Most embarrassing moment

Ok everyone fess up, what is your most embarrassing moment with your Hobie, maybe some newbies will get some pointers lol.
One day I sailed across my lake (about a 10min sail in nominal winds) over to my buddy's place for a cool one, as he has a sandy beach I just dragged the 16 a little was up just so I was sure it was secure. As we sat on his deck a good stiff breeze just took the boat turned it around and sent it on its way, just as if god himself wanted to go for a ride. Well no chase boat other than his 2 person paddle boat I watched the 16 run into a marshy corner of the lake. After pedaling for what seamed like an hour and wading in thigh deep muck and struggling to get the boat out of the mud I was on my way again. Now I always either tie it up or drag the boat far enough up the sand. Everyone around the lake knows me as there are only 2 of us with sailboats and every summer I get teased about letting my boat get away.

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06 getaway -- always remember, man with both feet in mouth have no leg to stand on.

I've posted this story before, but for the sake of the topic and the current season I'll post it again.

My most embarassing moment happened the first time I took my Hobie into salt water. I had met some folks through the forum that sail off of Wrightsville Beach, NC, ie. "the junkyard crew". My very first trip sailing with these I brought some pretty good wind with me. As we headed out through the inlet towards the open ocean I immediately started having trouble. I had the boat rigged, from the previous owner, to where the blocks on the jib clew plate were swivel blocks, way overkill. My jib sheets kept getting all twisted up so when I went to tack the sheets wouldn't run freely. Needless to say, I was sailing down the inlet, tacking up wind, when I got really close to the Coast Guard Station. I went to tack 10-15 yards in front of their dock and I blew it big time. I was sailing to starbord, towards the dock at the time. I went to tack, blew it, and had to fall back on my starboard tack. I couldn't get enough speed back up to stay clear and I slammed into their dock, luckily not into the big coast guard cruiser that was docked there. So I run up onto their dock and had to beach on their property. BIIIIG NO NO, there are signs all over warning boaters of this. I beached the boat, fixed my sheets and blocks, whilst the coasties were telling me I had to get out of there, and headed back out. I had no room to manuvere and clipped their dock once again on the way back out. It was sooo lame. I had been sailing on the lake for about two years prior to this incident and had to hang my head in shame when one of the ten or more coasties that were watching, and laughing at me shouted out, "have you ever been on one of those before?". But, I made it out and ended up having a great day.

Dealing with the current and swells was pretty new to me and put me in my place pretty quickly. But the dudes I was sailing with were all very supportive and didn't razz me too hard about it. I'm sure I was red all over. But that's my most embarassing moment so far. Maybe not the dumbest, but most embarassing.

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James
86' Redline Hobie 16
Sail # 76909

Once my buddy and I tried to make a sailing video just for fun, and spent a good amount of time planning everything out like waterproofing the new camera, planning shots, etc.. Well needless to say, we went out in a pretty nice wind and had a ton of fun taking awesome shots while sailing. Then after about an hour or so of sporadic filming, I jumped off and floated in the water while my buddy circled around and was going to sail over top of my for a really sweet shot. We had seen a cool shot like this somewhere on youtube and decided to give it a try. Well this is where I forgot about one very important thing, called a Dolphin Striker. So, as my buddy sailed toward me, I filmed him and everything seemed perfect. He approached me and we were directly in line and as he was about 10ft from me it began to occur to me that there was no way there was enough clearance between the dolphin striker and the water for both the camera in I to fit. Well, you probably guessed what the end result was in this situation, but if not, I can tell you that it ended with a nasty cut on my head, a slightly bent dolphin striker, but an awesome shot for the video!

That's my embarrassing story.

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~vinny

Several come to mind. But I'll only elaborate on two. The first was at the 1980 Hurricane Gulch Regatta. I just acquired a brand new Hobie 18. During the first race on Saturday I hit and sank C mark. The marks at this event were orange flags mounted to PVC poles stuck in styrofoam floats with anchors. When reaching across from B to C (we were double wire and going about what seemed like warp 3), I was distracted by a large container ship coming into port blasting it's horn. When I turned to look forward again...there was C mark right in front of me. Too late to do anything about it...I hit the mark dead on and shattered it into a million pieces. It then sank. The 18's started first and the rest of the fleets were coming behind us looking for C mark. Ooops. Later that evening at the spaghetti dinner, Jeff Alter sat next to us and was talking about "who was the guy that hit C mark?" I haven't fessed up until now

Another time I was sailing my Hobie 17 at the Continentals in Kingston, ON (2000?). On one light air day while going downwind, I inadvertently fell off my boat and watched it sail away. I ended up receiving a large piece of safety netting at the awards ceremony from the race committee as a joke

Ah...the memories.....

I had just gotten my 16 (#1933) on Friday and with my crew headed for Cocoa Beach for a distance race from Cocoa to Melbourne (FL). We had never sailed a 16 although I had lots of experience in the surf on 14’s. Amazingly we won the Saturday distance race although none of the “gunsâ€

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Jack Woehrle
Wave #100
H20 #287 "Tallahassee Lassie" (down in FLA)

This happen many years ago when I was single. Me and a buddy were sailing in Pecks Bay behind Ocean City, NJ and we come across 2 girls sailing a Sunfish. They’re near a lea shoal on the far side of the bay from the park that they had launched from and they were having a bit of trouble. The water was very shallow so they had there center-board up and could not make any headway off the shoal. So we decide to give them a hand and tow them to deeper water using the righting line. So I tell my bud that I will swing past the girls and head into the wind, so when we get I tell hind to close jump off and swim to them with the tow line. My rudders are kicked up, the wind is strong and I’m struggling with tiller to bring the Hobie into the wind. As we pass the stranded Sunfish he makes a perfect life-saving jump ……… into 6â€

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John Latimer
'79 Hobie18 - Magnum
Sail#4854

Vinny you have to post the "Dolphin Striker Video".

We all want to see that.

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Mike Hensel
'86 Hobie 18, '93 Hobie 14, '80 Hobie 14(restso in progress)
Wind in your sails, water in your shoes, great day!

Non necessarily all that embarrassing, but the thread brought back memories of a story from my youth.
When I was about 13 or 14 my family was living in Houston, and sailing out of Seabrook Sailing Club.
Mom and Dad sailed a Flying Scot, and we kids sailed a Dolphin(similar to a Sunfish).
The standing Rule was that we could sail anywhere we wanted as long as we could still see the yacht club building. My parent's thinking was as long as we could see the building, they could see us.
Anyway, one day I started up the channel towards Clear Lake, it was a broad reach up the channel and before I knew it I was quite a ways up the channel. Now the thing I had not taken into consideration was it was Flood Tide. When I turned to tack back out of the channel the flood tide was taking me in as fast as I could sail out, add the big boat traffic in the channel and it was an exceedingly difficult situation. Add to that the realization that I was out of sight of the yacht club and had been for quite some time.
I just knew I was gonna be in BIG trouble when it finally did make it back. I finally sailed up to a dock and tied off and tried to figure out how long it was gonna be till the tide slowed down enough for me to make it back out of the channel. After deciding that it was gonna be just wayyyyy to long, and every minute out of sight was getting me into more trouble, I screwed up my courage and asked a fella in a power boat to give me a tow out of the channel and into open water.
When I finally did make it back to the yacht club, my dad was waiting on the beach. To my amazement, he
didn't say a WORD, Years later, I recalled that day and asked him about it. He told me that the look on my face told him that I had learned a lesson and that he didn't need to say anything.
My dad's conclusion that he wanted me to remember the lesson and not the punishment was a good one. Where do Dad's learn that kind of wisdom? I'll never know, maybe from their dads, but I am grateful that they pass it on.

Stephen
H-18

I don't have an embarressing moment...yet. Give me time though I've only got back into sailing at the end of the last season.

About 15 years ago however, a friend of mine was docking his brand spank'n new cuddy cabin and he cut the end slip piling too close, he crushed in his bildge air vent. I then started what has become a tradition. I called another friend on his way to the marina/bar and told him to stop by a store and pick up a box of "Captain Crunch". Now if anyone has a mishap with their boat they get a box!

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1981 H16.
1993 Macgregor 26S

I was hanging out at Lavonia Park on Lake Lavon with all the other Lavon catters back in the late 80's. Wind was pretty good. We'd just finished a group lunch and I was the first to head out. As I pushed my H-17 away from shore and hopped on, I had either some rudder or mainsheet issues. I don't remember which. I just remember I messing with it for a few seconds as the boat picked up speed.

Once I got it straightened out, I jumped out on the wing as I yanked in the main and started to fly. I looked up just in time to see that I was going to nail a No Wake buoy near the ramp with the windward hull. There was zero time for evasive action.

Boy howdy did I ring its bell. The windward hull was just about a foot off the water when I hit the buoy dead center about 4 inches below the top of the buoy. I took a pretty good chunk out of it.

The roar from the peanut gallery on shore was heard all up and down the beach. I rounded up, took a bow then sailed off.

A couple of weeks later, the buoy was missing. I'm not sure if that was my fault or not, but I heard about it for years to come.

The boat was fine.

Brian C

Guess I'll chime in on this one. I do not have many experiences since I only have half a season under my belt. The wife and I were at Lake Tyler on a windy afternoon with some other family members. After an hour or so of sailing, we had a quick lunch on shore and decided to take a walk and burn off a few calories. The wind was really whipping and I was reluctant to go out again. I pulled the boat up on shore and into the wind. I uncleated and added slack to the main sheet and jib sheet thinking it would stay put on shore. We walked for about 20 - 30 minutes and were nearing the ramp area when my wife yelled "There goes the boat!" I looked up to see it screaming across the water heading for a dock. I broke into a run and headed for the dock. I thought the hull was going to smash into a piling, but it actually straddled the piling and the bridal wire hit the piling dead center. This acted as a spring and propelled it backwards. The wind was getting ready to grab it again when I dove into the water and scrambled on board saving the day. Of course my wife will not let me live this down, especially since she had asked if the boat was secure before the walk and I said "yes dear, all is good".....sarcasticly of course. Anyway, lesson learned and she will be tied off from now on.

Ahhu Ahhu its like I said, those dam things are so light they need almost no excuse to get get up and fly away without you.

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06 getaway -- always remember, man with both feet in mouth have no leg to stand on.

I picked a really stupid spot to launch my first 16 from on a lake that is less than 5min from my house. I almost never sail from there because the access is such a pain.
Any way. It was freaking blowing, had I been at a regatta I wouldn't have wanted to race windy. I don't know why we even went out. The windsurfers were out in force, 3-4, which is alot around here. I took off from the spot the windsurfers always use which is about 30 feet wide right next to a real nice swimming beach that is always roped off and has very large rocks for errosion control on both sides. Had a blast that day. Pitch poled a few times, just tipped over a few more. Good times. Hot, windy, and wet. It was time to go in wind hadn't let up. The beach was almost dead downwind. It was really tough to get in at anything less than lightspeed but we got in somewhat ok. When we hit the sand my crew just jumped off and his weight getting off the boat flipped it. My fault, should've told him to stay with the boat while I spun it around into the wind. Ended up bending a mast. By some miracle it didn't hit any of the large rocks. Tore some holes in a very nice tequilla sunrise sail, and pretty much drove me to a new level of angry. I bought a new boat a couple of weeks later. Not really embarrassing, just stupid nOOb mistake on my part.

1. Having the mast come down when my father in law took out three others after having just rerigged the new stays. No one was hurt thank God.

2. Asking my wife who was late in her pregnancy if she wanted to go for a sail. She declined citing the wind strength whereupon I pitchpoled the wave and it blew away from me. Only a lull in the 25+ breeze allowed me to get back to the boat. I lowered all but about 4' of sail and sheeded the roll by hand to get back to the dock.

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Dan St. Gean
'82 H 18
'96 H Wave

I've only had my WAVE since September, but managed to nail an embarassing moment the 2nd time I took her out.

I launched from the Newport Aquatic Center, in the back bay, upwind, tacking pleasantly past the Dunes and under Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). I eyeballed the clearance marker (clearance: 24 feet) and figured "made in the shade", cruised under the bridge with a couple of feet to spare and out into the open harbor. It was such a perfect day, warm, breezy, that I sailed past the Coast Guard Station, out into open sea and tooled down around Crystal Cove for a while with the Dolphins and sea lions. Great day.

A few hours later I was on my way back, jibing downwind now. I didn't even bother glancing at the clearance marker under PCH, as I already knew that I was good to go.

Hmmm, let's do the math, low tide + several hours = high tide.

Carlos Mencia would have said "dee dee dee"

Suddenly, my WAVE bucked like a bull trying to throw a rider. "What the...???"

I looked up, and the BOB at the top of the mast is scaping and bending across the bottom of the bridge. The boat tilts at a scary angle, bouncing and kicking, trying her darndest to pitch me into the 56 degree drink. I can barely hang on and I'm thinking "what a numb nuts. I have bent the daggone mast on my friggin' second day sailing my brand new boat!!" Wedged at a ridiculous angle, by wind and incoming tidal current, the boat scrawls to a complete stop.

Out of nowhere, a little, red Coast Guard boat appears, and one of the guys throws me a line. As I lean out to grab the rope, a major gust of wind pushes me further under the bridge and away from the line.

The guy pulls in the line and tosses it again.

As I lean out to catch it, the wind teases me, again, with another breezy shove away from the rope.

With one hull way way out of the water, the other completely submerged, the mast goaning and bending and threatening to snap, the wind finally raked me all the way under the bridge and pooped me out the other end.

The BOB got scraped up pretty good, but I bent it back into reasonable shape, and the mast stayed true.

Yes, tides are a good thing to keep an eye on don't you think?