Sunday Bruce, Johannes and I (Colin) took Pacific High out. As we were preparing to go I said to the crew, let’s try to get to the Golden Gate but if we cannot make it in time with the early sunset we can do some man-over-board practice, last time I was out we nearly lost Chuck and Bob as we could not see them in the sun’s glare.
We should have realized Poseidon agreed we needed more practice, as he provided a first test by placing an empty 10 gallon diesel jug in the channel for us to chase and pickup on the way out.
The winds were with us and we made it to the Golden Gate without any further incident. After the obligatory picture beneath the bridge and looking back towards San Francisco we turned around and started sailing back talking about how lucky we were to be out on such a nice day in such a beautiful place.
What seemed like quite soon after getting under the bridge we saw a wing surfer sitting on his board, holding his wing up, more like a sail and not really going anywhere. This seemed a little odd and as it was easy Bruce adjusted our course to go by him. As we got closer we started communicating by hand signals. We got a thumbs up, he was fine. As we got to hearing distance we again asked if he was okay and this time he said yes but if we had a line he could do with a tow upwind (he meant down wind but up current but we knew what he meant).
I told Bruce we are going after him, bring the boat around. Bruce conducted a figure eight maneuver, Johannes handled the sails and everything but the helm on the boat and I found the longest line in the locker. We attached it to the stern cleat and put a bowline on the far end. We caught ourselves a wing surfer on the line! I asked where he wanted to go. Not so surprisingly, for any locals, the beach near St Francis Yacht Club. It became quickly apparent even with us loosing as much speed as we could and getting the speed over ground down to 2 knots he was finding it hard to hold on. The wing was dragging behind him in the water. After a chat over the transom he suggested deflating his wing. We all agreed this was a good idea and he promptly let go of the tow line! That had not been in our plan! Clearly this was to help Bruce with his MOB practice! We did another figure 8, this time I was smarter with the line and tied a fender to it so we could see it and to stop it sinking. We caught the wing surfer again. Again with us now rolling up the jib and going at only 1.5 knots speed over ground, but maybe 2 knots faster through the water he was struggling to hold on. I offered, “why don’t you just come aboard ?” He did not need a second offer and we dropped the swim ladder down and pulled the line in and got him to the ladder. We took the deflated wing, board and surfer on board then pulled out the jib, pushed out the main and started sailing to where he wanted to be dropped off. As we go closer to the beach we watched the depth and when it hit 30 feet we hove-to (stopped the boat) and released our catch to swim back.
We then called Tradewinds to warn them we might be late returning, but in the end the winds were with us and we made it back to the slip including stopping at the pump out dock 10 minutes before sunset.
A number of thoughts occurred to me after this lesson from Poseidon.
Was the wing surfer really in danger? He thought so enough to ask a random stranger for help, if he was able to rescue himself it would have been more risky. Given the quite strong current and that it was still increasing we think he would have been sucked under the Golden Gate bridge and would have been in a lot more trouble later. We think it was the right call.
Should we have initially refused to tow him, hove-to and made him get on our boat? It is hard to know how he would have reacted, but I suspect he was not yet ready to admit he needed that much help.
We had three people in the boat to rescue one person in the water, could we have done it with less? Maybe but it was extremely useful to have a helm, a crew and a lineman / communicator. I did not see anyone resting.
Should we have dropped the sails and used the engine? It would have taken time to do this and we would have had the extra risk of a line and man in the water with a spinning propeller. Doing the whole rescue under sail seemed at the time the more prudent thing to do.
Next time you are out practice your man overboard, pick up that fender you see in the distance just don’t let Poseidon know you want to practice man over board!
By Tradewinds Member Colin T.
Well done, lads!