{"id":675,"date":"2004-07-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=675"},"modified":"2009-04-15T09:00:20","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T14:00:20","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew224","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew224\/","title":{"rendered":"Blunders?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Linda and Steve recall some of their funnier blunders over the years.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

There have been many over the years. Some humorous, others less so. If we eliminate the racing years (lots of BIG mistakes in those days) we could start with the beginning of our serious cruising.<\/p>\n

We were working our way into San Diego harbor in thick fog, something we’d done many times before without any instruments. But now we had both depth sounder and radar. Elyse, then seven, was reading the depth gauge, Linda was on the radar, and Steve was at the helm.<\/p>\n

Elyse’s little voice announced "14, 12, 2." Steve assumed that she had said 2 by accident. Instead of putting the boat into reverse, he started to ask if she had meant 12. The words had just started to form when there was a solid thump, and we came to rest on a mud bank.<\/p>\n

Of course the fog then lifted, and there we were for all of San Diego to ogle, gently heeling over as the tide dropped.<\/p>\n

Now we all knew we had to get a kedge quickly set or we’d be spending the afternoon as the butt of a lot of jokes. Problem was the dinghy was packed with fenders, awnings, and a pile of other junk. No quick solution there. We finally got a passing fisherman to drag out our kedge anchor and with the help of a couple of wakes, we winched ourselves off.<\/p>\n

Lessons learned: First. seven-year-olds know the difference between 12 and 2! Second, thereafter the dinghy was kept almost empty, so it could be quickly used in the event of another grounding (there have been many!).<\/p>\n

Then there was the time in 1977 when we were heading up the river in Auckland, to haul out at the Salthouse Boatyard with INTERMEZZO. The channel is marked by buoys and to the south side are wide, shallow mud flats. Now the Kiwis (and most of the rest of the world) use a backwards marking system, with red being on the port side when returning. Of course we knew this, but we were late, and in a hurry to get to the yard before they closed. We took the first buoy after the Auckland Bridge to starboard, and promptly went hard aground with a dropping tide. The Kiwis notice everything nautical, and this was just before rush hour. So by the time we’d worked ourselves back into deep water, four hours later, at least half of the people and a quarter of the sheep on the North Island were aware of our little misadventure. We still hear about it from time to time.<\/p>\n

Linda remembers the time going into Port Luis on the island of Mauritius. We’d just finished crossing a long stretch of very rough Indian Ocean without incident, and were feeling pretty good about landfall. There were a series of sea buoys, which were not marked on our chart. They looked to Steve like a shipping channel. Linda opined that they should be taken to port-no sense taking chances. Steve said, "No, we’ve got lots of water" and promptly parked on a large coral head. <\/p>\n

Some years later, we were departing the yacht club in Virginia City, Virginia. A crowd of new friends were on the dock, wishing us bon voyage. We cast off the lines and put INTERMEZZO II into gear, but she didn’t move. A little more throttle did not help the situation, whereupon one of the bystanders shouted at the top of his lungs "Hey, you’ve still got your stern line attached!" And this was after we’d written our first book and so were now supposed to be experts.<\/p>\n

Later that year, we had sailed from the U.S. East Coast through the Panama Canal and were now getting ready to anchor after a rough passage across the Gulf of Tehuantepec. We were both tired and our working jib had been damaged by boarding seas while secured on deck to the life line stanchions (Linda had suggested removing it and storing it when it was dropped, but that’s another story). We were anchoring in the outer harbor of Puerto Madero. The mud was very soft and we were having a hard time getting the anchor to dig in properly. Steve was at the bow, working the windlass. Deciding to get it over with, and having 400′ of chain on board, the chain was allowed to run out all the way while Linda backed down. The end of the chain was marked with red and white paint, and a series of wire ties. As these came by Steve took just a moment too long wondering about their significance-and then the end of the chain flashed overboard (the bitter end was tied, but the knot had worked loose-we now whip the loose ends of the knot so this cannot happen). The anchor and chain were eventually recovered with the help of some locals. They must have thought we were pretty dumb gringos to lose that much gear in such shallow water!<\/p>\n

There are lots more stories we could tell. The point is, if you cruise you are going to make mistakes. Not much you can do about that. When they happen, make the best of the situation, and try and learn from it for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda and Steve recall some of their funnier blunders over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}