Duffing

Don't ever lift your rudder up to clear off some weed if you are near to lots of moored yachts....and a gust hits....

Had to take the crew to A&E to have his mashed thumb sorted out. We still don't know how it got between the colliding gunwhales.

Still feel like a twit for doing that.

Leaving a bottle of Sun Cream in the bottom of a 2000 on the first day of the nationals and have it burst leading to a full on ice rink for the whole week even after about 1000 washes with a hose.

Also last year the day after we had a freshers department christmas night out we decided it was a good day to go to largs for a blast in the 2 RS 200's Mr. Noble has access too. Chris and one other had headed down earlier and were to pick us up from the largs to cumbrae ferry terminal in a rib. When we arrive at the ferry terminal we see a sign that says "Ferry cancelled due to adverse weather". Ben (Isis) and I look at each other and are both thinking the same thing "Breeze On!".
Anyway after a bit of a sail with another dude. Ben hopped into the boat and we headed off upwind. It was windy but it was going well and all seemed simple and stable compared to the last time we had sailed together in largs (our first time sailing together. it was in a cherub and it was as windy). When we bore off and shot off downwind with the heavily loaded rib struggling to keep up. I say lets gybe so ben gets set says ok "gybing". I gybe kite cross boat and look back to see ben running accross boat reaching out for the non-existant trapeeze handle and running clean out the side of the boat. ooooooooooooooooooooops sucks to be Ben who didnt have a dry suit but did have a long swim back to the boat.

Great stories indeed.

The other side of duffing as (© Gideon Coe) is finding yourself slightly out of touch with the modern world.

Such as finding yourself saying 'Well 400's are too big for our pond'

F3-4 " Draycote Water

Out practicising in the Fireball, dropping kite about 300 yds from wall (for those of you who know Draycote) as I uncleat halyard we gybe accidentally taking my crew off the boat. Leaving myself with kite up approaching wall singlehanded just about planing on a run

Managed to drop kite and do perfect man overboard without saftey bopats even noticing (all though we did get rather close to the wall)

way back when I was thin I was crewing a 470 oop in Scotland.  Brand new kite up, blasting along, the helm bore off to avoid another boat I hadn't seen so of course in we went.  We thought we would be clever and bring the boat up with the kite still up - usually feasible, but this time it had swallowed as much water as it could and as we brought the boat up the whole inside of the kite peeled away leaving us  just flying tapes.....

of course, the whole thing was caught on video and of course, us being a) blonde b) female and c) English meant we relived the experience several times over back in the bar in front of the tv....