Mary,

If it's about sharing nightmares, my latest ones have mostly been about being physically unable to do things that were so easy at age 20... like surviving a pitchpole or capsize without any bruise, for instance.

This (and my wife...) are the reasons why I stopped "real" catsailing and started the move to a folding tri.

But if we can include offshore sailing, then I have a couple of nightmares in one story:

Bringing a 38 ft monohull from Rio to Santos, we knew there was a front coming. It meant strong headwinds and heavy seas, but we were fully crewed and ready to race, so we set sail anyway to get arrive in time for the Santos to Rio race.

There were about 80 miles to go (out of 220) when the front reached us. The wind was at 20 to 30 kts and the waves, rain and visibility were what you would expect...

With about half this distance covered, we were heavily reefed with three hands on deck. Land was relatively close and unfortunately it was a "shallow" depth area (10 m - 30 ft).

Then I saw the ROGUE WAVE coming. I don't know its height, but it really doesn't matter. I could only shout "HOLD ON AND DON'T LOOK" to the experienced guy checking something in the mast and then make sure the helmsman was pointing to the wave.

The boat managed to climb nearly half of the "hill" and then procceded through the rest of it. The man in the mast almost couldn't hold. Due to my warning, a curious (and rather stupid) South African crew opened the companionway and the wall of water sent him violently back. We took maybe a ton of water due to his curiosity.

At the time, I couldn't help but laugh at the guy, who previously missed Salvador by 800 miles when coming from S.A. and set the clocks to Greenwich time for a 220 mile coastal delivery with no visibility. But after a minute there was nothing to laugh about.

We found that the wave somehow overloaded one of the shroud's chainplates, cracking the hull/deck. The mast was nearly useless without the shroud in that kind of weather and the deck integrity was also at risk. As usual in this cases, the engine wouldn't work, so we couldn't use the batteries to pump the water out. We almost turned back, 'cause things looked really bad and our destiny was upwind.

(Later we found that the same wave capsized a bigger boat and broke the rudder of another one - both sailing downwind from the South.)

Guided by the experienced guy, we used all halyards to help the shroud, reduced sail to storm jib and third reef and went on slowly.

Then came the second nightmare - my personal one.

Closer to Santos, close to shelted waters, I was working the waves VERY carefully with the same guys nursing the mast. We were out for hours after the wave for fear or living the boat in less capable hands.

Then we noticed what seemed to be a very small fishing boat following us and for a moment considered if they needed our help. But they kept the distance and did not signal, so we just forgot about it, concentrated in sailing.

When we reached sheltered waters the guys inside somehow managed to fire the engine, so we lowered the sails and procceeded to the yacht club, pumping the reamining water from the bilge. From outside it would seemed that we were in pretty good shape.

When we were docking the guys on the "fishing boat" approached us, so I waved at them joyfully. Then they started to shout VERY angrily at us.

It was the RC boat crewed by the Commodore himself, accompanied by his pals, who were violently and unjustly removed from the comfort of a smoking room (or something) to sail into a storm in the middle of the night, in the only available boat -to attend a distress call - from our boat!

That S.A. guy, the owner and the rest of the crew in the cabin had panicked and called the club - but didn't care to tell us outside - actually, they never stepped outside the cabin after the wave.

Anyway, the Commodore (and gang) was really angry at ME - the stupid 19 or 20 year old skipper. I just happened to be at the helm all the time they were following us, so what else could he think? He was especially angry that I didn't even acknowlege the presence of their boat after sending a distress call! And how could we send a distress call when we were able to sail AND motor all the way to the club!

It took the rest of the useful part of the night for the very experienced guy and his wife (coincidently, a sailing reporter) to finally calm the guys, tell the whole story and finally convince them that the entire deck crew (3) never knew of that radio call. Actually, only after the owner went to the restroom could she tell the real story. I could have been seriously beaten that night and almost became persona non gratta in the Santos Yacht Club...

Cheers,