Dave Palen had permission to use his father's 16 foot sailboat, and thought it would be a good time for him, Greg Gunn and I. It was definately a time we won't forget!
The three of us went to Dave's brother's girlfriend's (Think I am trying to confuse you? Well I'm not!, you see Chris is going out with this girl cause she has lots of expensive toys that he can play with!) house by the lake to use the Palen's sail boat that Chris had moored there. We dingied out to the boat, and took about a half hour to set everything up. All we really had to do was put the sails up, and untie it, but we kept screwing things up, and having to undo and redo stuff.
We finally got the thing moving and the voyage looked promising. We steared clear of other boats, and were crusing out to the middle of the lake, then to the other side to check out the burned down Skaneateles Country Club (which I had a nightmare about last night... I was a waiter again, and I only had two tables to worry about. One I totally neglected, and the other was my parents. Even giving my parents all my attention, I still screwed EVERYTHING up... I eventually woke up and I still felt like I was in a dream world, nothing seemed real... anyway...), we decided that we weren't going to go swiming like we were going to because none of us really wanted the bother of getting wet, so we decided to head out to play around the racing markers that where floating around.
There was a larger sailboat of adults that we were passing on our way to the markers, and it was having some troubles, its sails were flapping in the wind, and they really didn't look like they knew what they were doing. We commented about it, laughed at them, and bragged to ourselves about how we should circle them just to show off how easily we controlled our craft. They took their sails down and started their motor and puttered away, all the time, we grinned at what idiots they where.
About that time, our confidence was making us hungry for speed. We pulled out the Jibb (I think that is what the extra front sail thingy is called) to gain as much speed as we could. We were really crusing, and even got to "hike" (Where you get to lean way out of the boat to keep it from flipping over in the other direction, which was almost like trying to stay on a bucking horse) fighting the odds... It was most excellent!
But then we where turning, or something, and a blast of wind blew directly at our sails, nearly toppling the boat. We jumped to the opposite side to counter balance the effect, but not before the back of the boat dropped half a foot below the surface and we took on ALOT of water... In response to our shift in weight, the boat flopped back too far in our direction and we again jumped to the OTHER side. All the while taking on lots of more water. The boat again swayed extremely in the other direction, and the sails hit the water. We were sideways, our sails were in the water, Greg and Dave where crawling to the side (now top of the boat), our "stuff" was floating away in all directions... I decided that now was a pretty good time for a swim, and jumped in. A few seconds later, and the boat finished it's turn in my direction, and the boat was completely upside-down (turtled), and Dave and Greg decided to join me for a swim :)
We WHERE actually trying to lower our sails to gain control, but what little we were able to do didn't help. Dave was actually pretty funny to listen to, because this boy who hadn't thought of God in at least 5 years was today, just then, continually repeating "Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh Jesus, I swear I will NEVER touch another sailboat again in my life, I'm going to die..." (hehe...)
Now we where all clinging to the inverted boat, the action basically ground to a halt, and Dave traded his original chant for another... "I'm going to die, my dad is going to kill me..." He was also worried about what we were loosing from the boat, and at one point I remember him screaming "THE FAMILY TOOLS !!"... I had seen the tools that he was talking about, and they were a few cheap run-of-the-mill True Value easy-to-come-by tools... and he seemed to believe at that moment that they were family heirlooms. Needless to say, I now tease him about that, every chance I get :)
Anyway, at this point we where trying to put all of our weight on one side to try to right the boat. Greg found a rope attached to opposite side of it, we all pulled, and even climbed out of the water to stand on the now visible centerboard. We couldn't get the sails or mast to surface. After trying a few times, we noticed that there was a guy in a BIG cabin cruiser using a long pole to fetch our "stuff", which was now quite spread out by now... We had ALOT of stuff!
So while we began to feel like we were swimming in icewater, this guy was saving our shoes, our lemonade, a sunglasses case, a life jacket (which we should have been using :), .... Geeze guy, nevermind us, as long as you'll enjoy our things!! He finally finished, and we decided we'd have to have him tie our rope to his HUGE motor boat, and tug us back over. We tried it and despite my vivid premination that this EXTREMELY tight rope between the boats, that was making all kinds of stress sounds, was going to snap and slash my neck... It didn't, and we managed to upright the boat, and tie the front of our boat to the back of his. Our idea being that he could tow us a distance, while we bailed. We still weren't in our boat, and Dave and Greg where climbing into the motor boat, while I was taking things that were hanging into the water, like the sails and putting them into the boat.
At that moment I took pride in the fact that I was in control of my shivering body, and that I was thinking so clearly. I was at that moment very calmly going about removing the sails and the boom from the boat, figuring out how the boom was attached, and holding this long metal sure-to-sink pipe very securely... I eventually managed to get it all apart and into the boat, but now I think back and wonder if I was thinking normally... I was being awfully obsessive about being calm, and taking the thing completely apart... I could have just thrown it all into the boat (like Greg kept prompting me to :).
Dave meadiated(I don't care how that is spelled!) between us and our driver, while Greg and I held onto the, still submerged, back of our boat, and bailed as we began to move away from the middle of the lake. Even being towed very slowly, we found it quite difficult to keep our shorts from being pulled off by the water rushing by us! Appearantly I found it more difficult, and had to wrap my legs around the lower part of the (now ruined) outboard motor that was attached beside me (This thing scratched me the most). Soon Greg crawled in, and I followed, and we made it (bailing the whole way) to a public boat landing, where we prepared to sail back to the other side of the lake, where we parked.
At this point, Greg was the only one who wanted to sail even a little bit. It showed on Dave's and my face that we felt we could do it, but we weren't very excited about it. Luckily Chris showed up in a (his girlfriend's) motorboat, and we told him that it was his responsibility to bring this sailboat home, so he took off, managed to find a car, and we successfully avoided sailing anymore that evening.
When we where dropping Dave off at his house, I felt like Greg and I where dropping Cameron(spelled right? From Ferris B.'s Day Off) off to deal with his dad... He was still pretty nervous about facing him. It ends up that his dad was more concerned about Dave's safety, so he didn't have anything to worry about... except replacing the sails bag, and a half eaten back of Cheese Doodles (The thing I complained the most about losing). We even managed NOT to lose the "family tools" :)
I aquired many cuts and bruises and a sun burn that evening, and am
constantly being reminded of them, and our most excellent adventure!!!