I’ve heard it said that if you’re not falling you’re not pushing yourself hard enough.  Not sure that anyone has ever said that about sailboat racing in particular but I think it applies nonetheless.  Maybe not to falling off the boat but hopefully that sentiment will make a guy like Dicky Darrell – who took a swim off of a J/22 right in front of me a little while back – feel a little better about getting dunked in the Harbor during a Thursday race night.

Here’s a little background from an email that Dicky sent me inquiring about the images from that particular night (reprinted here with his permission of course) -

My wife is very interested in seeing my “man overboard” escapade. It was quite an exciting event. While working the fore deck my shoe got caught on a hook used to hold shock cord for keeping the jib on deck. When this hook caught my shoe I lost mobility and went over the side. My ankle was wrapped by the spinnaker guy and is still a little swollen and tender to touch but otherwise does not hurt. The hook tore my shoe from the top to the sole and I ripped the hook from the shock cord. It was still hooked to my shoe when I got back on board.  Lucky for me Charles was on board and strong enough to pull me in and we were able to complete the spinnaker set and keep on racing.

Here’s a slideshow of the sequence (click through the images using the arrows if it’s not moving fast enough for ya’) -

As Dicky notes above, he was lucky enough be sailing with fellow crew member Charles Kyler who was able to yank him back on board in one fell swoop.  And, credit is due to skipper, Marty Fetsch, who was able to lend a hand to Dicky while keeping the boat going in a straight line.

While Dicky looks to have never lost contact with the boat, maybe now would be a good time to review those man overboard procedures.  Check out the wikipedia entry for Man Overboard and this old US Sailing website that has the Man Overboard Procedures that I first learned when taking sailing lessons at the Downtown Sailing Center back in 1998.

I’ll leave you with a link to a slideshow sequence from another time when I was in the right place at the right time to catch some pretty hair-raising action of a J/22 broach on a breezy Thursday night a few years back (Jester J/22 Knockdown vid).

See you on the water…