Last night it was my turn in the rotation for RC duty at my clubs Thursday night race series. Most of the boats racing a large monohulls with a bunch of portsmouth boats and a couple cats thrown in the mix. By 6:15 we had our course set, and the start line in place and were waiting for 6:30 to begin the rolling starts that take 30 minutes to get through. A Nacra 5.8 was sailing around waiting for the start an capsized just prior to 6:30. He was single handing and unable to right the boat on his own. He was drifting slowly downwind with many other boats sailing around him, but none offering any assistance. There was nothing I could do at this point as I was responsible for getting all the starts off on time. I kept an eye on him to make sure he stayed with his boat and he seemed to be doing fine. At 7pm when we were done getting all the starts off, we pulled anchor and hurried down to him to assist. By this time he had gone turtle and a large sailboat was attempting to assist. We took over from the sailboat and sent them on their way. We attemted to right the boat by using the tying a line to the mast base and attempting to right by pulling the boat bows over the stern as I have learned this is the correct way to assist a turtled cat. The mast was full of water and the boat would get to pointing straight up and then flop back on its side and return to turtle. Things got scary....the only place on this body of water deep enough to go turtle is the main shipping channel into the port. A LARGE tanker was coming up the channel, a rather frantic conversation took place. Do we get him off the boat get out of dodge and hope the tanker doesn't run over his boat, or do we give it one more shot? We opted to go like hell and drag him out of the channel. We made it out of the channel and away from the path of the tanker. The boat was still turtle with a mast full of water. We took one more shot at righting him and with the committee boat at full throttle (big diesle on about a 24 foot work boat), it slowly came upright. The main was torn to shreds, but other than that, the boat was intact. We towed him back to the beach left him safely there.

lessons learned.....

1. Don't single hand a boat you can't right yourself.
2. Don't rely on others to help you in case you need it. I was very dissappointed at all the other boats out there that just sailed around him without offering any assistance. This would have been a non-issue if someone had helped him right prior to him going turtle.
3. The boat is not worth your life. When it comes down to it, get out of trouble and worry about your boat later. It can be replaced.