faux pas

What the heck is a Faux Pas? At first I thought it was some sort of French Yacht...I had to look it up. Lol! For the not as polished yachtsmen on here, like myself, another common term would be ''@#%* Ups ''

Let's see, I have one , or ten...Faux Pas.
Late 1980s just got done painting my Father's 55' Pacemaker MY ; Hull and bottom at Riverside Marina up the Delaware River, launched the boat in late afternoon and we left to head back to the Chesapeake. Boat was running great and fast with a clean painted bottom and we were pushing it to get to Chesapeake & Delaware canal before night fall. Well it became dark a few miles before the C & D jetty entrance, I was running the boat on radar, pitch black out, we still had the Detroits ramped up at 2300 rpms. Came into the canal on radar ( Decca Radar/night boot) with no lit markers on the ends of the jetties. What looked like a clean centered up shot into the canal on radar, turned out we came in hauling butt just 10 feet or so from the rocks starboard side of the boat...It was hair raising to see those big old dark rocks just passing by the open starboard pilot door. I swear you could have just reached out and touched them.
We just looked at each other bug eyed said nothing, and pulled the throttle back to 1200 rpms and changed our shorts.

So I almost ran Dad's wood Pace up on the rocks, or could have punched a hole in the bottom starboard side and sunk it in the 40 foot deep canal. That's a big almost "@#%* Up! ''

Shocking!
Yes you are right. I'm a night running amateur to this day because I don't do it enough. It's totally different running inland at night, even in your own back yard.

I once did an overnight passage on a 65'. The Owner hated his boat out at night and sent down his nephew who was a 'Supertanker Pilot' to oversee.

As we approached the bay, he took us directly towards the reef. We had those old Morse twin controls, with the Red and Black handles. I've never seen a guy pull so hard on the wrong controls in my life. The local fishermen laughed their asses off from their dinghies as we just kissed the coral.

I grabbed control and safely anchored, the twit was never invited back.

My dad loved fishing so even as young as 10 years old it was me at the helm and him in the cockpit. We had a 28 Carver Santa Cruz with twin Waukesha 302 fords which was pretty cool and could handle the family of 5 every weekend.

So we are going on an early summer day trip to the kelp beds off the power plant in San Onofre , about 10 miles below Dana Point. Typical outing, catching the three B’s - bass, barracuda and bonito. The afternoon fog rolls in and time to head back up hill to the harbor. This is the early 70’s, pre-loran days, only a compass, a chart book, and a wanky Gemtronics RDF that was accurate to about +/- 15 degrees, mostly dead reckoning navigation, seat of your pants stuff.

So I am feeling pretty confident as a young kid and after we raise anchor start the trip back home in the fog. Wide open ocean to my port, long stretch of beach and rocks to my starboard, with San Clemente Pier to avoid in front of us, just have to get through the dense SoCal fog. Get going and start questioning my heading and feeling the disorientation you get in fog. Slow down and look to port, where it should be wide open ocean and see some guys standing on rocks about 25 yards away! Can sense that we are in shallow water , no surf as seas are calm and realize these are the rocks below San Clemente pier, so I am either about to beach our boat or t-bone the pier!

Anxiously back track and head out to deeper waters, learned not to put too much trust in that RDF signal. Got used to the fog early on so it helped many times coming back to the Harbor without visibility.

My first captain was also the Cox on the Lifeboat, 40 years at sea.
Oh my, he got it so wrong in fog we ended up doing 8 knots backwards off the wrong Island due to the tides.

Faux Pas: Had to google it also: One example given was burping in public, been there, done that, and worse..

As for boats, or marine faux pas:
(80% of my sea time has been pleasure, only 20% for work)
Here goes:
44’ sailboat with a retractable centerboard, brand new at boating and boat ownership. Motoring into a bay on Tortola, BVIs, did not understand the UK system and used the Red Right Return program from my home base in the USVI: Got on the wrong side of the marker (board was up) bounced on the reef, but got in the bay, anchored and dinked to shore for nice dinner.
Then realized all the diners had seen my arrival as the restaurant was facing the bay, a bit red around the ears, but the folks on another sailboat who followed us in did not have a centerboard and was stuck on the reef all night.
Better be lucky than good..