TIGHT LINES
COOL, CALM AND COLLECTED
Sailing can be a pretty dangerous affair. Case in point, during the 12-Metre Regatta component of the recently completed Nantucket Race Week, yours truly was fortunate enough to be racing on Columbia. In the first race, we were pretty far ahead, due in no small part to my extraordinary efforts. We were about fifty or sixty yards from the finish line and literally in first place by a couple of minutes. This one was in the bag. We had one final tack to the finish. No biggie.

Then disaster struck.

A 12-metre isn't twelve meters long. The twelve part comes from a pretty seriously complex mathematical equation that involves words like "square root," so I'm not going to try to explain it to you. A 12-meter is approximately 65 to 70 feet long. So it's a big boat, and that's the important thing to remember here. Big boat, big sails, big lines, big everything.

So, back to disaster striking.

The big jib on the aforementioned big boat was making its way across the big deck when one of the big lines somehow caught on one of our smaller crew members. Thousands of pounds of pressure started pulling on a woman who might go a buck-thirty soaking wet, which, ironically enough, she became pretty quickly when that line lifted her up and over the side of the boat, depositing her unceremoniously in Nantucket Sound. David Tausig-Edwards, who was also on the boat, made a valiant attempt at grabbing the now-soaking wet and floating crew member, but he, too, found himself going over, as the physics of a 70-foot boat going eight knots apparently counteracted his usually superhuman strength.

As Andrew says, know which warning signs to heed.

We're 50 yards from the finish and two members of our crew are now in the water. Chaotic is not too strong a word to describe the situation on board, but a few cool heads prevailed. Columbia is chartered for races like this, and when you charter the boat, you're also getting a couple of permanent crew members who work on the boat. In this case, Kevin Hegarty took over the steering duties and calmly turned the boat and explained to everyone what we needed to do to facilitate getting them back on the boat. David and Leslie floated around, calmly waiting for us to come get them and, by following Kevin's directions, we had them both safely back on board in no time flat.

The whole event was one of those completely unforeseeable things that could happen to anyone at any time. And it's that universal nature that means we can all learn a lesson from it. And you know what specific group amongst us can learn the most from it? The anglers out there.

Segue overboard!

Friends and neighbors, what happened to us on the water that day was only sort of funny in retrospect. And it was only funny in retrospect because nobody got seriously hurt, which could have happened very easily. The outcome may have resulted in a trip to the emergency room or worse, which puts our third-place finish in perspective. But, clichés aside, the fact that Leslie and David didn't suffer anything worse than wounded pride and a couple of bruises was no accident.

First of all, they were wearing PFDs (personal flotation devices), so their heads were safely out of the water. And, equally important, they remained calm throughout the whole thing. They didn't flail around in the water wasting their own energy. Rather, they floated and waited patiently for us to come back and pick them up. Meanwhile, back on the boat, Kevin's calmness was also a key to the successful recovery. He didn't start screaming at people and he didn't start going crazy. He explained with assurance what we were going to do and how we were going to do it, then he calmly made sure we all did exactly what we were supposed to do and that we did it calmly, too.

So the lesson here is to use common sense and remain calm. Check your gear before leaving. If you're going on a boat, make sure you've got a VHF radio. If you're heading out in a car, make sure you've got equipment to dig your car out of soft sand. And don't get complacent about your abilities. That's when accidents happen, just like it did with us. Keep in mind that accidents can happen to anyone at any time, no matter how experienced you are or how careful you are. It's a fact of life that we're all human and we make mistakes. Accept it. I'm not saying you should go through your entire fishing trip waiting for disaster to hit. But if it does, remain calm and assess the situation. Going crazy and panicking won't help the situation at all, and more often than not will in fact make it worse.

So have fun out there and be careful. Remember that it's better to come back and lie about the one that got away than it is to come back and tell the truth about your visit to the hospital.

And finally, congratulations again to Senator Kennedy on a fine race and a well-deserved victory. And again, Senator, you better be ready for next year. And I'm really, really serious this time, because Team Columbia is coming back better, faster, calmer and drier than ever.

Tight lines. I