Hehehe, I remember my first pitchpole. It was on my G-Cat 5.7M (Amazingly I never pitched the H-16!). We were on a very broach reach, hauling butt, and I saw the gust coming but waited 1/10th of a second too late to bear off. My crew couldn't get the jib to uncleat and the bows just dove for the bottom. Once that forward trampoline got into the water the boat just went verticle. My crew got ejected but I held onto a foot-loop. The boat went down all the way to the mast beam (and G-Cats have very high-volume hulls!) before I let go the loop and slid down into the sail. It settled onto it's side in the typical capsize position. The actuall pitchpole took about 1 second.

The best pitchpole I've ever witness was buy a fat guy soloing a H16. I was putting around with about 5 people on my G-Cat and watching him blast around the shallow bay. I kept seeing the bow stuff a bit and knew it was inevitable. He managed to do it in a pretty shallow spot, less than 3 feet deep. The leeward bow went down, struck bottom, and then the whole boat pivoted on the bow and came back down, still upright, facing into the wind The guy never neft his little corner of the trampoline the whole time. When it was over he just sheeted in and took off again, but didn't push the boat as hard for the rest of the day