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)