Sea Tales - have one?

C'mon!!!!!!

Great idea CaptEvan,

Where are you guys? Waiting for the first to jump?

Marmot?
K1W1?
CaptJ?
Pascal?
Carl?

OR should I just make one up!

Nah, will leave that to a new thread sometime called "Biggest Lies Afloat"

Would a story about inadvertently being a drug smuggler interest anybody?

What do you thinkk?

Ofcourse, or you would not of volunteered, we wait in anticaption..............

Gentlemen,

When I read this thread yesterday, I sat back in my chair and shook my head wondering why this thread degraded into a political dissertation. Capt. Evan put forward a good thread idea that could have been entertaining.

In the interest of maintaining thread continuity, I have stripped several posts. Please do not use this medium as a platform to voice discontent or your own personal frustrations.

Below is a copy of a post I made previously. I'm including it here as well...

We have a GREAT foundation that is evolving as one of the most useful resources in yachting. Let's build on it! I will remove this post shortly. In the meantime, let's proceed with the original thread concept...

Maybe the thread needs a soft start.
8am on a summers day in 1975, Cockles the yard foreman sent Basher Bapty down the harbour to weld up a hole in the bottom of a dredger. He had to pump the bilges dry first and would need the Big Yellow Diesel Pump from Alec Fairbairns yard. Basher took me along with him to carry his tools. We drove down the pier in the yard Landie, with the BYDP in tow and set up alongside the dredger. It was a big one...had a crane and bucket, and a large open hold that was full of water. It had so much water in the hold I was amazed it hadnt sank already.
We put the pump inlet pipe into the hold, and fired it up. I spent the rest of the day whittling wood, fetching tea and listening to Basher break wind through both holes at once every half hour to the minute, until Cockles came down to check on us. He was of course rather narked that we were still stood on the harbour pumping out, rather than actually in the bilges banging scraping and welding and stuff. Basher indignantly informed him that the 'bilges' were so full of water it would take another day yet to get her dry enough...I agreed...after all, the water level in the open hold hadnt gone down much at all.
Cockles looked at the hold, then the pump pipe, then Basher, then using language that I still shock people with today, he pointed out that all we had been doing all day was pumping sea water out of the dredgers hold as fast as it was coming in again through its open bottom doors.

2nd Hand Story. I used to work for a company that did spill response and launch work for the power plant platforms here on L.I. The navigation equipment on these boats consisted of a radar and compass. Coming back at night from the east end we'd simply keep th L.I. coast about 1/2 mile off our port. When you get to Pt. Jefferson the coastline curves out a ways and straight out from that is Middle Ground, then Connecticut. Heard one fellow came cruising back after a few days out east rocketing at an attention locking 8 kts. By the time he got near Pt. Jeff his attention was shall we say lacking. He followed that curve, next time he looked at the radar he had Middle Ground 1/2 mile off his port, then Connecticut. By the time he figured out he had looped he was 1/2 way to Rhode Island and unemployment.

created a boater!

Decided to take my girlfriend ( now my wife ) to Santa Cruz Island here in Southern California for a "Day Trip " on my incredibly seaworthy Nordic 20 1/2 ft I/O ski boat ( closed bow ) as it was all I had and had been to the island many times so I obviously was a seasoned captain right??? Oh well, loadd up some towels, wetsuits, a few sodas and a paper bag full of munchies and off we went. Its about 40 NM from the marina to the South end where we rounded to go around the back side to find a beautifull secluded beach. Found one, anchored and spent the day frolicking about snorkeling and running around the beach simply enjoying having an island to ourselves. At around 2:00, we decided to pack up and go back to Smugglers Cove and drop anchor for a short bit, eat some more of our delicacies, and head off for the mainland. Problem........................the channel we had crossed to get to the island unfortunately is the same channel we would have to cross to get back to the marina.........When we shot across at 8:30 a.m., it was placid and calm with 1 foot swells maybe @ 20 seconds. Now at 3:30 p.m., someone had turned on the washing machine and the channel was now extremely confused ( as I was too at this point ) and looked formidable to say the least. I decided I would give it a try and set out to do battle. I was wearing a gold necklace at the time ( I wasnt trying to be Mr T or anything as it was a small single necklace not a group of 15 or so that could actually be used to support a 25 lb anchor if needed ) which proved to be a blessing in disguise. We had gotten out about 1/4 mile when the bow of my boat slightly pierced a very confused wave which sent a rush of 6 inches of water over the bow directly at our faces. She ducked, I didnt as I had to be the brave captain that never turns his back to the sea....right? Well, when the water hit the reverse style 12 inch blue plexiglass windshield, the water won! The windshield broke apart in front of me and a pizza slice shaped piece hit me in the high part of my chest point first..........but hit directly onto my necklace which miraculously broke from the impact while literally saving my neck............again.......literally. I looked at her with the piece of windshield in my lap and said holy #**&%#$$!!!! We immediately turned around and decided to wait it out back in Smugglers Cove. We were wet now, towels were mostly wet, what munchies we had left we mostly wet, but we were OK..........ratilled ( course I didnt let her know I was ) but OK! We dropped our anchor about a 100 yards from a Grand Banks anchored in the Cove also. We commenced to gather up our stuff, tryed to wring out the seawater from towels and sweatshirts, and basically regroup. The channel decided not to cooperate and remained rough into darkness. had a bit of moonlight though for a while which helped us prepare a nest to use for the night under the bow. I think we had just about gotten to sleep when there was a knock at the door.........actually on the hull as we unfortunately were not home in a warm bed at all! We popped our damp heads only to see a gentleman peering over the side at us while asking " are you guys OK? " rather than answer $%$##$ no we arent OK, I bit my tongue and said " well, were a bit damp and hungry but yeas, we were OK. he asked us if we would like some food and to dry off. We said sure thinking he was going to give us a sandwich and a dry towel. What he had in mind was taking us back to his Grandbanks trawler for a hot shower, pasta and red wine at his white table cloth dinning table. Needless to say, we reluctantly accepted his demanding request and were clean, dry and well fed and feeling 1000 % in no time. After dinner/wine and a discussion on what the %$## were we doing out there in our ski boat, he proceeded to take us back to our boat with a couple of sleeping bags/pillows to sleep it off.

When we got back home the next morning, we decided we had learned a huge lesson, we needed a much bigger boat! And always wear a gold chain necklace too when boating! Simply one of many experiences we have had that has made us boaters for life. My wife refers to this as just one of the times I tried ti kill her.........but she too is a boater for life!

Nudie Beached

Confession time.

I Sunk my Mom on a Nude Beach

A nice day out with my Mom in the 18ft Dolphin ( a bit like a Boston Whaler but built like a 'coon turd). We left the marina all happy families, ice cold drinks, sandwiches and chips. On the back was a brand new Johnson V4 115hp and 2 very expensive Penn boat rods and reels.

After trolling for 2 hours and catching about as much as a HMO salesman in Hawaii, we stopped for lunch.

While at anchor in a quiet bay, a bloody great big Hatt battlewagon went past us and put up a huge wake. You could see it roll in and then it hit my stern.

BOOF!

It came over the engine and the stern. The round hatch in the stern had been baked by the sun and cracked under the pressure. So the foam filled hull will save us.

Nope, it had the tensile strength of the skin on a Starbucks and let the water into the void between hull and deck. Ah, you're thinking, it's full of foam but after years of leaking fuel the foam is now the size of a golf ball rolling around the bilge.


GLUG!

Sitting on the sand, sandwich in hand, while the battery tingles the ankles, watching your brand new Penns float away, you say to your Mom "No problem" as she walks home up the hill through the forest.

This is where the naked German bloke comes in. On the naked beach there was a couple and the guy saw I was in trouble and offered a shove off the sandbank. He gave a great big shove as I started the engine and the prop almost hits his package. A lot of impetus was lost due to fear of losing before said package. He said "You're on your own now" and bogged off, I do'nt blame him!

After being towed back and walking the 4 miles home Mother sat at the head of the table and looked at me, "You're late" she said. My answer is lost somewhere very dark.

I could have been but elected not to. My brother and I were bringing our family 48' DeFever back from the Bahamas after spending a couple of weeks in Freeport and Nassau with friends. This was a detour on our delivery run from Galveston, TX to Savannah, GA. The friends flew back from Freeport because they both had to be back at work. We still had one girl who was a friend of a friend and had come along to clean and cook while we drove. About half way between West End and West Palm Beach a cruise ship passed a couple of miles in front of us. When we got to their wake it was full of garbage. Apparently they had dumped their garbage right in front of us. I slowed to go through it in case their was anything substantial in it. As we go through we see what looks like a bale of hay all wrapped in plastic with a transmitter and a strobe light on it. Not wanting to be there when someone came to pick it up we high tailed it out of there as fast, not very, as the DeFever would go. We had discovered along the way that our cook/stew had a fierce weed habit. Fortunately she had been napping when we passed the bale of suspected weed because when we told her she was ready to go back for it even if she had to forcibly take the wheel from me. It shouldn't have been so much fun telling her but it was.

Tail Is Told.

Joe McGlasson; a US West Coast boat designer and builder, became a very close friend of mine through the years. He had built a beautiful 40ft pilot house sailboat for a friend of ours in Newport Oregon.

I remember soon after Chantey; the boat he built, was launched, it ended up on my same dock a couple of slips down from us. Joe and his wife; Evy, came down one afternoon to grill a salmon we had caught. While the salmon was grilling Joe and I walked down to check on Chantey. Joe asked about a stain on the black hull near the waterline. I put my hand on the side of the boat to lean down and get a better look. The dock lines were not tight at all. The boat moved out much more than I could reach. Needless to say I fell in! Joe laughed so hard he almost fell in. The water was really cold and I pleaded for Joe to pull me out. With a twinkle in his eye he said, "That'll be $5.00 cash... I couldn't bargain... I said OK but it'll be wet!" We went back to my boat; ZIA, I changed clothes and we had a great dinner of fresh grilled salmon.

Two days later I sent Joe a bill that read as follows; "IN THE WATER HULL SURVEY, $10.00 ...CASH!"

Neither of us paid up, but we had a great laugh.

ZIA

I'll tell mine if you tell yours

another one for the books

When my wife heard I had posted the story about our Santa Cruz boating story, she reminded me of when I had gone to Lake Mead near Las Vegas on a boatcamping trip long ago. We had all made a remote beach camp in a cove on Lake Mead with about 5 boats total. 6 of us guys decided we would take one of the flatbottoms back to the ramp where there was a good sized campground located that was full of campers including some seriously good looking girls that we knew would be interested in our incrediblly good looks ( Our good looks increased of course with every beer we drank ). We visited the campground only to be asked by a number of the girls' dads to just keep walking. Wow, you would think they knew what we were looking for or something.......amazing! Oh well, it got late and the fish werent biting so we packed back up into the flatty and off we went to go back to our private and serene cove.........across Lake Lead which by now was engulfed by fog so thick you could roll it into a ball a put it into your pocket..........well......maybe not quite that thick........but still really heavy! No compass! No running lights! No oars! No common sense! Nothing but a 18ft flatbottom and 6 tired and lonely guys just trying to get home ( 4 of the six including the driver/owner had had way too many beers and were barely awake). I know, its sounds like heaven.........but it really wasnt!!!! When we got out into what we think was the middle of the lake, we came across a boat floating with no lights or life apparent that looked worse than the "Orca" floating about in Jaws..........after the night attack! We eased up to the boat and discovered there were no less than 8 young people all sleeping down low in the hull while adrift. They began to wake up with our arrival only to thank god we had discovered them as they had been floating since sunset with a dead battery. Being the gentleman we were ( mostly drunk of course ), we offered to tow them back to their camp if they knew where in the $%$# it was. They said they did as they had a portable GPS with them and a flashlight. Wow, what a concept. A little GPS and a flashlight to boot! Hooked them up and off we went to their camp. No problemma. After dropping them safely off at their camp to the delight of all of their parents, we decided to get back to our cove which was around the point from where they were camped according to their GPS. Fog had not let up but we were armed with a spot light they had loaned us with battery clips so we were completely and utterly confident in our seamanship abilities as after all, we had just rescued 8 people from sure disaster while adrift at sea so what could stop us know! With chests exploding from our bodies in superhero fashion as we embarked on this final leg home of our incredible adventure, the engine quit. Wow was it quiet! Wet Bassets are still very loud in comparison to a boat floating with no motor at all at 2:00 in the morning, in the fog, in the middle of lake Mead! Tried to start the engine but it wouldnt crank over as the battery in our boat was now at the end of its charge due to a failed alternator we didnt know about, bad cable connections on the battery and with the additional discharging from the 1 MILLION CANDLEPOWER SPOTLIGHT!!! $%%$#$$%$# We were now afloat, in a boat ( hey....that rhymes...... ) with 4 drunks & 2 sobers, on Lake Mead with a dead battery and no oars, no food, no beer, no sense and no GPS, but we did have a 1 MILLION CANDLEPOWER SPOTLIGHT!!! Us 2 sobers decided to yank the square seat cushions ( they encompassed the entire coast guard equipment package on board the vessel!). from under the drunks and proceeded to paddle with them to go somewhere, anywhere but in the middle as now we were concerned with the batteries ability to take care of the bilge pump in the event the boat even had one and it was hooked up! We rowed ( if you want to call using seat pads as oars... rowing!) for what seemed like forever until low and behold we found land!........We pulled the flatty up as far as we could ( all 4 drunks were by this time fast asleep and werent waking up so pulling the boat up was nearly impossible ). A few hours later, the sun came up and skiers looking for glass were out and one of them happened to be one of our buddies from camp; which by the way was directly across the water in front of us as we had landed on a small island! $%$$#$$%$#!!!! Just goes to show boating is boating......lake or ocean! S*#t happens!

another one for the books

When my wife heard I had posted the story about our Santa Cruz boating story, she reminded me of when I had gone to Lake Mead near Las Vegas on a boatcamping trip long ago. We had all made a remote beach camp in a cove on Lake Mead with about 5 boats total. 6 of us guys decided we would take one of the flatbottoms back to the ramp where there was a good sized campground located that was full of campers including some seriously good looking girls that we knew would be interested in our incrediblly good looks ( Our good looks increased of course with every beer we drank ). We visited the campground only to be asked by a number of the girls' dads to just keep walking. Wow, you would think they knew what we were looking for or something.......amazing! Oh well, it got late and the fish werent biting so we packed back up into the flatty and off we went to go back to our private and serene cove.........across Lake Mead which by now was engulfed by fog so thick you could roll it into a ball a put it into your pocket..........well......maybe not quite that thick........but still really heavy! No compass! No running lights! No oars! No common sense! Nothing but a 18ft flatbottom and 6 tired and lonely guys just trying to get home ( 4 of the six including the driver/owner had had way too many beers and were barely awake). I know, its sounds like heaven.........but it really wasnt!!!! When we got out into what we think was the middle of the lake, we came across a boat floating with no lights or life apparent that looked worse than the "Orca" floating about in Jaws..........after the night attack! We eased up to the boat and discovered there were no less than 8 young people all sleeping down low in the hull while adrift. They began to wake up with our arrival only to thank god we had discovered them as they had been floating since sunset with a dead battery. Being the gentleman we were ( mostly drunk of course ), we offered to tow them back to their camp if they knew where in the $%$# it was. They said they did as they had a portable GPS with them and a flashlight. Wow, what a concept. A little GPS and a flashlight to boot! Hooked them up and off we went to their camp. No problemma. After dropping them safely off at their camp to the delight of all of their parents, we decided to get back to our cove which was around the point from where they were camped according to their GPS. Fog had not let up but we were armed with a spot light they had loaned us with battery clips so we were completely and utterly confident in our seamanship abilities as after all, we had just rescued 8 people from sure disaster while adrift at sea so what could stop us know! With chests exploding from our bodies in superhero fashion as we embarked on this final leg home of our incredible adventure, the engine quit. Wow was it quiet! Wet Bassets are still very loud in comparison to a boat floating with no motor at all at 2:00 in the morning, in the fog, in the middle of lake Mead! Tried to start the engine but it wouldnt crank over as the battery in our boat was now at the end of its charge due to a failed alternator we didnt know about, bad cable connections on the battery and with the additional discharging from the 1 MILLION CANDLEPOWER SPOTLIGHT!!! $%%$#$$%$# We were now afloat, in a boat ( hey....that rhymes...... ) with 4 drunks & 2 sobers, on Lake Mead with a dead battery and no oars, no food, no beer, no sense and no GPS, but we did have a 1 MILLION CANDLEPOWER SPOTLIGHT!!! Us 2 sobers decided to yank the square seat cushions ( they encompassed the entire coast guard equipment package on board the vessel!). from under the drunks and proceeded to paddle with them to go somewhere, anywhere but in the middle as now we were concerned with the batteries ability to take care of the bilge pump in the event the boat even had one and it was hooked up! We rowed ( if you want to call using seat pads as oars... rowing!) for what seemed like forever until low and behold we found land!........We pulled the flatty up as far as we could ( all 4 drunks were by this time fast asleep and werent waking up so pulling the boat up was nearly impossible ). A few hours later, the sun came up and skiers looking for glass were out and one of them happened to be one of our buddies from camp; which by the way was directly across the water in front of us as we had landed on a small island! $%$$#$$%$#!!!! Just goes to show boating is boating......lake or ocean! S*#t happens!

Wow, Double spacing is good