Your worst day sailing is better than your best day working.

Unless your job is sailing... I think this is a true statement from my perspective. People often ask me, "How was sailing last night?" or "How did the regatta go?". This kind of phrase comes to mind. Most of the time your worst day sailing is better than your best day working. While there are exceptions... almost any sailing experience is "better than a sharp stick in the eye"!

Well this might be one of those exceptions. Some members of our local Lido fleet went down river to sail in the Spring Fling with Willamette Sailing Club. Although I wasn't there, the story goes;
The skipper's meeting started at 2:00 under partly sunny skies and an 8 to 10 knot breeze. The first race started on time at 3:00 under menacing skies, a building breeze, and claps of thunder. About 30 seconds later a squall rolled across the river. As it hit [us], we luffed the sails and watched them flog in the wind. It wasn't enough to prevent us from being blown over. We tried to prevent the turtle to no avail. We righted the boat and were immediately blown right back over. We decided to wait for the wind to ease a bit before trying again. So, we climbed on top of the turtled boat and began to wait. I looked behind me to see if anybody else had capsized and counted 7 more of the 12 starters turtled as we were. Only 4 boats remained upright, 1 being an 81 year old [with] his grandson on board for his first ride in a sailboat.

The rescue boats arrived in no time at all, including 3, 2 manned jet skis from the Portland Fire Rescue team.

[We] were able to right our boat the second time about the same time the rescue boat arrived and decided to accept the tow they offered rather than sail back, as our machismo seems to have evaporated at some point during the adventure.

Several people had abandoned their boats in favor of the rescue ride as the river water got very cold, very quickly. It took a while to get all the people and boats back to WSC and the race committee decided to cancel racing for the rest of the day. Nobody was hurt and no boats were damaged.

2 races were completed on Sunday in very light winds with [one of our own] taking home a 3rd place trophy in the A Fleet.

Comments

Pandabonium said…
Similar story happened to us here in Japan on November 1 while sailing our Lido 14 on Lake Hinuma. Forecast was 4 to 8 knots, but we soon got 15 knots plus with gusts over 25 that knocked us down. We have a mast float, so didn't turtle, but had to be towed in.
12:10 AM
merrifie said…
A squall like that could take a mast or two with it. Especially with the loose rigs on the Lidos up and down this coast.
10:59 PM
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