by oldmansurfer » Thu Oct 09, 2014 1:38 am
When I was in the Sea Explorers (ocean version of Boy Scouts but coed) a bunch of scouts and the assistant scoutmaster wanted to sail our boat which we called the SS Rubber Ducky to Oahu from Kauai for a day trip meaning going and coming back in one day. We were all relatively new to sailing but Oahu is like 95 miles in a straight line from Kauai and sailboats don't do straight lines unless the wind is particularly good. I told them all it wasn't going to be a day trip since the Rubber Ducky did 3 knots max but they disagreed with me. I mean any one with minimal math skills (like grade school arithmetic) could tell there was going to be a problem. My ex-girlfriend and her brother arrived too late since the Rubber Ducky had left the harbor. I had a Sailfish (small sailboat) and knew I could easily catch them even overburdened with an extra person they were made for one or two people so I offered to take them out. Well...it was my ex-girlfriend LOL so I got them out there in no time. The Rubber Ducky hadn't made much progress due to the wind and that it was a plug of a ship. They left at 6 am and arrived on Oahu at 9 pm....must have had good wind. I was about to call the coast guard to go look for them. It was actually amazing they made it since they had no real sailing skills and no running lights and no navigational devices. They navigated with a method that I had figured out. If you took a transistor radio and tuned to a channel on the signal came in clear only when the antenna was pointed toward the transmission tower. So if you turned the radio this way or that way the signal got clearer or less clear depending on where the signal was coming from so a makeshift directional device. Seriously you can't see more then a few miles over the ocean in the best conditions. Anyway most of the crew came back by air since they had gotten seasick and didn't plan on staying overnight but they had to anyway because the last flight back was at 9 pm
So what is worse.... dying or regretting it for the rest of my life? Obviously I chose not regretting it.