Most spectacular capsize?!

i was once about to go out and i saw my old hiking streap was about to go at the seam. so i just tie a line across it and hope it will help support me. the winds were around 20 so i was definatley goin to need it so i go out and was hiking firehose reach and then the hiking strap went and the line saved me. that was a really close spectacular capsize.
 
From looking at that clip, it looks to me like he's almost trying to power up with the boom already past 90 degrees. Add to that the afforementioned loose kicker, and his kinda lame tiller movement, and I think we can all see why he's swimming! Lately I've been seeing just how loose I can have the kicker/vang, and I've been very suprised!! with the vang on its longest setting, in up to about 20knots I've not had any scares, except when I've tried to bear off slowly! By following the Cockerill idea of bearing off hard and using the rudder as a stabiliser, I seem to be more stable downwind than ever before.
It took a few near misses in the beginning tho, just from not being anywhere near aggressive enough on the bear away. Once I got that sorted, I discovered he was right! :)
 
OK i have two good ones.

So i was doing the bigdingy this year at ryc and i finished the first race. the wind shifted a crap load and they had to reset the course. The wind picked up to about 20-25 with gusts of 30. (we were racing in southhampton so big chopy swell). I decided to start sailing around isted of sitting in safety position. Then i get the bright idea to turn down wind and try to surf without easing the vang and all the vital things. i immediatly death roll and i get the mast stuck in the mud (supper shallow at southhamp) and the boom is still in the air boat rounds up tourques the top section so much that it rips the sail in half. boat pops up with the bottom section and a third of sail. that it. rest of my gear in the bottom of the bay. i got to spend the rest of the day in back of race commitee.. fun

second
i was racing the #1 bays reggata and i didnt realize that the clubs boat i was using was having serious delam issues (the whole port side deck hull joint was comming undone) . so after the race when sailing back from rycherdson's bay to SFYC it was blowing prty danm hard and huge swells and i turn the boat down in the wazes sailing ddw i start to get very squirlly.. i think to myself what the f- CRASH! i was plaing at full speed and death roll right there. i was launched forward . i was about 5-10ft away from my boat. once i got back to the dock it took 6 or 7 people to attempt to pull my boat up the ramp just to let it drain.

goood times
 
This one happened to me in the 125 I skipper. It was at the Nationals at the end of last year. One race was really windy - gusts up around 45 knots. I have no idea why they even let us out, let alone why they didn't cancel the race. Anyway, this regatta was occuring on a river, but I swear we had the biggest waves I have ever seen. We started the race and then capsized at the first mark. Deciding it was way too windy we headed back to the club. Therefore we were running downwind, surfing down these huge waves, me barely able to steer at all - I just had to pretty much 'go with the flow'. Suddenly this huge gust came as we were surfing down a wave and we went over, fast and messily. Then to make matters worse, the boat wouldn't turn head to wind because the waves were so huge, so every time we pulled the boat up the waves capsized it again. Heaps of the other boats said it looked very spectacular and painful (which it was - I almost got knocked out!) We ended up pulling the boat up eventually but then realised that we had shredded the jib and snapped the top batton in the main. We had to drift the boat onto a sandbank and wait for the rescue boat to come and tow us back.

To be honest that was the scariest sail I have ever had, and the scariest capsizes. I was so cold it wasn't funny, and when the boat was upside down we couldn't get on the hull cause of the waves and I could barely hold onto the boat. I ended up having to grab a line and hope that I would be able to keep hold of that if I lost my grip on the boat.
 
Fortunately, I myself have not been involved in too many capsizes (laugh!), well at least too many spectacular ones. There is one capsize that my friend did that I think is one of the most spectacular I have ever seen. I was sailing behind him in a race, with about 15-20knots of breeze. We were both experimenting with somewhat heavy wind by-the-lee sailing for the first time (we had only sailed by the lee in fairly light winds).

We had seen a trick done earlier in the regatta where when you are sailing by-the-lee, and a gust hits, when the boat starts to deathroll, you stand up and jibe the boat by grabbing the mainsheet below the block on the boom.

So my friend and I catch this large gust (I manage to keep control) and he starts to deathroll. To my surprise he emulates the trick the other competitor had done earlier in the regatta. Amazingly, he saves the deathroll and completes the jibe only to snap his topsection while he was flattening and with the broken top section, deathroll to windward on the new jibe. Not only was the capsize spectacular, yet expensive as well.
 
i once had an awesome near capsize when i was racing in palm beach and it was around 18 mph of breeze and i rounded to windward mark to start to go downwind and i found a gigantic tangle which involved my nalgenebottle which was tied in to the cockpit my mainsheet and my hiking strap. so i untangled it but in the process my bow went into a wave and water came up to the mast while i was reaching while going straight down wind cause i couldnt let the main all the way out and i untangled it all with out losing any distance.
 

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