Similar situation, My good friend Tony, had a Cheoy Lee 48. The PO had installed a secondary fuel pump with it's own on/off switch.The afore mentioned switch got forgotten about every 4th or 5th time out. This one particular time we were exiting the Galveston Yacht Basin into the Houston Ship channel when we "ran out" of fuel. Pleasure boats, some "tows", a ferry, a couple of large ships and a ripping current greeted us as the motor sputtered it's last. A very experienced sailor on board made this profound statement. "If it were up to me, I'd turn this tub into a sailboat real soon!" Thank the lord for room to leeward and a roller furled headsail. Merry Christmas to all Mark, Gratis (6115) Want to keep your WHOLE PAYCHECK? PLEASE VISIT http://www.fairtax.org ----- Original Message ----- From: Dick Holmes To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 4:31 PM Subject: Re: catalina27-talk: Race Sails & Ballast/IB v OB
We headed out one bright morning for a burial at sea. The outboard purred into life and I backed the boat out of the slip with the tiller to starboard. We motored out the obligatory three miles offshore (more or less) and idled around the other boats as the ceremony progressed. Following the ceremony we followed the family boat back into the harbor. Just as we rounded the point in front of the yacht club bar, the engine quit. I knew we were low on fuel, but I didn't realize we had been running on fumes all morning. We pulled off the main cover and hoisted her to catch the four or five knots of breeze, sailed around the point and into our slip on the lee side of the club. When we went in to splice one for our departed friend, several people complimented us on our superior seamanship sailing into the slip in light air. Never being one to go for long without the taste of shoe leather, I foolishly let it be known that we didn't have a choice because the skipper (me) had let us run out of gas. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a superior sailor than open it and be proven a ninny.... Merry Christmas to all, and may the wind and seas be at your back in 2008. Dick Encore Dana Point [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I probably already told this to the list once or twice, but it's worth retelling and I can always further embellish it to make it even whackier and stupid than it actually was in real life, so here goes: ----------- I have NO IDEA what we were thinking, but it was not summer, I think it was in November, but it was an unusually warm night and my wife's entire family was in town...we went out to eat in the neighborhood where my boat was kept in a slip. It was many hours after sunset and we left the restaurant and it was, by god, UNUSUALLY WARM, and this was in the Inner Harbor and the all the city lights looked beauty-full, so we decided, what the heck, let's all go for a quiet motor all the way up into the Innermost of the Inner Harbor! What fun!! How exciting!! Only: there were 9 of us on a Columbia 22. That's a lot...all dressed in stupid shoes and skirts and dress slacks and coats and ties. We looked somewhat ridiculous, I'll grant you that....6 adults (one in her late 70's) and 3 kids under 10 years old. I think, I'm almost positive I had 9 PFD's on board. Of that I am sure...kinda. But anyway, it was blowing all of 1 knot and the sea state (harbor state) was like a mirror...it was very beautiful..all them-there lights. Not another boat moving anywhere... Needless to say there was not a whole lot of room in the cockpit...in fact it almost impossible to move the tiller, but the old Merc fired up right away (i HATE mercs) and we made our way up into the Harbor, past the toxic waste site left by Allied Signal (on the EPA's superfund list at that time) past the Domino Sugar Plant (recent fire has shut down a few floors) past the Batlimore Museum of Industry (and the Steam Tug "Baltimore,' once a DuPont pleasure yacht, past the National Aquarium and the Rusty Scupper, past the diesel sub "Torsk" and up to the seawall at the Rouse Corporations' Harbrplace. A few crew disembarked to get hot coffees and assorted desert drinks...tourists walked by and cluelessly thought we, who actually were clueless, too, were pretty cool for "sailing" up to the Inner Harnor in Nvoember. Of course, you can guess what happened...pretty-much nothing. Excpet about 15 yards off the seawall the O/B conked out and would not, no way, no how, start back up again. No way, nuh-UH! My brother-in-law started to get his cell phone out (pretty much a novelty item back in those days) and call for a tow, when the sharp-eyed skipper noticed the wind had piped up to a roaring 2 kn off our stern. So, he hauled up the flaccid burnt-out gennie, and hanked that puppy on, to the amazement of the assembled, captive and near-paniced Family-in-Law (while my wife calmed them, saying, "Dont worry...he knows what he's doing") hoisted that piece of crud swath of Dacron® and off we sailed back toward the marina at maybe 1.5 kn, under headsail alone! We made a perfect, soft landing into the slip, whereupon my brother-in-laws glasse's (his only pair...they were moving to Kansas the next morning, facing an 18 hour drive) went ker-splash into Batlimore's colloidal stew and settled in 18 feet...12 feet of "water" and 4 feet of suspended hexa-valent chromium and sewage. In the slip, I was able to diagnose the problem with the engine...no one had ever hooked up the gas line. such is life. tf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.31/1128 - Release Date: 11/13/2007 11:09 AM
