An Embarrassing Story
Last Saturday was the fourth monthly Inter Island Yacht Club Regatta. This time, the regatta was in the South Bay. The boat bottom had been scrubbed Thursday and the crew (Steve and Ebb) were hyped and ready for an exciting day.
It was already windy at 11:00 AM. Early for the South Bay – usually, the wind shows there about an hour after the scheduled 12:30 PM start. When we arrived in the starting area, the race committee boat had not yet established the starting line. While waiting, we removed the outboard engine from the well and handed it to Ebb to stow in the companionway between the main and fore cabins.
Meanwhile, we were bouncing around in the wind trying to set the sail trim when Steve yelled, “buoy!” I looked up and there it was. Big and Red and about 12 feet away. Dead ahead. At about 3 knots.
Ebb reports that the noise below when we hit sounded like an explosion!
The boat rolled off the buoy to leeward and headed off to starboard. I think I was in charge? We did an assessment of the damage and found a small bulge on the inner side of the bow that was weeping a bit, but no other punctures. Some nasty scrapes on the port side and the bow pulpit was a little messed up.
Not really knowing if anything else might be awry, we decided to call it a day and sailed cautiously back to the Estuary and the slip.
Once at the slip, closer examination showed that the bow pulpit had pulled up, leaving cracks around the forward base plates. That was it, other than what we found originally.
A trip today to the yacht yard turned up a $2k estimate to repair it all.
Here are the damage photos:
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