I had to perform some catrobatics this weekend and it got me thinking what other sticky situations crew find themselves getting into all in the name of competitive sailing.

My story is; we just rounded C and were headed to windward double trapped out. I did my usual scan of the boat looking for any uh-oh’s when I noticed that our spinnaker sheet had found its way under the leeward bow and was wrapped around it. Not good.
(I should mention we are a Tiger with full-length snuffer.)
I point the situation out to my skipper; Dennis, who immediately tells me to go down there a fix it. So I swing in on the boat and hesitantly near the leeward side of the boat thinking he is going to head up so I can go crawl out to the end of hull and free the line. If I could only be so lucky. He has no intensions of slowing the boat down. He tells me to crawl out there and get it and he’ll stay out on the wire and hold the boat down and he continues to sail to weather.
The only thing that made me actually shimmy out to the end of the hull taking buckets of spray and waves in the face and risking falling off the boat, pitchpoling, flipping –whatever; to get that line free, was knowing we could not put the chute up with the line under the hull and knowing that we were battling for first position with one mark rounding to go with a downwind finish.
It was purely my competitive side. Of course later on the beach I screamed crew abuse and told everyone he made me do it.
There was nothing super dangerous about what I did but it was kinda crazy. So I was wondering what stories other crew might have about stupid or crazy things they’ve done all in the name of competition.