For the record:

Nate,



This is a cutlass NOT a scimitar.

ARRGH!

Now THAT'S Sailin'!

For those who know: Note the Main is reefed and there is still no hull touching water. She's completely on plane!

A sailing hydrofoil. Whooda thunk?!

ARRGH! and Double ARRGH!

Just so you don't think the assheads haven't been tryin'....

There is a sailing site I check into often that deals primarily with racing, but everything else gets thrown in, too. It's a hoot and the folks there are at least as odd as the 'C-triad'.

This is from the forum there concerning conversations overheard on the marine radio (That'll be VHF fer ye landlubbers, ARRRGH!) by a sailor who shall remain anonymous:

This was a few years ago, just after 911. A Canadian warship burst in calling for a ship to identify itself. The Canadian crewperson, a young woman , proceeded with a litany of questions for the ship which the radio person answered in strange, almost too perfect, English, beginning each transmission with a nervous ?yes yes??

The the ship was a 600 ton oil-tanker due into New York in two days, registry port of Kingston, Jamaica. After the questions, the Canadian warship signaled its intention to board the vessel and asked the tanker to slow to 8 knots. No answer and dead air for a couple of minutes. The young woman on the Candian warship again announced its intention to board and requested the ship slow to 8 knots, through a rope ladder over the starboard side, have papers ready, and have all crew identification ready. The tanker finally replied and the man with the automated English voice said that the ship would not slow down and would not comly. He claimed they had to make their June 20 delivery date in New York and since they had boarded recently, they didn't need to be boarded again. Silence.

Once again the young female navy voice requested that the oil tanker slow to 8 knots and again was met with silence. After a couple more times, the automated voice from the tanker asked what authority the Canadian warship had to board? The warship responded citing a US Canadian Treaty, this time with a much sterner more mature female voice. After another request was met with silence, the stern female declared that if the tanker did not comply, the warship would be forced to file 50 mm warning shots across its bow, but hoped it would not come to that. More silence.

This time the captain of the warship made the request. This time, another, more frantic voice with a noticeable accent answered from the tanker stating that the ship would not comply. After a lot of back and forth, the warship captain started a 2 minute countdown that ended in 10-9-8-7....3-2-1 fire!. Silence.

This time the stern woman's voice made the boarding request and again was met with silence. This time she indicated that the warship would fire 500 yards across the bow. "Clear your decks of all personnel," she said. This time, as the countdown progressed, the mic was left keyed and we could plainly hear the sounds of guns over the radio.

The tanker quickly broke radio silence. They yelled that they were on the phone with their agent in London and that they would lodge a complaint with the International Shipping Organization. They also told the warship to shoot all they wanted, as they were videotaping this for CNN.

The warship responded that it would start firing over top of the tanker if it didn't slow to 8 knots and prepare to be boarded. "Clear your personnel from your top decks." This prompted a similar response from the tanker who now claimed that they had been boarded four times in the last three days and they would not slow down.

As the warship started its countdown, the tanker quickly interrupted and claimed it was slowing to 8 knots, not because it was about to comply, but because it was having "engineering problems." At this point, however, the transmission was starting to fade and get garbled with static and within minutes we lost the transmission.

This long-winded account comes from my log at the time.

Ya' just don't know what kinda shit these sumbitches are up to everyday. We're just mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us shit all day. But every now and then a little light gets through....