Kiwiscots, by Adrian Pratt:Believe me, this was a lot scarier in real life than
it looks here. On the last day of our sailing course we were happily cruising. We had our spinnaker up for the first time, the wind wasn't too pushy, and we'd had a nice lunch. We sort of saw this ferry leaving its berth, but really paid in no heed. Until, well, we sort of ended up in its pathway. We'd learned all the rules and knew we had to give way - because presumably this bad boy is more than 500 tons and was in Wellington Harbor. But here's the thing about sailing and wind: you can't always control what happens. Next thing we knew (or, nek minit, as they say here), the wind was dropping, the spinnaker was going flaccid and the very large ferry was bearing down on us. Our instructor was slightly worried: "You see that ferry, right?" I'm not saying the tremble in his voice was so
pronounced because we had an Irishman at the helm. It wasn't that the way he said it made it sound like "you see that fairy, right?" that was funny. It was the fact that, well, this was the biggest ship I'd seen in a month and it was getting bigger by the second as we were right in its lane. It honked its fog horn three times. Though it sounded like the maritime equivalent of "get the f&%* out of the way or I'll squash you like a baby seal," our instructor told us - not entirely convincingly - that it simply meant the behemoth was turning to port. As you can see from the above photo, I was desperately trying to David Copperfield the ferry away. In the end, no harm was done, no seals were hurt, and we even received a friendly multi-fingered wave from the bridge of the Aratere. (Sorry this is a little late, but I only just was sent these pictures today.) Source: Kiwiscots
it looks here. On the last day of our sailing course we were happily cruising. We had our spinnaker up for the first time, the wind wasn't too pushy, and we'd had a nice lunch. We sort of saw this ferry leaving its berth, but really paid in no heed. Until, well, we sort of ended up in its pathway. We'd learned all the rules and knew we had to give way - because presumably this bad boy is more than 500 tons and was in Wellington Harbor. But here's the thing about sailing and wind: you can't always control what happens. Next thing we knew (or, nek minit, as they say here), the wind was dropping, the spinnaker was going flaccid and the very large ferry was bearing down on us. Our instructor was slightly worried: "You see that ferry, right?" I'm not saying the tremble in his voice was so
pronounced because we had an Irishman at the helm. It wasn't that the way he said it made it sound like "you see that fairy, right?" that was funny. It was the fact that, well, this was the biggest ship I'd seen in a month and it was getting bigger by the second as we were right in its lane. It honked its fog horn three times. Though it sounded like the maritime equivalent of "get the f&%* out of the way or I'll squash you like a baby seal," our instructor told us - not entirely convincingly - that it simply meant the behemoth was turning to port. As you can see from the above photo, I was desperately trying to David Copperfield the ferry away. In the end, no harm was done, no seals were hurt, and we even received a friendly multi-fingered wave from the bridge of the Aratere. (Sorry this is a little late, but I only just was sent these pictures today.) Source: Kiwiscots