, while manoeuvring in patch black near a bridge and a rather dense and thorny tree. Unable to do much with the tiller I went backwards into said tree, followed by the bridge. The following 2 weeks of sciatica sleep was less fun.
 
Going downwind from Yarmouth (IOW) home to Hamble in 25 knot SW wind, doing about 12 knots or so and setting up for a gybe off Gurnard.
Just about ready and my partner/crew's hat blew off forward along the coachroof which has two winches each side of bridgedeck.

Without thinking (I'm on the tiller - 12M boat) I dived forward and stretched out one arm to catch it, bearing away slightly (not noticing) with the tiller as I went, we then gybed with my forearm between the two starboard winches, the bridgedeck traveller slammed across to starboard and hit my upper arm resulting in this:

elbow.jpg
Future note to self, it's only a hat... apparently the ball bit is supposed to be in the socket bit :eek:
 
Not only is that a dislocation but also an orthopaedic emergency. The artery gets stretched over the anterior surface of the humerus and can lead to loss of blood supply to the forearm and hand.
 
As a newly fledged keelboat instructor, I was just coming back to the moorings in Baltimore at the end of the morning session, to go back to base for lunch. This was on a 5.7m (19ft) dayboat. It was my job, as I only had one trainee on board, to come alongside the moored club punt and use it to ferry instructors and trainees ashore from the other boats also returning to moorings.
So we came alongside and rafted up with no incident. The practice was, after firing up the outboard, to take the second mooring strop onto the bow cleat of the 5.70, drop the strop off the punt, release the springs securing the two boats together and motor away, which I did (or so I thought) with gusto, but before we had covered about a dozen yards we came to a dead stop, with the bow of the boat deflecting through about 90 degrees like the head of a lassooed calf. It took a few seconds to realise that, of course the punt was still attached to the mooring, while the dayboat was floating free, and in a Force 4 with a rising tide, was heading rapidly towards the nearby rocks!
Fortunately I managed to retrieve it in time, with no audience except the solitary trainee, who loyally kept his silence!
 
Post #24 reminds me ....



There is the old pontoon I had with my weekender alongside and main boat stern to at the end. The Weekender was moved and sat against the mud bank ....
I'm sitting on the boat enjoying a can ... suns shining ... gentle cool breeze ... why not - lets go on the river ...

Let go lines ... engine ahead .... all comes to a stop about 10m .....

I've pulled the end half of pontoon into water ... one line and electric cable still fastened !!
 
1) One someone else's boat, heading back to Ilfracombe on a compass course on an extremely hazy sunny day after a long liquid lunch at the Marisco Tavern on Lundy, thinking: "Why can I see the Welsh coast as well as the Devon coast. Then it clicked - I was well into Bideford Bay - compass was way out. Another mile and we'd have been ashore on Bideford bar.

2) Skippering a sailing school boat, one of the clients on board was clearly already a pretty good helmsman, keeping a lovely "groove" to windward. He hadn't told me he was near blind at distance. Came up out of the hatch after a look at the chart and glanced round, as you do, about ten feet from hitting a large steel buoy head-on. Grabbed tiller, had to actually S to miss it, first with the bow then the stern.

Plenty more .......
 
James_Calvert said:
The problem is deciding which one to confess to ... from among the ones involving:

dinghy painters... ?

collisions with navigational marks... (y)

going aground... (y)

flooding the boat... ?

running out of fuel... (y)

mid-passage promises of divorce...?

getting caught by pot lines... (y)

ditto own mooring lines... (y)

navigation... (y)
Click to expand...
My biggest Nav error was exiting Honfleur at night, totally loosing my orientation and bumping into the South river side training wall!
Most of the others are normal sailing hazards!
 
Hacker said:
Not only is that a dislocation but also an orthopaedic emergency. The artery gets stretched over the anterior surface of the humerus and can lead to loss of blood supply to the forearm and hand.
Click to expand...

We had RIB's from son in law UKSA, Hamble rescue and the Cowes RNLI out in no time thankfully, not been injured much in my life but this was painful beyond belief. Ambulance waiting at Trinity pier then off to St Marys for morphine...
 
My first boat of my own was a 26 foot trailer sailer. I took her for a shake down trip to Windermere with a mate of mine, a Commercial Airline Pilot and Senior Instructor.

First day went like this:

1) Took a wrong turn towing her to the marina into a cul de sac. Toyota Amazon plus trailer was about 50 feet long and it took over an hour to back out
2) Launched her and outboard engine cut out at low revs, despite just being serviced, in a crowded Marina full of very large and expensive “gin palaces”.
3) Started engine but only ran at medium to high revs without stalling so I decided to get out onto the lake to sort it out as moving to the dock was not possible at speed. Left the marina and there were lots of boats on swing moorings. Spotted a gap and went through a group of empty red mooring buoys. Two loud bangs as the swing keel and then propeller hit a submerged rock. Turns out that red bouys on Windermere are used instead of cardinal marks to signify an area of danger.
4) Raised the idling speed on the outboard to fix the stalling problem and moored up at the pontoon. Stepped on the large rubbing strip on the side of the boat to step ashore and it came off and into the water I went.

So in two hours I got stuck, had engine failure, ran aground and fell in. My mates only comment was if I was examining you for a flying licence I would suggest a bit more training!!
 
Love this thread..
Towed the 12ft dinghy down to Falmouth in '66 (?) Now, father had lent the gib to someone for the nationals. So, what the hell, I used one from one of the bigger boats and just shifted the fairleads and jamcleats. Being young and pretty foolish, I bunged her in the water in a fresh breeze and set off through the moorings by the Falmouth yacht club. With far too much sail up for the 'breeze' and the problems of dodging the moored boats, Not to mention I could not reach the gib sheet when leaning out with my toes under the straps, I quickly capsized, followed by two more. In the process I fell on the rudder head and bust it, and, neglected to put the stopper knot on the mainsheet, so that ran out.. So I had to run for Flushing, with one foot on the rudder blade to steer and only the gib under control.
Happy days...
 
Back in the 80’s when I was a spotty 16 yr old I was lucky enough that my Dad would let me take his boat out around the Solent for a week with my school mates. I was pretty mature and a good sailor, but of course this would be frowned on now. Although he set limits of nothing more than a force 5, no night sailing and I had to call in every day with the next days passage plan ...I nevertheless pushed my boundaries. So I dried her out on Bembridge beach, chuffed to bits that I had secured a stern anchor and the bow too. Beautifully lined up on the beach.....Only trouble is the next day we didn’t float off, I’d been neaped and was on a falling tide for some days. We had to dig a channel astern of the boat after the tide receded and fortunately we did float off on the next tide but it was a lesson learnt! Innocent days & happy memories. Respect to my Dad for having the courage and trust invested in me!
 
The internet probably hasn't got room for all of my mistakes, but probably the most public and potentially expensive was getting one beacon mixed up with another in the Passe Percee. Fortunately a tripper boat saw us, got our attention, and led us back to safe water.
 
January evening, after a successful day's sailing, alongside in a Hamble marina. Time for a shower ashore before supper and drink. The pontoon is well lit, I can see what I assume is the route to the sloping linkspan and miss a 90° turn. As I step confidently off the pontoon I realise exactly what I have done (and the implications) well before I hit the very cold water... Fortunately I wasn't alone and got out in less than a minute, before the cold got to me.


I think there is a saying in aviation that the safest pilots are those who in their careers have experienced great fear and will do everything possible to avoid repeating that experience. I now have a lot of respect for any boat to shore transfer.
 
fisherman said:
I can truthfully say that in fifty years at the job I haven't done one really stupid thing






I've done them all.....
Click to expand...

This thread makes me feel so much better.

I don't know who said it, the cock up's get less as you grow older, but the one's that you do have are more intricate .
 
Took my Mum (total landlubber) for a jolly in my first boat - 18ft triple keeled pocket cruiser. Perfect conditions and I was as keen as you can imagine. Running downwind I gave her the patter about accidental gybes. "...and you have to watch out, because if you stand with your head this high and the wind shifts..."

Wind shifted.

Direct blow, boom on noggin.

Blood trickle down right hand temple.

"Good demo, son".
 
Some years back I took my little boat for a single handed sail. My older son wanted to take some friends out for a sail. I have no difficultty departing or solo sailing just difficult picking up the swing mooring alone. (no engine) So seemed like a good chance to hand the boat over to him at the club jetty. He and his mates were late so after cruising around for a while I went into the jetty and tied up. Just a bit of 6mm line to the bow rail. I then go the idea to use the hose to wash down the boat. Now water does things to an old bladder and I dashed off to the nearby toilets. When I go back the line had let go and boat had sailed away. Now I had left the main up and jib up, neither cleated and tiller free to swing. As I watched she sailed beautifully outward s then tacked and sailed straight back in toward the jetty where I stood. Good thought I might be some damage but I will have it back. Perversely she gybed and went out again eventually doing several circuits over a few hundred metres. A friend in a similar sized boat returned about then and I got him to take me on board to give chase. Now my little boat is fast and light with no chance of running it down. However we found ourselves passing close in opposite directions and I made a wild leap into the cockpit. Now the closing speed must have been near 10 knots. In hind sight I don't know how I did not injure myself. Suddenly the drama was over no harm done except to a slightly shaken skipper. Son turned up and I handed the boat over to him. I never told him at the time what happened. He couldn't understand why I did not answer the phone left in the cockpit. And all this time being just out from the balcony of the club the spectators laughed.
ol'will
 
Something I learned when leaving Aberystwyth one day ... I suspect the same applies at other harbours, so I have made a rule out of it:

If the waves are breaking over the harbour wall, it was probably a mistake going out ...

The trouble with Aber is that by the time you round the corner and can see the sea state, it is too late to turn back, you are now in a narrow channel and turning broadside on as the waves sweep down it would be worse than carrying on!
 
About 10 years ago after a 17 hour journey from Salcombe in foul weather and at about two in the morning, radio chat alerted me to the presence of a inbound tanker as I approached the main channel into Poole. We cautiously followed it for ten minutes, only to discover that we were actually ‘following’ Brownsea Castle.
 
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