2006 Nov 4 Saturday Sailing and racing

I went out by myself today… It was a race day on the club scheadule but me and Patty are the only ones that showed up to the captains meeting. Oh well.. we both went out and since we had two boats we tried to see who could go faster 🙂 so I guess we raced. 🙂 there is some argument as to wether she won once and I won once or wether we raced in seperate divisions (racing and cruising) so both won. 🙂 I think since her PHRF is 140 or so that she is in racing and I’m in crusing at 194 or so 🙂

We had a great time. With north winds around 15 gusting to maybe 20 and 3 ft seas it was a beautifull blue sky day. After sailing we went back and tied up at Poo’s and got a bite to eat. Mostly because there was only 3.8 ft of water in Pattys marina and she had to wait for the tide to come back in a bit before she could get into her slip.

As always any day on the water can end up being an interesting one. I went by Pattys marina and pumped out my holding tank. They are federaly funded and the dockmaster told me that there is no charge to pump out there. So about every other week I will stop in and pump out. Well today there was actaully a lot of wind in the marina and as I went to make a 180 in one of the narrow aisles I did it too slow and the wind pushed me down torward some of the slips. I threw the boat in reverse hard and stopped with my bow just barely overlapping the bow of a sailboat in one of the slips. The sailboat had an anchor in brackets on the bow pulpit (a danforth style anchor)and the round bar at the top of it just hooked behind one of my jib sheets as I started backing up. The wind is still trying to push me down on the docks so I keep it in reverse and throw the jib sheet off the winch in the cockpit and let it run out and off the front of the boat into the water. It runs out and doesn’t hang on anything so all is well. Once im clear I throw the boat in forward… “cringe” and then about 10 seconds later think..”that line could get in the prop.” As I’m reaching for the engine to take it out of gear it just stops.. whap!!!! I know where the jib sheet got to. Shit!!! im drifting again! I had enough headway on that I was able to steer over into an empty slip. About now I’m looking around hoping no one is seeing all this. It’s really pretty embaresing. My luck seems to be holding, I don’t see anyone in the marina at all and no one obvious in the condo’s that overlook the marina is watching. Anyways now I’m tied up there and have pulled the engine out of the water and unwound the jib sheet from the prop. I’m hoping I haven’t stripped the key on the prop. I crank her up.. starts on the first pull and goes in gear… we have prop wash…!! hurray…..!!!!! lol I now very carefully make my way out of the slip and the marina 🙂 knowing that I got off easy.

Lesson learned… When you have that much wind make sure you take it into account. If you slow down it has that much longer to push you around. Also when turning around with wind like that turn into the wind instead of away from it.