Maby it's a chivalry thing or just a generation gap, but the exact same thing happened the weekend before last to both my son and myself on two seperate Spitfires. We have two sisters crewing for us. We were both on the last beat with one downwind leg to go. He was ahead of me, with a Hobie Tiger just ahead of both of us. We had to get the Tiger on handicap. When Neil noticed the gennaker sheet around the hull, he stayed on the wire and sent his crew out on the leward hull to clear the rope, which she managed to do. I stopped, told my crew to hold the cat into the wind and I crawled out on the hull and cleared the rope. Just different generations. He ended up second in that race, I was fifth.

I saw one last year where something got knotted at the very tip of the spinnaker pole on a Dart Hawk F18. The guy decided to hook on his trapeze and work his way out to the tip of the pole. All seemed to go well, he was hanging on his trapeze right between the hulls at the end of the pole. A large wave arrived, lifted him up, his harness unhooked, he dropped down holding the end of the pole and snapped it. He did manage to grab the rudder, as he went through the middle, and pull himself back onto the boat !. Not his day.