Sailing with Dad - 10 most embarassing Moments

Sailing with Dad! – or “ My 10 most embarrassing sailing adventures “

This short story will be an entertaining recollection of sailing with my father (now deceased) on many different boats from Camden, Maine down the East Coast to Cape May and the Delaware & Chesapeake Bays – They include:

1. Sinking in a Comet in Camden Harbor after trailering it behind an air-conditioned Corvair Convertible on a home-made trailer.  Then trailering it home again, (blowing the transmission and then blaming me.)

2. Puncturing an antique yacht in Marblehead with our boat's bow, while my father was trying to tell me how to make his coffee and was not watching where he was going,

3. Trying to sail through the Cape Cod canal against the tide with a British Seagull outboard on a 32 foot sloop and ending up sailing backwards while being arrested by the Coast Guard for trying to sail through the canal in the first place,

 4. Running aground in a muddy creek because my father never kept a chart on the boat that was newer than 10 years old and he couldn’t remember if the numbers were in feet or fathoms, (they were in feet, we drew 6 feet and the water was only 3 feet deep at low tide). We stayed in the boat, my father sleeping, snoring and smoking as he wallowed in bilge water on the low side.  I stayed up all night waiting for the tide to come back in.  When it did, he woke up looked around and said; “See, I told you it would be fine.”

 5. Hitting the rocks in Newport while trying to get in after dark with an old chart, taking a short cut and ending up bouncing on the rocks all night long, then being “rescued” by the Coast Guard, who towed us 35 miles out of our way to make a report,

6. Getting dismasted in a 24 foot Tylercraft because my father was too cheap to keep the boat at a marina and decided to throw out an anchor in a channel in front of a bridge that did not move when the anchor dragged and the boat was pulled under a bridge in Old Saybrook,

7. Hitting a bridge that wouldn't open in New Jersey, while we were powering out E-scow down the Intracoastal waterway to keep the boat in the Chesapeake for the fall to see the leaves change.  Dad forgot that the bridge was a swing bridge, not a lift bridge, so we had to make a U-turn by bouncing off the bridge.

8. Getting swamped by a tanker in Delaware Bay, because we were sailing after dark, without running lights, in the E-scow, which had a freeboard of about 12inches and they couldn’t see us and we were in the channel,

9. Running aground in the Delaware River because we didn’t check the tide drop and ended up walking around the boat in the mud, taking pictures with the sails up so Dad could look “cool”,

10. Converting a racing E-scow into a fishing/casting platform after 3 dismastings in 1 year!!  He couldn’t afford any more mast and besides it was bass season,

Maybe some day I will write this story when I have more time!

By his son, Tom.

7/16/02