Re: [Paddlewise] Lost at Sea while Sailing

ralph diaz scriv:

> I know how you feel regarding giving a long string of safety advice to
> newcomers.  They look at you as if you have just told them there is no
> Santa Claus.  I feel like Scrouge or the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

Yes, it is a little daunting.  Sometimes the "safety lecturers" just seem
like unpleasant people who have some axe to grind.  But all it takes is one
bad experience to make one realize the truth in their warnings.

I was MOB once from a sailboat in Long Island Sound in the last week of
November.  The remaining crewmember could not return to pluck me from the
water (he didn't know how to turn the boat around !!! - he had
misrepresented his skills to me, and I was stupid enough not to have gone
over everything with him).  There are very few people on the water in
Eastern LIS that time of year.  I was in the water about 30 minutes before
being rescued by some guys in a skiff checking markers for the nearest
channel.  By the time they got to me, I couldn't lift my arm to grab their
boat.  I was probably less than a minute away from drowning.  I had been
back and forth two or three times from the point of not caring any more.
It's a funny thing that takes over, where you just are ready to give up.  I
couldn't climb into their boat and they had to hold me on the side of the
boat and motor back to the yacht club.  They deposited me on the docks and I
sent them back out to try to retrieve my boat (and crewmember, who had by
now at least managed to stop the boat).  It was about an hour before I could
move.  I had to have help getting out of my clothes.  . . . .

Well, I hate to whine or complain.  That's not what this is about.  Just
that -- ralph and others: please keep up the vigil.  Those of us who are new
to the sport need to hear it from people we respect.  I've gone over once in
a kayak in (for me) rough water, and it was a whole lot more work than I had
expected to get everything back right again.  A whole lot more work.  And
that was only a few feet from shore (in Penobscot Bay).

Just rambling.

Mark

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