[quote=ericweller]I've been holding back on telling my new experience partly because of embarrasment but here goes.....
A couple weeks ago, I was out on the wire when a splice on my trapeze rig failed and I dropped into the water like a stone.
I had the mainsheet and tried to let go of it as quick as possible, but still sheeted in quite a bit. I surfaced in time to watch my wife valantly try to get the windward hull down but it was too late. She sailed away a couple hundred yards and then capsized. Fortunately, the tide was coming in and I was able to swim the 200 yards back to the boat but was EXHAUSTED by the time I got back to her. Too exhausted to right the boat. We could not get our bows into the wind because of the tidal current. Yes, we had our weight forward on the hull but the current must have been negating the effort. There was no way I would have been able to swim the mast around.
Fortunately, we had our VHF radio tied to the boom so I called the Coast Guard for help. We were in a pretty desolate area and figured the radio was not going to reach anyone but fortunately they heard me and sent 2 RBI's out to help us. I had them lift the mast end and the boat popped right up and we got back on.
I learned several things from the experience.
1) Put a radio on each person's vest instead of keeping it on the boat. If my wife had sailed any further away and capsized, there is no way I could have swam back to the boat. Then, I would have been screwed floating in the water with nothing but my whistle.
2) Don't tie "safetly" equipment onto the boat. Fasten it so it can be easily retrieved. I could not untie the GPS to tell the CG my position. The CG had me count to 10 so they could triangulate my position. I actually had to break the dry bag holding my radio because I couldn't untie the stupid knot I tied to hold it to the boom. Which brings me to....
3) Just because a radio is submersible does NOT mean it floats!! I handed the radio to my wife and she dropped it into the water. I thought it would pop to the surface but realized pretty quickly that our radio sunk. Fortunately, it was after the CG had our position.
4) Finally, put signalling devices onto your vest. We capsized late in the afternoon and could easily have had a situation where one of us is floating alone after dark. We had whistles on each vest but that was it.
What was funny was the next day, we headed to West to replace the radio and guys in the store heard the "pon pon" go out on the CG band. Of course, West had many suggestions on what safety gear we needed. Now each vest has a whistle, radio, mirror, knife, light sticks and a flashing LED. I feel like inspector gadget with all these things on my vest but think I'm ready for just about everything.
Now if I could just learn to splice a line so that it doesn't fail!<!-- editby --><em>Edited by ericweller on Sep 19, 2011 - 09:26 PM.</em><!-- end editby --> [/quote]
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