That's a Lovely Broach

Photo credit: Sean Trew. Pacific Fog
In summarizing our SOCKS Regatta experience, I mentioned "BIG air on Saturday with lots of destruction, many DNC/DNS/DNF and our own spectacular wipe out..." Someone noticed the carnage from their house and started a thread on Sailing Anarchy. There were at least two Holder 20s that got swamped in the same downwind run we were on when we wiped out.
We had just rounded the windward mark and our skipper noticed a couple Holders in front of us flying their kites. He basically said, "If Chris can do it, the we can too!" The two Holder skippers used to own Santana 20s and we've raced them before. So we did our set and got things cleaned up and started making gains on the (three) boats in front of us. I don't think any other S20s put up a kite.
Well I think we all got hit by a big puff or some of those tanker waves... (or both). At any rate, things went from the ride of the weekend to a flaming broach in no time. I started climbing for high ground and cleated sheets and then noticed the skipper was not in the boat... This is not good. He was hanging on by a thread... Well actually it was the spin sheet and back stay. Apparently the wipe out was so demoralizing our skipper felt compelled to fall on his tiller.
After we got everything under control and the skipper back in the boat, I noticed our knot meter was knocked off its mount (inside the companion way). I picked it up and the last speed recoded was 12.3. Wow! I wonder if that was our forward speed...
The Holders didn't fair so well. Two of them went done at the same time we did. One of them actually turtled. Needless to say their racing was over for the weekend. One was towed in while mostly submerged (seen tied up along the dock). The other was cut free during the first towing attempt and later recovered , pumped out and towed in by Vessel Assist. The later recovered their rigging. There were plenty of other damaged sails, a couple dismastings and lots of minor problems as a result of Saturdays racing. These are the conditions that test boat and sailor. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
Oh, yeah... one more thing. I showed the picture of our broaching boat to my son and he asked, "How come the spinnaker is in the back?"

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