UPDATE: Seahawk II
Well, that didn't take long. I challenged anyone to test my oar skills on the Seahawk II and it happened today.
I didn't get tested by a person, but I was still tested. I will let Erin give commentary on our first "sailing" day with the boat or if she doesn't, then I will later. But, back to my rowing story.
A nearby boat had lost it's dinghy and it was floating away when he yelled over if I could go get it. No problem…I can row over and get that thing in a second. Or that is how it was supposed to work. It had been pouring rain, our anchor was all messed up, but it shouldn't be an issue. READ MORE…
I rowed over and grabbed the rope on the stranded dinghy and started rowing back…unfortunately, I didn't have a good handle on the rope and just when I got going, the dinghy slipped away. So, I rowed back over, got the line again and started rowing. I rowed straight into a small boat that was anchored. So, I got around that and then started back on course. By this time I was struggling to make any headway and thought I was really not living up to my own hype.
Then, out of the blue, a man from another boat got in his dinghy (that had a motor) and came over to help. My pride was a little bruised at this point, but I was happy when he threw me a line.
We started off as a floatilla of 3 small inflatable boats with me in the middle holding one rope to the back boat and one to the front. He revved the motor and we didn't move. Uh oh.
Turns out the propeller shaft of the dinghy I was retrieving was caught on the anchor line of the boat I had run into earlier. So I wasn't such a bad rower, I just had a few thousand pounds and an anchor I was trying to move.
After we untangled, the tow operation went smoothly and everyone made it back to their respective boats. In the end, I should have expected bad karma as a result of my bragging…but it is easy to see why sailors have always been a supersticious group.