One nice Spring Saturday I saw that we were going to have a good 15 knots of wind. This was perfect because I had just re-cut the #3 on the San Juan 24, and that would be enough wind to give it a good look. Don was out of town, so I got Tammy to go with me to help sail the boat.
I was pleased with the job I had done on the jib, so we just decided to enjoy another trip around the lake. I was going to windward on starboard and looked below to make sure there was no traffic. The only other boat on our side of the lake was Amor Azul (blue hulled PT 40). They were way up the lake close hauled on port tack, so I settled down to drive. In my racer’s mind there was no reason for a close hauled boat to change course other than rounding a mark, so I probably waited a little too long to check on them again.
It was a most unpleasant surprise when their bow came through my freshly re-cut jib. Their bow pulpit proceeded to crash into our mast, causing the rig to come down. This was the first (and only) time I’ve had a rig come down, so I was surprised at how slowly it all fell. I had plenty of time to warn Tammy to watch out. Little did I know how busy she had been.
It seems when a 20,000 pound boat has a near head on collision with a 3,000 pound boat, the lighter boat reverses in a big hurry. Tammy was just sitting in the cockpit, so she kept going forward. She hit both sides of the companionway as she headed below. We know she hit both sides from the bruises and one side being broken. She then hit the table breaking it before she came to rest against the forward bulkhead. She was trying to figure out what happened when she looked up through the cabin windows. Her first thought was that the sky was a funny shade of blue. Then she realized the blue was the hull of Amor Azul. If that big boat was on top of us, she was not staying below. She was standing next to me when I warned her the mast was coming down. I never knew she hadn’t been there the whole time.
After we got the boat back to the slip and cleared away I had to make on of the hardest phone calls I have ever had to make. Fortunately, boats were tools used for racing as far as Don was concerned, and insurance would take care of that. Little did we know. It seems the owner of Amor Azul wanted to argue what had happened. Don politely explained the right of way rules to the insurance adjuster. The he pointed out that the damage to Amor Azul was confined to the bow. The damage to his boat was on the port side. Then he asked the adjuster to figure out how Amor Azul was not at fault. The adjuster looked at the boats and wrote Don a check.