this is my experience crewing recently. I won't mention any names but in the skippers defense, it was a brand new boat to him and he had only had it for a VERY short time prior to this race. He didn't have much time to test this boat out beforehand. We also had it pretty loaded up with three people on board.

- First the mast is overrotating and we (there were two of us crewing) rig up a dirty rotation limiter.

- getting ready to gybe for C, the other crew realizes that the leeward jib car is flopping helplessly on the trampoline because the pin has come out of it. Grabbing some left over line from the jury rigged rotation limiter, I tied the block in place - but realize it's temporary because the rope is on some fine metal.

- Next a trapeze rope breaks sending me in the drink. After the skipper stops the boat and I'm swimming my heart out (with the trapeze ring in my hand), he looses focus working on something at the front (my jury rigged rotation limiter I think) and the boat begins to sail slowly away from me. He realizes it and I finally reach them.

- An inspection of the repair of the jib car is showing some fraying. Realizing that one of the trap wires (with a pulley on the end) is now worthless, I steal the small pin and ring from it. The problem is that we are on starboard and the inflicted jib car is loaded (we're in a quasi distance race jib reaching for A) so I keep the pin and ring in my mouth while we sail the boat for about 10 minutes until we sail the boat up around A and change tacks (I should have waited to remove that pin until later!). Meanwhile, I'm trying not to laugh, cough, sneeze, or give myself any reason to swallow! Finally tacked over and repaired the jib car.

- Skipper looks at his mainsheet blocks and realizes the ear has just pulled out of one side of a shackle and the pin is **** and probably not far from breaking completely. After desperately searching for another piece of rope to tie a backup in place for the shackle, skipper points out that I have a piece of line tied to the shoulder of my life vest (I have it there for exactly this kind of situation but I didn't remember that I had it - geee, that would have worked great on the jib car too!). Tied said backup rope from the block to the traveler and not 5 seconds later, BAM the shackle lets go and the rope holds. WHEW.


We held on and finished 3rd.