In the past some have asked about the cockpit draining after being swamped. Well short story. This past weekend wife and I went for a sail. Wind 20-25 knts (true) with 10 ft. seas and 4-6 ft. waves. We were out about 3 miles of the coast and spotted a small skiff (10-12 ft.) that had been fishing before the wind came up. As we sailed by I asked if he was ok and with a bit of fear in his voice the fellow said he thought so. I suggested that he might want to start to head in since it was only going to get rougher. I also told him that we would stay near by and try to offer a little cover while he motored home.

Our story goes along ok but needless to say we had trouble going slow enough to stay along side. This ended up with us having to do a number of tacks and we would sail back and forth on his weather side. On one of our tacks (s-p) I missed judged the swell and we ended up taking a 10 footer right on the beam. Lots of splash and a very heavy roll but we were ok. Came back again on starboard got behind the boat and needed to do another s-p tack. We tried to judge the waves and swell and time it best we could but as the saying goes S—T happens. This time we tacked on a swell came out of the tack in the trough and was greeted with a 10-12 ft. roller that was breaking. I fell off hard put the stern to the sea and plow. Felt like the whole ocean just fell on us. After grabbing my sunglasses floating in the cockpit took a quick look at the little guy and his skiff saw that we had blocked the break for him and he was ok we checked to see if we had taken any water below. Besides a little splash all was well below. All this took about 20-30 seconds and now we just needed to deal with a full cockpit full of water.

I pulled the aft hatch board and dumped most of the water out the motor well so now we are about ankle deep and it took about 45-60 seconds to drain the rest.

So there is a story of getting pooped and how fast the cockpit can and will drain if no other wave washes over. Needless to say we all made it to calmer waters and the fisherman didn’t even offer us a ling for dinner. But he was very happy to be on hard ground………ed