"Martin Baxter" wrote in message ...


http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories...693&ran=145039

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawac...d-1778a80e66dc


Kudos to the US Navy.

Cheers
Marty

Those three were NOT sailors in any way, shape or form.
They were stupid, inept, dumb, chicken **** and pathetic.

I have copied and pasted the story from the Ottawa Citizen
and will comment throughout to support my position.

************************************************** ****

Corey Glynn has just returned from his first -- and possibly last -- ocean sailing voyage.

The Ottawa resident and two other Ottawa men were plucked from a life-raft in the
storm-whipped seas off North Carolina by U.S. navy helicopters on Saturday, after
having abandoned their 10.8-metre sailboat.

****Note it was a sailboat******

Mr. Glynn, 41, said he and his friends, John Rae, 44, and Peter Goodeve, 39, had been
planning the trip from North Carolina to the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean for a long time.

They set out Jan. 12 from Morehead City in the company of another sailboat for what
was to be a nine- to 11-day sail to the Virgin Islands aboard a sloop called the Jean Marie.

****Duh! You don't "sail" from Morehead City to the Virgins in that short a period of time.
Due to prevailing winds it is necessary to "sail" north and east of the Bahamas to at least
the 65th meridian and then turn south. The trip will most likely take three weeks. It is
clear they planned to motor into the trades most of the way.****

"Partway through the trip, our engine stopped working and we had to make the decision
to head back to land as fast as possible, which, unfortunately, put us into some very
serious weather," Mr. Glynn, an IBM employee, said yesterday.

****Typical of today's so-called sailor - an overreliance on a diesel. Did it never occur
to them that they could sail without a motor for pity's sake?****

"Without the engine, without the batteries, without some navigational equipment, we
realized things were getting increasingly dangerous."

****Again, there is demonstrated a total reliance on their diesel. Their boat was plenty
large enough for some solar panels, a wind generator or even a portable gasoline
generator which all could have kept the batteries charged.****

Because of the engine failure, the trio could not use the electronic bilge pump and
were reduced to using a manual pump.

****Too lazy to use a manual pump it would seem. Or even a bucket, I suppose.****

"There was nothing broken aboard the boat, except that the electric bilge pumps
weren't working because the batteries were losing their charge," Mr. Glynn said.

****Oh, poor babies! You just couldn't function without electricity. How sad that
people put to sea when they are so woefully unqualified to do so.****

"Because of the seas, the deck of the boat was awash quite a bit. Most sailboats have
minor leaks, so when a boat is being constantly washed by heavy seas, the water
begins to accumulate below."

****Simply not so. Most sailboats are water tight unless in a survival storm where
some spray finds it's way in but the quantity is so small it does not represent
a danger of the ship foundering.****

The men had been at sea for three days when they made the decision to turn around
and head for shore to make repairs. They headed into a northeast wind and heavy
conditions, and after 11/2 days of tough sailing, they had another two nights to go.

****So, instead of running before the wind to make life easier these idiots
decided to turn around and beat into the wind and seas. Duh! So after three
days they had only gotten as far as the latitude of North Carolina - and
they had expected to reach the Virgin Islands in 11 days. Bwahahahahhahaha!
After three days, they panicked in the face of normal wind and sea conditions
in the Gulf Stream and abandoned their voyage.****

"The wind was from the north and we were setting a course pretty well west,
heading for North Carolina," Mr. Glynn said. "We were on our last half-battery
and we were saving that power to run the radio."

****Oh poor, poor babies! Only half a battery left. I guess they would all
die immediately when the battery went completely dead.****

Their initial trip plan was carefully designed to sail into a "weather window"
that avoided dangerous storms. But when the engine failed, they had to return
to the bad weather. "We knew it was going to be rough, but it had to be done.
We had to get back to land," he said.

****It's apparent their trip plan consisted of motoring into the weather
window making a planned number of miles a day according to the engine
rpm. I've seen such as these out there. Fair winds for their course but
not a shred of sail up and motoring along at full speed. Little do they
realize the heavy motion stirs up years of sediment in their tanks and
their filters become clogged. And they have the nerve to call themselves
sailors? ****

"In hindsight, we decided to make the call to abandon ship at the right time,
before things got too serious."

****Completely wrong. You don't abandon a sailing ship just because you're
afraid and uncomfortable and your diesel no longer will start. You were
in no immediate danger and your sails were working just fine or should have
been had you any idea of how to use them. You were only a couple days away
from land. What a bunch of fat, ignorant losers! Here they are, after the
fact, trying to justify erroneous action which endangered the lives of their
rescuers.****

It wasn't a panic situation, he said. "It was nasty, the weather was crazy,
but it had been like that all day. We were clear-headed enough that we collected
our valuables, wallets, passports, that sort of thing, into a dry bag and got
ready to get off the boat," Mr. Glynn said.

"It was unbelievably hard for John to make the call, and he did it with grace.
He sort of weighed the odds and made the decision -- the only thing he asked
was that I make the phone call because he wanted to keep his hands on the wheel."

He said the three men "had a very clear and honest discussion of what our
chances were and that's when we said, 'OK it's the time' and opened the
satellite phone."

****These idiots had a sat phone but no back-up source of electricity for
charging the batteries? What kind of idiots do we have here, anyway? Alas,
the answer to that is a bunch of typical lubbers totally unqualified to take
any kind of an ocean voyage. They are the sort of people who can't think
creatively and who are locked into the ways and means of the typical lubber. ****

about 3 p.m., Mr. Glynn called the U.S. Coast Guard, which co-ordinated
the rescue. The sailboat, 330 kilometres southeast of Cape Hatteras, was
at the maximum range for its rescue helicopters.

In less than an hour, a coast guard C-130 transport plane from Elizabeth City,
North Carolina, was overhead, keeping an eye on the stricken yacht.

****Stricken yacht, my aching arse! The only thing stricken was the idiots
aboard who were stricken with a case of stupidity and stained underwear
because they did not have the use of their diesel engine. ****

About 200 kilometres to the north, the Norfolk, Virginia-based U.S.S.
Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier, was on exercises and responded to
the coast guard's call for assistance at about 4:30 p.m. The carrier turned
south and launched an E2C Hawkeye aircraft and two Seahawk helicopters.

"I gotta tell you, I felt pretty good when two helicopters showed up and the
floodlights went on and two divers dropped into the water," Mr. Glynn said.
"We piled ourselves into the life raft and cut it loose from the boat to give
them the safety margin they needed to pluck us out of the water."

The rescue swimmers, David Collins and Christopher Burns, battled six-metre
waves, heavy rain and 45 knots of wind to get to the raft.

****18-foot waves and forty-five knots of wind. Whoop-de-doo! My 27-footer
with no diesel handles those conditions just fine under sail. But, I would
not be so stupid as to be beating into the wind and waves. I would
have continued on course to the south east and made landfall in the
Bahamas if necessary to make repairs. These idiots created their own
bad situation, even so, it did not justify abandoning ship.****

"All I could see was this little, tiny light," Mr. Collins, 23, told the
Virginian-Pilot newspaper. "It would go under the waves and then come
back. Every once in a while, I'd get washed over," forcing him to find his
target again. "I had a mission to go straight for that raft and get control
of those survivors."

****What a bunch of overdramaticized crap! ****

When he made it to the raft, the calm of the three men "caught me off guard,"
Mr. Collins told the Virginian-Pilot. "I was afraid they'd be kind of panicky."
Instead, "they had everything planned" on who would go first. "That made
things a lot smoother."

Hauling the first man, Mr. Goodeve, out of the raft and into the helicopter
took about 20 minutes "that seemed like an eternity," lead pilot Lt.-Cmdr.
Tony Moreno told the newspaper.

****Yes sir, another made for television pile of swill to glorify rescuers
and legitimize idiots and fools needing rescue in relatively benign conditions.****

Mr. Burns made the second rescue, pulling Mr. Glynn out, and Mr. Collins
went back for Mr. Rae, the captain of the Jean Marie. "It was a great
feeling to actually go out there and save their lives," Mr. Collins said Sunday.

****Save their lives?? Bwahahahahhhhaaha! Who says their lives were ever
in danger. It appears to me the only thing in danger was their comfort and
their bruised egos at not having a diesel to push them along and run their
electronics. Let's get real here.****

"We didn't wait until we were too cold or too fatigued and we got out of
there uninjured-- apart from minor cuts and bruises -- still warm, sentient;
it was all good," Mr. Glynn said.

****NOT! It was all pathetic and unnecessary and it's even worse how
you attempt to justify your lame decisions. You make me sick.****

Before they abandoned ship, he said, they set the sail as best they could,
locked the rudder "and the last we saw, it was making a course on its own
northwest into the Gulf Stream."

The sailboat had been performing beautifully, he said, except for problems
with the engine and pumps.

****How would anybody who relies totally on their diesel know the first
thing about if a sailboat was performing beautifully. How could anybody
who knew how to sail abandon a performing beautifully sailboat because
the motor was inoperable probably doe to dirty filters? How could anybody
in his right mind convince himself he had made the right decision? Only an
insane person of low character could possibly succeed in this idiocy.*****

"We're not certain it will be possible to recover the boat, but John is
looking into it," Mr. Glynn said.

****You abandon a perfectly good boat in need of filter changes on the
diesel and now you want to recover it? Pathetic! Stupid! Ignorant! and
Unrealistic! You are a loser of the highest magnitude.

"His plan was to take his boat into the Caribbean and spend quite a lot of
time down there. It was a devastating decision for John to make.
He stepped away from his dream."

****He didn't step away from anything, Rather, he chickened out when
things got a little uncomfortable. People like that have no business on
the water in a lake, let alone on the high seas. STAY HOME and nurse
on your baby bottle next time. Give everybody a break from your worthless
life and unrealistic dreams.*****

I have spoken!

Capt. Neal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~