Armchair Sailors discussion
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Those pictures are heart-breaking.However, I can't help wondering...he could afford the boat, but not to insure it?
Well, with 8-10 ft swells Saturday, and the same today, with nasty chop between swells, we didnt stay out long before fleeing back into the intercoastal. The only thing of note was a porpoise hunting thru schools of spots & croackers in the middle of the intercoastal channel. I did get a decent pic of a boat that looked like it had the legs to make a Bermuda trip...A sailboat sorta like what Scotty is thinking of...
Oh, my, yes...I wouldn't kick that out of the marina!
Squirrel, my pic really didnt do it justice. We were anchored & fishing, and my son spotted it. My back was to it, and by the time I got the camera out, it was past us & at an angle. It was a REALLY sharp-looking boat, and there were many many water containers on deck, which suggests to me a longer-than-day-trip voyage. The paintwork was very well done, all the fittings looked new or recently shined, the sails looked brand-new, and the overall appearance was of a boat that I would 'guess-timate' at an easy quarter million $...
*drool....*
that is very terrible
Well, Dunc & I went to check out our usual lake, which has suffered from the drought like everything else around here. We havent been here in a while, because the water is now about 5-6 feet below normal, but was about 9 feet low during the months of July-August-September. Its scary how many rocks there are just below the surface. In pic#4 you can see a boat that had run up on the rocks. There were two women in it, and they had to spend the night on the boat. They, sadly, came out with no communication equipment, so I called 911 on my cell phone, and told the sheriff's dispatcher to contact the appropriate authorities to send someone to help them. There were a LOT of fish skeletons on shore. I'm not sure if the oxygen levels in the lake got too low, or if the water got too hot, or what...OK...the pics:
I had to tow Dunc, as the wind made it hard for him to steer.
Pic 1
A nice little day sailor. The lake belongs to small sailcraft nowdays hehehe
Pic 2
A little island on the lake, you can see where water normally erodes the shore of it,
Pic 3
In the background, you can see the boat that ran up on the rocks.
Pic 4
Me, with the next island we went to in the background.
Pic 5
I told ya the lake belong to the day sailors now...
Pic 6
Cool pics!Sailing with no phone or radio seems a tad reckless, though.
If you like, I could put these up in the Flickr group :).
Mod
I just wanted to tell you all about my weekend past. It was very very calm off of Wrightsville Beach / Wilmington. Almost flat calm, with some nice rolling swells occasionally. Just enough to rock the boat slightly. I was fishing a shipwreck about 4 miles offshore, but could have easily gone much further out. I dont do so with my 9 yr old son onboard tho...when he's older, sure. We were fishing, and the fishing was good. Unprecedented in my experience were the three different octopus that were brought up on a fishing line! They are extremely difficult to remove from the bait/hook! There were also quite a lot of juvenile sharks! We brought two aboard in the 3-4 foot range, and had two over 5 feet either bend the hook or cut the leader! The water was very clear for that close inshore, and we could see probably 20 feet down! On an interesting note, my good friend of 20+ years, who is a SCUBA instructor was with us. He lives in Wilmington, and told us of a sailboat that lost a mast in the drawbridge!!! This occurred last month, and is still the talk of the town. Here is the story:
BREAKING NEWS - Drawbridge snaps ship's mast, accident snarls traffic
by Keith T. Barber
Monday, September 10, 2007
Drivers hoping to cross the Heide Trask Drawbridge at Wrightsville Beach met with an unexpected delay Monday after a sailboat’s mast collided with the bridge as it lowered back into place.
Steve Alberts, captain of Clampdown, said the sound of the collision brought the bridge to a halt on its way down, but the damage had already been done to Sterling Stevenson’s sailboat, Marijke IV.
“It took him at mid-mast and almost took him under. It almost capsized his boat,” Alberts said. “I saw the weight of the bridge pushing it down. As soon as they heard the screeching aluminum noises, they started pulling it back up. When they did, the boat almost rolled over.”
Stevenson said his greatest fear was that the 55-foot high mast of his CSY-44 sailboat would come crashing down on him.
“What I was concerned about was the top part of the mast snapping and taking me out,” he said.
Stevenson realized his greatest fear as bridge maintenance workers untangled the mast from the bridge and the extent of the damage was clear.
“The jib is ruined, the mast is ruined and the main sail is ruined. The shrouds have been pulled off the boat. They’re all gone,” Stevenson said. “That’s 40 to 50 thousand dollars worth of damage.”
Stevenson, who was two weeks into his journey from Chesapeake Bay to Guatemala, said he couldn’t afford to make the necessary repairs to continue his trip.
“I don’t have the money. It’s not insured. This is a personal tragedy,” he said.
Stevenson cited operator error by the bridge tender as the cause of the accident.
“I was out here for 20 minutes, waiting for 20 minutes,” he said. “If they couldn’t see me or didn’t know I was there, they must have been asleep at the wheel. Of course I expect the state to take responsibility.”
Alberts agreed with Stevenson’s assessment.
“They didn’t see he was even there; that was what concerned me,” Alberts said. “They didn’t stop. They’re usually on top of things are far as the bridge is concerned, but I thought that was a little strange they didn’t see him.”
http://www.luminanews.com/article.asp...