Weird radio calls

[Fortis]

I was part of a navigation exercise witht eh Coast Guard last weekend. The first part of the morning was at one of the base stations, just next to the radio room.
I had been there about 15 minutes when I heard the call from B.O A yacht I had crewed on and had enough strong opinions about to have faded away form crewing on any more. Seems they had lost their prop while out in Bass Straight and were returning under sail through the heads. They were requesting a crew evacuation for one female crew member. I instantly knew who that was, because she was the co-owner and tactitian and skippers wife and simply did not allow other women on the boat. So I was getting concerned that she had been hurt and was listening out as the story progressed. Eventually she got picked up and the skipper of the CG boat called a fairly disgusted call to the effect that she was not injured, she was merely severely pissed off and had been having a screaming row with her husband the skipper for about four solid hours about who's fault losing the rpop was...she then declared she did not want to be on board any more and the CG had been dragged into the mess, thank you. Central control decided to diplomatically call the pick-up a public relations excercise...and that was the last we would hear from B.O until they needed help getting into port. I was there marking charts and shaking my head because there, in a nutshell, was both the maintenance the human stress reason why I quit crewing that boat. hardware falling to bits in your hands or pulling out of the deck for lack of maintenance, while the husband and wife held huge screaming rows and the crew sat there and pretended to be lumps in the fibreglass and other boats went past us.

Anyway, got back to figuring and working with my team on the chart stuff...
20 minutes later I hear another familiar name called in. Avenger, a beautiful Adams 12 that is lovingly maintained in all its burgundy-hulled majesty has managed to go aground, again, no real surprise, the skipper is famous for kicking up sand and mud by hugging the very edge of the deph contour the boat needs in order to get the most out of shore breezes...and sometimes there is a spit of sand sticking out across that contour. My wife and I had both crewed this boat extensively until we got our own boat, with a shallower draft!!!.

By this point I am well and trully distracted and listening out for the trifecta. It came a little later in the form of the sail training ship Enterprise (A beautiful restored schooner) having lost its rudder int he busiest part of the Bay, and really asking for a hand as she drifted out of control across about 6 major shipping lanes (no where at all to anchor where she was, it is the convergence point for pretty much all major ship traffic and anywhere you throw out a hook means you are blocking a channel).

Feeling a little cursed (even though I had only crewed the Enterprise a couple of times four years ago), we go out and do the navigation exercise...only to be called off to offer assistance to ...you guessed it, another boat that my wife and I used to crew for, which had suffered a tangled prop and rudder when they started the engine and ran over their own anchor rope...while doing a cruise for the potential new buyer of the boat. Ooops!

So I got to throw them the towline and call out, Not that cleat, it isn't as firmly seated as the other one, and you need to give the pin on the bowrail a kick to get it to let go.
I heard the guy that was trying the boat out say "Wow, these Coast Guard guys really know their stuff, he could see all that from his boat!"

So we sort of skip-towed them in (the rudder could aim almost but not quite straight so you tow along ina  straight line, and when you start hauling the boat side on by the nose, you slow down, tow the angles around to where you want them and start again) . Then we went back to our exercise...which I think I totally bombed because I was running through my head how many other boats fomr my past were going to have "issues" that day and need to call CG on their radios.

All in all a very odd day.

Mind you, the previous weekend we recovered 150meters of loose fishing net that had 23 dead penguins and two cormerants tangled in it.

Working the CG does teach you skills you never can get elsewhere!
(I smelled of dead penguin for three days despite about 14 showers and baths. Then, the following weekend I got to realise the hard way that the one thing I had forgotten to wash was my PFD....)


Alex.

[AdriftAtSea]

Alex-

I get the feeling that you might be a bit short on invitations to crew for any one on Sailfar.net anytime soon.  ;) 

Dan