Watching your boat sail away by itself is an interesting experience. During training the day before the start of the F16 Euro last year I decided to trap downwind to see how it felt in the conditions there. I turned downwind, cleated the main, set the spi up, clipped the trap hook to my harness, grabbed the spi sheet in one hand and the tiller in the other and pushed my butt overboard.

Well, the trap hook was not clipped properly and I executed a perfect backflip into the water. I let go the tiller extension (I've broken 3 of those already so I know you have to release the darn thing or it breaks) and kept the spi sheet in hand to stay in contact with the boat. Except that sheeting the spi made the boat bear off and it kept going and going dragging me behind it. After a while I was tired of drinking the whole Como lake by my nose so I let go the sheet hoping to see the boat round up and capsize.

Well, the darn thing continued to sail downwind, the now flapping spi and sheeted main in perfect balance, quickly sailing away from me.

I was surrounded by 3 ribs in hailing distance and I was quickly picked up and dropped on my trampoline. The boat had traveled quite a distance and the rib driver had to punch it to catch up!

Since then I'm always thinking twice before trapping downwind solo because I know the boat will sail away by itself... I love the idea of a VHF on your person, you never know when something stupid is going to happen to you.