[Paddlewise] Trip report and Darwin Award nominee

The following was a trip report about a harbor paddle several of us did this
morning. We were entertained by the Coast Guard, Vessel Assist, a 26'
Striper and a 65' Catamaran owned by one of the concessionaires for the
Channel Islands National Park. Thought you might enjoy it.

Seven of us showed up at Kiddie Beach this morning for our scheduled
intermediate level paddle. The participants were, Peter O'Sullivan, Patrick
Martin, Lee Shurie, Chris Wood, Taylor Burch, Tom Banks (from Anacortes,
Washington), and me. The wind was blowing up a storm and outside of the
harbor they were a steady 35 knots. That's a bit much even for the Old
Farts. Patrick suggested that since it was 5 NM around the harbor, that we
paddle a couple of laps and we'd still get our 10 NM or so in. Peter wisely
suggested that we do one lap, but go into every one of the nooks and
crannies because it would be tempting at the end of one lap to say we were
hungry and just bail and head for Daddy-O's or some other eatery. Winds
inside the harbor were about 15-20 knots which was doable.

So that's what we did. For about an hour we were entertained by our radios
and a skipper of a 26' power boat who was trying for a Darwin Award. He had
had three kids on board, and could not handle the rough water. He was either
near Anacapa Island or Santa Cruz Island, on either the ocean side or the
mainland side, and could or couldn't see the 65' Island Packers Catamaran
that was looking for him. He had a GPS, but the coordinates he was giving
the CG weren't anywhere near where he thought he might be. Finally he said
he was able to see a pier on one of the islands but he couldn't get there
because he was only going in circles because the water was too rough. The CG
tried to convince him to motor their and tie up to one of the mooring buoys
and drop an anchor. He couldn't do it.

Finally the Island Packers boat found him and they were going to have a crew
member drive the boat back. Their main office got on the radio and said no -
too much liability. Then they decided to tow the boat, but the main office
said the same thing.

They took the boat over to the mooring buoy and the skipper called Vessel
Assist who informed him that he could take the Island Packers concession
boat back to the mainland and they would go pick is boat up for him - but it
was not a covered incident because his boat was functional, it was the
skipper that wasn't functioning. Cost was estimated to be about $1,500.00.

The final alternative was that he could stay with the boat and wait out the
weather but NOT go ashore, because he was actually at Smugglers Cove and
landing is prohibited there.

All of this was taking place on Channel 16 because he couldn't figure out
how to switch channels on his VHF. I'm betting that he puts the boat up for
sale when he gets back to the mainland.

Later we met up with Jeandrew Brink and George Miller who were also paddling
the harbor and not trying to fight the winds.

Actual Google Map track of our trip can be found at
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0jnY2nAKqFrlzZHT
Yd4Zh1vlCs9DZFRt6 or if your email doesn't like long links you can go to
http://preview.tinyurl.com/Steve-s-Spot-Track  

Steve Holtzman
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