"Wally" wrote in message
| This week's little adventure was a broach in the Sonata during Wednesday
| night's race. Beating in gusty conditions, we were in the lee of one of
the
| bridge piers and got a bit of a knockdown. Crew on the windward rail all
| leant forward to keep the weight up as much as possible. Before we knew
it,
| the boat had slewed and we were into a bigger knockdown on the opposite
| side - it's amazing how fast the windward rail can become the leeward rail
| and dipping under. It's amazing how fast the crew can move when they
realize
| that they're knee-deep, getting deeper, and liable to slide off. :-)

The fastest I've seen was on a tight starboard tack, pinching up into a
gust...... it went around us so fast it knocked us over flat to the
starboard..... spreader to the water.... loose the sheets..... sprung back
up.... set and got flattened to port....... that's slamming a full keel
double ended crab crusher spreader to spreader in under 20 seconds.

|
| By the time we got the unintentional tack sorted out, we had tack again
| immediately to avoid hitting the bridge, which brought us onto port tack -
| then we had to avoid a bigger boat on starboard coming straight at us.
Only
| one boatful of water out of the three of us (one guy had light foulies on
| that didn't velcro around the leg). Grins all round. :-)

The coamings on Overproof kept us dry on both knock downs. I lost my
beer..... casualty of war.

CM