So what did I learn? Nothing!!

[deblen]

You kept your calm,notified the neighbor boat & kept a sober watch. Not bad!! S... happens.
Always use floating painter as suggested-I use lifering rope-bright & floats.
Could you have freed the dink & secured it alongside the stern qtr?

Cheers/ Len

[TrentePieds]

My thanks to OzSkipper! For this:

I have the first six paras of message #1 on the screen, and I'm going "Harumph...". MyBeloved, who, as I've mentioned before, is an absolute greenhorn, sez "what are you harumphing about?", so I ask her to read what's on the screen, whereupon I launch into the standard sermon about how it's skipper's responsibility to know EVERYTHING and not to jeopardize the ship by telling off a crew member to do something he isn't up to doing. The usual harangue about "when poop happens, it's ALWAYS Skippers fault." What was wrong with this guy? Harumph...

So MB goes back to doing her morning toilette, and I scroll the page and read down to the end.

And there it is! Different words, but same message.

So, Ozzie — I thank you for giving me a hook to hang a lesson on and for backing me up on one of my gospel songs :-)!

And now the comfession: On a dark night many years ago, towing three Enterprise dinghies behind a KingsCruiser 29, I was approaching a lift bridge on a fair tide. Alone in the KC. In the days before radio. The bridge didn't respond to my signal. In the struggle to get my flotilla turned around before I'd loose my rigging against the bridge span, I buggered up and picked up a painter in the prop. Well, King Neptune musta been in a particularly generous mood that night for he let me keep enuff revs on, though they were falling, that I could get to the wharf of a chemical plant two hundred yards to starboard and get a line around a bollard.

The walk up through that plant, where they made caustic soda, was surreal. The stuff of nightmares. It scared me more than the bridge had :-)

TrentePieds

[skipgundlach]

heh.

I've backed over poly line (had to cut it, too!) so that's not the answer. Moving the dinghy during anchoring is one of our first, not last, things to do before throwing out the hook, let alone backing. We DID learn from that...

However, I have a better tranny story.

We buy our boat, and cast off. Admiral, being new to such stuff, neatly frenches the stern lines. Me, being similarly new (enough) not to think of it, think nothing of it and we go about our way in 25-30, 8-10, no problem.

First anchorage is just fine, ditto second. But the third had no bite when we tried to motor up on the taut chain. Engine revs, no action.

We'd backed down on the hanging mooring line, which had gone over in the pitching of our travels.

Fortunately, two things: We had a conventional stuffing box. Dripless would probably have sunk us. Second, our Morgan 461 had been built for charter, and had a tube between hull and strut - which prevented us from bending the strut as Archimedes' screw worked...

... to pull our transmission out, breaking the plate on the bell housing.

I was not the first to do this; indeed, a review of the times mentioned this feature(s) as it spoke of someone/credit card captain doing the same decades before.

So, I dove on it in the waves, cut off the line, used part of it to support/pull the tranny into the housing after I horsed it back in, including, of course, managing to find the spline/hole in the housing. As I'm not a talented knotter for tensioning, all I could manage for tightness was to keep it in place, not overcome reverse.

Which meant that I remounted it two more times before we got to Key West and managed a reverse-less docking to allow the admiral to get off and to the Ace to buy a come-along.

Which, when installed, allowed us to continue, with reverse.

Stupidity,or ignorance, is common. Fortunately, we survive our misadventures to regale others who might later avoid the same fate

[model 10]

We towed our dinghy quite a bit last year. I backed over the floating line and it was sucked into the prop the first time and the second time I forgot to warn my wife and she backed over it. I think I have it figured out now. The floating line thing might work but the 3 point bridle part of my towing set up did not float and caused some sinkage on the floating part. Maybe those little red floats you see on some painters would be good.

[adlib2]

Originally Posted by sailray

I learned 30 years ago never tow a dinghy

Having lost one dinghy offshore and run over my painter inshore I understand your sentiment. I now never tow offshore, use the davits or on deck and inshore tie the the painter to a breast cleat and hip tow.

[barnakiel]

Last time we caught the painter in the prop was in NZ, around Xmas time ... I think I am beginning to see a pattern here. Ha ha ha!

Happy New Year everyone!

b.

[viking 1944]

I had a similar experience in the narrow mouth of a river adjacent to a large marina and much traffic. I used the compression release to disable the engine, put it in reverse and hit the starter, the rope unwound itself and I was able to restart and avoid traffic. In my case it was a jib sheet that came adrift.
El Condor Pasa

[TomLewis]

Originally Posted by viking 1944

I had a similar experience in the narrow mouth of a river adjacent to a large marina and much traffic. I used the compression release to disable the engine, put it in reverse and hit the starter, the rope unwound itself and I was able to restart and avoid traffic. In my case it was a jib sheet that came adrift.
El Condor Pasa

Geez, I thought I would be the only one to catch a jib sheet. What the heck was it doing in the water anyway I ask myself.

[Don C L]

I had to laugh... I have a similar story, only it was windy with swells making it into the anchorage. I thought I had done everything "right." I had to dive on the line at night, not much fun but I cursed the whole time, at myself, for the bonehead move and not predicting the situation better. Things worked out, and the prop shaft too was ok, but I FEEL a whole lot wiser. But really, can we be completely prepared for EVERY thing?

[TrentePieds]

:-) Nah, little red floating things and other butt-savers just complicate things and clutter up the boat. Uncle Occam doesn't like that.

Only proper thing to do is stay tidy and alert and to train your crew to do a given thing EXACTLY the same way each time it's done. To do that I put on my "aw shucks" manner, so people don't get to thinking they've been press-ganged into Nelson's Navy, but I do make sure that within the first few hours people are aboard that they know that "requests" [we don't EVER call them "orders":-)] are to be repeated back to me VERBATIM, and they are then to be complied with promptly and proficiently.

The reciprocity is that I never "ask" anyone to do something that I haven't carefully instructed the person in doing so that it will get done precisely the way I want it done, and no other, each and every time it is done.

It all sounds a bit rigid and harsh when it's laid out in black and white like that, but in practice it needn't be. MB is not, from nature's hand, "mechanically gifted", and she came to the seafaring life only at retirement age. She has spent her entire working life in ECE dealing with other people's infants and toddlers, so she's not attuned to linear, structured, analytical thought a la engineer, or to what sailors call "forehandedness". The corollary of that is that I'd be a bloody fool if I didn't GENTLY lay that sort of rigidity on her for our common good and common safety.

And the pleasure becomes palpable when at the end of a successful evolution she goes "Wow! did I really do that?"

And Uncle Occam likes that :-)!

TrentePieds

[MarkJ]

I don't see much of a reason the berate yourself. This stuff happens, occasionally. You did well in the situation.
I think we all get into problems, but its the getting out of them that makes the seaman.

[zeehag]

i like to add a net float to my dinghy painter if i happen to be towing it any where--and i donot tow at sea. the float keeps my prop safer than it already is.

[Kerry1]

Originally Posted by ozskipper

I have been sailing for over 30 years. And even ran my own sailing school for some years. No matter the experience we all screw up. So heres the story.

Heading into a bay for NYE fireworks. It had about 200 boats anchored to leeward of where we found a spot.

I went up to the bow to lower the anchor, my mate was at the helm. I had told him he would need to apply reverse help us set the anchor. He did what he was told. The next thing the engine died. At this point I knew I couldnt let out much more scope do to the boats directly behind us. I also didnt know why the engine wouldnt restart. (sounded like a dead battery_ strange).

I ran to the stern to yell to the boat directly behind and let them know our problems. (though the anchor was appearing to hold at this point). This is when I saw the dinghys bow lodged under the stern of the boat. My mate had reversed over the painter. Arrg.

So now we cant motor out of the bay. Its dark and there are going to be 200 boats to leeward for the next hour or so. Plus I have no idea if we have enough scope on the anchor. *h Sh&T!!

By this time, I knew we had rope around the prop shaft, thats what killed the engine and why it wouldnt restart. My next concern was "what if the prop shaft is now bent"? Double *h Sh&T.

Now, 15 mins in, the anchor appeared to be holding (thank whichever god). We had lots of cold beer on board. But we knew we had to stay sober "just in case".

Eventually, the fireworks went off and they were great. We attempted to be happy and excited. But we knew we were stuck there for the night and if the wind picked up, we would be in for a long night.

Luckily, 20 mins after the fireworks, our leeward neighbor motored away. That allowed us to increase the scope substantially. It held over night.

The next day we dove on the prop shaft and cleared the spaghetti of painter.

Then with some trepidation we started the engine and put it slowly into reverse then forward gear then reverse to listen for bangs or sounds of bent shaft. WOOOHOO.. No bent shaft. So we were able to motor off safely.

So what did I learn? Nothing! I already knew not to run over the painter. I already knew to let my crew know of these things. I simply forgot to mention it and for got to bring the dinghy in closer. Sigh!
There is only one thing to blame for the events that unfolded. ME!

It takes a generous, honest heart to see anothers faults and still give the benefit of the doubt. It sometimes takes an even bigger heart to forgive oneself for doing something when we know we should know better...If someone want to be a millionaire they should invent a self-recoiling painter that recoils as soon as mamaboat's reverse gear is engaged.

[patprice]

Amen!

[buzzstar]

For me, the lesson was things may (and probably will) go wrong , often in combination, even if you know enough to avoid them.The important thing is how well you are prepared to react when they do. Of course, as many of us have also learned, luck -good or bad- is often a factor in the original event and the outcome, although being prepared tends to shift the odds favorably.