Let's Get Creative

Being on the water is not like being on land in the sense that you don't always have all of your always at your exposure.  While on the water, sometimes the captain is forced to get creative to take on various tasks.  Its best to learn how to be creative before the situation happens rather then having to think something up right on the spot.

As everybody knows, I love to tell stories to teach lessons.  Here are some stories about times when either I had to get creative or I was part of a crew where we were all forced to put our heads together and come upt with a master plan.

1. If you take a look at my YouTube channel, there is a video of a Corsair F37 getting pushed into the dock during the passing of a pop up thunder storm.  It was a time when all three of the company's charter boats were out at once and we were all at the dock.  The captain of the boat I was working on went out to help the captain of the Corsair protect the boat from the storm, making me the captain pro-tempore if you will.  Since the Corsair is a racing boat and sits very low to the water, it was actually being pushed under the dock and jumping back up allowing the dock to actually hit on top of the boat.  I will be the first to say that I was not the one who had to get creative in this situation, but I witnessed a great mind do great things.  With the winds gusting up to 50 knots, the captain had to find a way to either keep the boat off of the dock or completely leave the dock to prevent any damage to the quarter of a million dollar boat.  One of the most valuable resources on a boat is the engine, you would be surprised the things that can be done with just the steering wheel (or the tiller in this case) and the throttle.  At first they turned the engine away from the dock to pull the stern away from the dock since that is where the wind was hitting the hardest.  Though Honda's have special technology to help them reverse better, it still wasn't enough with the combination of the waves and the blowing spray.  To no avail, they finally gave up and moved on to become more creative.  The next thought was to completely remove the boat from the dock and take it out to open water.  Since the wind was blowing the boat onto the dock, there had to be some creativity to get the boat off of the dock.  Another thing to remember is that the Corsair is a trimaran sail boat, therefore it did not have a very big engine, only 20 horsepower.  With the thought that more torque would be produced by going forward, they turned the engine to push on the dock thus kicking out the stern.  Once the wind was on the stern, there was enough time between the waves to back out and turn back into the wind.  The boat made it out with just a few small scratches.  Great job Captain Fred! The video does not show much action since the storm was just starting and the high winds had not arrived yet.  Yes, this is just the beginning.  Click here to go to the video.  
2. Talk about getting creative, watched a person use their anchor to get off of a sand bar once.  The lake that I am on has had a few record setting lows over the past few years.  If you aren't familiar with the lake and where there are under water obstructions, it is easy to get yourself into trouble.  At one of the local harbors that that many boaters go to for the Thursday night concerts there is a sand bar that is shaped like a levee running right through the middle of the harbor.  When the docks were built, this is where they dumped all of the dirt that was dug out to create the retaining wall.  A boater unfamiliar with the lake who came inside the docks found himself stuck on a the ground that was just below the water line.  Being so shallow, it was not going to be safe to use the engine to power off of the sand.  He took his anchor, jumped off onto the dock, went down the dock about 30 feet, threw his anchor into the water and walked back to his boat.  At this point, I just thought he was going to set up camp and park there til the water level came back up, which sadly enough, we are now 3 months later and the levels are still at record lows.  When he got back to the boat, he stared pulling on the anchor rode, I thought that he was just trying to set the anchor, he didn't, he was actually able to pull his boat off of the ground by setting his anchor and pulling his boat by hand toward the anchor.  Talk about getting creative.