The crazy weasel

It's a truism that you can't learn how to handle emergencies without actually experiencing some. So it is that Hoofer keelboaters go looking for trouble, and often they find it.

One day I found myself on a Soma lesson, screaming toward Maple Bluff in 25kn winds, with puffs up around 30. The instructor was good ol' Pat Moroney, a 60ish balding guy with a baseball cap. I'd sailed with him plenty, on lessons and cruises, so I knew that Pat liked to sail on the edge. [Recklessness has its advantages: I'd learned a lot during a couple of broaches, although the crew who landed in the water may not have learned so much...but that's another story.]

Today was no exception. We hoisted the chute in picnic bay and rode it out. From the start, Pat was having a blast, so much so that he wouldn't let anyone else take the helm, even the two skipper candidates on board: myself, already with a skipper rating on Toyboat, and Kareb, a serious sailor from Greece with a cute wife. She was on board too, along with three less experienced students.

Things started to get out of hand as soon as we reached open water. As the two most experienced crew, Kareb and I were on the foredeck, reluctantly preparing to gybe.

"We have to douse!" I shouted back toward the cockpit. Kareb echoed that. I'd been in similar weather before on Toy, Maria, and other large keelboats, and I had learned one thing: 30 knot winds are simply not spinnaker weather. If you fly it, something will get damaged, be it equipment or crew. The boat was rolling so hard now that Kareb and I had to use both hands to hang on.

Pat's response came as no surprise. "Prepare to gybe!" he yelled again from astride the tiller, a look of idiotic determination on his face. Kareb and I looked at eachother, then shouted again to be sure he heard us.

"We're dousing!!" we yelled in unison at the top of our lungs. I looked up at the heavy chute, hard with air and marching back and forth before the mast now, and wondered how long it would last. Losing the spinnaker wasn't the only risk. The way the boat was rocking and rolling, we could also do a flying gybe or round up hard. Either could cause serious injury. But again the robotic response from the cockpit.

"No, we're gyyybing! Get ready!" The four other crew were gripping the handrails like baby monkeys on their mother's back, hanging on for dear life. Suddenly, the matter resolved itself. With a loud pop, the spinnaker halyard snapped and the chute billowed into the water in front of us.

Reflexively, Kareb and I scrambled to the lifelines and started pulling the chute in as fast as we could, but it was settling faster than we could gather it in. We were going to run it over, and then we'd surely get tangled up! At best, the chute would be destroyed. I pulled as fast as I could, gashing myself on meathooks on the old lifeline as I did. Much of the chute was in the water now, and getting heavier fast as it started to go under the bow. Incredibly, Kareb and I managed to get it aboard just in time. The head--with a length of red halyard still attached--slid up from amidships. We were soaked and bleeding, but the spinnaker was saved.

Back on shore, Kareb's wife and another student tracked me down, knowing that I was the second most experienced person on board and also a keelboat skipper. Although it was a warm July day, both of them were shivering, or shaking.

"Was that safe..?" asked -----. Her friend just stared, eyes wide.

Now it was my turn to be the robot, to do my part to protect Hoofers. "Sure," I said, my eyes betraying disgust with Pat. "I've been in windier conditions than that. Soma can handle anything." Of course, people and sails are a different matter. Later, I would be grilled by the fleet captain about why we tried a gybe instead of just dousing, as if it had been my decision. And sometime after that, I would learn that Pat had told him it was.

NOTE: this story is absolutely true, but the names have been changed.

The Eunuchs

According to Hoofer legend, a large, prehistoric fish has prowled the depths of Lake Mendota for many years. Some say the fish—possibly a pirarucu or a very large sturgeon or alligator gar—was released by a Madison resident when it became too big for its tank, eventually growing to more than ten feet in size.

As the story goes, while swimming off a boat one day, the club's first commodore was attacked below the waist by the carnivorous fish and lost all function in those parts. Today, like 15th Century Oriental captains, every new commodore must undergo mock castration as part of his installation ceremony. Later, during Commodore's Cup, he is carted around in a rickshaw for all to see.

No one knows for sure if the huge fish still exists, but evidence occasionally surfaces in the form of a half-eaten deer or pig. Several swimmers and canoers have also vanished into the lake in recent years, their disappearances still unsolved. Believe it or not.

Coming soon!

Hoofer legend and lore. Check back again! In the meantime, leave your stories, anecdotes, and tales of lore here!

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Florida State 42, Wisconsin 13! Yeah!

Ah, Florida--a great place for sailing and football. There's not much sailing news these days, so it seems like a good time for other stuff. The radio is blaring as I type, promoting the benefits of a college football playoff instead of bowl games, probably because so many of the bowls are pathetic jokes. Which one did Wisconsin just lose..? Was it the Carquest Hinder Binder Bowl? It wasn't the Rose Bowl. The fact that anyone even talks about a college football playoff is support for Isaac Asimov's "marching morons theory" which hypothesizes that over time, the human population will become stupider and stupider.

A college playoff is about the dumbest idea since a new Union South. Not only is training football players not the purpose of higher education, but who cares who the "best" college football team is? There's just no need to know, not that a playoff would answer that question anyway. Let us know what you think about college football playoffs or J-22 prerequisites.

(Orig posted: Dec. 27, 2008)

Pumpkin funk

That scary time of the year is here again.... pumpkin disaster, er, regatta! In this event, some suckers, er, racers, agree to sit in large, overripe pumpkins and row around in cold water. Why do they do this..? No one knows, but it may have something to do with pier pressure. :D

The event was started in 2005 and is such a curiosity that, that year, so many people stopped to gawk that the main Hoofer pier collapsed under the load, dumping about 20 people into the cold October water (see story at http://badgerherald.com/news/2005/10/10/pier_collapses_durin.php). Hoofer officials insisted that no one was injured seriously, although it's hard to fathom a pier full of people suddenly being dropped among wooden pier sections and rusty steel trusses without being injured. This year, there were no major incidents. Hurrah!

(Originally: 10/6/08 10:13 PM)