Shortest voyage!
Posted by maturin23@reddit | sailing | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Hi all, Was looking forward to a weekend sailing with my two best pals on the Solent (UK) - boat (Bavaria 37) is based in Portsmouth. The marina has finger berths, and we were stern in. Fairly stiff breeze blowing from behind, a boat berthed next to us and there's not a lot of room to turn. Fortunately both berths opposite were empty - so plan was to drive straight ahead and then reverse out to avoid getting blown on to the boats opposite. Unfortunately, the gear selector snapped (single lever controls throttle and gear selection with two cables) - so when I tried to give it a burst of revs in astern to stop the boat and back out, it just gave me a big extra chunk of forward motion. Killed the engine, but smacked the bow into the opposite dock at about 2 knots - no time to stop the boat with A bit of gelcoat lost and a whole chunk of lot of pride! Can anyone beat a journey of 4 boat lengths? :)
SecureVillage@reddit
Haha love it.
We're on a pile mooring.
Sprung off our connecting line, knocked it into forward to get away and, bang, line around the prop and engine stalled.
Took a couple of hours to get it sorted and then back home for a curry.
We went forward about half a meter I think.
(Good news is that we're much better at getting on and off of pile moorings now.)
maturin23@reddit (OP)
That beats my distance - but did you need to be rescued after?! :)
We had to call the marina RIB over for a tow/push back to the berth...
SecureVillage@reddit
Yeah ended up calling Sea Start to give us a hand with their underwater camera. Honestly, I assumed the line would have been melted around the prop but it wasn't actually that bad. I'd give it a better go myself next time (hopefully there won't be one though).
It was funny because we went to the boat on Friday night, got up early, made breakfast, excited for a day of sailing...just to screw it up within the first 5 minutes, spend hours messing about trying to get free, missing our tide window and then going home defeated.
I think, unless we're being dangerous, the mistakes we make along the way are all part of the fun.
Even better that you had friends onboard. I hope you were giving it the big licks about how good you were at sailing before hand, haha.