by DanaDCole on Tue May 06, 2014 11:27 am
I agree that it's obviously best to avoid rocks and so on (kind of hard with the ones you can't see though). An incident just the other day has convinced me that, especially with my limited sailing ability, I'm going to have to give in and mount a small outboard, especially for maneuvering around docks.
It was windier than predicted when I got to the lake (around 18 knots or so, not the predicted 12). As this was my first sail of the season, the prudent thing would have been to turn around and go home, but of course I did not. I was about ready to launch from the dock when a pontoon boat began heading toward me--the guy had lost his forward thrust somehow and was unable to maneuver. The wind, quartering off my starboard bow, was blowing him straight at me. I untied and tried to quickly back away and tack to starboard. That was not to be and I was pushed to port, headed straight for the shore at a pretty good clip. My only choice (I thought) was to gybe around to port. Instead, as the lake was about three feet low I quickly ran aground. This was probably a good thing because out that far the bottom was sandy. I dropped sail, raised the daggerboard, paddled in, and put the boat back on the trailer. (I did stay around long enough to help the guy get his pontoon boat back on his trailer.) In hindsight, there were a couple things I could have done differently that might have worked, but I didn't think quickly enough. So, this was another good lesson learned.
This would have probably been much more of a disaster with the PocketShip. Maybe the outboard would have helped me get out of the situation, or maybe I could not have started it in time--at least it would have been an option.