July 26, 2004-Cruising Blunders

Now, as to the dumbest thing we've ever done with our boat...I was fortunate to have considerable sea time crewing aboard a large motorsailor owned and operated by a very happy, carefree, close friend who was a risk-taker, and casual about certain aspects of voyaging safety.

Hazardous circumstances were to his liking, and we did many things together that I would not do now...Cutting the markers on major ports we'd never entered to make it to the dance club by closing time (once saved only be a commercial fishing boat frantically flashing his spotlight at the jetty we were about to pile onto in the inky darkness)...Rejecting compelling radar data to pass between two treacherous islands in the middle of the night based on memory and a faulty LORAN LOP (turning out to be the wrong two islands and much more risky and reef-strewn than the intended ones)...Coming fairly close to sinking in an offshore storm, largely because we lacked storm sails and heavy weather gear, not to mention a liferaft, SSB, weatherfax, etc....And once shipping quite a bit of water on a rough, dark night in the Windward Passage, only to discover that we'd forgotten to finish a slightly-above-waterline job that had started with drilling a 2-inch diameter hole in the hull (we stuffed a towel in it, braced a bucket below it, and emptied the bucket every 15 minutes all night long).

I say this not to implicate my friend, because I was a young, willing participant in all of our misadventures. As a survivor of more reckless actions than almost anyone I've heard of, I was inordinately prepared to be conservative when I could finally afford my own boat. Actually, it's only been in the last year that some casual errors have begun to creep in--whacking the top of a coral head with our centerboard because I'd drifted slightly off-range while gazing at a surf break, this in a narrow passage I'd never entered; poking my downwind pole through our spinnaker because of taking a lazy shortcut when setting it up; and falling off the top of the ladder at the hardstand due to casual, risky technique loading tools in the midst of a maze of ropes I should have secured first.

But I think one of the dumbest things ever was shortly after departing New Zealand for Tonga in a state of fatigue four years ago when I had the crew hand-steer for 48 hours because the "autopilot needed fixing". I finally got a nap, and soon thereafter realized that the reason it wasn't working was because I hadn't engaged the lever!