I learned to sail on Lake Murray, SC on a Hobie 14. After I had developed some confidence with the boat, I started pushing the boat to see how fast it could go. I was rewarded with a nasty beam reach pitchpole about 400 yds from shore. I flew straight into the forestays (una rig) and got cut and scratched pretty badly. The boat turned turtle and took 4 people to right. I never pushed the Hobie very hard after that; it scared me because it happened so fast with so little warning and was violent like a car crash. Shortly after that I sold the Hobie and bought a Prindle 16

My next pitchpole was 10 years later on a Tornado that I borrowed from a sailing buddy on Rickenbacker Cswy down in Miami. We traded boats, his T for my P19 and we sailed off together. Upon reaching a landmark (Vizcaya, IIRC) we both tacked and headed downwind. It was blowing and I left the sail a little too hard and dove the lee bow pretty bad and went over diagonally. It was kind of a slow motion pitchpole though compard to the Hobie incident; no injuries or boat damage. I never did pitchpole any of my Prindles, though I came close on the P18 once while sailing in rough surf from Captiva to Sanibel down off SW Florida.

Jimbo