Funny thing happened on the boat ............

Refueler

Refueler

Well-Known Member
Joined
13 Sep 2008
Messages
23,982
Location
Far away from hooray henrys
Visit site
I think we all have those moments that cause a smile or stick in the memory to laugh at later on ...

My Ex in UK ... my previous boat a Snapdragon 23 ....

We are on the mooring out in Langstone Hbr. I'm on the boat .. she's in the dinghy.

I am sorting things with her waiting ... she has her bouyancy jacket on ....

NIGEL .. HELP !!

I turn and see her near horizontal with feet over dinghy gunwhale .. hands gripping the Snapdragon toerail .... frontal parts dipping in / out of the wavelets ... as the dinghy tries to move further out

Joyce ... you're gonna have to let go .. no way I can pull you up ...

NIGEL >>> NO WAY !!

Honest - its a situation you can do nothing about because whatever you do - she goes in ...

But she was determined she was NOT going to go for a swim .. and she fought hard ... and finally the dinghy started to ease back in ...

Later at home - having had a very quiet drive home ... she relented and we had a good laugh about it. Then she called me all the names she could think of !!
 
Mmmm, not sure I can better that but…
We set off early this morning and we’re returning to the lock at Chatham today about 13:00. As we approached the lock we had a short wait so whilst my wife hung the fenders out I decided to take some clothing off, as it was bound to be warmer ashore than out in the river. Good so far, being a little tired and lazy I decided to sit on a locker, slip my life jacket off, remove my smock and then put the life jacket back on. What could be easier? Sadly I chose to sit on the very locker that my wife had opened. I disappeared at speed, folded into a large V and ended up with my bottom in the locker, and my knees and nose in close proximity. I was stuck, I had to be pulled out, having first answered the question, “What the hell do you think you are doing?”
 
Shouldn't really tell this story but here ye go ....

First a picture so you can imagine the event :

tAYDAsb.jpg


The fenders are large and these ones designed to stand up to 100,000 ton ships alongside each other ... location Kerch Channel Crimea, during the change over Ukraine to Russian control.

We had one fender that decided to try walk about - one of the standing lines parted ... so we 'hooked' it temporarily with intention to have workboat sort it out. Orders came through that an Export vessel was due next day and we would have to berth her to transfer cargo.
Workboat was otherwise occupied and TBH - they were a useless bunch of lazy ****.
The Mooring Master on board contrary to standing instructions went over the side with messenger line to sort a replacement mooring line. Once messenger passed through the 'ring' and passed back up to deck ... he decided to 'pose' on the fender ... stood up straight .. head held high .. arms out like a Greek Athlete !!
mmmm these fenders tend to 'roll' !!
Just as he cried :: Hey Look at Me !!
Over he went .....

OK - at the time it was a serious matter and we luckily had safety line on him that we made sure was clear of the fenders appendages .. but after - its one of those events that everyone sits down ... has a glass or two and laughs off ..

Needless to say - he never did that again !! Of course it was never logged or reported ...
 
When First Mate and I kept a canal narrowboat on the GU at Slapton We got 'Stemmed up' - aground by the stem - near Leighton Buzzard.
We only has a Yanmar YDS12 donk so I used the long pole to try and push it off back the way we went on.
Eventually the pole end found a hard bit, the engine was flat out astern and I was pushing hard. The 40 footer started moving backwards, but was still aground. I took a step forward, right to the point of the bow and shoved harder.
The boat shot backwards, the pole was trapped in the clay bottom and it pulled me into the cut.
A passer by quipped in the best Eddie Waring voice " Eee Lad - Thars off fer 'an early bath! "
Well, he and First Mate thought it was funny....................
 
Friends of ours berthing in Conwy marina, M jumped on to the leg and hung on to the pulpit while bow was blown off by strong wind. For a while afterwards, boat on maneuvers trying to get back in with him still hanging half in/out of the water, much to everyone's amusement and applause.
 
Yes Nigel re original story. I have had a guest do just that. I have always had hard dinghies GRP and now ali. Guests just don't understand the need to quickly transfer weight into the middle of the dinghy. You can't have it both ways. She ended up stretched out then in the water. The other case an old curmudgeon reckoned he knew it all. sat right at the stern of the little dinghy until it capsized stern down and he fell out. In both cases it was easier to just row them ashore hanging on to the dinghy stern. Not far. Water not cold. ol'will
 
A me too:
I took my son out and we picked up a buoy in Langstone Harbour for lunch. It was blowing a bit 6, gusting 7 according to the CG forecast. I got in the dinghy to do something then went to get back on board. Tom & Jerry moment... Oh, I could get wet here... Oh, I am wet...

Then the bumpy sea and low fuel level stirred up the crap in the fuel tank and the engine died a few yards short of No 4 buoy going into Portsmouth Harbour. Entry under sail. For those unfamiliar with the entry to the harbour, in a strong westerly, the wind can come from the west, the north, the south and even, just for a change the east. Small boats have to keep to the west side of the narrow entrance, but under sail, that just ain't going to happen. Cue a couple of Wooton Creek ferries to dodge. Then the Normandie came out to play. I'm still traumatised ?

Not the best day out
 
Skating over the events that have involved me personally, there was an occasion when we were In Ven, near Copenhagen, and had my neighbour and his wife as guests for the week. We moored in Kyrkbacken and our guests enjoyed exploring the delightful island. After a pleasant evening we retired to bunk. This was 2002, before we had access to internet forecasts. In the event, the wind turned in the night and became so fresh that our berth became untenable, with the small harbour fully exposed to wind and wave. So it was that we decided at about 4am to move out, and motored across the water a few miles to Denmark and Rungsted, which would be easy even in the dark, and sheltered. This went as planned and we all slept again.

At about 7.30 my guest, who I shall call Ivan, decided that it was time to rise, and that he should do something useful. I still remember the sound effects he produced, which could have come from a Carry-on film There was a prolonged groan followed by a splash. He had been fully advised that the stern ladder was hinged and not fixed, and shouldn't be used as a hand-hold. The best bit was that we weren't charged for our stay.
 
Sadly Tom has passed on but he crewed on my boat several times. No matter how much he sailed - he just could not get 'it' ... but a great guy.

We were at Folly Inn - my boat and couple of others. We all decided to make our way upriver to Newport. I stood on Folly river pontoon talking to the others ... Tom was somewhere off doing his thing ...
Tom came back and I mentioned that we would Ferry Glide the boat out as tide / wind was perfect for it ... I described which lines to let go etc. to do it ... carried on talking to the guys while Tom wandered off again.
Next I am being shouted out by one of the guys ... NIGE ... the boat !!!!

Tom had let go lines, SA was fast drifting out with Tom standing on pontoon with one still in hand ... lucky it was a long line as we managed to get SA back alongside !!

Tom what are you doing ?

Nige I thought we were going now !!

We took a few minutes to let hearts stop pounding and then boarded our boats ... at which 'proud to say' I performed an absolute perfect Ferry Glide out and off we went ...

Tom bought the beer that evening !!
 
We were sailing across Gocek Bay when the sun umbrella which was shading our cockpit fell overboard, as it was a blisteringly hot August day and very light winds - we were making no more than 1 - 1.5 knots - I promptly dove over the side, instructing Lesley to 'heave to' as I went; we'd been practicing the manoeuvre only the day before, so this seemed a good opportunity to put that knowledge into practice.
On resurfacing I was close enough to hear Lesley enquire: "How did we do that, again?" But she'd sailed too far to hear my shouted response of "Tiller to the boom!" I did get back (sans umbrella) but it was a ten minute swim to where she eventually stopped.
 
Jumping o'bd and going for a swim when supposedly calm .. can be a surprise !! Its amazing how fast a boat can drift and be extremely hard to get back to ...

Guy who looked after my race boat in Tallinn - Alex ... we used to borrow a Conrad 12m yacht sometimes for a sail in Tallinn bay ... he had a party trick of tieing a line to himself and jumping of the stern - to be towed along ....
Crazy guy ... he often ended up with bruises and pulled muscles ...
 
Dinghy sailing with my (then) 8yr old daughter - two up on a laser with absolutely no wind, so we really weren't paying attention, sitting with feet in the water and back to the boom, when but a sudden gust tipped us both in.

I grabbed for the boat - it had gone a surprising distance and was still moving away, so I pulled myself up over the transom and tried to regain control for the MOB rescue. The problem was the mainsheet was still under tension, but why? It was running out over the transom and was surprisingly taut, leading to a large disturbance under the water, but I couldn't depower the sail.

I pulled in as fast as I could - and landed my daughter, who, far from being traumatised, said that being dragged along underwater was the most amusing thing that had happened that day, and asked if we could do it again.

(she wasn't tangled in the sheet, just holding on)
 
Plymouth Maritime College ...

We had a number of GP14's we raced against local clubs ....

I was assigned 'helm' on a GP14 - named POLLUX (always thought they had a sense of humour assigning that one to me ..). Anyway - there was I - a Deck Cadet and my No 2 was an Engineer Cadet. Now it was well known that in the Merchant - there was a phrase : Oil and Water ...

Well this guy and I - we generally didn't have any Oil - Water issues like many of the others till one day out practicing ...

RAF Mountbatten had a couple of RAf Rescue launches tied to destroyer buoys just across from our Seamanship centre.

We were out there practicing capsize driills and generally tacking / sailing etc. Then for some reason he wanted to go one way and I wanted to go another ... he was adamant and refused ... all the while we were fast approaching the side of one of these RAF launches ... BHAM ...

Oh **** ... so about turn ... away we went ... back to Centre .. in the rush to land boat - forgot to raise CB ... that broke off and floated up alongside .. to the shout of Centres Bosun - NOT ANOTHER BLOODY BOARD !!

We kept stum about the incident but noted some days later - one of the launches hauled up the slipway ... mmmm ??

Dunno how many people know - but those launches were plywood .... mmmmm
 
PilotWolf said:
Always loved sitting in marinas off charter watching the antics of others.

W
Click to expand...
In the tideless Baltic we had a policy of arriving anywhere by mid-afternoon at the latest in order to be sure of getting a box berth. We would then spend the next six hours or so refreshing ourselves and watching the charterbavs drift in, intent on getting their money's worth of sailing.

Entertainment can also be found at home, with tides being a special source of amusement for unwary. I remember watching a pair of young men in an engineless day-sailer trying to pick up a mooring near Bawdsey, where the tide runs at a couple of knots or more. They had obviously read that you turn a sailing-boat head to wind to stop it but hadn't read the next chapter about currents. After many attempts trying to pick up a buoy while moving at about four knots and after the loss of the odd boathook, they eventuall worked it out.
 
PilotWolf said:
Always loved sitting in marinas off charter watching the antics of others.

W
Click to expand...

Cowes West ....

Came in from a sail and it was a bit late to get up to Newport, called ahead to a pal and heard Folly was full. So we opted for Cowes West ... not my fav but anyway.
Going in - lass on pontoon says they have Marquee party for the Sail School boats due in and I would have to use the inside run of the outer pontoons. OK .. no prob.

There's Mike .. Svet .. Mags and myself sitting on the boat discussing where to go that evening when the School boats start coming in ... Jeanneaus putt putt past and turn into berths in varying displays of 'skill' or lack of !
Then the Beneteau control boat slides in and starts the run along past us.

Now to this day - I have no idea what that skipper was thinking about - but he could not pick a worse place to try turn the boat to reverse into the marina .. YES he decided to reverse the boat along the 50+ odd metres till the 90 deg turn to get to the berths ...

My boat was ok being relatively small .. but ahead of me where this **** decided to turn was a lovely sloop of about 40ft ... and the channel was of course narrow.

First he struck the pontoon opposite .. then started astern turning towards the sloop.
Bodies on the sloop were hurredly throwing out fenders and gesticulating to this guy !!

Finally he sort of gets control and there's a rather smart young lady standing midships holding a rope ... completely confused and not knowing why she was there ...

I have a terrible black sense of humour and once I saw her ... called out :

Excuse me - are you the cosmetic addition for the cameras ??

The laughter that rang out all around was cruel ... so if that Lady is reading this - I apologise !!

The Bendy boat then sorted itself and berthed - with the skipper hightailing it away as fast as he could !!
 
johnalison said:
In the tideless Baltic we had a policy of arriving anywhere by mid-afternoon at the latest in order to be sure of getting a box berth. We would then spend the next six hours or so refreshing ourselves and watching the charterbavs drift in, intent on getting their money's worth of sailing.

Entertainment can also be found at home, with tides being a special source of amusement for unwary. I remember watching a pair of young men in an engineless day-sailer trying to pick up a mooring near Bawdsey, where the tide runs at a couple of knots or more. They had obviously read that you turn a sailing-boat head to wind to stop it but hadn't read the next chapter about currents. After many attempts trying to pick up a buoy while moving at about four knots and after the loss of the odd boathook, they eventuall worked it out.
Click to expand...


Tideless Baltic ... until I sailed my boat here I had no idea how good it is. Tie up to trees ... BBQ's ... only fees are at marinas and they are few ... fabulous ...

b5LXYrI.jpg


BIeIPOE.jpg


hJKXb0a.jpg


Most boats there are fin ... but as a Bilge Keeler - the islands really open up with the shallow draft .. amazing channels and inlets ..
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Other threads that may be of interest

geem
Atlantic crossing 2025
2
Replies
39
Views
2K
geem
geem

Share this page

Top