Grand Union Canal
Anyone who has been on a narrowboat holiday will know that at night and away from towns the canals are beautiful places. It's very peaceful, little or no noise and no artificial light so the stars look amazing. They will also know that narrow boats have doors at either end that are quite similar.

I was having a nice argument on the phone with my then girlfriend. To get some privacy I jumped off the boat and walked up to the nearest lock gate and sat and sorted things out. I then walked back to the narrowboat. A few minutes later my phone rang again so I got up, walked out of the double doors and jumped on to the bank. Except there was no bank. I had walked out of the wrong end of the boat and jumped feet first, fully clothed into an 8 foot deep, still and stagnant canal.
( Peej, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 14:28, 7 replies)

Norwegian cold lake
I was staying on a campsite in Norway with my girlfriend. The campsite had a beautiful lake, with a glacier at the far end, and Canadian-style canoes to borrow. One lovely sunny day, with a clear blue sky and a beautiful blue lake, girlfriend and I decided to borrow a canoe and show the the other campers how good at canoeing we were. Girlfriend sat in the canoe, I pushed off, then jumped in gracefully, and immediately tipped over into the freezing cold water. We both surfaced, gasping with the cold, to the laughs and jeers of the rest of the campsite. Bastards. We climbed back in, and with British stoicism paddled off to the middle of the lake to dry off. We wanted to return under the cover of darkness, but it was late June, and it never gets dark in Norway at that time of year. We were greeted with smirks in the campsite bar forthe rest of the week. I suppose we should have guessed that lakes with glaciers running into them would be cold...
(Smale is stuffed, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 14:20, Reply)

I recently picked up open (canadian) canoeing and i bloody love it.
It seems i am alright at it too. Many years of not really bothering have been wasted but that says a lot about my last few years. Hence getting a grip and starting this course, which i heartily recommend: www.cumbria.ac.uk/Courses/Subjects/CreativeArts/Undergraduate/AdventureMedia.aspx
Anyway, to a story.

I canoed over to Peel Island, or Wildcat Island as Swallows and Amazons have it, and camp out (you are not allowed, but laws like that in your home town don't apply to you as we all know). Me and a couple of mates have to canoe back. Now i remember it as choppy as hell in thick mist with a nervous passenger, my mate remembers it as a glorious morning. We have agreed that we got the days mixed up but maybe it was just me being 'in charge' and frightened we might all drown. What i can say is it was a damn sight harder getting the tank of a thing back to base with a fierce headwind by myself a day later. 1 mile in 4 hours. I could hardly drag it back up the bank and the valley must of heard the raging madman i had become by then.

My favourite moment however is one i shall cherish and, if i can get my old canoes on the water again, one i shall replicate. Again this is back in the mists of time and when i smoked a lot more weed. I had paddled off to camp and once i had set up and eaten i took a spin out into the darkness. Floating in the middle of Coniston Water with crystal clear skies and the Milky Way visible i spent a very happy few hours getting stoned and eating biscuits and boggling at the universe. I was bloody cold when i woke up and much further away from my warm tent than i should have been.
(DreddPirateBob has watched every scifi film ever on, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 14:11, 1 reply)

A house? No I think we'll try a boat instead
This was the great plan of ex hubby many years back and it sounded good to me at the time but I feel it wasn't destined to be....
A boat was found in a Marina a few miles down the road and a deal was done. It needed an engine but this was part of the deal. While still at the Marina some one managed to unplug the power supply from the mains so the bilge pump had no power, boat sank.
The marina picked up the bill for this mishap and soon hubby was heading back towards the sunny shores of Cambridge when a hose burst leaving him stranded somewhere between Isleham and Cambridge until they managed to bodge the hose back together after several hours. On arriving in Cambridge it was booked into a boat yard for some work who told us it had some amazing woodworm thing and could fall apart at any moment.
Downhearted but not yet defeated we moored up in Town and started clearing it out in the hope that we could find a way to restore it. Then it sank again (stolen battery)and we paid the sea cadets 50p to refloat it. About 15 minutes after it was refloated someone was back on there robbing stuff off it (there was only some small bits of wiring left). We admitted defeat at this point, cut our losses and got rid of it. I've not been that enthused about boats since.
(cmouse is pondering about life in other jobs, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 13:44, Reply)

Good steak and ale pie
on the Isle of Lewis ferry.

Also, the breakfast is good, if you're on the early boat.
( Larry Death Anger Pain Fear Aggression, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 13:26, Reply)

I hate boats/ships/ things that float!
I have traveled on ships, floating bridges and even hovercraft. Growing up as forces brat, my Dad would drive across Germany, Holland and Belgium to catch the ferry from Zeebrugge to Dover. This would happen every summer and every winter. I was sick on every ship in the fleet that did this crossing. I was on the Herald of Free enterprise a week before it sank and we thought that they had made a beautiful job during its refit, with all of the new glass walls.

The Hovercraft crossing in January was awful, the craft bounced it's way across the sea, the inflated rubber skirt kept crashing against the side, scaring the shit out of the passengers and when we finally floated into Dover, even my Dad threw up.

The Floating bridge that connects Plymouth to Cornwall has also made me throw up. However, while stood on top of it, looking down at the water, it was horrifying seeing the raw human sewage that was dumped into the Tamar back then.

Boats, I hate them. I even hate Kayaks, after throwing up in one of them too. I tried body boarding once... You can guess how that ended.
( Rev. Jayneflakes Buy my book, I need the cash for drugs and hookers, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 12:46, 1 reply)

Fond childhood memories
As a lot of other poor sods did, I used to get dragged kicking and screaming to Bridlington in the summer holidays for a weeks sojourn of bad weather, bad food and bad guest house accomadation. One year my father decided that fishing might be fun, so a boat that offered said fishing trip was booked on and early one morning, i was dragged out of bed and press ganged onto something boat shaped that looked as seaworthy as it smelled.
2 hours in, I was horrifically seasick and managed to throw up over my sister, my dad and my cousin, although i was secretly pleased through the nausea that i had chucked up over my father for inflicting this nightmare upon me.
5 hours later we were back in the harbour and the only thing I caught was mumps from my germ ridden cousin. Henceforth an important childhood lesson was learned that boats are a totally loathesome form of transportation. Never had any other positive boat/ferry trip to challenge that belief since.
(Finster Ate a cat biscuit for a bet, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 12:40, Reply)

Boozy barbeque and sailing at night
After a pleasant day's beach barbeque on the West coast of Scotland, we were returning back to anchorage on the yacht my Dad had borrowed from his mate. It was getting rather late (after midnight), so it was getting difficult to see where we were going. As we approached the sea loch leading to the anchorage, my step-brother Graham was on the tiller steering, right at the back of the cockpit.

My Dad and I were sitting in the cockpit chatting, when suddenly Graham became airborne and flew past us, superman style, and disappeared below deck through the open hatchway. This unexpected airborne manoeuvre was accompanied by a large thunk as the yacht made contact with a submerged rock.

Although Graham's impressive flight lasted over 12 feet, along with a 6 feet descent below deck, by some miracle he made no contact with the side of the hatchway as he went below and landed flat, still in the superman position, and slid to the very front along the cabin floor. He emerged without a scratch on him.

We were similarly lucky with the yacht - we had made just a glancing blow to the top of the rock, so had sustained no damage. We did, however, keep quiet about our Concordia incident when we returned the keys.
(eukaryote, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 12:28, Reply)

For my stag do last year, my best man arranged for us to go sea fishing one morning.
The fishing was done in Dartmouth, and the guy who ran the boat was called Dave. He were a good Devon laaaad, and 'ad a good strong aaaaccent. He had tanned, wrinkly skin from all the fishing, tended to speak with one eye closed from so much squinting into the sun, and walked with a bit of a limp.

I just really wish we'd had the opportunity to buy him a parrot.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 11:38, 6 replies)

Do canoes count?
The then Mrs. dchurch and I went on holiday to the South of France some years ago. It was a rather fly-by-wire affair, in which we had to meet a bloke in a carpark by a supermarket some 300 miles north of where we were staying at 9pm to get the keys to the place we'd hired. We missed him by a few hours due to getting lost in Paris on the way, but miraculously saw his car when we were just a few KM from the house....it's not quite that simple, but that's for another QoTW.
Once we'd finally got to the place and eventually met up with our friends who were also staying at the same place, we all decided to go and hire some canoes.
We managed to find a large shed with some French blokes who would hire us a canoe each. We asked about lifejackets...they seem perplexed but one of the blokes went away for about 15 minutes and came back with armfuls of jackets, each with about an inch of dust on them. We asked about helmets; similar story. Health and Safety clearly hadn't reached this far south at the time.
The Mrs jumps straight into her canoe with shouts along the lines of "Last one to the rapids gets the first round in when we get back...." and shot off in the direction of some rather fast running water.
We all follow.
As she hit the first of the rapids, she was thrown about like a ragdoll, eventually tossed free of the canoe and was dragged through the rapids until she's black and blue and knocked unconscious.
A friend and I dragged her out, which is no easy feat whilst in a canoe in fast moving water - there would have been little point either of us getting out as well, as we too would have been thrown around and beaten by rocks.
The speed of the water is still dragging us along for quite some time, but now with an unconscious girl sprawled across two canoes. Eventually we came to a clearing.
We rescued her canoe, which had been following us due to the water flow, and tied the three canoes together with our shoelaces. It was clear that we weren't going back *up* the river for help and had to continue onwards until we found a road or simply just other people - so far we'd seen nothing but dirty and fast moving water. We could just as easily have been in the Amazon or Chattooga. Indeed, I half expected to see Burt Reynolds brandishing a crossbow.
Another of our group had been thrown free of his canoe in one of the subsiquent rapids, and was dragged through some rather fierce looking trees...until the branches had ripped his shorts off and he'd managed to drag himself to the side.
We had to negotiate ever more violent rapids tied together in this manner for the next fifteen km until we finally ended up in some French MOD land. After some time waiting we'd managed to flag down an army vehicle.
Unfortunately, at the time, the only one of us who spoke French to a degree higher than a toddler was the chap who was now walking about in nothing but trainers and a filthy looking lifejacket.
So, in the middle of some MOD land in searing heat, with a now semi-unconcious girl laying back in a canoe tethered to two others we see a bright yellow bloke flying his English flag - thankfully flying it low - flagging down a French military vehicle and attempting to ask to be taken to a phone (I'm not sure I could have got the word 'flag' in there any more times).
Instead, they went away and bought back a medic. A medic with some rather bizarre methods of treatment. Some sugar tablets, and some very odd massaging of all of Mrs.D's bits until she fully comes round, albeit with a stonking headache.
The medic(s) then picked her up and took her off somewhere informing us that we'd have to carry on for ANOTHER 15km before we'd be anywhere where they could get a vehicle to to be able to pick up the canoes. I wasn't all that happy about letting Mrs.D be taken off in that way, but they insisted that she go alone...and to be honest, there was very little I could do about it, seeing as they had guns, and I barely had my dignity.
In all though, they very kindly had driven her back to the house along with a medic to look after her some hours later after treatment...although, to this day she, understanderbly refuses to go near any kind of floatation device.

tl;dr

Hired canoes, girl got mashed against rocks, man loses shorts, flags down Jeep, French military save the day.
(dchurch bah, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 10:41, Reply)

Me and a couple of mates went up the Thames in a boat once.
We took my dog.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 9:14, 18 replies)

My boat misadventures are not serious or entertaining enough for there to be any worth relating here.

But there is a guy I know who (having purchased copious amounts of new camping equipment) found he had run out of space in his car and ended up loading his boat and trailer with the surplus equipment.

Anyway, between the two lakes we fish the most, there is a long, steep switchback laden road that makes its way up a pretty large mountain. It's bad enough as is, but extra slow and hard with an extra load like a boat trailer in tow.

But marvelously, as he drove up said steep mountain, he was astounded by just how well his car dragged this hideously overloaded boat trailer. You could hardly tell there was any kind of trailer there at all...

Hmmm...

Yep. No trailer. Gone. The overloaded trailer had given up and the trailer, boat and excess baggage had plunged off the steep mountain road into a deep rocky gully. Just to make sure nothing could be salvaged, the boat fuel burst into flame and incinerated the wreckage.
(xixax, Mon 5 Nov 2012, 4:07, 6 replies)

I'm on a boat right now.
It's cold, and it's raining.


Ahh, the glamour.
(Woodlouse say it with flowers. Send her a Triffid, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 21:12, 1 reply)

I once had a shed imported by ship.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 17:09, 32 replies)

Reposted but relevant.
One of my mates awoke one fine Sunday morning to find his Topper (Toppa?) dinghy on the roof of his Vauxhall Astra, the mast in place and his life preservers, anchor, ropes and a variety of breeze blocks all inside it. Neither I, nor the other people he left at the pub early so that he could go home for a game of hide the sausage with his girlfriend, could possibly be able to explain how this happened. Definitely nothing to do with us.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Sun 4 Nov 2012, 16:30, 2 replies)

On a catamaran in the Caribbean...
Sitting at the front, on the nets between the hulls, enjoying some fruity rum punch, the heat of the sun & the occasional refreshing spray of seawater; all is well with the world.

Hang on, I'm starting to feel a little sick. Maybe I should move to the side, just in case. Hmm, still not feeling great, perhaps ifBLEEEEEEEEUUUUUUURRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!

And so I was very very sick over the side of the boat. Then I heard words that will remember until the day I die:

"Sir if you're going to keep being sick you'll have to move to the back of the boat; you're spraying the other passengers"
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 13:25, 1 reply)

Genuinely wished I was fucking dead.
Very, very fortunate to be invited on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to take a 65-foot yacht from a marina in New Jersey to dry dock in The Bahamas. Once you get to The Chesapeake Bay you can pick up the intercoastal waterway and have a nice leisurely cruise along that. It's like a fucking massive canal. However, on the way down there the weather turned shite and as we were on open seas we headed into Atlantic City for a couple of days. I went to buy some stuff to cook on deck and came back with some particularly fresh tuna. Steve (who had invited us) decided it was so good we were going to have it raw, which we did. Next day no problem. We had it again that evening and the next day set off back into the awful weather to get to Chesapeake Bay before it got worse. Now, despite working on ships for a couple of years I never got my sea-legs and I was soon so seasick I wanted to die. It couldn't get worse, except it did. Much, much worse. I'd picked up an horrific bout of food-poisoning from the tuna which kicked in while I was already contemplating throwing mnyself to the mercy of the waves. For two days solid I shat, puked and shivered non-stop on the floor of the tiny toilet (or 'head' as we seafarers refer to them). Think you've ever felt ill? Try having food poisoning while you're already seasick and then get back to me.
( routine has perfected burgers, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 12:36, 8 replies)

Henly-On-Todd
Waterless rivers of fun, where going down with the ship wasn't quite so brave as the effort to drink the tinnies and make the boat.
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 11:40, 19 replies)

We decided it would be an awesome idea to go out for a boat ride up the river one night,
The only problem we had was a lack of a boat.
Well, after a couple of drinks, some genius pipes up and says "well, there's a boat yard down by the meadow, It's got a pretty tall fence, but between the four of us I bet we could get s little row boat out if we're careful."
Excellent, so, a bit more dutch courage, and off we go. Find the yard fairly easy, me and another chap hop over the gate, and start a search for a suitably light vessel, with space for four.
"Fuck, they're all fucking chained up, that's bullshit"
"ssssshhh, there must be one without a chain, bring that torch here"
"hang on, look, under this tarpaulin"
"looks a bit battered, Fuck it, its all we've got"
Cue 30 mins or so of 4 of us trying to manouvre a fairly hefty wood hull rowing boat over a 5 foot fence, with a break to sit down after Joe took an oar to the face. Complete accident.
"brilliant, where do we launch it from?"
"looks like a slip way just up the path come on"
We get the boat down in to the water, everyone jumps in, except Joe, who in more bad luck gobs it, and gets a wet left leg, and we're off. We are gentleman now. Calmly rowing our boat out on to the black glass water of the Thames. It's everything we'd hoped it would be, we light a smoke, crack open a beer, and marvel at our genius. Then I notice my boots are wet. Then Joe notices his ankles ate wet, then James notices his bum is wet, and we all realise, there might have been a reason this boat wasn't locked up. We start frantically trying to bail out with our hands, Dan on the oars hits out for the bank with all the strength in his weedy vegetarian arms...but no. We sink. Beer gone. Phones dead, wet through stood in the boat, water just above our waists, and sadly wade back to the bank. Disheveled, cold, wet and defeated.
( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Sun 4 Nov 2012, 11:12, 1 reply)

This QOTW really isn't very good.
Maybe someone should throw it a lifebelt before it drowns in barrel-scraping mediocrity.
(dozers, do fuck off ur a nob m8, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 10:27, 13 replies)

I went to the Isle of Man in 1979.
In a boat.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Sun 4 Nov 2012, 9:10, 2 replies)

Which one to chose...
A combination of career and hobby choices means I spend lots of time on boats (little RIB's to full on patrol ships) so quite a few to choose from.

Once upon a time I had been given a generous budget to purchase a new dive boat and as a penniless student (at the time) being given a set of keys to a brand-spanking, little-plastic-covers-on-the-GPS-screen-new boat was quite exciting. So much so that myself and the gentleman who was with me decided it was going in the water for its maiden voyage.

So about an hour before dark we towed our (grey and well camouflaged) inflatable to Lymmington Slipway. It was low tide so a bit of a bugger to launch her, but we were determined.

After much phaffing we got her in the water. But by now it was late, low tide, and dark. Having parked the car and the trailer I jogged back to the boat, turned the key and the shiny new engine sprang into life.

"Did you grab the flares?" my faithful companion asked.
"Arse. Did you pick up the radio?" I replied.
"Arse."

No matter. We were going for a hoon and that was that. Nav lights on, plastic peeled from the screen and off we went.

"Weeee" we both shout as we speed across the pitch black water, wind in out hair. Until the engine coughs, slutters and refuses to start.

Bugger. And then the nav lights die. And that big bright white thing in the distance? That's the Lymmington Ferry. It's much, much bigger than us and we're directly in its path. Remember the grey and well camouflaged boat? Forgetting the flares and the radio? No method of contacting them or preventing its props from chewing us into food for really, really small fish? So did we. With bowl emptying terror we rowed, turned the key frantically and watched the ferry get closer and closer.

In the end nothing interesting happened. The engine kicked into life, we returned to the slip with great urgency and decided that that was enough of a maiden voyage, went to the pub and decided never to speak of it again*.


I've also been stoped by the Thames River Police, run aground more times than I care to remember, ramed a tender into it's ship and gotten very, very lost 10m from the ship I was attempting to board in thick fog. Not all of them my fault but all lots and lots of fun.



*Typing doesn't count.
(Squash, Sat 3 Nov 2012, 15:44, Reply)

I sold my soul once and worked in the offshore oil industry,
mainly in the North Sea. Prior to working offshore, we had extensive safety training (how to get out of a ditched helicopter, how to right a capsized life raft etc.). We also did fire training and how to get out of a burning oil rig - this is that scariest thing I've ever experienced: the instructors send you into a mock up of a rig, with a fire somewhere. It's pitch black, full of smoke and you are given a breathing mask and about 15 minutes of air. It took about 5 minutes to 'escape' and I was on red - so real firemen have my full respect.

Anyway, it's pretty dangerous working in the North Sea - not least because the water is pretty nippy. If a disaster occurs in the winter, they reckon you'll survive about 3 minutes in the water before hypothermia gets you - as far as I was concerned, the safety aspects were pretty important.

So I had a bit of a shock on my first offshore job, on a vessel formally used by Jacque Cousteau. I was just about to finish a shift and the crew went through a safety drill - this one was the rapid rescue of a man overboard (i.e., get him out of the water fast). The ideal drill should get someone out within about a minute and the ships have a fast rescue boat to do this.

On this day they threw a dummy in a life-jacket out into the water, sounded the alarm and the rescuers went to do their thing. My workmates and I stopped to watch the well-drilled crew. What actually happened was they couldn't get the boat into the water - it took them 20 minutes - and once they did, the fast rescue boat went round the main boat's stern and broke down about 50 metres away from the dummy. We had to throw them a line to help them back. The dummy was lost.

The ship's cook was great though - fresh croissants every day.
(Jimbojames Wishing every day could be like today, Sat 3 Nov 2012, 12:22, 2 replies)

The herring queen festival
My brother bought a midlife crisis boat called the Moondancer it is currently moored in Felling in Gateshead
One intrepid morning we set off from friars goose with plans to sail up to Edinburgh.
The weather was fine ,sea state moderate to good & the wind was mostly blowing in the wrong direction , but hey two out of three ain't bad.
We planned on the first leg of the trip to get to Eyemouth.
Once past Blyth & Amble a boat with a big fin under it like Moondancer can't get in to any little harbour on the way, there just isn't anywhere.
What should have taken about 10 hours took us 18 hours we had the motor on for the entire journey we arrived in the dark in a thick fog barely missing the Hurkas ( a nasty sharp sticky out bit )
The weather turned and a storm blew in .
We were trapped in Eyemouth for two weeks.
It seemed rather sinister we were trapped in some where called Eye Mouth next to somewhere even scarier called Stabbs Head in the middle of the Crowning of the Herring Queen.
I worried about my virginity
.The herring queen fest is the border Rievers version of the Wickerman film but with more fish & fighting.
This was the most surreal experience I have had since the time that lobster ate my face.
The out going herring queen and all her sandeel posse meet the new queen in the square and all dressed in fishing nets they duke it out with halibut.
The winner gets crowned by macreal man.
For the next year the queen gets the first fish from every catch and an unlimited supply of winkles.
You can google it and see the herring queens over the last century

www.eyemouthherringqueen.org.uk/listings.php
(tomma turn around an bite you every time, Sat 3 Nov 2012, 10:22, 1 reply)

Our chances were sunk, but at least our sails were full & we kept our anchor dry.
ᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕᵔᵕ
^Wavy lines...

Many moons ago.. I was a member of the 1st Kalkadoon Scout troop. Sixer of "Brown" Six in the Barkley B pack actually. *rubs lapel, reflects on it & thinks maybe it doesn't sound that good after all.*

Anyhoo - some of our many activities involved fundraising for various groups and charities. We achieved this usually by taking part in various community events and either hassiling onlookers for money or being sponsered.
One of these activites we decided to take part in was The Henley-On-Todd Regatta.
Now as many of you may expect the H-O-T-R is a boat race. With a difference.
The boats generally have no bottom, they're usually beer-fueled & foot-powered and aside from the copious libations the nearest major drop of liquid is some thousands of kilometres away! The Todd River has to be a completely dry riverbed in order for the race to be run successfully. EDIT: It has apparently been cancelled once recently because the Todd River had some flowing water and they shut the race down due to Flooding.

Thus we made our boat. She was a sprighlty skiff, wide of beam, deep of keel and with a sturdy rudder. Ahh the "HMAS Barkley", 'twas a good ship to be sure.
We built a light dowel and balsa ovalish frame with a beam down the centre and 2 across which we attached shoulder harnesses to. We painted and stuck banners around the frame - I honestly can't remember who we were "sailing" for, I think it was something to do with Rotary.

After the several hours bus journey to Alice Springs with the boat listing precariously on the seats at the back of the bus the whole way we arrived and began to unpack.
And then disaster struck! As the vessel was breaching the safe harbour of the bus doors it struck a head-rest shaped reef and tore a hole in her port side from bow to stern. (The banner got caught and ripped!) Calamity!
Fortunately the race organisers found us some space-age lashing twine (duct tape) and we were able to ensure that the Barkley was once again "sea-worthy".

On the day of the race we were trounced by another group from a nearby Christian Youth Group. We peeked under their boat and I'm sure that they were using a winged keel which we felt was an unfair advantage, but the Barkley suffered irreparable damage due to the white-caps and pounding ocean (6 kids running down a sandy, dry river bottom). Tbh - I have a feeling we were the only group of sober participants all day, by a long-shot.

A good time was had by all, we raised some money for a charity and the Barkley was burnt to the tideline (chucked on the bonfire) due to the crew mutinying (no-one cba getting the thing back on the bus for the long journey home).
Beat that ya bunch 'o land-lubbers!

EDIT: For all the Scouts out there *gets out the pedo bashing stick* - I went onto Sea Scouts when we moved nearer to the coast (1st Pelican Point). I gave up after I became a Venturer. Apparently Scouts get to go sailing on the weekend and Venturers get to repair the rigging and boats.
Mind you several Jamborees (Including a Queen's Jamboree) & enough patches to cover a blanket, a nice brass "Be Prepared" belt buckle - I'm a happy camper.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sat 3 Nov 2012, 4:35, Reply)

Walking on water.
Yeah I did this a few times when I was younger, on the local boating lake.






It was frozen solid mind.
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Sat 3 Nov 2012, 1:37, 3 replies)

Gone Fishing....
I used to be the proud owner of a wee cabin cruiser, the Tight-Alnwick. It sunk, but that's another story.

One night, me and my mates were in the pub having a few beers and talking about the fishing trip me and Andy were going on the next day. We'd be getting up at 5 so we could catch the tide so we were me and Andy said our goodbyes and prepared to go.

"Don't forget to make my sandwiches" I said to the ex who was staying behind in the pub.

"What?" hissed Andy's missus "You make him *sandwiches*?"

"Of course" said the ex - "It's what proper women do for their men"

Me and Andy left as steam leaked quietly from his missus ears......

Next day, I met Andy down by the boat and we loaded our gear in. Andy was grinning like a wanking Jap.

"Look at this" He smirked, pulling open his rucksack "Missus got up with me and made me all this stuff" pointing to sandwiches, a flask of coffee and a couple of kitkats.

"10 years we've been together and this is the first time she's ever made me bait.....Mind - it was made with venom. She was hacking to tomatoes to death muttering "I'll show them what a proper woman is.."".

So we set sail. An hour later we anchored offshore and started fishing. We had a pleasant morning. Caught a few, lost a few and had a few laughs. Around 8 we had a bite to eat and again at 11. About 12 Andy's mobile rang. It was his missus. He chatted for a few minutes then looked at me and said:

"She wants to know what you think of the sandwiches. Are they what a *proper* woman would do?"

I grabbed the phone from Andy.

"You didn't cut the crusts off" and pressed end.

We were 4 miles out in the bay. We could hear the banshee shriek from where we were.....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sat 3 Nov 2012, 0:43, Reply)

SOS Save my Shorts
First B3ta post so go easy on me!

I used to work as a flotilla skipper in the Greek Islands. This is where you guide a bunch of novice to amateur sailors around the islands, briefing them in the morning and dealing with the chaos in the evening when you have to assist in the mooring of 12 Yachts in a small harbour.

Anyway, one evening I was helping in the last yacht. Drop the anchor, reverse in, tie up the lines.....sigh of relief then relax with a cold G&T. Well in this case not quite. Due to the tricky spot this yacht was moored, I had to lay out a second anchor using the RIB (Inflatable tender). This is something I have done many times without disaster. So I sit the anchor on top of the tender and give it large in reverse to pull the anchor and chain away from the yacht and drop it in the deeper water. When the chain ran out, everything went tight and the sharp part of the anchor punctured my tender causing one side to deflate rapidly with a large bang. Now I had the attention of everybody in the harbour....a sure sign sign that the situation is going to get worse. The anchor had not freed itself from the RIB and was slowly pulling it and the still running engine under water. So to stop this from happening I had to free the the anchor. The only way was to jump in the water lift anchor off the RIB then problem solved. As I did this the anchor got caught in my shorts, with one last breath I was rapidly being dragged down to the seabed 20 meters down. Saved my self by releasing the belt on my shorts and saying goodbye to my radio and wallet with it. As I came to the the surface my friend was there in her wee boat and launched my self into, very quickly realising I wasn't wearing very much.

Now to top it all off, the whole event was witnessed by a journalist from one of the uk's biggest selling yachting magazines, who happened to be writing an article on my mates yacht about chartering in the Greek Islands. She asked if she could tell the story in the mag, and I said yes....but please don't mention my name or the company I work for. Next months magazine had a picture of me wearing a company shirt and guess what, I was named and shamed.

Moral of the story, Always wear underpants and never trust a journalist. Argh time for a rum!
(Muntered Tinny, Fri 2 Nov 2012, 23:54, 1 reply)

THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED (May not have actually happened)
"Wir wollen ein Boot mieten."

"Beg pardon?"

"We'd like to hire a boat, please."

"Then why didn't you say so? Six quid."

Six of the Queen's Pounds - quite reasonable for an hour's paddling about Weymouth Bay.

"Name and address, if you please."

"What," I ask, my whiskers bristling as the sun reflects off the blade of my freshly-drawn sabre, "What the Devil do you need that for?"

"Insurance, guv. Rules is rules - I turn me back for five seconds and you could paddle round the headland and WOOMPH! You'd 'ave it away."

"WOOMPH?"

"Yes, sir. Woomph."

I kindly point out that the craft in question wouldn't go woomph if it were powered by the bastard lovechild of Lance Armstrong and Steve Redgrave, but he is adamant.

But I care little for the stripe painted across his nose and the dandy highwayman attire - and I tell the scruff the big mistake he's making - so I reluctantly comply with his request.

"So," I ask apropos of nothing but to show that I am able to write and move my lips at the same time, "What do you do with these names and addresses?"

"Oh, nothing much guv. I just stick them in this 'ere folder."

"Ah yes," I observe, "The one marked PEDALO FILES in red chisel-tip marker."

"Then I give it to the police."

"I tell you what, my good man. I think I'll just hire a sun lounger."
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Fri 2 Nov 2012, 23:40, 4 replies)

Despite no nautical family background
I was born with a total immunity to seasickness. This is rarely useful since I live 50 miles from the sea.

Still, back in the 1980s as a teenager I found myself on a Townsend Thoresen ferry (it may well have been the Herald Of Free Enterprise) on the Zeebrugge-Dover run one stormy night. My father paid for a last-minute cabin and retired there to be ill in private. I wandered the decks, literally bouncing from one side of the corridor to the other as the ship rolled, marvelling at the sick people lying on the floor in the public areas, even on the stairs.

Most of the washbasins in the bogs were clingfilmed to stop people using those that had already been blocked by diced carrot. The whole ship had the sweet tang of vomit.

Outside, it was like something from a film set, with foam, spray and howling wind. A small group of men were engaged in a chundering contest over the rail.

I went into the canteen and ordered a large sausage and chips. I think they had to fire up the cooker specially.
(rogerzilla, Fri 2 Nov 2012, 19:55, 1 reply)