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

Having been to both harbours a few times before, I had just sailed into Penzance and went to go to the nearby chippy, only to find that it was Newlyn... Or was it that I was in Newlyn and thought I was in Penzance...

Clipped to the jackline when entering port I thought that the autopilot needed attention so jumped into the cockpit. Unfortunately the tether stopped me mid flight and I found myself hanging upside down in the cockpit. Fortunately the adjustment were not that urgent after all.

An almost infinite number of rotations in the locks at Shoreham following my first inboard-outboard's slow decline into aluminium oxide.
Fitting a used Vire inboard...
Replacing it with a used Sabb inboard...
 
1976, the hot summer, I was doing fishing/sightseeing trips which started with a coastal cruise, into the caves, round by the lifeboat station. Particularly attractive daughter sitting on the bow (this was an 18ft clinker open boat), I was furiously posing with unbuttoned shirt, I was quite pretty then, and regaling them with tales of seafaring derring do and smugglinbg......and I hit the breasting buoy off the slip, head on. To be fair the girl was in my line of sight. Fortunately the buoy is a soft one.
 
Summer holiday many years ago. Anchored in Dixcart Bay, Sark overnight and left the next morning to head towards Bray, Alderney. Shipping forecast came up on VHF and mentioned storms at the start and this in July. Me and crew so engrossed in listening to the forecast (easterly F10) and discussing options that we weren't really keeping an eye on what was ahead. One crew popped head up and looked around and ahead was a rock just breaking surface. Another 5 minutes and the rock might have hit us.
When the easterly F10 came in the next day we were in St Peter Port. Started with heavy rain and then the wind. We were alongside a pontoon in the tidal part of the harbour and it was horrible. Was seriously considering going into the drying inner harbour but luckily the tide started to drop and reduced the swell in the harbour. Interesting night!
 
Rowing back to the pontoon moorings with my wife midweek after an evening in the Folly Inn.
It was a beautiful night, not a breath of wind, neap tides, nothing stirring on the river.
As we neared the pontoon the lights of the Folly Inn suddenly disappeared as if a curtain had been pulled across. WTF? I looked up and to my horror saw the steaming light of a coaster as it slowly passed up river crossing our wake where we had been seconds before.
Only after it passed did we see hear the slow thump of the engine and the trickle of it's wake.
That got the heart pumping!
 
BlueChip said:
Rowing back to the pontoon moorings with my wife midweek after an evening in the Folly Inn.
It was a beautiful night, not a breath of wind, neap tides, nothing stirring on the river.
As we neared the pontoon the lights of the Folly Inn suddenly disappeared as if a curtain had been pulled across. WTF? I looked up and to my horror saw the steaming light of a coaster as it slowly passed up river crossing our wake where we had been seconds before.
Only after it passed did we see hear the slow thump of the engine and the trickle of it's wake.
That got the heart pumping!
Click to expand...
Yikes! I can picture that scene only too well.
 
fisherman said:
1976, the hot summer, I was doing fishing/sightseeing trips which started with a coastal cruise, into the caves, round by the lifeboat station. Particularly attractive daughter sitting on the bow (this was an 18ft clinker open boat), I was furiously posing with unbuttoned shirt, I was quite pretty then, and regaling them with tales of seafaring derring do and smugglinbg......and I hit the breasting buoy off the slip, head on. To be fair the girl was in my line of sight. Fortunately the buoy is a soft one.
Click to expand...
But was the girl soft?
 
Approaching Oban for the first time, from the north, through the narrow channel between Maiden Island and the mainland. Ferry leaving Oban gave the standard broadcast "Calmac ferry, shortly departing Oban Bay by the north channel". Crikey thinks I, that must be the channel I am in, make a quick change of course to the wider channel between Kerrera and Maiden Island. Five well deserved blasts from the ferry as I cut across his bows then tacked again to get out of his way.
Learned later the the narrow channel east of Maiden Island is not used by the ferries and the one referred to as "North Channel" is the wide one north of Kerrera.
Note, may make sense to those familiar with the area, hard to describe otherwise.
 
Back in '63.. On our way to the CIs and coming down the coast towards Dover. I had taken over the watch in the early morning in mild conditions, but by the time we were near Dover, it had increased to 6/7 and we thought a bit of a rest in there might help. Not having details of the signals..we saw the them change as we were angling for the entrance. Some bloke jumps down from the building and starts waving at us..just then we saw the top bits of a ferry behind the mole, so decided that he might be warning us off. We were right,... as we did a quick and messy 360, the ferry appeared round the end of the mole and we went in after it cleared. Not our finest hour.
 
We drove down to Gosport loaded with gear ready for a 4-week cruise to France.

Stowed everything away. Started the engine. Took all the lines off except for a spring, when my wife said "We should put our lifejackets on"

"OK,OK. Hand them up"

Then the horrible truth dawned. We had left them at home in London!

A quick dash to Arthur' Chandlery before it closed to buy two more.

£160 lighter, off we went.
 
Dan Tribe said:
But was the girl soft?
Click to expand...
Sadly I didn't get to find out, her parents would have had doubts about me after that.
We were a bunch of terrible giggle-ohs. A family turned up with three lovely daughters, the father went home, a busy surgeon, leaving the rest for the summer. While most of us were frantically sparring and maneouvring about the daughters my mate quietly sidled off and investigated the mother, who proved to be most accommodating.
 
Hmm, which one do I dare confess to !

We left Conway in my Contessa 26 on a fast ebbing tide, the morning after far too many beers with the crew. Only leaving the marina after I had religiously conducted the usual engine oil checks on the aged Yanmar 1GM ..... And headed back to the Menai Straits.

After quickly leaving the Conway estuary we stopped the engine and sailed in glorious sunshine back towards Puffin Island and up the Straits with copious amounts of coffee and bacon to help our hangovers.

Approaching Beaumaris we started the engine and sat back to enjoy more coffee before we alarmingly noticed thick smoke coming out of the saloon. Fortunately we managed to get to one of the few moorings in a Rock Bay before anything appeared to catch on fire.. but not before one of the crew bashed his already sore head on the boom.

Unsure of the cause and with a slightly panicky crew I phoned ABC Marine at Beaumaris for help. They got in touch with the Puffin Island cruise boat who kindly give us a tow into Beaumaris. The tourists onboard found this very exciting and lined up on the back of the Puffin Island boat to photograph the daring (not) yacht rescue.

At Beaumaris we left the boat on a temporary mooring and returned home after asking ABC Marine to go onboard and investigate the engine ‘failure’.

They phoned me back a couple of days later and said they could not find anything wrong. The alternator was dirty but the cause of all the smoke was probably oil spilling onto the hot engine.... they asked if I was sure I had put the ‘dipstick’ back in correctly and not down the side of the engine ?????

I said absolutely not, but I think we both knew who the dipstick was !
 
One morning I carefully poured a pint of oil into the header tank. Not thinking, and in a hurry to get away as the tide was leaving, I opened up the drain and changed the water/antifreeze....rather than just top up with water and float the oil out.

Went to bed one night, turned over, sat back up with a jolt. Just realised that I had dismantled the raw water system and oil coolers, started by carefully closing the seacock, but had opened it again last thing to run the engine for a few minutes....not closed it again.....boat dried out but tide now flooding. I drove the twelve miles as fast as possible without risking getting stopped. The water was up over the sump breather, there was an inch of water in the sump. The incoming water was going through the raw water pump past the impeller and up to the heat exchanger where the pipe was off...surprisingly fast.
 
fisherman said:
One morning I carefully poured a pint of oil into the header tank. Not thinking, and in a hurry to get away as the tide was leaving, I opened up the drain and changed the water/antifreeze....rather than just top up with water and float the oil out.

Went to bed one night, turned over, sat back up with a jolt. Just realised that I had dismantled the raw water system and oil coolers, started by carefully closing the seacock, but had opened it again last thing to run the engine for a few minutes....not closed it again.....boat dried out but tide now flooding. I drove the twelve miles as fast as possible without risking getting stopped. The water was up over the sump breather, there was an inch of water in the sump. The incoming water was going through the raw water pump past the impeller and up to the heat exchanger where the pipe was off...surprisingly fast.
Click to expand...

If the engine survived - you are one lucky fella !!

My 4-99 got water into the sump when rainwater filled the cockpit (drains are forever getting blocked on her) ashore ... yard lifted her in ready for my visit ... she was deeper in water by about 20cms and tender as hell ....
Water level was halfway up the sump.
Wife and I pumped her out - cleaned her up ...
Drained oil ... flushed - drained again - refilled with fresh ...
Did the usual spray everything with Electro- Cleaner to get rid of water / crap (I hate WD40 !) ....

Once boat had dried out - we started the 4-99 ... she ran sweet as a peach.

Following weekend Wife, myself and Mike with his lass - we went of to Folly Inn on IoW ...... everything fine till we went to leave. Engine was completely locked up solid.

Once I got her back to HYCO .. Alan checked out the engine and it was shot ... not worth effort to rebuild. Replaced with 2nd hand 4-107 ...
 
I was creeping, dragging a barbed bar along for lost gear. There was a 120fm coil of rope in the bin, just off Kynance in a lot of tide. The creep came fast, I missed a trick and got broadside, the boat fled away down tide with the rope streaming out, I had to get out of the way in case I got snagged in it, and over went the bin with the rope's end attached to the handle.
Bugger!
So I chucked over a railway chair, the thing the rail sits in, about 20kg, on another coil of rope, and dragged it across where the rope was, more in hope than expectation. Bit difficult, being across the tide, but I got a bite straight away: up came the chair, with the bin hanging on it, I reeled in the 120 fm of rope, and on the end of the creep was the pots I'd been searching for.
 
The coaster I was on took shelter in the Solent off Yarmouth whilst a for e 10 passed over,we lt goboth anchours.The next day the skipper gave instructions to weigh anchour so we started bringing in the stub anchour which promptly started getting crossed with the port anchour the deck hand and I attempted to haul in the port anchour but it looked hopeless then the skipper turned up to give his advice..........I looked aft and we where goingastern on the Spring tide on collision with the bows of a Russian freighter so I raced back jumping across the hatches and up on to the bridge and engaged the gear andwound on full speed ,......we missed colliding by about six feet,and by steaming full head somehow the anchours is entangeld.........how I managed to do that I’ll never know!......we’ll daf of the skipper to leave the bridge!
 
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