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Sacramento, California, United States
so salty pieces of coral from surfing Hawaii in the 60's and 70's getting reef pounded living in my body fall through my skin from time to time!

sailing to Oahu

Jimi Hendrix was playing on Oahu. I had never sailed. Surfed Mexico, California, Hawaii! Aw, how hard could it be to sail 90-110 miles from Kauai to Oahu? Piece of cake, right? Remember it was the 60's! This is so bad. We thought we were looking at Kaiena Point,Ohau, knowing we weren't going to make the concert! But at least we were in site of Oahu-wrong! Coy, who had never sailed before, me,who had never sailed before, jeff and Abbott etc. We were looking at the sleeping giant on Kauai! We had done three-sixty's in the night! We sailed on the only tri-marran I've ever sailed on ( except later ) in my life, missed the concert! It was at the Waikiki Shell Ampitheater ( Moon eclipsed . We finally made Nawilwili Harbor! The Skipper tried to give us his boat saying, " It's trying to kill me"! We watched him go stark raving mad not even realising that had we got caught in the channel current we were on our way to Japan! Remember it was the 60's and we were going to see Hendrix. I left out some of the good stuff but I will make up for it later!

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Dismasted

Signed on for a boat delivery. Corrected time winner of transpact, " Montgomery Street"! She is a Cal "40", sloop,four spreader mast, stripped racing vessel. You know what I mean? Some sailors are racers and some sailors are cruisers. I never cared that much about the difference between racers and cruisers until I started reading forums. One of the most recent questions was, " Why don't cruising sailers race?" I ( when askesd ) think I might have a quick answer to that. Why is there any need for boat delivery of racing boats after a race? 1) To return the boat to it's port of call is uphill? " I'm a knowledgeable racing sailor why should I have to go against the wind"? 2) I race and then have places I need to be! Let the owner of the vessel pay to get grunts to get his boat back home! I got him 2nd place, didn't I? 3) So what if we damaged the boat! " The owner is rich"! "Let him pay for it!" It really goes on and on. Here's a story not many have gone through! Five days North of Hawaii delivering " Montgomery Street " to Oakland, California after winning transpact, with two people aboard that knew what a passage could mean and four bodies capable of finding out! I was at the helm in broad daylight when a shotgun blast exploded! Joe was skipper and had been part of the racing crew that had won this particular transpact race. He was hired by the owner to return " Montgomery Street" to the mainland. The " shotgun blast " was so loud I, who was driving the boat, ( by tiller, can you believe that? ) watched, as in slow motion a four spreader main mast fell to port into the ocean in broad daylight! I yelled to my watch partner, " Duck!" ( we were running partner watches ) otherwise, he is dead. The boom which crashed next to his head as the ocean started pulling us under water due to the amount of rigging falling into her, missed him by no more than two inches! Joe and I with a hack saw and bolt cutters, cut all the garbage away. When I say garbage I mean our boom, main sail, our jib and all our rigging! Remember racers we are only six hundred miles away from the nearest 7-11! Now here is the question. What would you do? I know what we did. We sailed back to Oahu. How we did it is quite interesting! Hint. We sailed ( get it ) and we returned one day faster than it took us to get where we lost the main mast. I am looking forward to anyone's suggestions on how getting to a safe anchorage might have been or be achieved? RB

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