I have a hunch there'll be one less master's license in Charleston soon:

http://www.charleston.net/news/2007/..._regatta11241/
Joel Lambinus unfurled the sail on his 14-foot Laser on Sunday and then
happened to glance backward.

What Lambinus saw made him leap for his life. A Fort Sumter tour boat loaded
with tourists was bearing down.

"I looked over my shoulder, and I saw the boat, about 75 yards away and
headed dead straight for me," said Lambinus, 57, an experienced sailor who
was competing in the Charleston Yacht Club Open Regatta.

Witnesses told the Coast Guard the tour boat was the 102-foot-long,
32-foot-wide, 97-ton, Spirit of Charleston, and that the vessel was crossing
an area reserved for sailboat racing. As Lambinus swam to avoid being pulled
under the tour boat, it cracked and broke his sailboat, tearing chunks of it
with its propeller.

Lambinus said he felt his legs bumping the hull of the tour boat, and he
feared the propeller would slice him up, too.

"By the grace of God, I was able to get away," he said. "When I popped up, I
realized that if I had stayed in the boat I would have been mincemeat."

Owners of Fort Sumter Tours could not be reached Sunday for comment.

Lambinus had been one of about 40 people in one-person sailboats preparing
to compete in the regatta. Instead, he spent much of the day at Medical
University Hospital's emergency room.

"I have bruises and contusions here and there," he said. "I'm beat up, but
I'm not going to die."

The Coast Guard is investigating the 12:20 p.m. incident. Investigators had
no comment.

Sylvia Galloway and Fran Trotman, who operated a safety boat at the regatta,
witnessed the collision from a few hundred yards away. They said the tour
boat did not stop at the scene after the collision, and its operator did not
return calls until after returning from Fort Sumter to peninsular
Charleston.

Galloway said the tour boat "came absolutely straight down the middle" of
the nearly one-mile-diameter area near Castle Pinckney reserved for the
weekend's races. The tour boat "never slowed down until the sailboat popped
out of the back and never hailed either of us to see if the sail boater was
OK," she said.

Galloway displayed copies of race permits, with restricted areas outlined,
approved by the state Department of Natural Resources and the Coast Guard.

Lambinus, a construction company owner from West Ashley who holds a
captain's license, said he can't stop thinking about what might have
happened had he not jumped. "A Laser sits 6 inches above the water, and that
boat is four stories tall and 100-something feet long," he said.

He recalled hearing a woman aboard the tour boat scream as he hit the water.
"I thought, what a hell of a way to die. I'm going to die underneath a tour
boat in Charleston. What kind of a way to die is that?"