Edd,
thanks for this story you cracked me up!!!
Danny
On 7/18/2018 11:27 AM, Edd Schillay via CnC-List wrote:
I figure this would be a good time to share a story about when the
Enterprise-A, a 1978 C&C 34 which was co-owned by both my father and
I, hit a rock formation off of City Island.
On the afternoon before a Wednesday Night Race, I’m in my office and I
get a call from my bottom cleaner:
“Edd, what are you doing? Pushing all the rocks out to the middle of
the Sound?”
“What?!!”
“Yeah, you hit something big.”
The weekend prior, my father took his girlfriend, whom we later
nicknamed “The Crusher” (no reference to Wesley), on a short overnight
cruise to Greenwich Harbor.
“No, I did not,” I told the cleaner. “But I bet I know who did.”
Before hanging up, he told me it’s bad and I should get the boat
hauled. My next call was to the yard telling them I’ll be bringing the
Enterprise over that evening to be hauled, inspected and repaired. I
then dialed the old man. The conversation went like this:
“Eddie? How are you?”
“I’m fine, Dad. How are you?”
“Good. Looking forward to tonight’s race. What’s up?”
“Did you have a good time with your girlfriend on the Enterprise this
past weekend?”
“Yes, we did. Thanks for asking. Weather was perfect.”
“That’s wonderful to hear. I’m happy for you. Say… when you guys were
out there, did you, oh I don’t know, happen to HIT ANYTHING?!!”
Silence. Then: “Well, on our way to the mooring, we kinda hit Big Tom.”
“Kinda??!!”
“Yeah. She was driving and I was lowering the headsail. We went
straight into it. Pretty hard. I looked below and didn’t see any water
coming in so I thought it was OK.”
Note: Big Tom is a rock almost 200 yards due west off the southern tip
of City Island. It is surrounded by three buoys. If you enter the
triangle, you may hit it. Stay outside the triangle and you’re safe.
Only idiots hit Big Tom. The conversation continued:
“It’s not OK. Diver says big damage. We are bringing the boat over to
the yard tonight.”
More silence. Then: “Oh. OK.”
“What happened to all those times when I was a kid and you told me
that if I do something wrong, I won’t get in trouble if I own up to it
ahead of time?”
A longer pause. “Well that only really applied to you…”
“Bye Dad.”
When the yard brought the boat into the slings the next morning, they
said there was water above the floorboards. The front of the keel was
damaged and the hull behind it was cracked and loose (the keel bent
in, then snapped back, making big cracks). $9,000 in damage and
several weeks out of commission. Thank God for insurance.
Sad at the time, but we do laugh about it now. As others have said,
just be thankful nobody was hurt.
All the best,
Edd
Edd M. Schillay
Starship Enterprise
C&C 37+ | Sail No: NCC-1701-B
City Island, NY
Starship Enterprise's Captain's Log <http://enterpriseb.blogspot.com/>
On 7/16/2018 11:18 AM, David Knecht via CnC-List wrote:
It is a sad morning here and I need some help to drag me out of my
depression. This list is my support group, advisers, experts and
therapists. Or maybe you will kick my butt for being an idiot and
that could help as well. Aries had a serious grounding on a reef on
Saturday and is currently awaiting insurance to start assessing the
situation. We were barely towed off the reef by SeaTow and the boat
is on the hard at a local marina. The damage is worse than I had
hoped and better than it could have been. When they were able to
pull us off the lip of the reef (tide going out, getting desperate)
the rudder hit the reef and bent the shaft, damaged the hull around
the shaft and pushed the rear tip of the rudder up through the hull.
The bottom of the wing keel is also chewed up from grinding on the
reef. That sound of hull grinding over rock is now forever seared
into my brain. South Shore yachts actually lists the rudder on their
site (thanks to the list for making me aware of their C&C parts), and
I am hoping there is nothing else damaged that was not obvious. No
one was hurt, except my pride and confidence. Leaving the marina, I
now have an appreciation for the emotions of people who abandon their
floating homes at sea. At least I will hopefully get mine back.
I have gone over the incident a thousand times trying to understand
what happened and how I could have prevented it. I thought I was
hyperaware of all the hazards in the Fishers Island Sound area and
swore that I would never ground the boat again after an incident with
an unmarked reef during a race a few years ago. I try to race with a
priority of safety, fun and speed, in that order. I almost always
have crew who are not sailors other than racing with me, which I
enjoy, but takes some of my focus away from other things. We had
spent the day in a long race all over Fishers Island sound. It was
blowing 15+ and we had worked very hard to get around the course and
the last leg was a straight downwind sprint to the finish heading due
North toward the CT coast. With 3 inexperienced crew I was happy
that we were in second place in our class and focused on getting to
the line. We crossed the line, then jibed over to head back west to
parallel the coast to our home port of New London and had just taken
a deep breath, congratulated the crew when we hit the reef. It turns
out that the Race Committee had set the finish line inshore and just
East of the single offshore buoy marking Horseshoe Reef. I never saw
(or recognized) the buoy because it was behind the mainsail as we
approached the finish and I was looking for the finish line, not
other buoys. By the time we jibed, it was essentially over my
shoulder. I did not see the buoy until I looked around when we hit
the reef and realized where we were. A hundred yards inshore and we
would have been fine and a hundred yards offshore and we would have
seen the buoy and passed the correct side of it. I think the Race
Committee deserves some part of the blame for setting the finish line
in a dangerous location but certainly my lack of awareness of where I
was relative to dangers (of which there are many in Fishers Island
Sound) was the major factor. If I had looked carefully at the chart
at any point, I presume I would have recognized the danger of the
finishing area, but we were closely following the lead boat and so
our location was not an issue until we finished. I was in familiar
waters but I just did not recognize precisely where I was in familiar
waters. The other boats near us turned East while we turned West so
we were not following anyone after the turn.
If anyone has any suggestions, comments or strategies to help prevent
this, I am all ears. A moments inattention is all it took and it
makes me concerned about several factors- age, racing with non-sailor
crew, racing in general. In our Wednesday night races, we race
around the same marks every week, and it has taken time, but I now
think I know every hazard and am aware of where we are relative to
them while also keeping on top of the boat and crew. This was an
area I have sailed in many times but rarely race there. Also in
terms of the incident itself, if Seatow had not happened to be in the
area and seen us and we were not able to get the boat off the reef
until the next high tide, I have no idea what we would have done. I
know I have learned from other people’s disasters (always the first
thing I read when a new Sail magazine is delivered), so maybe this
will help someone else not have this happen or make someone feel
better about things that have happened to them.
Relevant to the issue of thinking you know where you are when you
don’t, if you have not read Laurence Gonzales’s book Deep Survival, I
highly recommend it. He talks a lot about the psychology of visual
perception of your local environment and how it affects decisions. I
think there are lessons there for everyone, as many of the things he
alerted me to I can see over and over in everyday life and this is
perhaps another example.
Dave
Aries
1990 C&C 34+
New London, CT
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Each and every one is greatly appreciated. If you want to support
the list - use PayPal to send contribution --
https://www.paypal.me/stumurray
_______________________________________________
Thanks everyone for supporting this list with your contributions. Each and
every one is greatly appreciated. If you want to support the list - use PayPal
to send contribution -- https://www.paypal.me/stumurray
_______________________________________________
Thanks everyone for supporting this list with your contributions. Each and
every one is greatly appreciated. If you want to support the list - use PayPal
to send contribution -- https://www.paypal.me/stumurray
