Apr 16 2009
If You Sailed Yesterday You Would Be Missing too…
Yesterday afternoon was nothing but howling wind, sirens and helicopters. Now I know why. It turns out that a boat was lost about 2 miles North (west) of the Channel Islands Harbor entrance. It looks to be a small Cal or maybe a Newport to me in this picture.
You can read what little information there is about the incident. The bottom line is whomever was in the boat is missing. But my question is…if you were sailing yesterday, what the heck were you thinking ? You had to be completely crazy. Yesterday was the third day of a raging dry cold frontal passage. The seas had had the previous 60 hours to build into a massive maelstrom of 10+ foot wind swells and it basically looked like the end of the world out there with breakers hitting the breakwall and hurtling water 30-40 feet into the air. Today, where I walk down to the beach, near where the boat came ashore, is a sand dune about 8 feet high and 50 feet long that wasnt there before.
Unless this skipper was bent on suicide, he didn’t leave port yesterday. Hell, you couldn’t have gotten past our breakwater yesterday even if you wanted to commit nautical suicide.
I think she was flotsam before yesterday. Maybe broke loose from the gaggle of junkers anchored off Santa Barbara when the storm first cranked up.
Note: she’s still in one piece. Must have had her mast pointed to the sky until she got rolled in the surf. Another object lesson that teaches: “Don’t abandon ship until you have to step up to the lifeboat.”
capt. dan