That Hobie 20 had been over for about an hour. The mast was full of water and they couldn't right it. The wind was peaking at 35 kts, the water temp was 52°. There was also a 3 to 5 kt flood current trying to take them up on the rocks on the south side of Angel Island. The rescue boats alternated between towing him away from the rocks and trying to right the boat with the motorboat, without success. Brett went in the water to help them, and I transferred from the signal boat to the rescue boat to assist with the righting process.(We had called racing for the day, the photo was taken from the signal boat. We were about a mile and a half from where they originally capsized.)

Despite our best efforts, we still couldn't right the boat.We eventually towed it (still inverted) upwind/upcurrent of a very small beach on the southwest side of Angel Island and let them drift into shore - they missed hitting rocks by about a foot on the way in. They managed to right the boat on shore, dropped the sails and we threw them a spare radio attached to a Type IV PDF (cushion) so we could talk to them to coordinate getting them off the beach. They walked the boat up the beach to get away from the rocks, and we got as close as we dared to the surfline while Brett swam out to connect towlines. It took us the better part of an hour to tow them back to the launching area.

The worst part of this was they tied up a significant portion of our rescue resources (two of six boats) when we had 50 other boats racing. A similar thing had happened to them two days prior (wasn't as windy) and they hadn't fixed it. (It was a charter boat and they had limited experience with a Hobie 20.) I wasn't going to let them sail the next day after this unless they fixed that mast. Fortunately, I didn't have to - they withdrew from the event after this incident - he knew he was over his head.

The best part? The guy's name was . . . John Williams.

And there was no damage to the boat, to people, we didn't get in the way of shipping or ferry traffic, and we didn't have to call the Coast Guard.

The two rescue boat drivers were ex-Vietnam war helicopter pilots. You never heard such professional radio comms in your life. Great guys to work with.