Sailing stories or mishaps

Ok, I'll kick this off.

We had a sailing day with the uni club in one of the local esturies. One of the girls (who is a good sailor) decided to take one of the lasers out. Now, this laser is generally referred to as 'Snotty' cause it is green and a heap of junk. During her sail she decided that the boat felt a bit sluggish so she decided to tack and head back. However, when she tacked the boat capsized and then she couldn't pull it back up. It turned out that somehow during the course of her sailing the bung had fallen out (I told you it was a heap of junk! - she'd checked the bung before she left the beach!) Therefore the boat was full of water. She was stuck over the other side of the estury unable to right the boat. To make matters worse, the guys had pulled the rescue boat up on the beach and decided to tinker around with the motor (lol men. lol.) Anyway, in the end some random sailing boat had to come over and say "isn't that your green laser on it's side over there? The girl sounds pretty angry, you'd better go and get her." The guy on the rescue boat copped it big time when he went and towed her back. lol.

There was also the day when my parents took my laser 2 out for a sail and capsized it. My mum (who has been sailing for years and seriously should have known better) cleated the main, and therefore when they got hit by a gust the boat capsized. Then neither of my parents could pull it back up. Because they still hadn't uncleated the main the boat turtled. They were hanging onto the upside-down boat, which then floated down the estury, under the bridge and out towards the bay. Luckily someone came and towed them back but then they were the wrong side of the bridge (even a small sailing boat can't fit under it at high tide - unless of course it's upside down!) My dad had to walk all the way back to the car. I can laugh about it now, but I wasn't happy at the time - I still don't know how they didn't bend the mast!

3335 said:

...I think the crew's neighbor was out in his powerboat & saw the boat & sent the crew's Dad out. That was just plain lucky because they were so far out nobody on land could tell that anything had happened. The boat could have continued to Canada if that neighbor hadn't been out !

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(Apologies for bumping an old thread) That's just plain scary! Glad it worked out ok!

At the start of this season we had a new member come and start sailing our old club Laser. He was all confident and we thought he'd do just fine, considering all his previous experience on different boats etc etc.
Much to our mirth - he forgot to put the bung in! Half-way thru the first race, he realised why his poor little red Laser was feeling like a slug! It took about four of us to pull it up out of the water too! hahahaha! Once drained and bung re-fitted, he went out and won the second race... hah! Bloody typical! hahahahaaa

On the last day of sailing camp last year, my friends and I decided to take out an old Jy Trainer that was half dead. There were like 5 of us on the boat, and we all wrestled to be king of the boat. When the day was over, the old broken boat had 1 inch of material left above the water, and since it was upside down, we righted it fine and all, then when we towed it back to land, it took all of us to just swim it back. what we didn't know was how much water was actually in the boat. We ended up spending 2 hours with at least 20 people trying to lift a tiny little boat that weighed like 800 pounds, no joke. after that was done, we undid the drain hole, and it sprayed, i mean sprayed out water out of the back for at least 30 minutes. I don't think we ever took out that boat again....