# Towing a dinghy behind



## dailymirror (Jun 4, 2015)

I have to credit my dad with my life long love of sailing. He did three things; he bought me Chichester's book - he introduced me to Hornblower and The Cruel Sea, and he built our first sail boat in the basement... I won a lifelong passion, mom got a new kitchen.
Yes that's right, the only exit from the basement was through the kitchen wall. Good deal all round Id say.

So I've been dinghy sailing for more years than I care to count. Creaky knees and other achy parts have suggested that its time to move up. So now I'm engaged in the search for something a little bigger. 

There's an in water end of season boat show nearby this coming weekend and who knows? I have a certain amount of money sloshing around in the "boat fund" and I've had a look around several boats in the neighbourhood this summer, and I think there is one that may fit the bill down there at a good price.

See you on the water!


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## Erindipity (Nov 29, 2014)

My Father gave me a Boat.
I was making a Soapbox Derby car. A rusted out Radio Flyer wagon provided the wheels. The two front wheels were loosely nailed to a 2X4 Front Axle, which was singly nailed to the woodish Body in the center. A skipping rope stolen from a Sister made some Steering.
It was a dismal failure; the nail holding the Axle to the Body just wasn't up to the task.
One day, Dad actually called me from Work, and said that he was going to give me a Boat.
All thoughts of the Soapbox Derby vanished- I was getting a Boat.
When he got Home, he gave me a paper bag, and inside was a Boat, a couple of Nuts, and a few Washers. It would hold the Axle firmly on the Body, and make steering reasonably safe. Mom chortled.
One single mis-heard word irretrievably changed my life.

Roughly a year later, I got my first real Boat for my Tenth Birthday- an eight foot long El Toro, hand-built out of Mahogany Plywood, and dirt cheap, because it no longer Classed for Racing. Pretty much every critical dimension was slightly wrong.
I Sailed the front lawn for a couple of weeks, until Dad found a Red Cross Sailing Class for me to attend. For the next few years, the El Toro lived on top of our VW Bus, while his Fishing Rods clattered around over the Engine Bay. Perpetually Peeved, my Sisters took a dislike to pretty much anything involving Water Outdoors. Mom laughed at all this Nautical Nonsense. (Dad and I had a sort of ongoing contest over how to make Mom laugh. We did outlandish things to make her laugh; because if she laughed long enough, she started to hiccup, which made everybody else laugh.)

Well, between Bolts and Boats, Dad gave me Books- Swallows and Amazons and a Wind In the Willows and a High Wind In Jamaica. I also got Chichester and Heaton, and eventually, a signed copy of the 1972 COLREGS, which he had contributed to, with his parts underlined. Dad was into Marine Insurance and Admiralty Law; incomprehensible terms to an eight-nearly-nine-year-old Boy.
I, in return, found and read, and then gave to him, a copy of Walton's "The Compleat Angler". How he had missed this Book in his Youth remains a Mystery.

A score or so years later, I took Dad and Mom and an odd Sister sailing on my newest Yacht. 100A1 Lloyds Rating; I had the Certificate. The Hull was fine, everything attached to it varied in quality and quantity of Rubbish. (Lloyds did not consider itself concerned about attached Rubbish back then.)

I learned his Secret then. Dad, with all his fondness of Boats, and Boating, and Fishing, and just about anything and everything involving them... Dad was prone to Seasickness.
So was Mom.

I still have that El Toro. It was stolen, along with its Seagull outboard, some three decades back. It was eventually found by the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, bobbing nose up, upstream of Rio Vista, minus the outboard, and with the transom partially rotted away by two years of Sacramento Delta River Crud. They traced it to me by an old EBMUD Reservoir Sticker on the Bow.
It's holding the West side of my House up now, and it eventually may be made into a half-submerged-in-Adobe-Ocean-soil Planter for Drought-Tolerant Cacti, in my front yard.
***********

Well, enough of that.
The only reason that I am posting this was because of your short and succinct and very well written account of how you got hooked into Boating. There isn't nearly enough of that here. 
I wish the Best of Fortune to you.

¬Erindipity

PS- Now about Creaky Knees- there are Knee Pads for this. I have a pair, and I use them frequently on board.
There are no Creaky Knee-friendly Boats.


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## Woodvet (May 5, 2012)

I was never so ready to trade a boat as my canoe, so when a friend brought me a laser I was ecstatic. 
The rigging was gone so I shored it up, grabbed some emergency gear and away I went in February...
It's cold but you ignore all that. 
It was late and windy that day but a little voice says "good sailors sail in all weather!" 
I put in at Antioch and with far to much breeze tacked up toward Pittsburg at a rate to fast to say no. I knew it was too much power but a little voice says: "It will die down after sunset_. 
A laser is no boat for multi tasking, much like snow skiing you just sorta go with it. 
I had already sailed much larger boats and thought the dinghy was easier. Not so says anyone who knows small boats. 
I was clear up river when I came about in the greater Sacramento river.. 
In a blow you can't jibe so easy so I was tacking into a jibe when the main sheet parted from UV damage. 
The tide was flooding at about four knots by then so a run down might have been thrilling, had I a sheet I could rely on....
As it was I could not let it out and this made for slow progress. 
Night came on and the little voice so full of advice began to talk in small increments and timid ones at that. 
The ominous clouds came and sucked out all light. 
There were still some frogs around then, who's chorus informed me I was close and it was time to jibe off. 
With the tide I soon gained sight of the "red light returning" of the old Antioch boat ramp between the wreck of the Solano ferry and the Fulton shipyard. 
The little voice came back once more all full of it's self. "It's time to celebrate." 
I had a small ice box lashed to the mast that contained for me a hand made cigar. 
Getting it out as I screamed across the river was no problem but lighting it was. I bent low in the small cockpit out of the wind but just as it lite, the keel that was locked hit a tree and pitch poled. 
The cold water was shock enough without the realization the rudder had parted and my ice box of belongings were being blown up river faster than I was willing to go.
I grabbed what I could but I stayed with the boat which was still held fast to a tree on a sand bar. 
The whole business below was yucky and slimy. When she finally floated free I swung the hull to windward and standing on her keel tried to leap aboard. 
With no rudder she was difficult and swung around only to go over again, again and again. 
Some how she lodged in a second of three trees. This one was sharper and cut me. 
Free once more I tried to get aboard but she turtled and lodged her mast in the third tree. 
I had to dive down and try to see what could be done by feeling around. 
Let me tell you, I was hardly holding up as well as it sounds. I found my self stuck in a tree with leaves still on it a with the flood tide so strong the mast would not come out. 
It was then I found myself singing the star spangled banner. 
It all came back from childhood that when I was scared, REALLY scared, I would sing the anthem. 
With the rudder and much of the gear I had gone before me and my hands shaking with hyperthermia 
I heard the little voice that was saying "you wanna sail, you gotta get your self otta this." 
Answering the voice for the first time I said, "Screw that... This is a mayday."
I cut loose the mast and she floated off and once up right threw myself into the **** pit. 
Got in the ice box and in it was a cell phone in a zip lock bag. it was an early model with limited reception and battery. 
I dared not take it out of the bag in the wind, chop and spray. 
So hitting the button it lit up so surreal there is no words to say. 
Hands shaking boat rocking I thumbed out my home # after carefully choosing what I was going to say....
I hold it to my ear and hear my wife answer on the limited battery. 
"Listen, I am blowing up river and should be at the Antioch bridge in about 6 minutes. After that I don't know...
You need to call my friends at the Sportsman YC and get them out here to save me." 
"Honey, it's 3:30 AM and I have to work in the morning, what can I do?" 
"Im in a serious situation here sweetheart, I COULD DIE!!!!" 
"Call who ever cause it is bad!!!" 
"I have to save battery" 
"Goodbye, love you!!!" 
Time in the thick of it moves slower than slime. 
In what seemed forever I saw a search light. The noise was so high no voice could be heard. 
The cell phone rang and in short order I was found after I discovered a head lamp I was wearing actually still worked. 
The moral of the story is, that little voice you hear in your head is fricken nuts. 
Never in a situation assume anyone gets it over the phone. 
Even a bad friend who comes out for you on the water is worth all the kindness you can bestow on them before hand. 
That some of the most stupid ideas can get you in the worst jams but they also teach you more than any book ever can. 
It takes a lot of failed gear and added expense to make a good sailor.
There are too many lessons here to list.....


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