"Eisboch" wrote in message
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"Wayne.B" wrote in message
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On Thu, 16 Aug 2007 08:14:17 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
wrote:

LOL, Harry you sure seem to be hung up on this transom thing.

You noticed that also. Methinks he is a mite sensitive perhaps.

Not to worry though, Harry has told us many times how experienced he
is and there's no reason to doubt it that I know of.

http://www.newsargus.com/news/archiv...escued_at_sea/



My comments on this transom thing is based on personal experience. I
swamped a small boat once, back in my teenaged years and it was on a
fresh water pond, flat as a pancake with no other influences on the boat
other than my stupid operation of it.

I was pulling a skier and she fell, but didn't immediately let go of the
tow line. I immediately made a hard turn, while pulling the throttle
back. The resultant wake wave hit the boat on the stern quarter and
filled the boat with well over a foot of water in a nanosecond. There was
no way I could move it with the engine without more water pouring over the
open transom.
The engine then quit, the boat became extremely unstable, in danger of
flipping so I slid into the water. The skier and I then swam back to the
nearby shore, slowly pulling the swamped boat with us with the tow line.

When it happens on a small boat, it happens fast.

Eisboch


This is a story that dates back to the early 60's I'd guess.

My father had a pal with a wooden lapstrake boat of around 15' to 16'. This
was a very small and tender boat by today's standards but they fished it in
the open ocean many times without incident. Returning from a fishing trip
outside of Boston Harbor they were in the Charles River about 50 feet from
shore in the vicinity of where the Hyatt Regency Hotel currently stands when
the outboard konked out. They carried tools with them and set about working
on the engine. In a chain reaction of events someone dropped a tool
overboard, someone else made a quick move to grab it, and the sudden shift
in trim caused everyone to lose their balance and fall towards the transom.
Water poured into the boat and it quickly capsized.

They swam for the river bank, pulling the capsized hull with them and found
themselves standing in waist deep water with various flotsam and jetsam from
the sinking surrounding them. At least that's how the photo that appeared in
the next day's Boston Record-American newspaper immortalized them.

Boy, would I love to have a copy of that photo today. Even if that image
were archived somewhere I wouldn't know how to begin to search for it
considering that for some strange reason they all gave the reporter false
names!

Steve P.